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“Need something to get the taste of death out of my mouth.” Ripley exhaled a plume of smoke then coughed. “But this somehow tastes even worse.”
Out of earshot of the motel owner, Ella could be more open about her theory. “What do you think?”
“I think… I’m glad I quit years ago.”
“Not that. My theory.”
“I think you’re onto something,” Ripley said. “There are some seeds to work with.”
“Right? Aside from our killer talking to God, there’s some religious aspect to this whole thing. Joanne went to rehab at a church. David had tons of religious paintings in his house. Gary was a maintenance worker for local churches, and Dennis said that was deeply religious. And then there’s the obvious thing. I can’t believe we didn’t see it a mile off.”
“What’s that?” Ripley asked, flicking her half-smoked cigarette into the wind.
“I didn’t notice it until I saw Gary. There was a moment he slipped out of his position, landing face first on the bed.”
“What do you mean?”
“These victims were posed. To look like they were praying to God.”
Ripley’s gaze wandered from Ella, out towards the empty street. She seemed to like the idea. “Could be. I guess they couldn’t hold the prayer position for long. Their bodies would slip out of the pose in death.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I saw. By the time anyone had gotten to the other victims, they’d fallen out of position. Our killer’s making these guys pray.”
That was where Ella’s theory hit a wall. “Beats me, but there’s something else we need to consider too. Now that we know Gary’s life story, all our victims have a connection. A pretty strong one.”
“They were all struggling, down on their luck, pretty much on death’s door anyway?”
“That’s another one, but each one of these victims lost something. Well, not just something, but the thing that defined them. They’d all had their identities stripped away.”
Ripley reached into her pocket then shoved two pieces of gum into her mouth. “Like?” she asked.
“Look at the first victim, Joanne. She had her heart set on being a parent, but then that got taken away from her. Then it was a downward spiral until her death.”
“Right. And David?”
“Same thing. He had his wealth and his business. Lost it all, ended up homeless, ended up dead.”
“I see where you’re going. Gary loved his possessions. That got taken away, then he woke up dead.”
“Exactly,” Ella said. “It’s not about the drugs or the homelessness or the conspiracy theories. At its core, it’s about identities. Motherhood, wealth, possessions. Defining characteristics that were stripped away, leaving nothing but empty shells behind. Our killer is targeting people who lost themselves.”
Time seemed to stop while Mia reflected on Ella’s interpretations. She untied and retied her glowing red ponytail, affording Ella a rare glimpse of her partner’s locks in full flow past her shoulders. Catwalk models the world over would kill for those natural curls, she thought.
“Right, but… why? What’s the point of killing people who wouldn’t last much longer anyway?”
Ella regarded Ripley for a moment, willing the answer into her head. “You don’t think it’s obvious? You of all people must be able to see it.”
Ripley smiled. “Of course. I just want to see if you do too.”
“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Matthew ten-twenty-eight.”
“Right,” said Ripley, “mercy killings.”
“Mercy killings. God’s will. Our unsub is a walking euthanasia clinic. He’s putting these people out of their misery to give them better lives beyond the grave.”
The gravity of the conversation topichung thick intheair,apalpable pressure that squeezedthebreath fromthem. While serial killing was par for the course, religion was unfamiliar territory for both Ella and Ripley. Ella even felt a little foolish reciting a Bible passage that she’d only learned about thirty minutes before. The strange syllables felt unfamiliar as they tumbled from her tongue, a foreign language that she could repeat but not quite grasp.
After a moment of heavy stillness, Ripley said, “Matthew sixty-nine, huh? What’s all that about?”
