47. MURDER IN MY MIND

47

MURDER IN MY MIND

YARA

“ D id you find something?” Ryden asked, and I pushed the receipt toward him. “And?” Ryden asked, confused.

“Logan Jones. It’s him. I know it’s him.”

“You mean… the one we met at the Art and Apostles? The artist? That Logan Jones?” Ryden narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“His coffee order. These are the orders Miranda fulfilled yesterday, and this is one of them,” I said, pointing to what she wrote. “Look at the name on the receipt. It’s an anagram…”

“Grant Leshter. The Strangler. Fuck. He knew we’d come here. He’s baiting us…” Ryden said, punching the table. “But how do you know his coffee order, Yara?”

“I saw him at the Coffee Connexion. It was before the art exhibition.”

Ryden took in a sharp breath, and I knew he was trying so hard to not lose it right here.

“Something about him made me want to dig deeper, so I did,” I said, biting my lips. I told him about the AFIS search I’d done.

“And you think he might be The Strangler?” Ryden asked, scratching his stubble.

“He may or may not be The Strangler. Logan Jones wasn’t an innocent man. I knew that much,” I said, grabbing the receipt. “He knows something.”

“Let’s go find this fucking bastard, then.”

We went to the art gallery. Trish was talking with another woman who looked a little like Daphne. They stopped when we walked in. The other woman introduced herself as Daphne’s sister, Linda.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Linda, but…” I looked at her with an apologetic smile. I didn’t want to do this now, but I had to.

“Go on.”

“We’re here for Logan Jones. Is he here?” Ryden asked, shaking the woman’s hand.

“He isn’t here,” she said. “Do you need anything from him?”

“It’s alright. We’ll find him later… But… can you answer some questions for us?” Linda nodded. “Did you meet anyone unusual on the night of the exhibition? Perhaps someone suspicious Daphne was talking to? Did Daphne look normal?”

“I told the cops the same thing, but no. She was stressed about the gallery opening, but she was fine otherwise. There were a lot of new faces and old ones, and Daphne was busy talking with the patrons, trying to raise more funds. When the exhibition was over, she told me she was going home. I offered to drive her, but she said Logan was giving her a ride.”

“She was so happy,” Trish said. “We sold a lot of art and… I ca-can’t believe she’s gone now.”

“Did you talk with Logan after Daphne’s death?”

“Yes. He was here yesterday,” she said, rubbing her red-rimmed eyes. “He was her friend and…”

Fuck. He was no friend of Daphne. My suspicions were beginning to solidify the more I heard about him. His charm was poisonous. He was a fucking snake.

“He talked with the cops about her. He said he dropped her off at her apartment around twelve-thirty.”

“Do you have his address?” Ryden asked.

The two women looked at us suspiciously, eyes narrowed.

“Why? Did he do something?” Linda asked.

“No. We talked about commissioning a sculpture from him and…”

“I’ll get his address from the file,” Trish said. “Your… your art—the one you bought, if you want to take it with you.” Trish smiled, and I nodded.

“That’d be awesome. Thank you.”

Ryden and I shared a look when Trish finally came out with a piece of paper and the wrapped painting I’d bought. “I wrote down his apartment address,” Trish said. “Here’s your painting.”

“Thank you, Trish,” I said, grabbing the note from her as Ryden took the painting. “Bye.”

Nervousness warred with excitement. I felt it… the adrenaline rush of the hunt. The need for blood, his blood, was a thousand times sharper. It was like pin pricks on my skin.

Logan Jones, I’m coming for you.

“Do you think it’s him?” Ryden asked when we were driving toward his house.

I nodded. “I don’t know, but I have a bad feeling whenever I think about him. It’s… instinct. He was charming, but his charm was fake.”

I handed Ryden gloves when we finally reached Logan’s apartment. I always carried them with me—you never knew. Ryden smirked as he pulled it on.

Four rings of Logan’s doorbell didn’t bring him out. Of course, the fucker wasn’t here.

“I’m going to pick the lock,” Ryden said, quickly pulling out a pick set from his pocket. He used the tension wrench and a pick to unlock the door. Those fucking fingers were proficient with so many things. The door opened with a squeak. “What? I was a boy scout,” he said with a wink when he saw me staring at him.

“Well, good for you, Turtle Mocha. So… you’re not really a good boy.”

“I’m a good boy only for you,” he said with a salacious smile.

We walked into the clean apartment. Everything in his place was white, clinical—this place was all about efficiency and precision, and it barely looked lived in.

“This is definitely the house of a psychopath,” Ryden said with a shake of his head.

We searched the living room, which was filled with statues—one of Persephone drinking blood from a crushed heart. There was another of Medusa, but this time, she had the body of a snake. He was truly gifted but… also not normal. I recognized his darkness, his monsters.

“Let’s find the room where he buries his skeletons,” I said.

We all had the room of secrets. Mine was my childhood bedroom, the place where I had first killed. Ryden’s was the one next to his master bedroom. But Logan’s skeletons were certainly not here in this apartment.

“It’s too clean. Not even a smudge of paint. He doesn’t paint or sculpt here,” Ryden said when we were done.

“Artists usually have studios,” I said as Ryden closed the door behind us, and we took the stairs down.

“I’ll call Reah about it,” Ryden said as we walked down to his car. I waited as he talked with Reah, telling her about Logan. He hung up and after minutes of silence, his phone vibrated with a message. “Oh. Yes. His studio’s closer to Wagner Park.”

“Wagner Park? It was where Daphne’s body was found,” I muttered, anger coating my words.

Ryden drove to his studio. Logan wasn’t there in his studio, either. He must be hiding or hunting for his next victim. I had to catch up with him before he killed again.

Ryden picked the lock, and we walked into the minimalist, white studio space. The massive place was filled with paintings and sculptures—on the walls, on the floor, on the tall shelves.

“He wouldn’t keep his trophies out in the open if he was The Strangler,” Ryden said.

We walked toward the back and stopped when we came across a locked room. Ryden tried the handle.

“A perfect place to hide his darkness,” I said.

Ryden flexed his magic fingers again, and the door gaped open. I saw it as soon as I walked in. A painting of a girl in a red dress, her head tilted back, and a garrote around her neck. Red garrote. I knew her. She was The Strangler’s third victim. Flora River.

“Oh fuck,” Ryden cursed. “It looks like you’re right.”

I looked around, and there were more. More portraits of women The Strangler murdered, but they weren’t dead in the paintings. They were alive but on the verge of death.

My breath came out in a shattered gasp when I found what I was subconsciously searching for. Kat. There she was. My eyes burned. She looked beautiful; she looked like my Kat.

That fucking monster.

Ryden grabbed another painting with a frown. “I know her. Her name was Vicky Ledgers. She was his ninth kill. Toledo. She was from Toledo.” He studied Vicky’s portrait for a while. “These paintings… he couldn’t have drawn them from the pictures from the newspaper. He had to see them to draw them with such precision.” He turned the small canvas around and cursed, ripping off a transparent bag taped to the painting. “Fuck. This is real hair, Yara.”

My stomach roiled. I felt like vomiting. My skin burned when I took Kat’s painting. My fingers trembled when I grabbed the lock of hair glued to the back of the painting. This was his trophy.

It was clear now. It was him.

“I need to check this for DNA, but it might be highly degraded,” I said, feeling a sinking sensation in my stomach. I didn’t need DNA to know, though. “I-I’m sure it was Kat’s,” I whispered. I wanted to burn Logan’s studio down until there was nothing left.

I took a few strands of hair and sealed it in the evidence bag.

“I have to get back to Miranda,” I said, checking my watch. I didn’t want to. I had e to find him, but my job was still waiting for me. “You can stay here and…”

“I’m not leaving you alone, Red. I told you.”

“But we can’t waste time, not now, Ryden, not when we’re so close to this fucking bastard. We need more evidence that he was indeed The Strangler. We need to find him before the FBI.”

“I’ll use other means to find the evidence and find him. But I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving you alone.”

Ryden stayed outside the autopsy room, while I worked on Miranda’s body. I could see him through the glass door, talking on the phone, one call after the other, busy with collecting more evidence.

Amy came with forensic reports. “Everything is an exact match except the lipstick. He must have bought these things in bulk. If we could just find the place he bought these dresses, shoes, and wigs from…”

“Are there any logos on the dress? Names?”

Amy shook her head. “You see here…” She showed me a photograph. “This was where the tags usually would be, even for a cheap brand. But he ripped it off. He’s careful about every little thing. The detectives were looking at the flower shops, but they didn’t find anything yet. I’ll check again,” Amy said, walking out.

Wearing my gloves, I grabbed a scalpel and a rib cutter. When I drew the first Y on her chest, my fingers shook.

I finished after hours and typed the useless report. The FBI had officially asked me to be their medical examiner. I printed two copies, and as if Detective Rosario could smell it, he walked in with Agent Hayes. Agent Hayes was a tall man with eyes as sharp as a pike and white hair.

He had been in the business of catching killers for much longer than I was.

I handed them the report. “She’s pristine. We found traces of oxygen bleach, and the makeup was the same as the kind used on Daphne. We even found Daphne’s DNA on Miranda, but there was nothing else.”

Agent Hayes cursed.

“He’s upping his game. Like this is some kind of conclusion, but to what?”

“The letters?” I asked, staring at Detective Rosario.

“He talked about his little love, and this time… he mentioned something about knowing her when they were young.”

Agent Hayes nodded. “He talked about a night she was bathed in blood, that night when she became his god. We believe he met this woman when they were young, and she might have killed someone that night. It might be self-defense because he talked about injustice. And this would have started his unnatural obsession and fixation with this woman. She might not even know who he was.”

My jaw clenched, and my fists involuntarily balled up at my sides as I stared at the agent. The night I killed… the only place he could have seen me would be at the orphanage. That was the only thing that made sense.

But who is Logan Jones?

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember him from the orphanage. I had buried most of my life inside a little black box, trying to escape the memories of my time at the Convent for Sunflower Children. I didn’t remember much, except Tany and Sister Serena.

There were two buildings next to each other that both belonged to the orphanage—one for the boys and one for the girls. We lived, played, ate, and slept separately. The only times we were together were during Sunday masses and at school.

Could I have met him at school? Could he have witnessed me kill Robert Miller by some twist of fate? Sister Serena might know, but I knew she had disappeared two years after she saw me walk out of the chapel bathed in the bastard’s blood.

She protected me, but she paid the price for it.

“That’s sick,” I said as they both studied the body.

“It is. We have to find him soon, or he’ll continue to kill.”

They left the room, and I quickly zipped Miranda into the body bag before sliding her inside the temperature-controlled body drawer and locked it in for the night. I had to go back to her tomorrow, but I knew, deep in my heart, that she wouldn’t tell me anything more.

When I walked out, Ryden quickly stood up.

“Come on, let’s go home.”

“But…”

“I talked with Enzo. Irene is safe. I also talked with Reah, and she found Logan’s phone number, but it’s switched off. She also found out there were art exhibits Logan attended in various cities that coincided with The Strangler’s killings. Not everywhere, but some. She’ll call me as soon as his phone comes online. He’s hiding because he knows you know, and we can’t do anything but wait for now, but he’s going nowhere, not this time. We’ll hunt him and kill him together.”

“I can’t wait for that,” I said, my voice harsher.

Ryden’s eyes widened, and then they gleamed. He gave me a wicked smile that reminded me of the man I had met weeks ago when he was killing Phil. Angel in one eye. Devil in the other.

I couldn’t wait.