A Merciful Secret (Mercy Kilpatrick #3)(77)

“I love you,” she told him.

“Awwww,” said Kaylie.

“I love you too. Please be careful.”

“Of course.” Her tone was breezy, confident.

He ended the call and stared at the clock. With the crappy conditions, it would be at least an hour before he heard from her.

How am I going to focus?

“Boss?” Lucas shouted down the hall. “Detective Bolton on line one for you.”

Glad for the distraction, Truman picked up the phone and greeted the county investigator. “Don’t tell me you’re stuck in a snowdrift somewhere,” he said.

“Your department too?”

“All morning. And I don’t expect it to let up.”

“Nope. At least the snow keeps down the big crimes,” replied Bolton.

“What can I do for you?” asked Truman.

“I wanted to run something by you. Do you know if the FBI ever made heads or tails out of the array of slashes on the first two bodies?”

“As far as I’ve heard, they haven’t. Mercy would have told me.”

“Well, I’ve been playing around with the patterns and I think I have an idea.” He paused. “It could be nothing. I’ve been staring at these marks for a few days and my tired eyes have seen everything from circus elephants to airplanes.”

“I doubt they’re elephants.”

“Do you have a copy of the patterns?”

“No.” Mercy had told him about the similarities and penciled out the slashes for him, but he’d been no help.

“Hang on. I’m going to email you some sketches from both bodies.”

“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.”