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Nox’s hand clapped against his forehead. “Oh, shit! The lanyards!”
Nelson nodded. “Any guesses as to who made them and mailed them to the league’s volunteers?”
“Julian, obviously,” Nox said as he rubbed his chin and frowned. “But we know he was at the bookstore with Howard for hours after Elsa left and they drove home together. Julian dropped his father off.”
“In the shop’s van,” Nelson said, then held up a finger. Everything they knew about Elsa’s last hours pivoted around Julian watching Elsa get into her car. And if Nelson removed that one detail, the rest of the timeline collapsed and their search radius shrunk down to Bippity Boppity Books. “What if it didn’t happen the way Julian said it did?”
“What do you mean? Julian and Howard were the last ones to see Elsa alive and they were together for the rest of the evening after she left the store.”
“What if she never left the store?” Nelson challenged, earning a flabbergasted look from Nox.
“But Howard said so and I can’t believe he’d lie to us.”
“I don’t think Howard lied to us,” Nelson agreed, then leaned toward Nox conspiratorially. “I think Julian lied to Howard,” he whispered. “Remember, Howard said he was nodding off and Julian was running the store. What if he wasn’t just ‘nodding off?’”
Nox’s jaw stretched as a loud gasp poured from him. “His tea! How much do you want to bet that Julian always makes his father’s tea? He took advantage of Howard’s trust and drugged him!”
“Which would leave Julian with a big window of time and an unwitting accomplice to provide him with a credible alibi in the morning,” Nelson explained.
“He could have had hours to work with!” Nox said as he grew more incredulous. “If Julian had drugged the tea, he could have told his father they were leaving the store and dropping him off on time and Howard probably wouldn’t have known the difference.”
“Or noticed there was an unconscious body in the back of the van with his rollator. What if Julian drugged Elsa too?”
“Motherfucker!” Nox covered his mouth. “How could he do that to Elsa and Howard?”
Nelson sighed heavily as he turned to the picture of Elsa. “She was beautiful. He probably loved her from afar for a long time. For whatever reason, she wasn’t interested in a romantic relationship with Julian, or else he wouldn’t have felt the need to resort to this.”
“Do you think he knew she was going to die?” Nox asked shakily, but Nelson held up a hand.
“That’s a question of dogma and you’ll have to ask him if he’s truly a believer. Maybe he thought she’d be transformed into a deity or be some kind of queen after Samhain. I’d like to believe he was guided by love.”
“It would explain why Elsa was moved. What if Julian had second thoughts or realized he wouldn’t get to have her in the end?” Nox offered.
Nelson dragged a hand down his face, sad and so angry that this was what it was all about. Even with the Tuath Dé and the Dagda to give their cult legitimacy and make it a contender for a new world order, it all boiled down to the desire to possess, control, and rape a young woman.
“It’s always the same, isn’t it?” Nelson said to Nox. “No matter what Julian believes, in the end, it was all about using the Tuath Dé and the Dagda to rob Elsa of her free will and take what he wanted from her.”
“Now that you’ve discovered the how and the why, how do we find the other missing girls?” Nox asked him and Nelson’s lips pulled tight.
“This is all just speculation until we have evidence to connect Julian to Elsa’s murder and the other missing girls, aside from the league and the lanyards,” he stated. “A good defense attorney will quickly prove that Howard had access to all the victims through the league’s database as well. Or get a jury to believe that just one person—be it an obsessed reader or a former volunteer—could have gotten access to the database and shared it with any number of people.”
“You were right from the very beginning about the MacCrorys and you’re right about this,” Nox said and his chin tipped back confidently. “We’ll see.”
“I need to see where Julian lives,” Nelson said as he went to Nox’s desk and opened his laptop. He pulled up a map and found Julian’s address. “He owns a home within the boundaries of this cemetery.”
Nox hummed as he leaned in close and read over Nelson’s shoulder. “The old Edgewood Cemetery! I’ve been tons of times.”
“To a cemetery?” Nelson frowned at him. “Have you buried a lot of friends or do you enjoy the landscaping?”
“Cemeteries are fine.” Nox winked at Nelson. “Some interesting people are interred at Edgewood and there’s a gorgeous selection of Victorian and Art Nouveau monuments,” he explained, then bent over the keyboard so he could enlarge the map. “If I remember correctly, that’s the old caretaker’s cottage that Julian’s living in. From what I understand, Edgewood and a few other cemeteries in the area were bought out and some corporation runs the grounds out of an office in DC. So, no need for a caretaker, but who wants to live on the edge of a cemetery?” He asked, earning a chuckle from Nelson.
“Someone cheap and into the occult. He’s got a lot of privacy there with the cemetery on one side and the woods behind him,” he noted and his heart started racing again and Nelson felt an urgent need to get a closer look. And he was getting a tickle of hope in the center of his chest again.
“No one would notice if Julian was carrying bodies into his house or hosting pagan parties,” Nox mused, his eyes glittering with the same urgent need and hope as they flicked to Nelson’s.
“No one would notice,” Nelson confirmed.
“Is this something you would want to wait for a warrant and the task force for?” Nox asked and Nelson nodded.
