But it raised some larger questions, I knew. It wasn’t part of my job, but I knew that a serial killer wouldn’t usually have years between kills—not two, then six, then four, then five. Which meant that the motive was something other than a compulsionto kill. But the fact that there were so many was also strange—most killers were either serial, mass, or one-off. The idea that someone would intermittently kill five people across seventeen years was very unusual.
The alternative was that it was more than one someone, which was not a very comforting thought, either.
Not my job, but I wanted to give Smith and whoever else might work on the case more to go off if I could. I probably couldn’t, but I wanted to make sure there was nothing more for me to do before I stopped focusing on it.
I started by texting him to let him know I had the full reports from Wausau. They’d sent summary reports by email, but the packet contained radiographs amid the paperwork, because while they had the equipment to take them, they hadn’t actually managed to have the modern digital equipment that the radiographers for the living got to use.
I pulled out the dental x-rays and got to work finding the main pinpoints to narrow down the search parameters in the national dental database. Wausau certainly could have done that, but so could we, and they were dealing with cases shipped in from all over the state, so anything they knew wecoulddo, we had to do.
I was flipping back and forth between four sets of teeth belonging to missing persons from five years ago, checking each tooth against the radiograph I kept having to hold up to the ceiling lights when Smith walked in. It made it difficult to actually see all the details—given the fact that overhead fluorescent lighting isn’t exactly ideal lighting for viewing radiographs.
“Anything good?” he asked me.
“More details,” I replied. “Might help with IDing them.” Part of me wanted to suggest that he just find a medium and ask them to identify the bodies, but nobody had suggested using amedium even once since I’d moved to Shawano. I kept meaning to ask Lacy if there were policies stopping them from trying, but I also kept forgetting, and she was never around when I remembered. “Is there some reason y’all don’t use mediums to ID Does?” As in John or Jane or Jack or Joan Doe.
“Do you usually in Virginia?”
I shrugged. “We did. But we also had Ward Campion, so maybe they don’t elsewhere in the state.”
“Well, for one thing, we’d need corroboration from physical evidence in order to use a medium’s testimony as an ID, meaning the medium is pretty redundant,” he replied.
“It would help you know where to look, though, wouldn’t it?” I asked.
“Probably,” Smith replied. “But I’ve never met one.”
“Huh,” I replied. It made me wonder how often Arc-humans were mediums instead of one of the varieties of psychics—empaths or touch-psychics—or seers. “Well, if you get the chance, I’d recommend hiring one if you can.”
“Let me know if you meet any local ones,” he replied. “In the mean time, what are we dealing with?”
It wasdark by the time I got back to Elliot’s house, and I was anxiously tapping my fingers on the steering wheel as I pulled around the corner, worried about him even though I knew he hadn’t been here most of the day.
My anxiety was not assuaged by the fact that the house, too, was dark.
I reminded myself that it was only six, and that it was entirely likely that Elliot was still finishing up something for work up at the casino, especially since his Tundra wasn’t in the driveway.I took a couple deep breaths, then made myself pull into the driveway where the badger had been left—I’d always pulled in behind Elliot, but I didn’t want to block his side of the driveway. Not that he probably cared, but it just felt wrong.
I parked, took a couple deep breaths, and walked up to the front door, pulling out the key Elliot had given me the day before so that I could come and go as I pleased. It felt weird. Not bad, but weird.
I opened the door, letting myself in, and set down my stuff so that I could take off the hiking boots that had become my everyday work shoes. The fact that Elliot had bought them for me made me even more inclined to wear them, because clearly I’m a total sap. And I didn’t have that many actually comfortable pairs of shoes. I had a pair of trainers, but they were almost as old as the hiking shoes Elliot had thrown up on.
Elliot had tried insisting that I buy a pair of steel-toed work boots, but I hadn’t yet managed to pad my nearly-depleted checking account to the point where I could afford more than one over-a-hundred-dollar pairs of shoes. The next pair on my list were fire boots, and they would likely cost me three hundred or more. And then the uniform, extra gear, gas to get me to wherever in Shawano County I got sent… I wasn’t really going to be able to save up much money for a while.
It made moving back into Elliot’s house more attractive as an option.
I picked up my satchel and carried it into the kitchen, setting it on one of the stools at the island. And then I started going through the fridge, looking for the makings of dinner while telling myself that Elliot was just late coming back from work. That he was fine.
I whisked together a dairy-free carbonara sauce in a pan in which I’d sautéed small cubes of duck from one of the ducks that Elliot really had gotten in exchange for fixing up a bunch of barstools from one of the most popular bars in Shawano. Hunters were big fans of bars, and a lot of them stayed in and around Shawano while hunting game birds and deer in the surrounding fields, marshes, and forests.
Duck fat was absolutely amazing, and I was really looking forward to how it would taste in this pasta with some of the garden peas that Elliot had grown—or, rather, which had grown on their own and which we’d harvested—and frozen.
I was tossing a little olive oil through the pasta to keep it from sticking before stirring it into the rich, eggy sauce when I heard the front door open.
I was a little surprised at how relieved I actually felt—how genuinely worried I had been that something had happened to him.
He padded into the kitchen doorway, and I felt my eyebrows go up as I took in his stain-and-sawdust covered self. “Smells good,” he told me.
“You need a shower,” I replied, unable to help the smirk on my lips. There was a curl of wood caught in his hair that rested against one temple. It was absolutely adorable.
He grinned at me. “Want to join me?”
