The silence was reminiscent of a cancer ward after the worst news was revealed—shock steeped in heady dread. For a moment, all Maggie could do was stare at Doctor Hadley. Reid, too, had gone stock-still. The vanilla in the air was suffocating.
How is this possible?
The toy cars glinted from the top of Colin’s box, red and blue and yellow, a race car, an army truck, a convertible—the same kind left at the crime scenes. Colin’s blood was in her father’s bathroom. Someone had sent those files to Reid and called to ensure that the cases were linked.
Had Colin committed the murders, left them a series of clues, then raced back here to kill himself? With his history of suicide attempts, that felt possible, but why here? If he was leaning into an endgame, it would make more sense for him to kill himself along with the youngest boy. A pattern completed, full circle. Instead, he left Ezra alive and—
“When did he die?” Reid asked, cutting through the mishmash in her head. If she was the Oligarch of Overthinking, he was the Earl of Expeditious Examination.
Hadley blinked. “Over a year ago. I’d have to look up the exact date, but I’ll get it before you leave.”
This revelation finally narrowed her thoughts onto a single rail. A year. Colin James wasn’t their killer. Whether or not the murders had started before his death, he hadn’t killed his family, hadn’t killed Ezra’s family. Colin James had been framed. Again.
But if Colin had died a year ago, how had the killer left the blood? And why did the killer want Colin connected to this case? He was counting on Reid ending up here, realizing that Colin was innocent. Maggie wasn’t sure why they didn’t know he was dead earlier—why his death wasn’t reported to the state—but they’d find out. Backed-up paperwork was her best guess.
“Was the shower where Colin died a common area?” Reid asked. He’d apparently pivoted to Colin being murdered while her thoughts had gone back to spinning like a grasshopper in a whirlpool.
Hadley shook her head. “All the rooms here have an attached shower. It’s why they didn’t find him for a few hours. A guard saw the bathroom light on through the observation window and Colin’s hand on the ground, still holding one of his little cars.”
A car… he’d died with a car in his hand. Their suspect was practically screaming at them: I did this, come get me!
Reid sniffed, then said: “I’ll need to see the autopsy report.”
Again, Hadley shook her head. “I’m sure there’s a coroner’s report with the city, but I don’t think they did an autopsy. Colin James had a history of suicidal thoughts and attempts. It was ruled as such.”
Reid shifted in his seat, the box pressing against the arm of the chair. “How’d he get the weapon? Don’t you guys take extra precautions with patients who have that kind of history?”
Hadley’s nostrils flared, and with good reason. Reid was hinting that Colin’s death was her fault.
Maggie gently poked his wrist to get his attention—sweaty, though she couldn’t tell if it was his skin or her finger. “Patients are tricky if they’re determined. They’ll use their teeth if they have to.” She turned back to the psychiatrist.
Hadley’s face softened—thanks for that. She blinked at Reid. “We took extraordinary precautions. He didn’t have any hard photo frames in his room, did not have a mirror. He wasn’t allowed anything that could be taken apart to forge a weapon. We do routine room checks as well. But he somehow got his hands on a spork that he filed down between dinner and bedtime. As your partner said…”
Me, his partner? Huh. Maggie didn’t hate that assumption, though it wasn’t quite the truth. Or was it? Maybe it was.
“We’ll need to see his room,” Reid said.
“There’s another patient in that space right now.” But Hadley pushed herself to her feet. “Give me five minutes.”
Maggie watched the doctor leave, then retrieved one of the tiny cars from the box—a convertible, yellow.
Reid sighed. “Dead. Can you believe that?”
“I actually… can’t. How could we not know Colin was dead? And by we, I mean you.” She already had an idea, though—prison referral requests sometimes took a year or longer to get to her. A good quarter of those patients were released or dead by the time she knew they existed. Sometimes inmates died and their families were unaware for months.
“This hospital is underfunded,” Reid said, “and about as busy as the prison system. No funeral in this case, so no funeral director; usually, they’d be the one to file for the death certificate on behalf of the family. The hospital usually notifies next of kin, but entering data into the computers is a waiting game—most of the paperwork gets stacked as hard copies. It all gets into the system eventually, but…”
She nodded—it was what she’d suspected.
“Awfully convenient for our killer,” Reid muttered.
“I don’t think that’s true,” she said slowly, fingering the metal wheels. The tiny tires spun, spun, spun. “He obviously wanted his crimes linked to Colin’s family. It all started there, so I have to believe they were special to him. And with these cars, all of them like the one Colin was holding the night his family died, this suspect is connecting his current brutality directly to his first kill.” She dropped the convertible back into the box. “I think it’s Colin’s family that he’s murdering over and over.”
“We’re back to someone known to them, eh? The way you think the killer was known to Ezra? But no one else lived in that house, Maggie.”
“Maybe he was a friend of Colin’s; maybe a past foster child. Can we pull those records?”
“They looked into that during the original investigation, but we can look again. The biggest problem is that the children they fostered were all very young—even now, eight years later, most of them would still be under eighteen. A sixteen-year-old could have murdered Ezra’s family, but a seven-year-old didn’t kill Colin’s family eight years ago. And with the cars…” He dropped his gaze to the box; the convertible’s wheels were still spinning. “I’m having a hard time believing we have two different killers. There are too many specific details that were never released to the public, things between crime scenes that were the same. Not just similar—exact. The cars in particular. Colin was found holding one at his mother’s bedside, but even we didn’t know that until today.”
“But what about the blood at my dad’s? Do you think he killed Colin and took the blood, or did he somehow… save it back when he killed Colin’s family?” She knew a lot about psychology, but very little about forensics. And which option was true might change her profile. It was one thing to take a man’s blood because you wanted to plant it at a soon-to-be-crime scene. It was quite another to save blood for eight years. And to collect it… had the killer stuck a needle in Colin’s arm, then sliced his wrists, or what?
“I didn’t get the full forensic report back yet,” Reid said. He glowered at the car, then slid the box to the floor, where it sat like a well full of unknown things. “I just got a call that the DNA hit—the first thing they do is run the blood through the system for matches. Any specifics will come later, and now I guess we know what they’ll find.”
They’d find markers of older-than-expected bodily fluids. But it had been wet at her father’s house. The killer had put the blood there and… reconstituted it to make that puddle. Bizarre symbolism, but a step that was obviously of crucial importance to the killer.
“My bet is that the killer took the blood from this hospital,” Reid went on. “Colin wasn’t injured in his parents’ attack—the killer was gone before he arrived home. And it’s less likely that the DNA would have popped in the system so quickly if the blood was more than two years old. Samples degrade. Maybe if the suspect preserved it somehow, but even then… I don’t like it. I also don’t like any explanation where our killer doesn’t murder Colin. No one in this hospital sold off a pint of Colin’s blood to our suspect.”
Maggie nodded. “And for him to plant it at my dad’s apartment… it feels like bragging, doesn’t it? He’s showing us that he has no problem getting in and out of secure facilities.” So maybe a bit of narcissism there. “I’m more concerned that he suddenly wants the attention. He planted that blood because he wanted us to connect him to Colin. He’s no longer satisfied waiting around in the shadows for us to figure it out.”
Reid opened his mouth, prepared to respond, but was interrupted by the squalling of the door. Hadley’s face was drawn. “Follow me, please.”
The moment they stepped into the bright yellow hallway, Maggie’s nostrils tingled with the astringent scent of rubbing alcohol and cleaning supplies, sharper after the cloying sweetness inside the office. Sharp like Tristan’s unintentional cologne. She swallowed hard and shoved the thought aside. Their footsteps were a rolling drumbeat against the brilliant walls.
They took the elevator to the fifth floor, a sunshiny copy of the floor below, though it smelled dustier here, almost ashy. Maggie watched while Hadley swiped her badge at the end of the hallway—an electronic security system. They all stepped onto the patient ward to a droning buzz that ceased when the heavy door locked itself behind them. Trapping them inside with the patients.
Milder on the ward, both in smell and aesthetic, the walls painted a minty blue interrupted by the occasional poster of a landscape. It was meant to be calming, though her spine prickled with familiarity. It looked like her father’s building. Her dad’s place was not locked down, but the front desk was the same, as were the bands of hallway that led to the individual patient rooms. Only one way in, and the killer had managed to traverse it without difficulty. Had he entered as a visitor? Doubtful. Visitors weren’t allowed on the patient wards; hospitals had a common area for family. And even if they had allowed a visitor back here, they would not have allowed them in at night when Colin died.
Her flats tapped against the linoleum, the sound swallowed up by the throbbing of blood in her ears. To get in here outside of visiting hours, the killer would have had to steal a badge. He’d have needed to walk past the nurses’ station, subject to three sets of curious eyes—perhaps only one set on the night shift, but he would have been noticed.
Reid seemed to be thinking the same, because he squinted over his shoulder at the door, then said: “We’ll need information from the badge swipes. I’m sure you have some computerized record of who was on the ward that night?”
Hadley kept walking, her eyes on the hallway ahead. “No computerized record. These were installed after Colin’s death.”
“You replaced them after he died? That seems strange if you didn’t suspect foul play.”
Maggie nudged an elbow into Reid’s ribs. He jerked his head her way, startled not hurt, and half raised his hand—I hear you, I hear you.
“Foul…” Hadley sighed, apparently deciding not to respond to the veiled accusation. “It was a planned renovation,” she said, finally glancing back. “The old systems were down for maintenance when Colin died, but we had guards on the doors. We interviewed everyone. No one saw anything strange, no one knew how he got the spork.” Hadley stopped short at an already open door and waved them into the room.
Sparse furnishings inside, illuminated by a jaundiced overhead light and a single high window at the back. A wooden dresser had been screwed to the far wall, the bed done up in stark white sheets and bolted to the floor. A poster of Lizzo smiled from the wall above the bed, flute in hand. Her grin was infectious, but under the circumstances, the flute looked like a weapon.
Reid was already stalking toward the back of the room. He ran his finger along the window frame. “Does this open?”
Hadley shook her head. “No, it doesn’t. For obvious reasons.”
Reid moved his cheek closer to the window and craned his neck, peering at the wall beneath the sill. “So the patients are cooped up all day?” he said, more to himself than to Hadley.
“Harm and escape are both possibilities that we can’t ignore.” Hadley’s voice had taken on a sharp edge, but Maggie heard the sorrow beneath it. The guilt.
Reid squinted. “There’s no way that our guy climbed up here,” he said. “No way to get purchase on the wall. Even if he was flush with climbing equipment, he couldn’t have opened this window without breaking it.” He righted himself and headed for the other door—the bathroom.
Tiny; Maggie could see the whole thing from where she stood in the middle of the room. Minty walls that matched the ward, a standup shower, and a free-standing sink. Not even a place to keep towels, presumably because they might be shredded to make a noose. Patients without a history of suicide attempts probably had towels. Maybe real picture frames too. But they’d be housed on a different ward—a less secure ward. Not that the added security had helped Colin James.
“I’ll get forensics over here,” Reid said, peeking behind the toilet as if he expected to find another toy car soaking in Colin’s long-dead blood. “In case there’s particulate evidence.”
“You mean in case he was murdered,” Hadley said. It was not a question. “I assure you that if I believed someone hurt Colin, I would have acted on this a long time ago.”
“I know, Doctor,” he said. “This was not your fault.” But it was partially the fault of whoever let the killer wander into this room. And they all knew it.
He gestured to the bed—to Lizzo. “Any way to move the current tenant out until we clear the forensics? It won’t take more than a day or two.” It was a serious long shot anyway.
“Of course.” Hadley swallowed hard. “I’m as motivated as you are to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.”
Hadley couldn’t guarantee no suicides—all it took was a pair of incisors and a few minutes alone. But hopefully, she could take additional precautions against homicide. No part of Maggie believed that Colin had taken his own life. His history made it possible, but the blood at her father’s apartment made it unlikely. And no one had had any idea that Colin was connected until a killer deposited that blood in her father’s bathroom.
They hadn’t even known they were dealing with a serial killer until the killer had told them himself.