CHAPTER 18
I shot the detective my best smile, the one brimming with sincerity and innocence. Her raised eyebrow told me she wasn’t buying it for a minute. “Lucky guess,” I said when she repeated her question, this time with more force.
“Fair enough,” she began. “Mr. Reynolds, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent—”
Izzy pushed her slight body in front of me. “Wait. Blue isn’t a killer. He couldn’t have done it. We’ve been together all day and most of last night.”
I smiled, enjoying Izzy’s shriek of denial on my behalf. While I appreciated the sentiment, neither detective seemed to care about her assessment, nor about my alibi. I put a gloved hand on Izzy’s shoulder. “It’s okay. The detectives know I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Do we now?” Detective Locks asked, her head tilting to the side, a move that probably prompted a confession from a good percentage of the criminals she interviewed. But I was made of tougher stuff. Not to mention being completely innocent for a change.
“From the amount of rigor,” I began, “it’s obvious Barry was killed much earlier today, probably six or seven this morning. Add in the fact that Barry is far from the first victim . . .”
“What?” Izzy spun, nearly knocking me over in the process. I grabbed her shoulders in my gloved hands to steady us both. “What do you mean Barry’s not the first victim?” she yelled. “I didn’t see any other bodies.” She looked so disgruntled by the fact I had to smile.
“No, you didn’t,” Detective Rabit said.
Her eyes searched my face. “I don’t understand. Are you saying Barry was murdered by some spree killer?”
I winced. “Not quite.”
Comprehension suddenly flashed across her face. Her hand flew to her mouth. “No. It can’t be.”
I nodded.
“But he wasn’t a fairy!”
“Semantics, sweetheart. Semantics.”
The fairy serial murderer, Jack the Tooth Ripper, had struck again. The detectives admitted as much a few minutes later. They’d been on the serial killer case for just under a year, ever since the first victim was found. Rabit reluctantly admitted that the MO was the same in all seven, now eight, cases, with the exception of Barry’s lack of wings. All the victims had been strung up with dental floss after receiving a hefty enough dose of fairy dust to knock them unconscious. Prior to their deaths, the sadistic killer had removed each and every one of the victims’ teeth, one by one. Now the question was why? Why had the killer suddenly changed victims? And how was Barry connected to the murders?
It seemed like a stretch, but the piece of wing was the only clue that connected the twins to Barry.
That and Izzy.
After all, she’d purchased the nun’s habit from Barry.
“Blue, I don’t like this,” the fairy in question said a few minutes after the detectives let us go with the standard warning not to leave town. Like I had anywhere else to go. “The twins are missing,” Izzy said, “and now Barry is dead, killed by the same person responsible for the deaths of seven Tooth Fairies. That can’t be a coincidence.”
I grabbed her hand in my gloved one. “Remember what I said last night?”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course I do, but—”
“No buts, Isabella.” I gave her my most confident of smiles, all gleaming slightly tarnished teeth. “I’ll figure this out. Don’t worry your—”
She yanked her arm away. “If you say pretty little head, I will kill you in your sleep.”
Before I could comment my cell phone rang. I pulled it out and checked the caller ID. The screen flashed UNKNOWN CALLER. “Reynolds,” I answered with hesitancy. Nothing I hated more than getting stuck on the phone for ten minutes with a guy trying to sell me lightning rods.
“To find the truth,” the speaker paused, “two past the midnight hour.”
Definitely not a lightning-rod salesman. “What?”
The speaker’s sigh echoed through the phone. “If you want to know the truth about your new girlfriend, meet me under the Forty-Fifth Street Bridge at midnight tonight.”
I rolled my eyes. “Why not just say that in the first place?” Sometimes I hated my job. Everyone had something to hide, some angle to cover, which left me to weed through cryptic messages and layers of bullshit. My gaze inadvertently slid to Izzy, who stood next to me impatiently tapping her foot.
What was her angle? Was she really an innocent victim or was there more to her tale?