26

After dinner with Jack, who had helped tease out some of the subtleties that Carla had forgotten, she was convinced that the unsolved murders were linked. She often warned her students against finding patterns where there were none, but from what she had discovered from the crime scene photos and from talking to Perez, there was a strong possibility of a link based on protective charms. Stella King had died with a horseshoe charm in her purse. Cheap and tacky it might be, but it represented a keepsake to ward off spirits. Had the girl bought it herself? Possibly. But it was equally likely that her killer had slipped it into her things. Once, the charm would be made of iron, considered to be a metal with magical properties. Enclosing a cemetery with iron railings was considered to encircle the souls of the dead. If Stella was the first death, and the horseshoe nothing more than a cheap trinket, then the killer had been playing around with substitution. The ill-fitting shoes might also have a role, but Carla couldn’t yet grasp the connection. Her theory must be watertight if she was going to present it to Viv and she would need to mull on the significance of the glittery pumps.

The room where Madison Knowles had died showed the taper marks that mirrored those previously discovered in seventeenth and eighteenth-century houses. They served as folk magic to scare away evil and that had satisfied householders. The detectives had either not spotted the burns or had dismissed them as scorch marks from a candle. Jessica Sherwood had pins, thread, wine, all of which might be found in a witch bottle, items not dissimilar to those scattered around Tiffany Stoker. There was a pattern, Carla was sure of it. But the nagging question, and this was much harder to answer, was why the women had been targeted. Perez had been sure Madison’s killing was down to location, but Carla could see no significance in a scrubby wasteland such as Silent Brook. The only way of discovering the connection was to revisit the sites once again.

Carla found the Franklin Mall on her car’s GPS. The cubist nightmare at the river had given Carla a low opinion of James Franklin’s design ethos, so she was surprised to see that the mall was a two-storey circular building with an organic feel to the design. She parked near an entrance and looked around. It was difficult to tell where exactly Stella had been found, but she could see nothing in the lot that echoed with Silent Brook. It was an ordinary suburban car park filled with cars and pickups. At night it presumably looked a little different but not a place to be feared.

She looked at her watch. It was too late to go back to the office and too early to retire home and listen to Patricia’s updates on the church bake. And she certainly wanted to avoid another invitation for a glass of sherry. As she felt a trickle of rain down her back, she decided she might as well take the time to shop for a new coat. Not for fieldwork. Her waxed jacket would serve her well for years to come, but something she could wear around college. As the doors swung open, Carla was momentarily disoriented. Instead of a straight row of stores, the corridor opened out like a petal and in the distance narrowed again. It made for an odd design ethic. Surely the point of a mall was that you looked at shops on both sides of you as you walked along. It’s what she did certainly, but anyway, she hated shopping and was always desperate to get it over with. Here, as shops curved away from each other, she was forced to choose a side and went to her left, looking for a women’s clothing store that wasn’t too expensive. When she got to the end of the corridor, she realised she was in the centre of the building. She looked up and saw that the level above was a food court while the ground floor space could be used for music events and fashion shows. A woman was singing into a microphone and a crowd huddled around her, clapping out of rhythm to the tune. Carla stopped for a moment to listen to the music, her eyes taking in the other ‘petals’ leading from the centre. Petals?

Two hours later, she was a hundred and fifty dollars lighter and had sunk two cups of coffee in quick succession, the caffeine struggling to keep up with her adrenaline. Erin lived in a tall townhouse that shrieked New England, but its interior was sparse in contrast to Patricia’s homespun decor. As Carla had suspected, there was no sign of a husband, but she did encounter a six-foot-tall teenager who made himself a peanut butter sandwich while Carla gulped at the glass of wine Erin had proffered. Erin had looked surprised to see her but had opened the door wide and pulled her inside.

‘So let me get this right. You have this idea that the items left around the Silent Brook victim were a sort of deconstructed witch bottle.’

‘If there is a pattern, then it would make sense. These witch bottles were handmade. You would take bits and pieces from the home and stuff them into it. Stuff that had a significance – teeth, needles, wine, feathers but also glass and coins. As we saw around the victim.’

‘And what does Viv say about all this?’

‘I don’t think she has a problem with me suggesting there’s some kind of ritual protection around the death of Tiffany Stoker, but she’s not much interested in connecting the cases. As far as she’s concerned, I’m a rank amateur.’

Erin snorted into her glass. ‘Well, you are.’

‘The main point is that I’m pretty sure I can identify similar objects around the deaths of the other three women. There is a connection, I’m sure of it.’

Erin looked unconvinced. ‘If, from what you tell me, everyday objects were given magical properties, then aren’t you going to find these in a house anyway? Wine, coins, thread. You’ll find it here. Does that mean I’m a target?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Isn’t there a possibility that you’re seeing patterns where there are none? Use your scientific brain. Suppose a student came to you at a dig and made these assumptions. Wouldn’t you ask for more evidence?’

‘Of course I would, which is precisely the reason I haven’t gone to Viv yet. I don’t want to be laughed out of the place.’

‘And what about the Franklin Mall? You have to be careful. Franklin’s a big cheese round here. What’s his mall got to do with any of this?’

Carla took a breath, wondering if she was sounding insane. ‘The design is a really strange pattern. From the outside it’s round, so what you’d expect inside would be a centre and shops radiating out from the hub.’

‘Makes sense.’ Erin topped up Carla’s glass.

‘And that’s what you have to a certain extent, but these rows aren’t parallel. They’re shaped like this.’

Carla retrieved her notepad and drew a flower shape. ‘Can you see? There are six entrances to the mall, which I guess isn’t particularly unusual. When you wander up and down though, the shops sort of bow away from you and then come back together in the middle. It makes for a daisy wheel pattern.’

‘Okaaay.’ Erin gave the drawing on the pad a glance. ‘The architect liked daisies. What’s this got to do with anything?’

‘Daisy wheels are often inscribed on buildings. Above doors, in attics, in cupboards. They serve a similar purpose to the witches’ bottles. They’re known as hexafoils or apotropaic marks. They can be quite complex, wheels within wheels, but the essence is the same. You can draw it with a compass, and it consists of a single endless line to confuse spirits and trap them within the design.’

‘Neat,’ said Erin. ‘I might draw one above my bed. It’ll be handy for repelling the next loser I bring home from a date.’

Carla smirked. ‘When I was a student, I drew one in the house I was living in. I met Dan, my husband, so it must have worked.’

‘But what’s the connection? You got a psychopath obsessed with symbols or something?’

Carla slumped, her enthusiasm dulled by the wine and Erin’s scepticism. ‘I don’t know, to be honest. It’s just more evidence of a pattern.’

‘Look. I didn’t do the autopsy on Stella King, but I remember the case. She ran away from home in Boston. No one knows how she wound up in Jericho, but hitched a ride would be my guess.’

‘You can take another look at the file?’

‘I can look at our files, but that’s it. I’ve no access to anything outside the facility and, like you, I’ve a heavy teaching semester, so my ability to give headspace to this is limited. You want the investigation material, you’ll need to go to the police.’

‘There’s another thing I wanted to ask you about.’ Carla dug in her bag and pulled out Lauren’s notebook. ‘I found this amongst Lauren’s things.’

Erin raised her eyebrows and looked at the page Carla was pointing at. ‘Look, there’s Detective Baros’s name and three numbers. Recognise them?’

Erin shrugged. ‘They mean nothing to me. Why your interest?’

‘Don’t you think it’s strange that the police officer’s name is in a notebook from this year? Lauren had attended Madison Knowles’s crime scene, but that was the previous year. It sounds like she was having a rethink before she died. Those flame marks are like the ones I saw in Madison Knowles’s house. And, incidentally, her notebook from the period covering Madison’s death is gone.’

‘Ask Baros. He’s a dick, sure, but he’s not incompetent. He’ll tell you what Lauren’s conclusions were even if he gives you the update with a sneer on his face.’

‘Viv called him and Perez in to ask if they had Lauren’s notebook. He didn’t mention anything then.’

‘That’s Baros’s modus operandi. Reveal the bare minimum. You’ll have to show him the notes and ask if they mean anything. Sorry, but he’s not the first cop to answer to rule.’

Carla glanced at her watch. ‘It’s too late to call now. They’ll think I’m an obsessive.’

Erin laughed. ‘Really?’

‘Lauren didn’t mention anything to you?’

‘I barely knew the woman. Look, let’s have a breather. Do you want some food?’

Carla shook her head. ‘There’ll be something waiting for me at home that I can heat up. Can you do me a favour? Could you make a list of the unsolved murder cases over the past three years? The ones everyone’s alluding to but don’t really talk about. I know about Stella King, the burnt woman, Madison Knowles and Jessica Sherwood.’

Erin winced. ‘I’m about to get my ass kicked over that one.’

‘What do you mean?’

Erin reached for a letter and pulled her glasses down from the top of her head. ‘Letter from my boss. That’s right: a letter. Who the fuck actually writes to you these days? Wants to talk to me about my handling of Ms Sherwood.’

‘Think you’re in trouble?’

‘Probably not. Just got to be seen showing willing. It’s a strange case. Look, let’s sleep on it. You’ve admitted you’re going to need a lot more on this before going to Viv. Let’s reconvene in a few days.’