“What about Rob Murray?” asked Truman.
“It’s not the same. You saw that one. I think it was simply anger or panic and not planned out like the first two were.”
Truman refreshed his email on his desktop and opened an attachment. It showed outlines of two human forms with the slashes drawn in. The marks were nearly identical on both bodies, but they looked random to him.
“Scroll to the other drawings at the bottom,” directed Bolton.
Truman did. Someone had drawn in dotted lines, connecting some of the slashes.
“I think it’s a dagger or a sword,” said Bolton.
The slashes suddenly made sense. “I see that,” said Truman. “There’s a handle and the guard and then a long blade. I can’t unsee it now. It’s almost too obvious.”
“Okay. I was concerned I’d jumped to assumptions by drawing in the dotted lines.”
“They look logical to me. I don’t think you’re making any huge leaps.”
“I’ve been sketching a lot, connecting lines here and there. This is the first one that made sense.”
“What does it mean?” asked Truman. “I know there were a lot of knives and daggers in Olivia’s home. But what’s the point of carving the symbol into two victims?”
“A dagger can stand for betrayal.”
Truman was silent for a long moment. “You suspect someone is making a point. I think the people intended to receive the message are dead. I wonder if it has anything to do with the Sabins’ collection of blades.”
“I wish I knew if that crazy room of knives was Olivia’s or Salome’s collection,” said Bolton. “Killing Olivia with some sort of dagger or knife when she’s a collector could be a slap in the face, proving that the killer is stronger. If it’s Salome’s collection, maybe the killer was sending a power message through Olivia’s death by using a weapon meaningful to Salome.” He cleared his throat. “The sword is quite prominent in Wicca.”
The hair on Truman’s arms rose. “As a murder weapon? From what I read, Wicca is all about nature and energy. Not violence.”
“The sword is primarily ceremonial.”
“Maybe the patterns are simply to throw you off,” Truman speculated out loud. “Make the police waste hours trying to find the meaning.”
“Then they’ve succeeded.” Bolton colorfully cursed, echoing Truman’s state of mind.
“But what would the sword mean in Malcolm Lake’s death? You heard that Salome visited him the day he died?”
“I did. And I’ve already reviewed the video. It’s definitely her.”
“No one placed her near the judge’s home that night, and no one has proved she was somewhere else.” Truman ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “How the hell does Rob Murray tie into this?” The handyman’s sad apartment flashed through Truman’s mind. “The connection has to be through the Lakes, but I can’t quite see it. There’s been no tie to the judge, just his son.”
Silence filled the line.
“No alibi for Christian Lake, correct?” Truman asked softly. He liked the man, but his instincts weren’t always perfect.
“He had the time to get to Portland, kill his father, and come back to kill Olivia,” Bolton pointed out. “And I know those tire tracks at her cabin haven’t been confirmed, but it sounds like he could have been there.”
“But he was there after the murders. The tracks crossed all the police vehicle tracks.”
“That doesn’t prove he wasn’t there before. Killers often return to the scene of the crime.” Bolton’s sigh was loud over the phone. “I don’t know if this phone call helped me or threw a dozen other possibilities on the table.”
“I don’t want you missing anything.” Truman understood. Linkage blindness happened frequently. It was easy to steer all efforts toward one lead to the detriment of the other leads. The intense focus would make an investigator miss opportunities.
“I don’t want to either.” Bolton ended the call.
Why did he call me? He could have run his theory past Ava or Eddie.
Truman looked at the drawings again. Bolton’s connect-the-dots lines definitely looked like a weapon.
Why?
Boots sounded in his hallway, and David Aguirre stopped outside his door. “Got a minute?” The minister was covered from head to toe with a light dusting of snow. He pulled off his stocking cap, creating a minisnowstorm in the hall.
Truman stood and indicated a chair. “What’s up?”
David twisted his hat in his hands, a struggle on his face. “I don’t know if this is any of my business . . .”
“Why don’t you let me decide that?”
“When you were looking at those particular months in the church records the other day, you were looking for some sort of connection to Salome Sabin, right?”
“Honestly, David, I’m not sure. Since a woman looking like Salome had possibly broken into the church and we had another break-in at the library, I was trying to connect the two in some way. Whether or not Salome was involved remains to be seen.”
“Well, I assumed that’s what you were looking for. I knew she was a year behind me in high school, so I estimated her age and took another look at the records. I looked at later dates than you did.” He slid a ledger out of his jacket, flipped it open to a page, and handed it to Truman.
The book was warm from David’s body heat. Truman noted the dates on the page were nearly a year after the microfiche film months. The name jumped out at him immediately. Salome Beth Sabin. Age two weeks. Olivia was the sole parent listed.
“She was baptized in the church?” Truman wondered aloud. “That surprises me a bit.”
“You never know what faith means to people. Olivia and I had our differences, but we also had a lot of beliefs in common. I suspect the baptism was very symbolic to her in some way.”
Truman stared at the baptism date. He turned to his computer, quickly accessed a database, and verified he was correct. “According to the DMV, Salome was born six months before this baptism date.” He looked up at David. “I can’t imagine the minister would mistake a six-month-old baby for a two-week-old. The baptism record has to be the correct date.”
“How did you know this baptism date didn’t make sense with her birth date?” David scowled.
“When everyone was searching for her, I looked up her driver’s license. I’d noted the birth date to see if she was the age I thought she was.”
“What’s the big deal about a few months?”
“Her father, Antonio Ricci, was sitting in jail during the twelve months before this baptism date.”
David’s face cleared. “Oh.”
Truman nodded. Is it relevant?
THIRTY-ONE
Morrigan is restless.
It’s a struggle to keep her occupied. We’ve been living in the same small space for three days now, and she wants to know why. I can’t tell her someone wants to kill me. And her. Today we played in the snow again. I’ve built more snowmen and made more snow angels than I have in my entire life. We started to construct an igloo, using a rectangular bin to form bricks. It’s challenging and time consuming. Exactly what she needs.
My hands in the snow connect me with its energies. I close my eyes, inhale the crisp scent, and taste the clean air. I pick up a handful of the snow and study the minuscule structures that make up the whole.