“I was just going to remind you of that.”
“It’s still on.” He slid one arm through his jacket. “Tonight,” he promised. “We’ll talk tonight.”
“I’m holding you to it, Detective.”
He thought she might be teasing, but the look on her face convinced him that she was just this side of being really pissed and calling him out.
At the station, Reed stopped for a cup of coffee in the break room. Several cops had gathered, talking, laughing, grabbing coffee, and getting ready for their shifts. As quiet as the station could be at night, at this time in the morning, it was alive with the thud of boots, the clang of lockers being closed, and the ever-present hum of conversation. Cell phones jangled their individual tunes, while the distinctive ring of desk phones punctuated the air.
He checked Jamison’s office, but the door was closed, inside dark.
Once at his desk, Reed scrolled through his e-mails and stopped short when he saw the lab report he’d been waiting for: blood analysison the stones left at the murder scenes. And not just the blood from the Huber homicide, but from the Greenlee and LaRoux scenes as well. There was a short note from the technician explaining about the delay due to a problem with equipment, but now that it had been fixed, she had processed the blood from all the rocks found at the three scenes. The blood in each case was identical. Not from the victims. And only partially human.
“Partially?” he said aloud. Someone had made a concoction of equal parts human, caprine, and bovine blood.
And the human blood came from an unknown female.
His stomach knotted.
Another victim?
One they had not yet discovered?
He and the department had worked on the premise that Billy Huber was the first victim, though there had been conjecture that there could be others, but, until this report, there was no real evidence or indication that there had been others.
As he was looking at the report, Sol pushed open the door. “Mornin’,” she said, dropping her backpack onto the file cabinet.
“Morning. Report on the blood came in.”
“Finally.”
“Take a look.”
She peered over his shoulder. “A mixture. Human. Goat. Cow.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s that mean?” she wondered aloud as she read the rest of the information.
“Don’t know. What do you think?”
She settled into her desk chair, and he expected her to type in the information and do some sort of Internet search. Instead she said, “Sacrifice.”
He looked at her.
“Animals used for sacrifice,” she elucidated.
“And human,” he reminded her.
“I’m just sayin’.”
He thought about it. “So you think the numbers carved onto the rocks have something to do with … what? Some kind of satanic ritual?”
“Not necessarily satanic, but maybe.” She shrugged. “I’m just spitballin’ here, but what else you got?”
“Not much,” he admitted, as his phone rang and Jamison Kittle’s name and number appeared on the screen. “Yeah?” he answered, hoping beyond hope that his friend was calling to say that Naomi had come home or been located. “You hear from her?”
“No.” A long pause. “I’m going quietly out of my mind.”
