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“Spirit-talker.”
“Whatever. Can we push pause on all this mystical hoodoo voodoo monkey magic until we can figure out whose killing people around here? This is making my brain hurt. I wish the Jubilee had never come to town.”
His face held a look of disappointment. “If that’s what you wish.”
“I wish. Definitely.”
“Okay.”
Speaking of the killer. “Having sex with you wasn’t the reason I drove out here tonight.”
“No?”
“Oh, don’t look hurt. You were a pleasant bonus.”
“That’s a consolation.”
“Sheesh.”
“Why did you come tonight, Chavvah?”
Every time he said my name, my heart skipped a beat. I think he knew it too. “I want to get a look at the second body. Maybe the first one as well. And I wanted to show you something.”
He dropped his gaze to my T-shirt.
“Ha, ha. No, I mean something else. But first, did you smell sassafras on them?”
Billy Bob blinked. “Yes,” he said.
“On the second guy as well?”
“Yes.” He tapped his chin. “And little else, other than blood and meat. There’s been a lot of it going around the fair. I didn’t think much of it.”
“Could the killer have used it to mask his own scent?”
“It’s not a bad deduction. I didn’t smell anyone else on the bodies. Just their own stench and the light smell of sassafras.”
I pulled the star from my sweatpants’ pocket and held it out for him to see. “Roger Messer found this while he was cleaning the restaurant for me. It feels important.”
“What is it?” When he reached for it, I pulled it back. He didn’t try to touch it again.
“An eight-point star,” I told him. I turned it in my hand, my fingers tracing the twisted edges.
“It could be something to do with religion or rituals, or it could be some kid’s trinket,” he said.
I clasped the star in my fist, and I swear I felt it pulse again. “I can’t shake the feeling that it has to do with the killings. Do you know who the second victim is?”
“Jerard Blackwell.”
“Blackwell?” I’d heard that name, but where? “Jerard? As in, Jerry? A woman was asking about him this morning at the police station. A chick named Willy Boden.”
Billy Bob groaned. “I’ve met her.”
I grinned. “She’s feisty, for sure. Anyhow, she was looking for this guy. Said he’d gone missing.” Once again, I was relieved that the victim wasn’t someone I knew and loved. “Was it the same as the first one?”
“Yes. He’d been skinned while still alive, his throat cut after.”
I shuddered. “It takes a sick, sick mind to come up with some heinous crap like that.”
