Lies We Bury(63)

I slide into a bar chair. “All right. What is this news?”

Oz flags down the bartender. “Another mule?”

The man nods, cleaning out a glass with a towel, then looks at me.

“Same.”

Oz throws me a smile. “Let’s take a step back. You’ve been at several crime scenes in the last week.”

“Yeah,” I reply. “What about it?”

“You’re a smart person. You’ve managed to sneak your way into the right places to get photos for Pauline and get her to pay out more money than she gave our last photographer.” The bartender drops off our mugs, and Oz raises his. “What do you think about the killer? I mean, what can we reasonably infer here?”

I uncross my arms from beneath my chest. The impulse to step away from this conversation, to protect what I know and protect myself from any other surprise attacks, wrestles with my need for answers.

“I would say this person has some kind of obsession with enclosed or underground spaces. He has control issues—”

“Issues?” Oz raises one eyebrow. “Elaborate.”

I think about what Chet said. “I mean, the killer likes to be in control, likes to control all elements pertaining to his captures and, ultimately, kills. He’s probably got a history of—”

“He?” A smile blooms across Oz’s pointed chin. “How do we know it’s a male?”

I raise my brows. Suspect Woman and the notepad from his bedroom were all I thought about on the drive here. Knowing Oz doesn’t think Gia is the murderer, I’m still not sure whether that was a note from his police source or his own personal suspicion. The handwriting in his notepad and the scrawl on the binder paper Jenessa received don’t appear to match. But any interaction I have with Oz should be with this in mind: he could be involved in this as more than an eager reporter.

“We don’t know it’s a male. But without more facts, it’s safest to assume it is.”

“But why, sweet Claire, indeed, would this killer be female? Humor me.” Oz seems downright giddy, clasping his hands together on the bar counter. His fingernails catch the overhead lights and gleam as though recently manicured.

“Don’t you have some source inside the police? What do they think?”

“They’re up to their necks in the same questions.”

“Who’s your source? Is it Peugeot?”

He wags a finger back and forth like a metronome. “I’ll never tell.”

“Fine. Female serial killers have commonalities with male serial killers. Both of them usually witness violence at a formative age. But their motivations are what set them apart. What drives female killers is always psychological.”

Not only have I grown up spending way too much time exploring the internet’s sordid archives; the research I did at the bagel shop after leaving Lily and Bianca added to my arsenal of factoids.

“Always?”

My knee-jerk response—of course, always—stops behind my teeth. Right now, the killer may be leaving details from my childhood to implicate me, and it’s possible I’m playing into their hands. Rosemary’s strained voice booms in my head. Run. You run away from those crime scenes and that case as fast as you can.

“I mean, I don’t know. The police have no idea why the victims seem to have been killed in such different ways, right? Maybe this guy’s got a split personality.”

Oz considers my words. He wipes drops of sweat from the side of his glass.

A woman laughs behind me, and I lean closer to Oz. The scent of his shirt tickles my nose; it’s sweet yet muted, like my laundry detergent. Once Rosemary, Lily, and I acclimated to the outside, wandering down that fragrant aisle of supermarkets was my favorite thing to do. I would sit on the hard white linoleum floor and breathe in the artificial smells—more appealing than the stifled, stale air that would linger for hours after we cooked dinner in the basement—until Rosemary made me get up, saying it was time to finish our shopping. We weren’t ever allowed to wander off by ourselves.

Oz sips his cocktail, maintaining steady eye contact. “So who do you think is the killer?”

I take a drink, too, and buy myself some time to answer. The mule’s ginger flavor coats my tongue and reminds me of a soup Rosemary once made, her grandmother’s recipe. I loved it—begged her to make it again, but she never did. Too painful, she said.

“Whoever chose those tunnels as their headquarters didn’t want to answer to anyone. I’d say they prize autonomy and control above all else. Value continuity in a world that feels ever-evolving.”

A smile spreads across Oz’s clean-shaven mouth. “Sound like anyone you know?”

I stiffen. Has he seen right through my Claire-the-photographer facade? A low thrum of fear purrs in my chest, a feral cat sharpening its claws.

“Sounds like any millennial to my ears.”

He laughs, then lifts a pointed finger. “Yes, exactly. Which is why I asked you here and wanted your opinion. I think our murderer is a woman.”

“Really? That’s so . . . modern of you, Oz.” After watching the way he sizes up each bra that passes, I didn’t expect him to be so egalitarian.

He offers a shrug. “I know, right? Women can slip in and out of places more easily than men. Plus, the police just confirmed that each victim—while outwardly unrelated—has a massive social media following. The stripper had something like a million Snapchat followers, the insurance salesman has eighty thousand followers on Instagram for his artwork, and the third victim—did you hear about him?”