LITMIR.BIZ

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name.”

      “She was killed thirteen years ago—she was found the same way.”

      “I’ll have to look up that report. I was working in San Francisco thirteen years ago,” Samuels told them.

      They thanked him for his time and headed back to their car.

      “None of them was molested,” Jack said. “I guess there’s a small comfort in that.”

      Small comfort? Rocky thought. Maybe. They were all still dead.

      “Yeah,” Rocky muttered. “I guess. I don’t think they had any idea they were going to die. It must have been quick.”

      “I don’t understand how he pulls it off. This guy has to be covered with blood once he’s done,” Jack said.

      “Not that much. He’s behind the victim, and the spray would go forward.”

      “But then he’s lowering his victim to the ground—laying her out. And placing the medallion on her,” Jack said.

      “Yes, some blood, but not so much that he couldn’t cover it if he’d stashed a jacket nearby. Soon as he’s done he goes home and cleans up. And since we don’t know where home is...”

      “Gotta be Wiccans,” Jack said.

      “I don’t think we can automatically suspect an entire community. It might just as well be someone who wants to cast blame on the local Wicca community. Maybe some nut job who believes that they’re Satanists and it’s up to him to get rid of them.”

      He might have been away from the area for a long time, but he knew enough to know that Wiccans didn’t practice human or animal sacrifice, and did not in any way, shape or form condone murder.

      “Yeah, I guess. Everything about this case is one thing or the opposite, isn’t it?” Jack asked. “Either it’s the same killer or a copycat. Either it’s a misguided follower of a nontraditional religion or it’s someone trying to pin it on them. Thank God the witch trials are over, that’s all I can say. All we need is another witch scare.”

      “That alone makes it imperative that we keep a lid on the details,” Rocky said.

      “Some of them have gotten out, you know,” Jack told him.

      Rocky looked at Jack and waited.

      “The boy who found Carly Henderson. Luckily the kid was terrified—he saw her and ran. But people know she was splayed out and covered in blood.”

      “I have it on my list to talk to the kid, anyway,” Rocky said.

      “No problem. Whenever you want to go.”

      “How about now?”

      Their timing was good. School was out, and Manny Driscoll, the fourteen-year-old boy who had discovered Carly Henderson when he was out on his after-school job delivering Chinese food, was home.

      “I’m not letting him work right now,” Manny’s mother, Martha, told them. “Chow Chang, his boss, understands. When this is all over, maybe. Manny can just mow the yard for allowance,” she said firmly. She sat with Rocky and Jack while they questioned her son.

      “Did you see anyone leaving the woods or hanging around anywhere nearby?” Rocky asked him.

      Manny was a sober boy. He looked at Rocky seriously. “No. I fell off my bike onto the road and...and that’s when I saw her through the trees. Man, I fell down when I got a look at her. I...” He paused and looked around, as if he wanted to make really certain none of his friends were there. “I screamed like a girl—like a little girl,” he said, sounding disgusted with himself.

      “That’s all right, Manny. I’ve screamed like a girl, too,” Rocky said.

      “Really?” Manny asked him.

      “Really,” Rocky echoed.

      “You fell, though, because a car almost sideswiped you, right?” Rocky asked.

      “Yeah.”

      “What kind of car?”

      Manny stared at him blankly. “Um, I don’t remember.”

      “Was it dark, light? Old, new?”

      “Not too old, I don’t think,” Manny said. He perked up. “It was dark—maybe a truck, but maybe not that big.”

      “A big SUV?” Jack asked him.

      “Yeah, maybe,” Manny said.

      “Did you see who was driving?” Rocky asked.

      “No. I just saw how close it was coming.”

      “My boy is lucky to be alive,” Martha said, setting a protective arm around his shoulders.

      “Of course, and we’re very grateful,” Rocky told her. “What then, Manny?”

      “Well, I fell. And the orders fell, too. Mr. Chang is really nice, and I didn’t want all that food to end up on the ground, so I was picking it all up—and then I saw her. I just threw it all away and grabbed my bike and got out of there. Fast.”

      “As soon as he got home, we called the police,” his mother said. “We didn’t believe him at first,” she admitted. “I thought he’d maybe been playing too many video games. But...she was real.”

      “Thank you, Manny, you really helped us,” Rocky said. He left the boy with a card—which, of course, his mother took. But Rocky thought it was important to make kids know they were respected and believed. “Call me if you think of anything else.”

      “I can’t believe you got something,” Jack muttered as soon as they were outside.

      “The car?” Rocky asked.

      Jack nodded. “When my men questioned him, they never asked about it. It’s not a lot, but it’s something. Or could be. It might just have been some idiot speeding home. Asshole might not even have realized he almost ran down a kid.”

      “True. Can you take me by the scene?”

      “At your command,” Jack told him.

      The crime scene tape was down, the fact that Carly Henderson had died here only a memory for many. Two weeks ago she had been planning her future.

      Now...

      Now she was underground and the soggy tape that had fallen from the trees was all that was left to mark the place where she had passed, a sign of nature regaining control.

      Jack led him the ten feet off the road to the spot where Carly had been found. He stooped down over the faint depression that told him where the body had once been. He could see the point of the star that had been marked by her head, the indentations made by her arms and legs, and was grateful the ground had been soft and muddy from a recent rain the day of her murder.

      What the hell did the position and the pentagram mean, though? A killer who was pretending to a belief he didn’t share? A killer who was sending a message, or one who was pointing a finger?

      He closed his eyes in thought.

      Help me.

      He thought he heard the words in his head.

      The victims knew, he realized with a sudden certainty, despite the absence of proof. They knew that something was wrong, there in the woods. But the killer was there with them—hiding. Either he brought them there or lured them there. Then left them. And he would wait—and watch. He wanted them to realize something was wrong, and only then did he slip up behind them.

      “What is it?” Jack asked. “You’ve figured something out, haven’t you?”

      Careful not to sound too certain and raise suspicion, Rocky said, “Here’s how I think it plays out. Most likely the killer gets there first, then he hides and watches his victim arrive.”

      “We

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