Page 21 of The Whispering Girls
She noticed a door at the end of the kitchen area that didn’t have any handles. It seemed odd. Always curious, Katie had to investigate. She ran her fingers around the edges and could tell that it was indeed a door. But how to open it? There were no security locks like on the front door and suite entrances. She pushed it, but it didn’t pop open. Running her fingers along the edges, she detected air at the top. That was strange.
Cisco whined, indicating he was hungry.
“Wait, Cisco.”
Katie got a folding two-step ladder from the corner of the room and climbed up. She took her fingers to the top of the door and pried at the wood until she heard a snap. The door hadopened an inch. Quickly stepping down, she managed to open the tall closet door, which was latched from the inside.
It wasn’t a storage closet, but instead a dark space. Katie leaned in and could see stairs leading down. It was quiet but there was cold air coming in from the outdoors.
Katie rummaged in the kitchen drawers until she found a flashlight. She took it and directed the beam down the stairs. The only thing she could see was light escaping from somewhere else.
What was the reason for this hidden passageway?
Was it in the original design?
Was it added later?
Telling Cisco to stay, Katie stepped inside on the small landing and followed the stairs down, which ended at two doors. One was to the outdoors and from where she felt the cool air. The other one seemed to go into the veterinary hospital, where it was warmer.
It seemed strange, but there was most likely a logical explanation. Perhaps Jack hadn’t wanted guests to be able access the surgery. He still had renovations to do; maybe he hadn’t got around to bricking up this old stairwell. Katie hurried back to the kitchen and secured the secret passage’s door.
She made herself a chicken and rice veggie bowl as well as fed Cisco. As she ate, she thought through all the strange occurrences since she had arrived in Echo Forest. Her mind stopped on the crime scene and the peculiar totem next to the body.
Katie spent the rest of the time while waiting for Officer Clark and McGaven searching for possible meaning in killers hanging their victims and the representation of some type of ritual with the outdoor elements in the totem. She read the reports about Theresa Jamison that Jack had sent her. The young woman had been a server at the Sunrise Café and was saving up to go to nursing school.
As the day gradually moved into the evening, the lodge feltcolder. Katie sat on one of the large sofas with a blanket and perused through search results about the items at the crime scene on her laptop. First, she wanted to read through ritual killings. They usually entailed removing the victim’s body parts, or the act of drinking their blood for some purpose or offering. Usually to please gods or some other type of totem. She hadn’t had much experience with these kinds of killers; they were rare in this country. But that makeshift display at the base of the tree appeared to have been constructed on purpose.
Basic murder statistics reveal that men are more likely to be victims of murder than women: approximately sixty to eighty percent. Women are more likely to be murdered by someone they know compared to men. To have a local girl murdered in a small town could possibly mean the killer was someone the girl knew well—an intimate partner.
From everything Katie had studied and experienced with homicide investigations, nothing was typical, but a homicide with a totem at a crime scene was definitely rare. It was telling about the killer, she was certain.
Katie made some notes.
Totem.
Spiritual significance.
Symbolic.
She looked at the photos she took at the crime scene of the body, general area, and especially the totem. There were three pine cones, several sticks, wild berries, a rock, and some leather strings surrounded by a padding of pine needles arranged in a way that wasnotrandom in the forest. She wanted to read the forensic report about all the items and see if they were all from the area—or if the killer brought in something of his own.
Katie didn’t want to assume what each item represented, but she found some basic meanings. She created a list on the notepad until she could get either a whiteboard or chalkboard for the investigation.
Pine cones made Katie think of many things: art, decoration, medicinal uses, and even Christmas ornaments. The pine cones looked to be the main interest by the way the piece was constructed. She read more about pine cones and found they had been known to represent many things, including fertility, resurrection, and even enlightenment.
Sticks symbolized the main origin of the vast and dense forest. Wild berries were often seen as sustenance or life. She wasn’t sure if it was the right time of year, but she knew that areas like this did have wild berries. A rock could mean so many things. It was heavy, final, and could be used as a weapon, structure, or to stop the flow of water. But to use one rock seemed significant to the killer somehow.
The padding of pine needles was a means to keep everything together and it seemed to be the foundation of the construction. As for the leather strings, Katie felt they were more ambiguous.
She stared at the photo and zoomed the image in and out. There was something off about the scene, but it seemed to lend itself to something she had seen before. She knew about a couple of cases in Northern California that had had totems at the crime scene, but they were more about spiritual meanings and hexes being placed on the victim. She mulled over these possibilities.
And then there was the term that TJ had used several times.
The Woodsman…
As soon as Katie wrote down the name, the lights blacked out, followed by a huge crash outside.
TWELVE
