“It’s possible…it’s possible that she wasn’t even taken by The Knife, isn’t it?” Fiona asked, finally tearing her eyes away from Gage’s phone to look him in the eyes. “It could be a copycat, trying to misdirect the police’s attention so that they can get away with killing her.”
“Yeah, it’s possible,” Gage agreed. “My gut tells me otherwise, though.”
Fiona bit down on her bottom lip, nodding more to herself than to Gage. He couldn’t help but wonder what all was going through her beautiful head.
“You should eat,” Gage said, gesturing towards her full plate. “You’ll need your energy if we’re going to catch some scumbags.”
Fiona picked up her fork and stabbed at her eggs but didn’t actually bring any of the food to her mouth just yet. She returned to looking at the phone, but a few seconds later, she froze, her eyes rising again to meet Gage’s. This time, her eyes looked full and wide, like she’d just pieced together the final bit of a puzzle. “Her dad hit her,” she said lowly. “A week before she went missing. Look,” she said as she handed Gage his phone, pointing to a message that Tori wrote to one of her close friends.
Gage cleared his throat and began to read out loud, “My stupid fucking father wouldn’t let me go out yesterday. I yelled in his face, so he slapped me. Mom told me to stop being a baby about the whole thing. Such a bitch. Can you believe that?”
Fiona took the phone back, but she finally put it down next to her plate and began eating, chewing slowly, obviously still lost in thought. “Could be nothing…”
“Could be something, though,” Gage argued. “Sometimes small acts of violence snowball. That might not have been the first time he hit her. Or the last.”
“But why would they come to you, then?” Fiona asked in between swallows of French toast. “Are they really that arrogant to think that they could trick you into pinning the crime onto somebody else?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t make sense. Still, it’s worth looking into,” Gage said, even though he didn’t believe that the Greenwoods were responsible for Tori’s disappearance. They seemed too genuine, too sincerely heart-broken about what had happened to their daughter. Gage would be shocked if they were behind the whole thing.
“So we’ve got a working list of suspects here,” Gage said as he finished off the rest of his eggs. “The parents of the unnamed girl, the Greenwoods, the guy at the sunglasses hut, and the ex-boyfriend. That’s good to start with.”
But Fiona frowned and pushed her red hair out of her face, the way she always did when she was struggling to gather her thoughts. “But if it is The Knife…he could be anybody. I need to look at the crime scene photos again, get an idea of how his mind works.”
“Are you sure…” Gage trailed off, thinking about how the photographs seemed to trigger Fiona in a powerful way just the night before.
But Fiona nodded furiously, so fast that her head practically became a blur. “Yes, I’m sure. I need to do this.”
That’s my girl, Gage thought with pride as he got up to go to the evidence cabinet, pulling out the gruesome pictures from the crime scenes again.
Fiona stared at them a long time, tapping her feet anxiously under the table like she was itching to break into a run. Gage honestly wouldn’t blame her. After everything that she’d been through, it was amazing that she was able to confront stuff like this at all. Maybe I’m just torturing her, Gage thought, feeling the heavy sensation of guilt sink down through his stomach. Maybe I should have never bothered her. Maybe she just needs to rest, not get drawn back into this bullshit.
But Fiona sprung up from her chair a minute later, gripping one of the crime scene photos in her fist. “The spiral.”
“The thing he carved on that one girl’s knee?”
“Right,” Fiona said. “It means something. It’s not just a doodle. It’s Masonic imagery. There’s an eye in the center, see? You have to really squint to see it, but it’s there.”
“What do you mean? The killer’s a Freemason?”
Fiona shook her head. “More likely, someone who thinks the Masons were more mystical and powerful than they really were. So, judging by that, the killer’s a man, although that was already statistically likely from the outset. He’s probably older. It’s not likely that a teenager is obsessed with the Freemasons, although I suppose it’s still possible. And…” Fiona trailed off, rubbing her finger over the edge of the photograph. “He thinks he’s doing God’s work. He thinks it’s holy or sacred or important.”