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Paige didn’t know, but it seemed unlikely. If the killer was making something deeply personal, then wouldn’t he use his own individual style for this?
Maybe there was something in that. Maybe it would be possible to get an analysis of works of art by local artists, trying to match the paint swirls to their works. Paige winced at that thought, because as good as it potentially was, she knew that it wasn’t going to happen. Christopher thought he had the killer in custody. The city wanted all of this dealt with as quickly and quietly as possible. No one was going to pay for the kind of testing that Paige wanted.
“Is it over?” Paige asked aloud as if the night air had answers. “Should I just go back to the car?”
If she did that, then what? She didn’t really believe that Lucien was the killer anymore, which meant that the real killer was probably out there somewhere. He might even be preparing to kill again as Paige strolled along the boardwalk, trying to make sense of his twisted art.
That made her look carefully at every side street she passed, trying to spot any sign of the killer setting up his murder scene. Paige knew that it wouldn’t be that simple, though. The killer had picked spots that wouldn’t be immediately obvious the past couple of times. In any case, if it were possible to spot a scene from the street, Paige had the terrifying thought that it would probably be too late by then. She would only notice it because a body was there, because another victim had been claimed and she was too late.
Paige snapped her attention back to the boardwalk just in time to avoid running into a large sign. No, not a sign, a map, stylized in that slightly artistic way that tried to show every fun spot on the boardwalk by listing its restaurants, its entertainment venues, and even some of the most permanent spots where street performers plied their trade. A large red arrow informed Paige of where she was.
Paige almost walked straight past it, but she found herself staring at it instead. There was a familiarity to it all that Paige couldn’t place, that she wracked her brain trying to understand. It made her stare at it, trying to get a sense of what was going on.
Then she saw it, and she understood what the lines of paint were all about. They weren’t abstract. They were a map.
The killer had painted a map of the boardwalk at each of his crime scenes. Oh, it was highly stylized, so abstracted from any normal map that Paige wasn’t surprised that no one had managed to spot it for what it was.
Now that she’d seen it, though, Paige couldn’t un-see it. It was simply obvious. The killer had painted the boardwalk around his victims, again and again, at each of his scenes. The swirls weren’t just swirls anymore; they were topography.
Paige pulled up the images on her phone, trying to match them to the abstractions of the map in front of her. It was hard, because not only had the killer not been striving for clarity when he produced the maps behind his kills, neither had the people who produced the map of the boardwalk.
Yet she found that shecouldpiece it together. That square there was the bar and grill. That was the curve of the ocean. Those were side streets.
Paige pulled up another one of the crime scene photographs and saw once more that it wasn’t quite the same. There were small differences in each of the patterns that might be possible to put down to simple variations in execution, but there was one spiral swirl that seemed to be in radically different places in each of the photographs.
Paige set about trying to find out where those swirls were. She looked at the Aiden Martlet scene first, since it was the oldest of the killings, and decided to work her way from there.
If that line there was the boardwalk itself, and that was a bandstand that stood out on one side of it, thenthosewere connecting alleys. Paige counted her way along them, tracing her route on the tourist map of the boardwalk as she went. The swirl sat in one of those alleys, but she was surprised to find that it wasn’t the one where Aiden Martlet had been killed.
No, it was the one where Hope Jackson had been murdered, instead.
“He’s leaving clues to his next piece,” Paige whispered, hurrying to find the crime scene photograph from the Hope Jackson killing. She stared at the lines of paint there, tracing them to find the next spot it marked. Paige wasn’t surprised now to find that it marked the site where Allison Hartley had been killed, but she was glad to see that it confirmed her theory.
She had the means to find the site of the next murder.
That realization shocked Paige for a moment, but it also filled her with hope. If she could work this out, she might be able to get there before the killer struck.
She called up the photographs of the last crime scene, tracing her finger over the tourist map as she worked, trying to find the spot marked by that distinctive swirl. Her heart was in her mouth as she found it. It was a few blocks over, down the boardwalk.
Paige tried to call Christopher. She had to let him know what she’d found. There was no answer, though. Was he driving Lucien back to the PD? Was he just not answering his phone?
Paige messaged him instead, sending the location that she’d found.
Christopher, I’ve found the site of the next kill! I’m heading there now. Hurry!
That was all Paige had time for. She started to run as fast as she could. She had to get there before the killer struck again.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Paige was breathing hard by the time she arrived at the spot the killer’s maps had indicated. It was another side street, with another lonely-looking streetlight partway along it.
Paige drew her gun and edged into that alley, feeling the tension rise in her as she did so. She was approaching the spot of a potential impending murder alone, without her partner to back her up. Protocol probably said that she should wait, because there was too much of a risk in going in like that, but Paige knew that she couldn’t. There might still be a chance to save the killer’s next victim. Paige couldn’t squander that opportunity.
She had to move forward, but she did it carefully, covering the angles as she went, trying to make sure that there was no chance for the killer to get behind her. All of the evidence suggested that this was a killer who liked to strike from his victims’ backs and strangle them to subdue them. Paige couldn’t run in blindly if that would only leave her vulnerable. If the killer knocked her out, or even killed her, then she would have no chance of saving his next victim.
Assuming that she wasn’t already too late. The killer could have already struck in the time that she and Christopher had spent bringing in Lucien and questioning him. She might be about to walk into another crime scene. But she might still be in time to stop that from happening.Thatthought made Paige quicken her step slightly.
Paige reached an open gateway leading to a small courtyard, similar to the one the killer had used in his previous murder. There were lights along the rear wall of the building it backed onto, providing enough light to see what was going on there.
