Page 56 of The Hanging Dolls
Scott’s body tensed, his jaw clenching. “No,” he said, immediately defensive. But the denial lacked conviction. Travis’ eyes bore into him as he waited. Finally, Scott exhaled sharply, his shoulders sagging in defeat. “I went to see Carly.”
Travis blinked, momentarily taken aback. “Carly? Why the hell would you do that? You know that woman is toxic. God knows what she’s doing raising a child.”
Scott’s eyes flashed with anger, and before he could stop himself, the words were out. “If Carly’s so bad, then maybe you shouldn’t have slept with her when I was dating her.”
The words hung in the air between them, sharp and cutting. Travis felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He stared at Scott, stunned into silence.
Scott didn’t wait for Travis to respond. Instead, he yanked open the car door and got in, slamming it shut behind him. The engine roared to life and Scott sped out of the parking lot, the tires splashing through puddles as he disappeared into the night, leaving Travis to marinate in shame at having betrayed his friend.
THIRTY-ONE
“Just trust your instincts, Agent Storm.” A dimple appeared on Aiden’s cheek. “Your instincts will never fail you.”
Zoe hadn’t noticed his dimples before. She liked it. “Haven’t your instincts ever failed you before?”
“No.”
“Aren’t you self-assured?” she teased lightly.
He cracked another smile. “If your instincts failed you, then it’s because you were too scared to actually listen to them.”
Zoe pondered his words. She knew deep in her bones she wouldn’t keep her promise to Rachel to not look into her death—she just didn’t have the stomach. “I suppose you’re right. But your instinct definitely failed you when you decided to decorate your office withthat.”
He turned his head to follow her gaze at the Pollock painting on the wall behind him. “That’s a classic! What are you talking about?”
“Why didn’t you pick something easy on the eyes? Like a Monet or a Van Gogh?”
He made a show of taking notes. “Patient has a shockingly poor taste in art. Unfit for duty.”
Zoe laughed.
There was something charged about that morning. An electric hum that clung to Zoe’s skin like static as she walked along the docks to the station. The water in the harbor lay almost perfectly still, a mirror reflecting the muted colors of the sky, broken only by the occasional ripple as a lone seagull dipped low to skim the surface. The boats, varying in size and age, bobbed gently in their moorings, their hulls creaking softly like an old man’s bones.
Her phone rang. “What’s up?”
“I finished my linguistic analysis of the messages,” Aiden said, sounding unusually hesitant. “And I found something intriguing.”
“Like what?” Her heart skittered.
“Both messages refer to conclusions or endings and contain metaphors. I did three types of analysis—lexical, syntactic, and stylistic. The first message had frequent use of first-person singular pronouns, unlike the second message that had third-person and impersonal language likethe outcome, everything concludes. The first message also contains more poetic terms likeclimbing a hill, plucking a flower, stealing a star?—”
She stopped in her tracks, watching the seagulls pick away at the carcass of a dead bird. “The second one had generic phrases likeperhaps it’s for the best.”
“Exactly. In terms of sentence structure, while both use contractions, the first one was a mix of short and complex sentences with multiple clauses but the second had two sentences of moderate length and simpler structure. Also, the tone has shifted from urgent, personal, and emotive to reflective, impersonal, and resigned.”
Zoe raked over the words that were embedded in her head. “Yeah, the second was more formal too. First one was poetic, less generic expressions.”
“Now you’re getting it.” A pause. “According to the program, there is a fifty percent chance that the two messages were authored by two different people.”
“What?” Her voice splintered. “Two?Isn’t it possible that the killer’s psyche is evolving with the killings?”
“It’s a possibility and to be fair, the two messages were very short but… the crime scenes are too clean, Storm. Especially for a town that has no history of violent crimes and incidents. Chief Hunter and I have looked into every newcomer in town and they all checked out. We can’t rule this out.”
“So there might be two killers.”
“It’s easier for two to orchestrate something like this.” A phone rang in the background. “I’ll give my findings to Scott. You coming?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there soon. See you.”
