“Probably,” Oakley responds, shifting uncomfortably.
“So, you were always going to be let in,” I say quietly, “but I was never supposed to know.”
“Do you think maybe your dads thought you wouldn’t be interested?”
Leveling a gaze at my cousin, I answer, “Or maybe they thought that my language processing shit prevented me from being a good candidate for the family business.”
“You can’t know that for sure,” Oakley insists.
“What happens when I call myself an idiot?” I ask, damn well knowing the answer.
“Don’t call yourself that.” Oak’s response is immediate. Reflexive. “Take it back,” he insists, finally looking genuinely angry.
“Exactly,” I say, going to the bar. I don’t care what time of day it is. I grab a beer and crack it open. “Well, let me tell ya, cuz. Nothing makes me feel more idiotic than knowing my family successfully hid such an important thing from me, likely because at some level, they don’t think I’m smart enough to handle the truth.”
I think back to the conversation I had with Holmes. I'd been worried that my travel schedule for the spring would keep me away from the family. He assured me that he was equally as busy, and now I'm left to wonder if that was code for, "I'm glad you won't be in the way."
And that thought sits in my gut like a verdict.
3
BOONE
Today’s homicidewill be forever burned on my retinas. As a junior detective, I’m still getting my feet wet, and the scene we walked in on was the perfect juxtaposition of art and gore.
Classic Baroque composition meets old school Rob Zombie.
I was checking in with my mentor and department crime-scene manager, Joni Sampson, when the call came in from a local WhiteHat group that monitors the Hell_AI app—the most recent iteration of the dark web. They discovered a bidding war over a little girl in Central Austin, along with a winner and, most importantly, an address.
Joni had officers from the local substation do a safety check. When they arrived at the buyer’s house, the door was ajar. When they went inside, they discovered the dead bodies, but no trace of the little girl.
Joni loves to make fun of my “useless art degree,” but when the officers sent her the initial crime-scene pics, she shared them with me and asked for my take.
Having minored in art history, I knew immediately that the killer’s inspiration had come from Guido Reni’s depiction of Salome carrying the head of John the Baptist. It’s a scene many artists have painted, but the calm, beatific expression on John’sface in Reni’s painting always stayed with me. In the middle of such a horrific tableau, it’s especially haunting.
Joni invited me to ride along and answer the team’s questions, as well as share my thoughts. After seeing everything in person, we agreed that it looked like the killer had worked with what was in the house and that this wasn’t his first kill. His attention to detail—the set of the mouth on the headless man, the way the second man’s hands gripped the platter—bordered on obsessive.
As Joni dispatched detectives to interview the neighbors and get any video they might have from their doorbell cameras, the supervisor at the local police substation called to let us know that a little girl named Sara had walked into the front office asking for her mommy.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt more relieved in my life.
The mother of the little girl arrived ahead of us and was, understandably, barely holding it together. Despite her distress, she trusted Joni, allowing her to ask the little girl a limited scope of questions.
Sara—tiny for her age, pretty as a picture, and without a scratch on her—had no idea how close she came to oblivion. I stood with Sara’s mom and watched, fascinated, as Joni gently elicited answers in her incisive, careful way.
Sara’s lisp stole my heart as she talked about how her dad picked her up early from daycare and bought her “ice cweam” before taking her to his “fwiend’s howse.”
Every time her little speech impediment asserted itself, a very dark part of me cheered on whoever had turned her father’s and the buyer’s last minutes into a grotesque vignette.
Good.
Ugh. I am unwell.
Sara explained that an older masked man with a “funny voiwce” surprised her dad and her dad’s friend, scaring them.Sara thought that was the height of comedy, giggling hysterically in the retelling.
Joni asked about the guy with the funny voice and discovered there had been another masked man “with spark-y bwue eyes and scawy cartoons on his hands,” who walked her to the station and watched her go in before leaving.
From what we could tell, Sara didn’t see any of the horror show and understood little of what was going on. Her mom agreed to update us if Sara remembered any other details.
