‘Are you sure? Okay, then.’ Bell nods to the open door of the Cool Room. ‘Go on in while I fetch the other files from Behavioral Science. Grab a chair. Yeah, they’re the same chairs. We’ve got a permanent phone now, at least.’
Emma peers into the room. ‘You got an upgrade.’
‘If you can call it that,’ Bell says grimly. ‘Hang tight, I’ll be back with the files in five.’
‘I’ll get your bag!’ Kristin bustles in that direction.
Emma swallows everything down, even the feelings she doesn’t fully understand, and steps inside.
The Cool Room has changed subtly from the last time she was here – it’s been three months, and change was inevitable. The fileboxes from the time she and Bell spent interviewing juvenile killers are all gone. There are desk lamps now, and a cup full of pencils, and a typewriter. There’s the telephone, in industrial brown. The room smells like it’s been recently fumigated. Someone has laid beige carpet tiles on the floor to make it look less bleak, and there’s an old, hard-looking couch against one wall.
The room is still gray, though: a basic, windowless concrete bunker. It’s not the same space she remembers, but it’s familiar enough, which lessens the sting.
Emma collects one of the metal folding chairs by the door, opens it out near two desks, their front ends pushed into cooperation to make a table. Two other chairs sit adjacent. She looks at how closely they’re positioned before shoving that thought aside.
‘Yes, it’s still like adungeonin here, if you were wondering.’ Kristin talks as she moves around the space, sweeping back her hair and setting Emma’s overnight bag near the leg of the desk. ‘Oh, Emma, it’s so good to see you! Horrible circumstances, of course, but still. How have you been? You’ve been at college, is that right? How are your studies?’
‘It’s, uh, it’s good. Fine. Everything’s been going fine. Up until now.’
‘Oh, yes – sit down, you must be quite exhausted. Would you like coffee? We have a filter pot. I don’t like brewed coffee, but you might.’
Emma cuts to the chase. ‘How long have you been working with Behavioral Science?’
‘Well, I’m not actuallyworkingwith them.’ Kristin has found a chair, but she doesn’t settle in it, more just flutters around the edges. ‘I’m notemployedby the FBI, I should say. But I contactedTravis – Mr Bell – in July, after I saw the news reports about the first girl. Then I contacted him again after the second girl, because the similarities to the Huxton case were just so striking, and at last he agreed I should come in and explain it all to his superiors, as he had been thinking the same thing, of course. And I kept telling them to call you, but they wouldn’t listen. It was like nobody wouldlistenuntil they found this new girl today, and then finally people seemed to sit up and take notice.’ She has been touching small things on the desk: a pencil, a chain of paper clips. Now she stops fidgeting and shrugs. ‘Anyway, I’ve given them – Mr Bell and Mr Carter, that is – all my thoughts on the matter, and I’m very glad you’re here. Now they might start listening to sense.’
‘They might.’ Emma’s getting used to Kristin again, the way the girl talks, that peculiar cadence and syntax. It reminds her of Simon, and Emma knows that’s a block in her, a natural revulsion. She has to fight it. Simon Gutmunsson is a serial murderer, and Kristin is not. Kristin is eccentric, but she is not her twin. ‘You knew it was a Huxton copycat just from reading the newspaper reports?’
‘Well, yes, but I wasn’tsure, that’s the thing.’ Kristin sinks at last into the neighboring chair, takes Emma’s hand. Kristin violates the ‘give her space’ order too. Emma reminds herself that Kristin is like this: she likes to touch, and she doesn’t mean anything by it. ‘I didn’t know for certain until I read your file. Oh, Emma, I’m so very sorry. I had to read it. Mr Bell has read it as well. I’m sure that will feel awkward and uncomfortable—’
‘It’s necessary. Don’t apologize.’ It’s hard, though, the awareness that everyone knows. That they’re viewing her through that lens. Emma experiences it like a wave of numbness, of absence.
‘It made Travis angry. But I felt a kind of sorority.’ Kristin’s grasp on her hand is gentle. ‘Isn’t that strange? I don’t want to presume, but goodness – between the two of us, we’ve gone through a lot, haven’t we?’
Emma returns Kristin’s clasp to show that she’s reciprocating. She doesn’t want Kristin to feel like she’s alone. Since Simon’s imprisonment two years ago, Kristin has been living in an expensive ‘mental health spa’ facility near Richmond. Emma’s been there: the individual bungalows are exquisite and discreet, but solitary. Once part of an inseparable unit with her brother, Kristin is now a girl who’s been alone for too long. And in Emma’s experience, the Gutmunsson twins react poorly to isolation.
When the door clicks open, it’s Bell, laden with paperwork.
He dumps the files on the corner of the desk. ‘Here’s everything. I checked in with Jack Kirby, too, so that’s one less thing you have to do. Lewis, what do you already know?’
Emma finds this quality in Bell the most reassuring – that after everything, after months of separation, he can reintegrate her almost seamlessly back into the team, back into the work. Work is good; it’s focusing.
‘Assume I know nothing, because that would be accurate. I haven’t been checking the news, and I have no information beyond what I know about Huxton and what I just saw in the Allegheny County Morgue.’
‘Okay.’ He pulls up his chair, kitty-corner from her and Kristin. ‘Here’s the timeline. The first victim, Geraldine MacIntyre, was found on July twenty-first. She was dumped under an overpass in Seldom Seen Greenway, so she wasn’t discovered for threedays, and he had her for probably five days prior. You ready for this?’
He means the crime scene photos, and Emma nods. He passes them to her. The pictures are stark, but there’s a certain remove. They’re nowhere near as disorienting as the body she saw on that table in Pittsburgh.
She’s sure her face looks dismayed all the same. ‘The wedding dresses.’
‘Yeah, he’s following the same pattern.’
‘The veils and bouquets are different from Huxton, though.’ Kristin touches the photos. ‘And the posing. Looking at these pictures, I’d say the most recent victim was the most posed.’
‘He’s refining a little each time,’ Bell acknowledges.
‘Does he cut the ring fingers on every victim?’ Emma’s soul, suspended just outside her body as she asks.
‘Uh-huh. Was that the thing that ran up your flags? Okay, let’s come back to the significance of that in a minute. He took the second girl, Marilyn Preston, on the fourth of August. Her friends reported her missing early. That let us figure out he held her for seven days.’
