“Hopefully, we can ID her during the autopsy,” Lina said as Bel crouched beside her to inspect the rotten corpse.
“I hope—” Bel froze, her hand unconsciously shooting out to grab Lina’s in support. “We don’t need to wait for an autopsy to identify Jane Doe…” she cursed, the blood draining from herface as she stumbled to her feet, and she wandered into the trees to catch her breath, leaning against a thick trunk to pray her breakfast didn’t make a reappearance. “I wanted a different outcome so badly.”
“Isobel?”
“Emerson, what’s wrong?”
Eamon and Griffin spoke in unison, and Bel cursed again, rubbing her chest to keep from crying.
“Emerson, are you okay?” Griffin repeated.
“Yeah.” Bel returned to the group, squeezing Eamon’s extended hand as she settled back before the remains. “No… I know who Jane Doe is.”
“Who?” Lina and Olivia asked.
“The necklace.” Bel’s gloved finger pointed to the nautilus seashell half-hidden by mud. “I recognize it. According to her parents, Ariella Triton never took it off.”
“No…” It was Griffin’s turn to curse, his words ugly in the horrified silence. “No, don’t say that.”
“I think this is Ariella Triton,” Bel whispered.
“I hate when it’s kids,” Griffin said. “Sure, she was nineteen, but that’s a child to me.”
“I know the odds of finding a missing person alive after two months are slim, but I wanted to hope,” Bel said.
“So did I,” Griffin agreed.
“We all did,” Olivia said. “I worried she was the next mermaid, and she was still being tattooed. I hoped she was. It meant we had a chance of saving her.”
“It seems our theory that Ariella got into the wrong car after the party was the right one,” Griffin said. “A predator took advantage of the chaos our officers caused and…” he trailed off, and for a moment, no one spoke. No one wanted to voice the thoughts rattling through their heads. No one wanted to put that horror out into the world.
“So, we’re dealing with two separate cases,” Griffin finally broke the silence.
“I think that’s the smartest assumption,” Bel said. “The killings are completely different.”
“Is it possible that her death was an accident?” Eamon asked, and everyone whirled around to gawk at the giant man they’d forgotten had intruded on their crime scene. “Perhaps her assailant didn’t mean to kill her.”
“Anything’s possible, but why ask?” Griffin asked, understanding that if Eamon was drawing attention to himself, it was for a good reason.
“The area,” he said. “Imagine this spot before the storm. The view of the lake. The elevation. The sunlight. It’s lovely. There are spots closer to the party that would’ve served as adequate burial sites. I know. I checked them myself. This is out of the way. If the killer is your mermaid perpetrator who broke his M.O. to dispose of Ariella, this location is also far from his mermaids. Of course, there are other explanations for why he’d hike her body here, but I wonder if her death was an accident. The killer felt guilt about his actions. He didn’t mean to kill her. Or perhaps he cared about her, so he laid her to rest in a spot that’s as close to heaven on earth that he could find.”
“He has a point,” Bel said, understanding why Eamon hadn’t found this location two months ago when he’d helped her search. No one had thought to check this far out. “This is a beautiful resting spot. If I couldn’t call the authorities, this is the kind of place I’d bury someone I cared about. The killer put her here on purpose.”
“We should treat this like two different cases,” Griffin said. “Mr. Stone has a point about this location. I don’t think Ariella is connected to the mermaids.”
“Unless he couldn’t sink her,” Olivia said. “I’m not saying they’re related, but to play devil’s advocate, what if it’s the samekiller? What if he couldn’t drown her? Maybe she saw him stalking the party and ran away, but with all the cops, he couldn’t risk letting her escape with what she’d seen. Maybe he didn’t have the time or equipment to drop her in the lake, so he did the next best thing.” Olivia pointed down the incline that Ariella’s grave sat atop. “It’s a clear view of the mermaid graveyard from here. He couldn’t sink her, so he made sure she would forever watch over his sirens.”
“No!”Mrs. Triton’s screams echoed throughout the quiet house, the cops frozen in silence as unimaginable grief played out before them. “No, no, no! Not my baby! Tell me it isn’t my baby!” The woman collapsed to the carpet, the life draining from her as she screamed with such primal emotion that Bel would never be free of the sound. It was a poison seeping through her limbs to paralyze her, yet her hands still found the freedom to shake.
“My baby!” Mrs. Triton wailed. “My Ariella. You’re lying. You’re liars. My daughter isn’t dead.”
“Is there…” Griffin cleared his throat. “Is there someone I can call for you? Family that you would like here?”
“We…” Mr. Triton stumbled on his words, rubbing his chest as if the pressure might relieve the unrelenting heartache. “We don’t have anyone we’re close to. It’s just the three of us… two of us.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Bel whispered. “Anything you need?”
“I want you out of my house.” Mrs. Triton drooled onto the carpet as she shrieked, and Bel fixated on the single strand of spit hanging from her lips. She couldn’t focus on the woman’s face or the raw pain spilling from her because she suddenly sawher father in this distraught mother. She saw Eamon learning she’d died via a news report. Had this been how he’d reacted? Had he screamed like Mrs. Triton or had he gone numb like her husband? Had he stood there blank and unseeing? Had he suffered in silence, or had his legs collapsed, his body unable to support his grief?
