The Devil's Daughter (Hidden Sins #1)(61)
It was impossible.
He gritted his teeth at the bruises on her wrists—clear rope burns that hadn’t been on Elouise—and the sliver of tattoo peeking out. It would be a sheaf of wheat, just like all the cultists had. Where there’d been some question over Elouise potentially joining before she left for college, there was no doubt in his mind that Neveah wouldn’t have submitted to the tattoo, let alone Martha’s ruling with an iron fist. The girl had never met an authority figure she wasn’t eager to give the middle finger to.
Never again.
Her hair was a tangled, dirty mess, hiding her face, and for that he was grateful. He didn’t want to see her brown eyes vacant in death. Elouise’s murder had felt personal. Neveah’s was even worse.
William came to crouch next to him. “I won’t know more until I get her on my table, but the markings on her neck indicate strangling.” He paused a beat. “Though it’s hard to tell, I think there are layers of bruises there.”
Zach shot him a look. “You think she was choked before she was killed.”
“Several times, possibly long and hard enough to make her lose consciousness. You don’t get this rainbow of bruises from a single event, especially since I doubt she’s been dead long enough for the killing marks to show this clearly.”
He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the bits of her neck he could see through her hair. She must have been terrified. Being choked to unconsciousness is enough to break grown-ass men, and she was just a seventeen-year-old girl. She probably went looking for a little fun and got this as a result. Fucking unforgivable. “How long do you figure she’s been gone?”
“I can’t say for certain, but less than six hours.”
He checked his watch. It was noon. Zach frowned and pushed to his feet, turning to survey the road behind them. “The killer moved the body.”
“What makes you say that?”
“If she died after six a.m., then someone would have found her before now. There’s a ton of traffic on this street, but even if you discount cars not being able to see her in the ditch, the Abbotts walk their dogs around seven every morning down this stretch of road. The dogs would have sniffed out a dead body if they came within a hundred yards of it. There’s no way they missed her.”
“The other girl wasn’t moved.”
“I know.” He wasn’t sure what it meant, but if she was dropped here after six in the morning, that took Lee right out of the suspect pool. He nodded at William to put the tarp back into place. “You need help moving her? We’re not going to get anything done with the audience.”
“I’ve got it.”
While William went to work, Zach once again surveyed their surroundings. Like so much of the land outside Clear Springs, it was miles of open ground running right up to the mountains. There were homes and farms scattered, but most of them sat on at least a handful of acres, if not significantly more. A person could walk for hours without seeing another person.
Except Neveah didn’t walk—or run—here. At least not the whole way.
He turned like a toy on a string, looking west, ever west, to Elysia. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t see the compound. He knew it was there, the shadow the cult cast finally too long and dark to ignore. If Lee wasn’t the killer, it was someone else who answered to Martha.
Or Martha herself.
He couldn’t rule it out. There was nothing saying there couldn’t be two killers, and he and Eden had discussed how unlikely it was that someone at Elysia was operating without her say-so. He still didn’t like the idea that Martha could be somehow responsible. He didn’t much like her, but it was a big jump from conning people out of their money to murdering two girls in cold blood.
Then again, maybe it isn’t that big of a jump. And that bastard might have already taken another victim.
That snapped him out of it. He looked up at Chase. “Henry has Lee secure.” For all the good that would do. Lee had been in the interview room when Neveah was killed. “In the event that Lee and/or a partner isn’t guilty, we need to get in contact with every teenager who fits the same physical description. This monster isn’t through, and I want our girls safe.” Clear Springs wasn’t large enough to have its own high school, so the kids were bused over to Augusta, but he figured there were a good hundred kids of roughly the right age group, half of them girls. Off the top of his head, Zach couldn’t count many of them who fit the victim profile. Clear Springs didn’t exactly have an unlimited number of teenage girls, and most of them had features that would set them apart from the victims—blue eyes, not petite, too young. That said, he wasn’t about to gamble that the killer would stick to that if his chosen prey was removed from his hunting grounds.
Chase nodded and grabbed his phone.
“Wait.” Zach glanced at the crowd and lowered his voice. “Take the call in your cruiser. I don’t want to start a panic.” Clear Springs was a ticking time bomb and would only become more so once word of Neveah’s death got out. One strike of the wrong match and they’d have bigger problems than the Smiths riling people up. It was his job to keep people safe, and if someone pulled the metaphorical trigger, they’d turn to the outsider and start stringing people up. It would start with the Elysians, but he didn’t think it would stop there, especially if Martha closed the gates. People would sniff out someone—anyone—to blame.