Tristan’s text had come just as Maggie’s friends were running into the ER: Got your boy. Very professional, his brother. So professional that he hadn’t answered when Reid rang him back for clarification on the cryptic text. Fifteen minutes later, he still hadn’t called back.
But Tristan was home if he was working on the case. It was the only place he had access to everything he needed.
The sloping driveway seemed to go on forever. Reid hadn’t been here since the day he’d burst in to save his brother’s ass. Maggie had been here that night, too.
And now… he was going alone. To his brother’s enormous house that looked like a giant white box. Walls of windows, but they were all along the back. From the front, the place was sheathed in cement, so you had no idea what you were walking into.
He raised his hand to knock, but the door swung inward before he could lower his fist—second time in a week. His brother stood before him with his arms crossed.
“Maggie’s dad okay?”
How the hell… ah. Tristan’s guards must have told him. He paid for them with his own money because he cared about the doctor, maybe loved her, and Reid hated the way that thought made his ribs hurt. Tristan had a track record of stealing the people Reid cared about, turning them against him. But Christine was not Maggie—Maggie didn’t play twisted sexual or emotional games.
Unlike his brother. And Christine.
“Not sure about Maggie’s father yet. Can I come in so you can tell me about my killer? Or do you want to fuck around out here while he murders a bunch more kids?”
Tristan narrowed his eyes at him, then at the darkness at his back as if expecting that Maggie might materialize from the shadows. Finally, he stepped aside so Reid could enter.
Tristan led him to the living room—ridiculous modular furniture and glass cubes for tables.
“It looks different in here when you don’t have a fire poker at your neck.”
“She never had it at my neck. She loves me.”
Like they all do. “Not anymore.” Reid slumped onto the couch. Talking to Tristan for any length of time was exhausting.
His brother stayed standing. “I called Maggie,” Tristan said, frowning at Reid. “She didn’t answer.”
Because her phone is dead. “You expected her to answer your call? Her father had a stroke.” He crossed his ankle over the opposite knee. “Did you send your goons over to the hospital?”
He shook his head. “No. I mean, I did, but they can’t get in—no outside security, and even your brothers-in-arms are not allowed in the operating room.” Tristan was still frowning at him—almost glaring.
Reid followed his gaze to… his palm, resting on the glass end table. A smudge. Reid resisted the urge to lick the entire top and rubbed the mark out with the elbow of his suit—they had more important things to worry about. “Unless our perp is a doctor, Maggie’s dad should be fine on that front. And I have units on the hospital. They’ll go in once they assign Grant a room in the ICU.” He straightened, careful not to sully Tristan’s precious furniture. “So, you gonna tell me what you found, or do you only tell her?”
“Well, you’re not nearly as fun to talk to…” Tristan sniffed, but his gaze was more relaxed now. “I’ve got six suspects, Richie. We’re getting closer.”
Richie, short for Richard. Asshole. Instead of responding, he waited while Tristan stepped back, then waved him down the hall. Reid shoved himself to his feet with a grunt and followed—even his bones were tired. But an arrest was the best gift he could give Maggie, a bright spot in an otherwise shitty day. He didn’t have her feelings ranked higher than catching a killer, but the added perk of easing her mind was not inconsequential.
Tristan slipped through a door at the end of the hall, a room where Reid had never before been allowed. He soon understood why—the amount of surveillance felt creepy, almost illegal. An enormous wraparound screen sat on the desk. The entire back wall was full of screens, too, most of them shining with black-and-white images, some stills, some moving. Streets? Yes. One of them showed… the retirement home parking lot. Tristan didn’t need his goons to tell him that Maggie’s father had been taken to the hospital. He’d watched it happen in real time on cameras he’d installed himself.
“It’s like NASA threw up in here.” The screens were shiny—the desk was gleaming, too, like he’d polished every surface just before Reid arrived.
“I’m better than those hacks.” Tristan pointed to the screen on the far left, this one separated into a blocky grid. “NASA doesn’t have photos of six possible suspects from the online support group.”
Reid leaned in, squinting at the men’s faces all lined up in a row. Three of the images appeared to be from a coffeehouse, and the other three showed men sitting in cubicles—the library? None of them were familiar. But the place…
“Is that my coffeehouse?”
“I didn’t know you bought it. But it is the one where I met Maggie the other day. It would have been useful if the killer had logged in while we were drinking chai, but alas.”
The place Reid and Maggie went for coffee—the killer had been there… maybe. That was far too close for comfort. Had that been planned, too, just another clue that Reid had missed?
Tristan pointed to the faces in the top row. “These are the only men who were using their devices in the coffeehouse while that IP was being used to chat in the bullying group. The libraries, same deal. No overlap in the faces, though in both locations, there are seats out of frame—the suspect could also be in the parking lot at either locale. If you get a warrant, I can tell if one of the library computers was used to access the group. Maybe you can pull a print.”
Reid nodded. “I’ll make that happen.” He turned his attention to the library shots. It would be ideal if their suspect was one of them for the reasons Tristan had mentioned—the fingerprints. The men in the library cubicles were vastly different from one another: one thin man in a plaid shirt, one burly guy with thick black glasses and a waistline that pressed against the desk. He wished he had some physical description of the suspect outside of “short,” especially since their killer took great pains to present as a child, crawling and crouching, swinging that ax while on his knees. It made it impossible to rule any of the men out. But one of the suspects was slouched as if trying to make himself appear smaller. He had a hat pulled low over his face, too—was he blocking the camera on purpose?
“That guy,” Reid said, tapping the man in the hat. “Do you have video of him leaving?”
“They don’t have cameras outside the building, unfortunately. If they did, I’d have followed these bastards out for a better shot at their faces and their license plates. I did check the surrounding streets and managed to rule out some other men that I caught on traffic cams a few blocks up. Those fellows couldn’t have committed the crimes unless you think they were watching MILF porn while murdering kids.”
So crass. Reid drew his attention to the coffeehouse photos with a pit in his stomach. A broad-shouldered Black man nursing a cappuccino, a hipster-looking white guy with a man bun, another man of indeterminate race with thick dyed-blond hair, a ring in his nose, and green eyebrows.
Tristan pointed at the third one. “He’s got my vote. Green brows are always shifty. Just look at Oscar the Grouch.”
“Oscar has brown eyebrows,” Reid said. “And you’ve never met anyone with green eyebrows to know whether they’re shifty.” But that wasn’t who Reid was staring at. He pointed. “Can you blow up that guy?”
“The Black guy? You’re such a damn cop. Black Lives Matter, you know.”
“You’re an ass,” Reid muttered, but Tristan had already obliged. The shot filled the screen—still grainy, but it was enough. He even recognized the shirt.
“What’s up, Richie?”
He ignored the jab. “He was at the first crime scene I walked,” Reid said.
“Seriously? Well, that is suspicious. Sorry for accusing you of being racist.”
Huh? “No, not him.” Reid pointed at a spot beyond the man’s left shoulder.
A child sat in the corner of the shop, a Rice Krispies treat in his hand, a laptop on the table in front of him, though he looked too young to have one. Swimming in a hooded sweatshirt. Reid could not see the freckles on his cheeks in the image, but he could see them in his head. “That’s the neighborhood kid who saw blood on the window—the one who called authorities to the Darren house.”
That morning, Reid had marveled at how the boy had seen the smudge—hawk eyes. But maybe Kole hadn’t needed hawk eyes. Maybe he’d known the blood was there because he was connected to their perp.
Had the killer… involved his own son? Maybe Kole had kept the suspect docile for the last eight years until Colin’s release triggered a renewed bout of murderous rage. And Kole and Colin—even the names were similar.
“You didn’t tell me you were looking for a kid, Richie.”
“I’m… not.” A child did not have the requisite strength to wield that ax, didn’t have the emotional capacity to plan the killings—could not have snuck into that psychiatric hospital. “Can you run him through… something?”
“Like facial recognition software?” But Tristan was already tapping keys at a lightning-fast pace. In the corner of the screen, a flashing box appeared, picture after picture after picture, scrolling through hundreds, maybe thousands of photos too quickly for Reid to follow.
“You using license pictures?”
“I’m running what I’ve got,” Tristan said. “Licenses, missing persons, school IDs…”
The rapid-fire blinking in the corner of the screen stopped. Tristan hit another series of keys, calling up the relevant data. They both leaned in.
The information sheet was not from the DMV; a license wouldn’t have made sense for a child. But the missing persons report didn’t make any more sense.
Reid stared. Impossible.
The missing persons report on the screen was filed nine years ago in Colin’s hometown, the year before the James family had been slaughtered. And the missing child looked exactly the same as the child in the coffee shop—same as the boy who’d seen the blood in that window.
Little Kole Bishop.