25
Ty
Liam, Kyle, Tara, and Mick spent the day working before regrouping in the living room that night.
I’d spent most of my time that day attempting to finishHard Kill #7, one of the books Liam had picked up at the store. However, knowing how important the work they were doing was to our future—and how I wasn’t able to do a goddamn thing to help—kept me on edge and made focusing on anything next to impossible.
Tara navigated them through the information they had about the case at hand, discussing details of the victim agents before Mick presented pictures from the autopsy on the screen covering the fireplace.
I sat on the couch beside Liam once again, but shifted my attention away from the screen for that part. As easy as it was for me to get through horror movies, seeing real-life crap was a whole other story.
“Looking through the autopsy results,” Tara said, “in combination with those of victims from possible links to past hits from the IPB, and taking into consideration the report Liam and Mick generated, we haven’t managed to narrow down the list of suspects. Whoever did this either isn’t connected to a past hit from F5 or is working to make these killings appear different than their usual MO. A smart move, given they must’ve known that was the first place we’d look after we realized the connection with the task force operating during a specific period of time. Mick?”
Mick changed the slide, and as I peeked, I noticed it was a series of close-ups that weren’t as disgusting as the body parts previously on display.
“While Mick was searching through the images collected by the IPB, he came across markings on the body, and he looked for anything suspect that might offer us a clue as to who we’re dealing with here. We have cuts, stabs, shredding…”
Shredding? Oh my God!I could have thrown up just at the mention.
Tara went on, “But one mark we found caught our attention…Mick?”
He changed the slide again.
Deep scratch marks formed a very distinctive shape. Below a triangle with a long end pointing toward the right, two vertical lines curved outward on either side of it. At the center of the lines was a diamond-shaped scratch.
“Where was this on his body?” Liam asked.
“Lower back, near the spine,” Mick replied. “It’s some sort of symbol. We think maybe the killer left it. You know, boasting.”
“No, that’s not right,” Liam said. “If I’m Spencer and my hands are tied behind my back…how would I send a message to someone?”
Tara looked between Liam and the image on the screen. “You think he did this to himself?”
“No one torturing him would have done this, not when they were trying to cover their tracks. Not unless they wanted to send a big fuck-you to an organization that can rain hell upon them.”
As Liam studied the image, he seemed to be mentally working his way through his past, all he’d been boning up on—that entire world I was so interested in getting to know, but at the same time, learning I had every reason to be worried about the underlying truth.
“Can you zoom in?” he asked.
Mick did just that. There were several other scratch marks beneath the triangle, connecting it to the curved lines, which also had two more fainter curves within them.
Liam pulled up his tablet and keyed around for some time before asking Mick to share his screen with him. He retrieved an image and overlaid it on top of the mark.
It was a simplistic rendering of a bird, like a tribal tattoo. Its wings curved the same as the scratch marks, its head faced the same direction as the triangle at the top, and the diamond was clearly representing the bird’s tail.
Even as an outsider with no training or experience in analyzing this kind of shit, it seemed obvious to me that Spencer had modeled those scratch marks after the image.
“What kind of bird is it?” I asked.
“A raven,” Liam explained. “More specifically, the shape of the raven the Blackmore Clan uses in its emblem.”
He pulled up some more images he’d found online, all with the same basic shape. Nothing fancy, which made it even easier to see how they resembled each other.
“Spencer must’ve gotten a hold of something—it’s fine, almost like the tip of a safety pin.”
“Safety pin?” I asked.
“Always keep a safety pin on you, kid,” Kyle noted. “Never know when it’ll come in handy. Picking locks or using it as a quick weapon. That’s standard IPB 101 training for you.”
