Reading the names of his victims, seeing the photos of them while they were still alive, none of it had really conveyed the monstrousness of what he had done. She and Nikki had skirted around the edges of it with their own serial killer research, but there had been an unspoken agreement between them not to unearth anything they couldn’t handle. Well, today she felt she had caught a glimpse of the beast Michael Reave really was, and perhaps it was time to face that.
She revisited the brief Wikipedia page, but there was very little information there about his background, or details on the murders themselves—all of which backed up DI Parker’s comments about Reave’s past being a mysterious blank space. She would have to look elsewhere for the information she wanted.
Back when she had worked on the newspaper, she had picked up the skills required to explore the murkier bits of the Internet, and taking sips of wine every now and then, her plate empty save for a few scraps of egg, she began to look for the raw reality of the Red Wolf murders. Quickly the screen was filled with some very basic looking websites, all favoring vaguely unpleasant color schemes of black, green, and red. There were titles like “nightmare fuel,” “dead lovers,” and “corpse faces.”
These forums were created and curated by people who regularly sought out the bloodiest details of the worst side of humanity, and it wasn’t long before she found a long thread detailing the Michael Reave case. There were pictures of crime scenes, and of bodies. In some cases, just pieces of bodies. Judging from the clinical lighting and lack of dramatic angles, some of these at least seemed genuine, photographs snuck out from police archives or from the investigation in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and in the face of them something, some barrier she hadn’t been aware of, was broken into pieces. She thought of the images of Reaves’ victims she had already seen, their faces caught smiling or uncertain in photographs that would go on to become infamous—this was where they ended up. Because of Michael Reave.
One of the first pictures showed a young woman lying naked and face down in a field. Her arms had been bound behind her back, and she had long red hair, glossy and loose, across her shoulders and across the grass. Her skin looked painfully white, and around her body was a rough garland of bedraggled wildflowers, clearly placed there with some thought and care. Heather, who knew virtually nothing about plants and nature, thought she recognized some of the blooms—bluebells, daisies, pale yellow primroses, and the nodding heads of foxgloves, pink and purple and somehow obscene. Next to her was an item of clothing that was difficult to identify, both because of how it lay against the grass, and the fact that it had been soaked with blood.
The next picture had also been taken outdoors, and the woman was lying with her eyes to the sky. In the center of her chest there was a large, almost round hole, and bursting up through it was a young tree, the sort you could buy from garden centers, small and ready to plant. Heather could see the dark wetness of the inside of her chest, although the hole itself was relatively clean. She wore what looked like a white shirt, unbuttoned, but it was stained a dark, brownish red; only a small patch on the collar gave away the fact that it had ever been white at all.
“He dresses them,” she said, feeling her stomach turn over. The eggs felt heavy and unwelcome. “He dresses the bodies, arranges them. He cares more about them dead than alive. He cares about this picture he’s creating.”
She scrolled down, already wondering why she had decided to do this to herself. Hadn’t today been enough?
There were a few posts from people speculating on the Red Wolf’s motives, talking about possible links to paganism and devil worship. The hearts, someone claimed, had never been found, along with other soft tissues—the poster was of the opinion that he might have eaten some of them, like Jeffrey Dahmer or Albert Fish. Heather got up to refill her wine glass, glancing uneasily at the windows. It was fully dark now, and they showed her nothing but her own reflection.
The doorbell rang, startling her into putting down her glass. Snapping the laptop shut, she went to the door, peeking out the spyhole before opening it.
“Lillian?”
“Hello dear,” the older woman stepped past her smoothly into the hallway, then as if catching Heather’s aggrieved look, held up a tote bag. “Sorry, I know it’s quite late. Just come for my casserole dish, if that’s all right? I need it for tomorrow’s dinner. I hope you’ve eaten it by now or it will have gone peculiar.”
“Oh sure, no problem. It’s all washed and ready. Come through to the kitchen …”
Except that Lillian was already there, locating her blue casserole dish and placing it carefully into her bag. Heather eyed the washing up from the day before—she’d always been lazy about chores—and felt her cheeks grow warm.
“Would you like a glass of wine?” She cleared her throat, feeling ridiculously formal.
Lillian raised her eyebrows at her and smiled. As before, she was dressed smartly, in a fitted green tweed suit, a brooch in the shape of two intertwined silver fish on her lapel, and her black leather handbag shining expensively. She wore pearl earrings, tiny and discreet flashes of white on her earlobes.
“That would be lovely, dear. Just a small one, if you don’t mind.” When Heather had handed her a glass, she took the smallest sip imaginable. “How are you getting on? Holding up all right?” Her gray eyes were kind. “When is the funeral? I would dearly like to attend. Colleen was such a good friend.”
Heather
