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“And you haven’t been anywhere near Joanne recently?”
“Absolutely not. And I was at a convention in Chicago from Friday until yesterday. I got plane tickets, pictures, everything. I sent them to the police already.”
Chris seemed committed to his innocence, and combined with his open body language, Ripley was all but certain she wasn’t sharing air space with a murderer.
Ella said, “Thank you. We’ll review them. Before we go, I just have one more question.”
“Go ahead.”
“You said Joanne got hooked on methamphetamines. Did she have a history of drug use? Even alcohol or nicotine?”
Chris shook his head. “Rarely. Occasionally alcohol. She always said she was raised to believe drinking was fine but drunkenness wasn’t. Some Christian mantra.”
“Got it. Do you know where she was sourcing these drugs? Meth must be pretty difficult to come by around here, right?”
Chris’s face was a blank slate, his answer evident. “I don’t know. Someone would drop it in our trash outside. Joanne wouldn’t tell me where she got it. I guessed online.”
Ripleysearched for focus, tryingto keep hermind straight and her thoughts linear. This unsub targeted a female drug addict and a male homeless person, both of whom had been well-to-do but weren’t anymore, both of whom had been separated from their spouses. Ripley looked past the trees and envisioned the forest, not letting herself get lost in connections that might not be there. For all she knew, Joanne and David could have been victims of opportunity and nothing more.
“And you don’t know anyone who might have wanted to hurt Joanne?” Ella asked.
Chrispondered the question,hisfingers idly tracing circles onhischin. He sighed and said, “No. I mean, I don’t know who she was hanging around with these days. Could have been anyone, you know?” He trailed off, but Ripley caught a flicker of doubt in Chris’s expression. A moment of indecision, characterized by a sudden rush of submissive body language. Two slumped shoulders, a narrowing of the legs, eyes sweeping up and down along their left-hand side.
“Mr. Murphy? Is there something else you want to add?” Ella asked. The rookie had caught it too. For all her problems, the wild theories and the impulsive rushes, Ella’s body language analyses were second to none.
Chris removed his glasses and placed them on the side table. He rubbed his eyes with his fingertips and said, “I don’t want to jump to any conclusions here, but I know Joanne was seeing someone. I still talk to some guys from our old workplace and apparently she was seeing one of the execs there.”
“Name?” asked Ripley.
“I don’t know exactly. It’s foreign. I want to say Hiko-something, maybe Hiro? He’s a board member or something. I never met him.”
Ella took the information on board. “Thank you for all this, Mr. Murphy. You’ve been a great help.”
“You’ll catch this guy, won’t you?”
“Yes we will,” Ella said, with more certainty than anyone should have in situations like this. Premature death was always the biggest tragedy of all, but false hope was a close second. Ripley had a mind to lecture her for promising things she couldn’t guarantee, but now wasn’t the time. Ripleyrosetoher feet, signaling thatthe interviewhad cometoa close. Ella passed on her contact details to Chris and joined Ripley at the door.
Next stop was the precinct to try and piece things together and see what – if anything – connected these unfortunate victims. The only thing Ripley was certain of was that this killer had a deadly mission and she and Ella were the only chances of stopping it. Unsubs like this never deviated from their plans, and nine times out of ten, they never went down without a fight.
CHAPTER NINE
Ella’s office at the precinct was adrab, cramped space,barely bigger than ashoebox. Itsyellowwallsandsparse decor offered little to stimulate, but all the inspiration she needed was already locked up in her head. She lay out her notes and paperwork on the desk and began scrutinizing the evidence she had available, carefully connecting the dots to form what she hoped would be a cohesive narrative.
But she fell at the first hurdle, because very little here made sense.
Victim number one, Joanne Gustafson, had been a reasonably well-to-do thirty-something woman. According to her ex-husband, the loss of an unborn child sent her spiraling into self-destruction, leading to a crippling drug addiction that destroyed her marriage and her will to live. By all accounts, she made a perfect victim for a fledgling serial killer because she’d descended into one of society’s downtrodden. The killer might have known this, and perhaps targeted Joanne because he knew her death could be blamed on other factors: overdose, suicide, perhaps a hit due to debt.
But judging by the lack of stolen valuables around Joanne’s home, the motivation here wasn’t financial. If she owed the wrong people money, the crime scene didn’t show it. This killer targeted Joanne for a completely different reason.
Victim number two, David Harper, had been a wealthy gentleman who’d recently fallen on hard times. After a bad investment in a wine vineyard that apparently didn’t even exist, David had handed over his home to his young wife and moved into a storage unit. The decision was apparently David’s own, feeling he had a moral obligation to get his life back on track without dragging his wife down with him.
Both were killed inside their own living spaces, both with one thrust of a steel blade. Both had been positioned on their knees post-death, with their heads buried into a chair.
Aside from the manner of death, the two victims appeared to live in two separate worlds. The victimology did not match up at all, although it seemed that both Joanne and David had lost something recently. Joanne had lost a person; David had lost money. Both had been separated, but who out there could say they hadn’t lost either of these things at some point in their lives? Ella wondered if she died from a heart attack herself tomorrow, would investigators consider her own broken relationship as a possible factor in her death? Very few people could say they didn’t have at least one running problem at any given time, so it was only natural that these victims followed suit. Hell, Joanne and David had both split up between six months to a year ago, so was that really recent enough to be a connection?
Ella stopped for a moment,pleasantly surprisedby herownlevel-headedness. By this point in an investigation, she was usually making wild leaps, clutching at straws, weaving imaginary threads to create loose and barely connected sequences. But not today. Maybe her frustrations were keeping her grounded, or maybe she’d just learned that after all this time, making tangential connections rarely got results. What was it Ripley always said to her? Homicide investigations are like a spinning top on a table. One should admire it first and study it carefully before proceeding. Touch it too soon and it’ll fly out of your hands. Right now, the spinning top was a fast-moving blur, so she had to step back and wait for the edges and the corners to become visible. Only then could she begin to dissect and grasp this case with full clarity.
And besides, thedead often wentto theirfinal resting places withtheir secretsstill intact, sometimes having never revealed them to anyone but the person that ended their life. If something did connect Joanne and David, it could have been something undocumented, something that even their closest allies might not have known. Troubles were seldom a topic of pride for most people. Perhaps she and Ripley could have asked these interviewees every question under the sun and still come out cold on the other side.
