The large, scale-size frigate was slightly tilted when Ilse returned into the study. Her foot struck a glass bottle, sending it rolling across the floor. She inhaled slowly through her mouth, and yet could still detect the faintest odors lingering on the air. She waved a hand beneath her nose, standing with her back to the door. Behind her, she could sense Sawyer still lingering outside the house. She didn't particularly care if he was watching her or not.
She knew, now, she would have to cancel the mornings appointments with her clients—something she was loathe to do. Those people needed her, and by canceling it felt like she was letting them down.
Still, others needed her too—namely the victims of this newest serial killer. Sometimes, the sheer state of humanity seemed an insurmountable object. But now, she was faced with a different type of mess.
This one coming in the variety of glass bottles, empty food wrappers, and what looked like a discarded pair of pants beneath one of the windows.
The place was a mess. On the desk, in an overflowing wastepaper basket, she spotted more than one manuscript jammed into the tiny, metal container. Shredded paper, like confetti, littered the desk as well.
Ilse inhaled shakily, scanning the area while wearing the severest of frowns. There was nothing to find here, was there? A navel-gazing professor had gone on a bender, set off by online criticism of his own critiques. This wasn't their killer—surely not...
Even when they had a chance to interview the man, she wasn't sure they'd find much of anything.
She tapped a finger against her lips as she moved around the edge of the desk and peered into the wastepaper basket. The title of the jammed manuscript simply read, Untitled, a treatise of allegory in childhood stories.
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she moved away from the desk, stepping over a yet untouched sixpack beneath the desk chair.
A small bookshelf by the window carried a modest collection of books with old-fashioned, curved binding. Some of them leather, others flimsy, cardboard like material. Ilse frowned as she leaned in, studying some of the books. She felt a faint breeze suddenly coming from behind her, and she turned to spot a small desk fan hidden beneath the large model frigate. The air current from the fan ruffled some of the shredded strands of paper draped over the desks.
The man had exacted his violence externally on his own work. He'd taken the criticism from his students and gone on a bender. This was the sort of person who harmed themselves when hurt by others. Was he really the type to also go and exact vengeance in the form of murder?
It didn't seem to fit with his personality.
The more she came to know the professor, the less she suspected he was their culprit. With this also came a slow, gnawing sense of impending doom.
If the real killer was still out there, biding his time, then Ilse didn't even know where to start. She studied the desk, searching for... for insight into the mind of their suspect. One could learn a lot about a person by perusing their desk. She turned away from the desk again, but as she did, the small fan beneath the model frigate sent a few strands of shredded paper flying, skittering across the wood then tumbling over the edge of the furniture piece.
She scowled, turning off the fan and moving it to glance at a notepad beneath it. The paper was blank. She moved on to one of the drawers, opening it to find a stack of bills. She glanced towards a filing cabinet, but the drawers were locked. She turned, kicking a couple of the ripped strands of paper, and frowning at more curls of ripped parchment on the table. She leaned in, brushing the paper aside.
She began to lift one of the strands of parchment, but then stopped, looking on the desk. A book lay hidden beneath the ripped paper.
A book lying open.
She stepped over the sixpack once more, avoiding a gas-station sandwich wrapper on the floor, and reached out delicately towards the open book. She brushed some of the shredded paper off to the side as if it were strands of limp pasta. She slowly closed the book and frowned at the title.
Roget's Collection of Fairy Tales.
She opened the book, scanning the table of contents, her brow still low. And that's when she spotted the titles of the stories.
On page four The Gingerbread Man. Page twelve had The Ugly Duckling. Following, on page thirty came the story of Jack and the Beanstalk...
She felt a faint shiver down her back as she double-checked the order.
The same order the killer was using. First the marathon runner, then the fashion model, then the bean farmer. One after the other. She also knew, from her experience researching different collections online, that most weren't in this particular order. Which meant...
Meant what?
She frowned. Professor Seatman wasn't the killer, of that she was nearly certain. But whoever the killer was, he seemed to be following a preordained plan. Or, perhaps, a table of contents. She tapped a finger against the next story on the list, beneath Jack and the Beanstalk.
Hansel and Gretel.
“What are the odds?” she murmured to herself, shaking her head. It was the same order, the exact same order. She knew what Sawyer would think. But she'd combed through twenty collections online—none of them were in this order. Well, one had been the same order, but the stories had been midway through the tome.
This book started that way and also... She stared at the cover. An old, leatherbound thing. She flipped to the publishing page.
1972. An old book.
Old enough for the killer to have possessed as a child? Clearly there was some emotional stunting involved in all of this. If the fairy tale theory was real, and she felt certain it was, then the killer must have had the same or similar edition.
And if that was the case...
She moved back to the Table of Contents, heart pounding.
Hansel and Gretel.
Then they also had a lead.
“Tom!” she called out over her shoulder, her voice excited. “Tom!” she yelled louder. She frowned when she received no response and turned, moving back towards the hall. She came to a stop, spotting Sawyer standing in the entryway, frowning at a stack of receipts by the front door.
“Tom,” she said, her voice inquisitive now.
He looked at her, then pointed to the receipts. “Bastard has been ordering food all week.”
She winced, nodding slowly.
“He's been shut in,” Sawyer said, scowling. He rubbed his jaw, looking up. “Not gonna matter if he sobers, Ilse. It ain't him.”
“Forget about him,” she said hurriedly. “Look what I found.” She held up the tome of fairy tales, wagging it in Sawyer's direction.
“A book?”
“A book of fairy tales. No, no don't do that with your mouth.”
“I'm not doing anything.”
“That's your disapproving look. Yes—that. When you press your lips like that. Hear me out, Tom. It's the same order. Look—No, here, take it. Look!”
Sawyer reluctantly accepted the extended tome, allowing Ilse to guide him to the table of contents. He gave a faint huff and shrugged. “Alright,” he muttered. “Looking. What exactly should I be looking at?”
Ilse tapped the story titles. “Look at the first one.”
Sawyer did and shrugged.
“The second,” she said.
His shrug turned to a grunt.
By the third tap and point he was frowning. He pulled the book a bit closer, lifting it as if to read it more clearly.
“See!” she said excitedly.
“Could be a coincidence,” Sawyer said.
“Or maybe not,” she countered. “And if I'm right, look at the fourth entry.”
He did. “Hansel and Gretel, yeah?”
“It's pronounced gre-tel. Like in the word gray. Not like greet.”
“Whatever, Gre-tel.”
She stared at Sawyer for a moment, wrinkling her nose. “Don't you know the story?”
He scowled back at her. “So what,” he said. “I was busy mucking stalls and rising at dawn. Didn't have time for fairy tales as a kid. Sue me.”
Ilse shook her head, trying not to roll her eyes. That comment alone was the most Sawyer-esque thing she'd heard all day. Of course he'd never read Hansel and Gretel. Of course he'd been mucking stalls at dawn. She tried to keep her exasperation hidden and instead, tone as gentle as she could manage, said, “Tom, Hansel and Gretel were twin kids. Two lost children in a wood that were kidnapped by a witch.”
Now, Sawyer's irritation faded, and he sobered a bit. “You think he's going after kids next?”
“I—I don't know. That would be a strong deviation for him. Especially if he's acting out some childhood fantasy.”
“So what, doc, we looking for twins?”
“I—I don't know. Maybe... we should look for missing kids in the last twenty-four hours. Might not be twins. Might just be siblings, or friends. Can we do that? He's escalating with the story component. The vines with the farmer were an added dramatic flair. Who knows what he's planning next?”
“Kids or siblings. On it,” Sawyer said. Now that children were threatened, she saw the way his eyes narrowed, watched as he seemed to hit a new gear. Threatening kids was one of the main ways to get Sawyer back in the game.
But Ilse could feel her own concerns now. What if she was right? What if this killer was going after children?
She set her teeth, feeling a sense of horror and fury.
“We need those reports. Anything and anyone within two hours of Seattle.”
“Any kids?”
“It would be two,” Ilse countered. “Two kids either related or friends. From the same area.”
“Got it.”
Sawyer's phone was already in his hand, and as he lifted the device, stalking back towards the front door, there was a renewed urgency in his step. Ilse followed after her partner, the initial excitement at the new lead now wearing off in the face of its obvious ramifications. As of yet, they hadn't taken a case with children involved...
She felt a lance of horror at the thought. Memories drifted back to her subconscious, threatening to rise to the surface of normally murky water.
She flinched, standing in the threshold of the doorway to the large home, closing her eyes and murmuring beneath her breath, “Two victims. Canadian. Air force. Assault. Narcissistic personality—”
But she was cut off as Sawyer said, “What the hell do you mean?” He paced back and forth on the patio, shaking his head. Ilse stepped back out into the night as well, watching her partner. Sawyer said, “That many? Just today? Any of them siblings? Twins?” He paused, frowning off into the night.
Ilse came closer and Sawyer switched his device to speaker. “Go on,” he said, “Repeat what you told me, my partner's next to me.”
A somewhat flustered voice on the other end of dispatch said, “W—there have been five new missing children reports in the last twelve hours alone. But none of them are siblings. I can go further back if you'd like. This week alone we're almost over a hundred—”
“Christ,” Sawyer muttered beneath his breath.
Ilse rubbed at the tattoo circling her wrist, feeling her emotions threatening to withdraw. She reached out, patting Sawyer on the arm. She knew how he got when kids were threatened, but also, she had her own demons where that arena was concerned.
“Alright,” Sawyer said, gritting his teeth and steadying himself. “Check back in two days. Any further and our guy would be breaking his apparent pattern.”
A pause, some lingering, then, “Well... I had two sisters go missing but they were found at a friend's house. They'd just forgotten to call.”
“Damn it, Jan, that's not what I mean,” Sawyer said. “Anything still open?”
Another pause. Ilse noted these pauses were far longer than when they involved Rudiger. She supposed some people were simply better suited for sitting in front of machines for a living. The woman on the other end cleared her throat then said, “No siblings. No twins. No open cases of children taken from the same home or school within the last two days.”
Sawyer grunted, lowering his phone and giving Ilse a long look. “Well?” he said.
Ilse just stood on the flagstone patio, shaking her head and frowning, trying to process what she was hearing. The number of inferred cases of missing children in Seattle alone was heartbreaking. She could still feel her emotions threatening to go into hiding. This was one of her many defense mechanisms when confronted with the underbelly of humanity.
She'd learned to hide at a very young age. If she numbed herself, she couldn't feel the pain, the humiliation, the shame and—most of all—the sheer horror.
But she was no longer a child. Her father was no longer tormenting her... at least, not up close and personal. For the sake of the case, she had to keep all parts of herself in the game. Emotions included.
“Alright,” she said slowly. “So maybe we're wrong about this one. Kidnapping kids would get far too much attention. What if—”
Before she could continue, Sawyer's lowered phone, which he hadn't hung up, started squawking. A voice, it seemed, was raising its volume over the cheap speaker. Sawyer hesitated, then lifted the device. “What was that?” he said. “Repeat.”
The voice on the other end seemed breathless but paused mid-sentence to start again. “I said we had 911 report for missing twins, but they're adults. Eighteen. I double-checked without the age restriction. A frantic mother called the operator.”
“Oh?” Ilse said, leaning towards the phone in Sawyer's hand. “What about?”
“She's reporting her two children missing,” the operator said hurriedly. “It didn't show up on the database because they're not children. They're both eighteen...”
“Both?” Ilse and Sawyer said at once.
“Twins,” the operator replied. “A boy and a girl who couldn't have been missing for more than three hours. Should I put her through?”
Ilse paused for a moment, considering this. “Was the mother on the scene when they were taken?”
“It—hang on.” The line went dead. Then it crackled back to life. “No, she wasn't; she tried calling, but her kids wouldn't answer. She drove by and saw a window open, the front door open. They were gone. But their car is still there.”
Ilse winced. “I see. Where is she now?”
“On the way to a police station, speaking on the phone.”
“Okay, in that case, no we don't need to speak with her yet. Just text us the address. Where were they taken from?”
Sawyer kept the phone aloft but was already moving rapidly back towards their vehicle. Ilse didn't hesitate to follow, her insides still swirling with that odd mixture of numbness and anticipation.