Release(85)

“A slaughter like this never makes sense,” said Praxider. “But Transman does have some evidence against him. One, he seems to have kidnapped Miss Gilit, and we have a distress call from her indicating this. Two, after the incident with the prostitutes, he ran. Three, Risciter’s distress call plainly names him as the killer.”

“It seems cut and dry.” Tramet knew he shouldn’t have allowed himself to hope. He knew it.

“But it’s not,” said Praxider. He shook his head and leaned forward conspiratorially. “The duke was wearing gloves when we found him. And he had a small bag on his person. It was full of little bundles of human hair. But both of those pieces of evidence seem to have been destroyed. I can’t find photos of the duke with the gloves on, can’t find the bag. Nothing.”

Now that seemed particularly damning. “What does that mean?”

Praxider looked frustrated. “Well, it means nothing, because it doesn’t exist anymore. Let’s go with what we do have. Risciter’s distress call said that Miss Gilit was dead and also that Transman was dead. He claimed that he’d fought off Transman, killed him, but been too late to save anyone else.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t,” said Praxider. “We could assume that Risciter saw Miss Gilit injured and was confused and thought she was dead. But that doesn’t seem to fit with the killer’s way of doing things. He drugs his victims or perhaps comes upon them in their sleep and slashes their throats. We could assume that Risciter was confused entirely, and that Miss Gilit was only asleep or something, that perhaps the killer was waiting to kill Miss Gilit. There are a lot of ways that it could have gone, but none of them seem entirely likely to me.” Praxider stroke his chin. “In fact, my lord, the more that I think about this, the more I feel like it hasn’t made one bit of sense from the get-go.”

“Why is that?” asked Tramet.

“Let’s assume Transman is the killer,” said Praxider, “and that he has a history of capturing women and killing them. Why did he wait so long to kill Miss Gilit?”

“It doesn’t fit,” said Tramet, his spirits lifting.

“No,” said Praxider. “It doesn’t fit at all. Why take her to some brothel and kill all the other women but leave her alive?”

“Unless, he hates all other women, but is in love with Miss Gilit?”

“That’s not the way the mind of a killer like this works,” said Praxider. “If you kill that many people that precisely, you’ve moved into a space where you no longer think of people as anything other than playthings. Killers like this don’t love women. They aren’t capable of it.”

“But we’re speculating, aren’t we?” asked Tramet. “We can’t know without more evidence.”

Praxider spread his hands. “Well, you’re right there, of course. And I have very little ability to search for more evidence now that the case is officially closed.”

This was a dead end. Tramet was no better off than when he started, was he? Could he go to the prince with little more than suspicions?

“Although there was something...” Praxider swiveled on his chair to face the screen on his desk and began typing on his console. “Before Transman was apprehended, I had a message from the police department on Hallon. They thought maybe they could connect a similar string of murders...” He hit a few more keys. “Ah, yes. Here it is. Dead prostitutes, nearly all killed on Rilla Alley, spanning nearly fifteen years.”

Tramet gulped. This was starting to make sense, suddenly. “There was a string?”

Praxider nodded, still studying his screen. “Yes. Throats slashed in a very similar manner to the way the women were killed on Scranth. A small subset of them with postmortem stab wounds as well. The police there strongly believe it was the work of the same man.”

“Do you see individual files there?” Tramet asked, his hands shaking. “Individual women’s names?”

“Um....” Praxider hit a few more keys. “Yes, they’ve sent me individual files as well.” He gave Tramet a curious look. “Why?”

Tramet’s breath was growing shallow. “Was one of the women killed in this manner a woman named Kara Transman?”

Praxider’s eyes widened at the last name. He hit a few more keys. “Yes, actually. Killed seven years ago, clearly fits the M.O. of the suspected serial killer on Hallon.”

Tramet covered his mouth with one hand. All this time, he’d assumed it was a random killing. After all, that was what happened to women who chose a profession like that. He’d never realized that it could be part of something larger, and if Risciter were the one responsible, he wished he’d been able to stab him to death himself.