Cohen held on to his frown for a moment, then stared down at his hands braced against the counter. I knew he was riding a line between his desire to protect me and the fact that I was a fellow cop who could and should take care of herself.
I drew in a breath and told them almost everything. The doll. The phallus. The dark-blue cargo van I’d spotted in the garage and outside Cherry Hills. And near the comics store.
But I didn’t mention the man in the grocery-store parking lot. Or my sense of being watched. As the only woman on the team, I could not appear paranoid or weak. Certainly not in need of protection. I’d ask the lab to prioritize checking the doll for fingerprints and DNA. It was all I could do for the moment.
Evan broke my reverie. “You have photos?”
“From the elevator, yes.”
“Why”—Cohen lifted his gaze—“didn’t you say anything?”
I put heat into my voice. “Hello? Marine.”
Cohen’s expression went flat.
“I’m okay, Mike,” I said, more softly. “I can handle it.”
I passed Evan my phone, and he zoomed in. He studied the image for a few moments before handing my phone to Cohen.
“Well?” Bandoni eyeballed the professor. “You got an opinion?”
“I’m rarely without one,” Evan said. “These are small samples, so take what I say with the proverbial grain of salt. But we have the same simple, declarative sentence structure. And there are other similarities. The use of exclamation points. The way the letters y and g extend far below the baseline, while the middle-zone letters barely rise above it. And the tails of the y and g in both exemplars form large triangles. Which, by the way, suggests repressed anger toward women.” He looked at us, his eyes in shadow despite the bright light. “I’d say the odds are better than fifty-fifty these notes are linked.”
“Shit,” Bandoni said. “The killers are watching Parnell?”
Cohen said, “Can you tell if the same person wrote these words and the ones on our victims?”
“Not without more time. It’s difficult to compare styles across different mediums even when dealing with a larger sample size. If I had to take a wild stab, I’d say no. The writing on the victims is much more sophisticated. Then again, I, at least, am confident we’re dealing with at least two killers.”
We let Evan’s words sit between us while the wind collapsed in upon itself, sinking to a throaty whisper. In the far distance, a dog bayed, and Clyde paced to the windows. My heart tripped over its own unsteady beats.
“Okay, I’m in on the whole ‘two or more killers’ thing.” Bandoni folded his arms. “I buy that we got mass murderers. But if Noah and Donovan were the warm-up, who are the mass targets? Anybody got an answer for that?”
Cohen shook his head. Evan stared at something invisible just past the six-burner gas stove. I turned multiple possibilities over in my mind and came up with nothing I felt ready to offer.
The wind did a reversal and slammed into the walls, shaking the house.
“Okay, then.” Bandoni put the rock and the note in a plastic bag from Cohen. “You youngsters keep at it. I gotta get some shut-eye. You”—he pointed at Cohen—“keep an eye on the rookie.”
“Why don’t you stay here?” Cohen said. “Save you the drive time.”
But Bandoni muttered something about feeding his fish and asked if he could borrow Cohen’s car. The three of us walked him to the front door and watched him hobble down the stairs through the rain. He stopped halfway across the cobblestone driveway, hunched his back to the weather, and lit a cigarette. He took a couple of drags before he crushed it under his shoe.
“Fucking rain,” he said. His voice was faint, tattered by the wind.
The rain turned to sleet.
CHAPTER 20
Too often, my skin feels like a prison.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
Near dawn, I woke from a dream in which I was drowning. Shivering, I reached for Cohen’s warmth.
My hand found only cool emptiness.
I jerked upright and threw off the covers. On the floor beside the bed, Clyde scrambled to his feet.
“Cohen!”
My voice echoed back, followed seconds later by the sounds of my lover moving in the kitchen, and the sweet, sharp aroma of coffee. Voices murmured; he had the radio tuned to local news.
“Damn it,” I muttered.
I yanked up the covers and sank back onto the pillows. It was 5:52 a.m. While Clyde trotted out of the room to find Cohen, I worked to recapture the thoughts the dream had lifted out of the murk of my subconscious.
It had been nighttime. I’d been thrashing in deep, icy water, trying desperately to move my arms and legs, to keep my head above water. As I struggled, someone—a dark shape in the murky distance—snapped photos, over and over.
My phone buzzed. I checked caller ID.
Tom O’Hara. My contact at the Denver Post. My heart gave a long, slow thump, forcing a sludge of blood through my veins. I managed to grunt something into the phone. So Bandoni-esque.
“Were you sleeping?” O’Hara’s voice rang bright with caffeine.
“No, no.” I propped myself up against the pillow. “Just getting a mani-pedi.”
Clyde trotted into the room, followed by Cohen, who carried two mugs of coffee. Cohen slipped into the bed next to me, and gratefully I took the cup he offered.
“Life of a murder cop, huh?” Tom said. The sound of a clacking keyboard came through the connection. He had me on speakerphone. “Sorry. Look . . . we . . . we got . . . something weird. Here. At . . . the office.”
“Stop trying to multitask.”
“I’m not. I’m hyperventilating.”
Cohen clicked on the bedside light, and a soft glow lit the sheets and ushered shadows to the walls. Wide awake now, I put my own phone on speaker.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“I’m working a story and couldn’t sleep. Decided to come into the office and start going through yesterday’s mail. There was a small box. Postmarked from Longmont. Inside was—well, I think it has
