Legacy (Sociopath Series Book 2)(4)

My team know all of this. It’s why the plate of breakfast muffins is untouched besides for Posner, and why their lattes have turned cold in their cups. The room reeks as much of stale coffee as it does cleaning fluid. Have to say, on this occasion, I prefer the lie of perfume.

“He hates women. All women,” Camden says slowly, wincing at the screen. “The last one was old, right? It’s like he picked someone younger just to make a point.”

“I don’t know.” Mira, who edits for Truth Daily and appears to have missed her last Botox appointment, fiddles with the diamond pendant sitting between her flaccid breasts. People overlook older women when they’re hiring, but they’re cost effective—they have so much to prove. “The way he gives them pet names…it’s affectionate. We should call him The Lover; it’s there, right? Even if he’s just playing with the idea.”

The Lover. Does she honestly look at these photos and think this guy ever loved anything? “Not memorable enough,” I say bluntly. “Next. And keep it relevant. Abstract shit never sticks.”

“So we just pick something that describes what he does,” says Camden. He picks a pen up and swats it against his lower lip a few times.

Mira sighs. “What, like Cunt Splitter?”

“Jesus—you think we can say that on primetime, huh?”

“You have a better word for vag?” she snaps.

I must not roll my eyes. But I want to. “Even if we did, it sounds like some shitty death metal band. Keep going.”

Leo raises her hand.

I nudge her beneath the table. “Go on.”

“They’re already calling the first one the Honey Murder,” she says, “but they’re not going to call this one the Darling Murder, not when it’s clearly the same perp. The Honey one is what he’ll be associated with first.”

“Keep going.”

“I’m done.” She blows a stray tendril of hair from her eyes. “Just thinking out loud.”

Camden frowns. “So the Honey Killer, then. Simple.”

“Not creepy enough. Come on. Look at that picture and give me something that does this psycho justice. He likes choking people. He likes blood. He clearly has issues with *. There are a hundred ominous names in all that junk, but all I want is one.”

Somewhere down the hall, a vacuum blares to life. My phone sits alone in the center of the table; nobody can bear the sight of Jane Doe.

“Blood Writer,” someone says finally.

“The Skin Graffiti Murderer,” says another.

I put my face in my hands.

“I like the graffiti angle. There’s something there.”

Camden mumbles in agreement. “Blood Picasso?”

“Oh, I like that.”

“That’s good,” Mira says in a dejected tone that she probably used at a beauty pageant thirty years ago.

“It’s not good. It’s cheesy.” I sigh. “You know what? This shit makes all of us feel uncomfortable. And these names only happen in the movies, or on CSI or whatever, and I’m sure you all feel like morons trying to come up with some trivial sound bite for a guy who hacks up labia for kicks.” At this point, all I really want to tell them is to get the f*ck over themselves, but that never did much for workplace morale. Still. I like the way half of them blush when I say labia. “The public deserves to know what they’re dealing with here. Give them something they can understand.” With that, I reach forward to yank my phone back, and try to ignore the way my pulse flares at the image on the screen. Red melts in the pale light; she’s strawberry milk, poured in ribbons. It’s like looking at the awkward scrawl of a child.

The world keeps trying to flash away from me today. Wants to pull me down into the mouth of a sin even I’ve never contemplated.

Eventually, Leo’s voice cuts through. “Blood Honey,” she says, studying me with wide, dark eyes.

“Kind of makes him sound…sweet,” Camden says. There’s a hesitant drag to his tone. “Do we want to do that? I don’t know, I—”

“But he probably is sweet,” she shoots back, “when you meet him. Just his idea of sweet is rather different to anyone else’s.”

Camden tugs at his shirt collar. “Jesus. You make it sound like he’s normal.”

“Enough. Look. I like Blood Honey—the name, that is. It’s innocent and provocative at the same time. And this…” I gesture to the picture still visible on my phone, “…is provocative. Use that.”

“Can we publish the images?” Mira asks.

“Carson?” I prompt.

The attorney shrugs. “If you blur her face out, I can’t see why not.”

Normally, we’d be asked not to show images like this for fear of inspiring copycats, or inciting public panic. But since the first body was—deliberately, I’m sure—placed well within the public eye, all that’s gone out of the window.

“Show the Darling part. Just her thigh,” I decide. “Nothing else, for now. We’ve got the upper hand with the exclusive, and nobody needs mangled * flashed across their TV screens at breakfast. We’ll keep it classy.”

If Tuija were here, she’d have snorted at that, and I’d have been annoyed. But she isn’t here. I’m annoyed anyway, as if the memory alone is enough.