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The wind shifted, sending a shower of drops into Jo’s face. She gestured to the makeshift altar. “No way those candles were burning once this rain started. But the wax has spilled over, so they were burning for a fair time before the rain started.”
“When exactly did it start?” Arnett asked, pulling out his phone.
“About eight,” Jo answered. “And based on how long it took us, I’d say it would take at least twenty-five minutes to walk at a moderate pace from the Alexanders’ house to where we are now.”
“The candles had to have been burning for what, an hour at least?” Arnett asked.
“We can buy some and test that out,” Marzillo said. “But I’d say closer to two. The surfaces are relatively flat, so it would take a while for enough to pool to overflow.”
“So, if that’s right, they’d have been lit no later than six or six-thirty,” Arnett said. “That narrows things down.”
Jo’s hand flew up to the diamond at her neck. “There’s something—”
“What?” Arnett asked.
“I don’t know. It feels like stage dressing again, but I’m getting something else as well.” She pulled out her phone and scrolled to the photos from Madison’s crime scene. She picked one, then shifted to the equivalent vantage point—and gasped. “Bob, Janet. Come around and look at this.”
They shifted behind her, then compared what was on the screen to what was in front of them. “Holy shit,” Arnett said. “The positioning isidentical.”
Peterson came over to see. “That’s creepy AF. And given how creepy this already is, that’s saying something.”
Jo nodded. “It’s like he used the first scene to guide the second.”
“Detectives.” Alicia Sweeney’s voice came from behind them. “We found her clothes.”
* * *
Jo and Arnett followed Alicia the few hundred feet to where the neatly folded stack of clothes, along with a phone and a ring of keys, sat waiting on a table-like boulder. A canopy of tree branches had kept them relatively dry, but not unscathed. Jo pulled up a photo of Madison’s clothes for comparison purposes, now welcoming the déjà vu.
“Same exact configuration,” she said. “Either the killer placed them himself, or he directed them very exactly where to put everything.”
Sweeney went through the procedure of examining and bagging the belongings. Beige bra and underwear. Red tunic, plain except for a small bow placed to rest at the top of Naomie’s pregnant belly. Black maternity leggings. Black hooded cargo-style rain jacket. Trainers with socks stuffed in at the bottom of the boulder. Phone powered on.
When she’d finished, Jo and Arnett trudged silently through the mud back to the temporary command center. They ducked in under the tarps to get out of the rain and poured themselves cups of black coffee from the portable urn.
“I’m feeling like I’ve been thrown out of a car down the side of a steep hill,” Arnett said. “So much for our mobbed-up strip-club theory.”
Jo took a deep breath. “I’m not so sure we can toss it out just yet. From what we heard from the group of friends, Naomie was close to Madison, like a big sister. If Madison told her something she saw or something that happened, Naomie may have intervened on her behalf.”
“You think she was that stupid?” Arnett’s grimace was skeptical. “Why wouldn’t she just come to us?”
“It may have happened some time ago, long enough for her to think it wasn’t relevant. You’re right that Naomie seemed like a smart enough woman to know better than to keep something like that from us, but we’ve seen people hold back on worse for less. And Julia said something about Naomie thinking she could do anything, and mentioned before that Naomie was very big on keeping people’s secrets. I think we need to talk to Julia, find out more about that.”
Arnett’s face nodded, still skeptical. “Maybe, but it seems extremely unlikely. I think in light of all this we need to dust off our other theories.”
Jo nodded. “I agree it’s not the most likely possibility at this point. If I take a step back from this, like I was just discovering both scenes at once, I’d strongly lean toward a random serial killer snatching pregnant women. But if that’s right, it’s a pretty big coincidence that the two victims were close friends.”
Arnett scratched his chin. “How many pregnant women are out walking this time of year? Pretty shallow pool to dive into.”
“Good point,” she conceded. “But could he even have known she was pregnant just by sight? I don’t think her bump would have shown under her jacket.”
“He’d’ve had to know she was pregnant beforehand.”
“But the whole reason Naomie and Madison were friends wasbecausethey were pregnant, so less of a coincidence.” Jo tapped her thigh. “They became friends through the prenatal class. And there’s that guy Chelsea says might have been watching them outside the juice bar Friday night, whose lack of description sounds very much like the man at The Volcano.”
“So maybe our killer was watching one of them, and stumbled on the rest?” Arnett said. “Maybe he followed Madison to the juice bar, or even the class itself at Triple-B. One-stop shopping destination if you’re looking for pregnant women.”
“So we need to expand our canvassing immediately to include Beautiful Bouncing Babies and the juice bar where the women went after class. See if anybody noticed anyone strange hanging around.” She tapped at her phone, sending out the information to the rest of the team.
