Zoe straightened her back and looked atShelley—to make it clear that this next observation was for her, not for theirritating presence in the room. “This was not a crime done on impulse. It wasplanned out, the location chosen carefully.”
“Do you think the victims were chosen onpurpose?”
Zoe chewed her lip for a moment, castingher eyes back between them. What did they have in common, other than beingburnt to a crisp?
“It is too early to say,” she decided. “Weneed to learn more about Callie Everard. If we can find a connection betweenthem, good. If not, there may be a bigger message at play.”
“A serial killer?” Shelley groaned. “Ihope they’re secret lovers or something. I had my fingers crossed we could gethome for the weekend.”
“Good luck,” the coroner put in, astatement that was absolutely unnecessary.
Zoe turned a baleful glance in herdirection, and was at least a little pacified by the way the woman shrank awayand busied herself with a nearby metal tray of instruments instead of meetingher gaze again.
“We’ve got a room waiting for us at thelocal precinct,” Shelley said. “The cop I spoke to assured me that the coffeeis awful, but also that the air conditioning is completely inefficient, so wehave lots to look forward to.”
“Lead the way,” Zoe said, wishing shecould at least find that funny to lessen the blow.
CHAPTER SIX
With a sigh, Zoe chose a chair and sankdown into it, reaching for the first file that had been left for them.
“Thank you, Captain Warburton, we reallyappreciate your help,” Shelley was saying near the door, making good work ofthe small talk and pleasantries that Zoe had never enjoyed.
It felt good to be part of a team thatworked. Where each of them had their own separate roles. Shelley was tounderstanding people what Zoe was to numbers, and though neither of them couldreally comprehend what the other did, at least it made everything flow easier.
After a good twenty minutes of studyingthe files, they were no closer to getting anywhere. Though the locals hadmanaged to amass some family statements and get a lot more information than theinitial files they had reviewed on the plane, none of it seemed to be helpful.Zoe threw her pages down on the table with a groan of frustration.
“Why can it not ever be a simpleconnection?”
“Because then the locals could do it,and we’d be out of a job,” Shelley said calmly. “Let’s go over what we know.Talk it out. Maybe something will click.”
“I doubt that very much. The two of themwere such different people.”
“Well, let’s start with that. John was ahealthy guy, right? A gym rat.”
“His housemate said that he spent almostall of his spare time at the gym. He was in good shape.”
“And a nice guy, too.”
Zoe made a face. “He donated money tocharity and helped out at a soup kitchen on Sundays. That does not necessarilymean he was a nice guy. Lots of people do things like that because they arehiding a darkness.”
“You’re grasping at straws,” Shelleysaid, shaking her head. “We can’t read anything else into that. He had a cleanlifestyle. No drugs, no convictions, not even any disciplinary record at work.”
“And she was the opposite.” Zoe directedthis last statement at a photograph of a smiling Callie Everard, beaming at thecamera and holding up a bottle of beer while an inebriated-looking young man heldhis arm around her shoulders.
“Well, maybe not. Yes, she had sometrouble with drugs earlier in her life. But she went in and out of rehab whenshe was twenty-three, completed the course, kicked the habit. She had beenclean for a couple of years. Back on track.”
Zoe considered this. “Maybe there couldbe something there. Both of them into clean living, even if only recently.”
“What, like a fitness cult or something?”Shelley asked.
Zoe gave her a dark look.
“Well, it’s possible,” Shelley said. “Justlook at all that stuff with the exercise bikes. And that self-help cult, theone that was tricking women into sleeping with the founder and giving all theirmoney away.”
“I suppose I have to concede that point.”Zoe wasn’t familiar with all of the ins and outs, but she had heard mention ofthe cases. Shelley was right, in a way. You never really knew what might begoing on under the surface until you dug down far enough.
She lifted photographs of the pair ofthem, looking for similarities. It was always frustrating to come in on a caselike this. With a single victim, you could analyze the evidencesingle-mindedly, fixate on every small detail of that one person. With three ormore victims, you had enough data points to build a pattern. To recognize thatthe killer was travelling in a certain direction, or only targeting blondesunder five foot ten, or that they revealed themselves in a certain tic thatshowed up at each scene.
With two, it was much harder. You couldn’tput things together in the same way. A similarity in numbers might just be acoincidence that would be broken by another body. You might notice that each oftheir ages were prime numbers only for that to turn out to be meaningless. Youcouldn’t tell what was important and what was just a red herring, thrown out byyour own brain and holding no deliberate intentions.
“There is one thing they have in common,”Zoe said, tapping the pictures. “Tattoos. Dowling had a tiger on his leftbicep. Everard had a rose on her right thigh, picked out in dotwork. She was onher way to see a friend about getting another one, too.”
Shelley shrugged. “Does that reallywarrant a connection? A lot of people have tattoos.”
Zoe was flipping through more photos,noticing more marks on areas of skin that were visible in different shots. Theywere almost all taken from the victims’ social media profiles, and it looked asthough they were both proud of their tattoos. Of showing them off. Did thatmean something? “It was not just one tattoo each. Look. Both of them werecovered in them. Dowling had the whole of one leg done, right down to the foot.And Everard, here, on her back and stomach.”
“I
