“Careful can still be stupid,” he says. “What’d they know then?”
“Timeline on when the Feds were coming in,” I say. “Rough geography on where Henry used to work before he popped up here. Nothing I couldn’t eventually get on my own, but it sped things up.”
His jaw works like he wants to tell me to log off.Instead he nods once.
“Okay,” he says. “We treat them like a maybe-useful, maybe-hazardous source. Ask a direct question. No hints about your real situation.”
“Yes, Mom,” I mutter, fingers already moving.
you keep saying that. elaborate.
The typing dots appear almost instantly.
look at the placement
placement? of what?
No response.
“‘Look at the placement,’” I read aloud, narrating more for Bran than me. “That’s all they say.”
“What’s that mean?” he asks.
“Could mean literal placement of the body,” I say. “Could mean where the article puts the information. Could be some weird code for ‘I’m eating my feelings.’”
“Show me the last thread where you talked about Thurston with them,” he says.
I tab open an old log. It’s from eleven months ago, right after we thought we’d seen the last of Henry.
he’s a creature of habit, Nightjar
Minotaur had said that then.
he’ll come back to the same places, same patterns, same light
Same light. I flip back to the article, eyes skimming the lines.
Mid-twenties woman. Hiker…the Falls. Nothing about the exact location. Nothing about her pose.
“Jack said there was no sign she was moved,” I say slowly. “Didn’t say where she was on the rocks.”
“Where wouldyouput her,” Bran asks, “if you were trying to send a message and not get caught—and you weren’t allowed to actually answer that question because you are not doing this in real life.”
“This is hypothetical,” I say. “You going to arrest my imagination?”
“I’ll cuff it to the radiator if I have to,” he says. “Humor me.”
My brain clicks into gear, the gross little thrill of a puzzle overshadowed by the fact that this one bleeds.
“Somewhere visible but not immediately accessible,” I say. “Enough time between discovery and contact that he can move. A place tourists know from Instagram. And if he’s mocking us…exactly where the last girl went missing.”
“You got coordinates from that case?” he asks.
I tap a few keys. Old folders open, neatly nested. Photos, crime scene sketches, handwritten notes scanned from Jack’s legal pads because his penmanship is a war crime.
“There.” I pull up a map overlay. “The last victim—Amanda—was last seen near the overlook trailhead on this side.” I point. “If he’s repeating himself…”
“State cops’ll have that angle covered,” Bran says. “They’re going to be looking at crime scene overlap. But they’re not thinking about his audience.”
