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She places a reassuring hand on Shenton’s shoulder.
“Thank you, Toby,” she finishes, and gets up quickly, walking away from the desk, suppressing her annoyance.
Noah appears in the doorway.
“What did Griffin want?” he asks again.
Cara slaps the file on to the desk. “Nothing good,” she says. Her phone beeps and she picks it up, then puts it back down roughly. “Go away, Nate,” she mutters. Deakin’s flipping through the file next to her.
“Don’t bother, Deaks. It’s just another one of his crazy theories.”
But Noah’s still looking and slowly sits down at her computer. He does a search on the system and Cara looks over his shoulder as he pulls up the details.
“Had you heard about this?” he asks. She pulls a chair over and sits down next to him, reading the screen.
Five dead, including one pregnant woman. Noah hands her the file and she pulls out one of the printouts Griffin has included. It’s a color photograph of a wall—the word PIG written in red. She looks back at the screen, where Noah is staring between the two pictures.
“Yeah, I have that same photo here,” she says, but Noah shakes his head.
“This isn’t the photo you have in your hand,” he says quietly. “This is a photo from a true crime website.” He looks at her. “This is from the Manson murders.”
Cara looks between the screen and the photo in her hand. There is no doubt about it. They are identical.
“What did Griffin just text you?” he asks.
Cara leans forward and Deakin moves out of the way of the computer. She types in a few search terms, and information appears on the screen. Two students, women, eighteen. Kidnapped when hitchhiking. Handcuffed, strangled, stabbed. Heads severed. Put in the trunk of a Ford Galaxy, one with a broken taillight.
Cara can barely breathe. She tears her eyes away and looks at Noah. His face is white.
“What did Griffin’s text say?” he asks again.
Cara looks at her phone, then back to the screen.
“Kemper,” she says.
CHAPTER
18
CARA SEES THE whole range of emotions in her detective chief superintendent’s eyes. Quietly, she and Noah had gathered up the file and taken it to Marsh’s office. They hadn’t spoken—they’d barely dared look at each other. To acknowledge what they both knew as true seemed bonkers. And yet, they couldn’t deny what they were seeing.
They go into the office and sit in front of their boss. They start with their own case, showing the similarities one by one to Marsh. At first, he seems to be humoring them. Then a look of confusion crosses his face.
“You’re telling me that someone went to the trouble of reconstructing a double murder from nearly fifty years ago in our back garden?” Cara recognizes the skepticism. She’d heard it in her own voice.
“We know it sounds crazy, boss. But all the details are the same. From the make of the car, to the way they were killed.”
He frowns, picks up the file, then puts it down again.
“So, what? We’re looking for someone obsessed with a serial killer from California?”
Cara looks at Noah and their boss sees the glance. “What?” he says.
“We think there’s more.”
Noah pulls out the second file, the one that Griffin had given Cara. He puts the pieces of paper on the desk.
“These are murders from the last few years. Prostitutes, killed in a way similar to Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. And women strangled and raped, consistent with the Hillside Strangler.”
