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Benny eyed the programme with a critical eye. “Don’t you think this needs a little more…” he waved a hand, which was still holding his sandwich. Marjorie, the president of the Business Students Association, has insisted on a meeting in the only time he had between classes today, and he had to eat something or his stomach would devour itself before the end of his night class. “Oomph? Pizazz?”
Marjorie shot him an unimpressed look. “It’s a panel on job opportunities in data science,” she said. “I don’t think pizazz is what it needs.”
“Then why am I here?” Benny spread his hands expansively. “I’m the Social Chair—this isn’t social, this is all business. Isn’t this more like, I don’t know, events? Mentorship? Outreach?”
“Social events are a kind of event,” Marjorie replied, and from the tightness in her voice, Benny knew he was pushing her buttons. Pushing Marjorie’s buttons were fun, because she’d sigh in aggravation and a cute furrow would appear between her eyes and she would smack her forehead, but only if he didn’t push her too far. “Benny, can’t you be serious for a few minutes? We’d really like to up our attendance for this event, a lot of the panelists were really hard to organize and it’s important to make this event a success.”
Benny grinned, looking back down at the draft flyer. “Fine, fine. First, it’s not really the flyer so much as the event itself, data science is almost more of a comp sci thing than it is a straight business thing, so let’s get the comp sci people involved for marketing. We could also stick food on it—free food is always a draw—and then plan a mixer afterwards. It’ll work out, everyone’s desperate for job tips in this economy.”
Marjorie sighed, but she was smiling as she took a few notes. “Couldn’t you have just said that from the beginning?”
“Where would the fun be in that?” Benny shrugged, handing the draft flyer back. “Some colour on this would also make it stand out when we post it around campus, even if it’s just red or blue or something.”
“It’s just…” Marjorie shook her head. “It’s hard to believe you and your siblings once went around solving mysteries, you know?”
Benny cocked his head, leaning forward across the tiny table. “What do you mean?”
“Just…” Marjorie waved a hand. “It’s not that you’re not smart, or anything. I just have a hard time seeing you be serious enough to go and solve a mystery. Things that no one else has ever solved either.”
“Well, it’s not correlated,” Benny pointed out with a small smile. “Seriousness and detective skills, I mean. It wasn’t that many cases—”
“Only, what, twenty?”
Benny ignored her, since the actual number of unreported mysteries the Aldens had had a hand in solving was far higher. Twenty was only the number that they hadn’t been able to keep quiet. “And I always worked with my siblings, remember? Henry’s actually a detective now. It was always a group effort.”
“That name recognition, though…” Marjorie shook her head, but she was smiling. “That’ll come in useful for recruitment for you. Thanks for your help, Ben—I’ll find a contact in comp sci and we’ll cross-market. If you can put together the details for the mixer after, that would be great.”
“Will do.” Benny finished off his sandwich, grabbed his backpack, and checked his watch. He had almost twenty minutes to get to his night class, and the night was a lot warmer than it had been recently. Boston was always chilly, the brisk breeze coming off the ocean ripping through his windbreaker, but tonight the air was warm enough that the wind was fresh rather than freezing. A trek across campus would only take ten minutes, so Benny took his time.
He was almost at the building for his Marketing Through Social Media seminar when his phone buzzed. He fished it out of his pocket, frowning as he recognized Violet’s name and number.
Violet didn’t really call people. She texted—she was more comfortable in writing and with music than she was with plain speech. In any case, it was Tuesday night, and Violet’s string quartet practiced on Tuesday nights. If Violet was calling, then something was wrong.
He picked up. “Violet, what is it?” he asked, making his way to a shadowed corner close to the building.
“Benny?” Violet took in a great, wracking breath. “Oh, Benny—it’s—I don’t know where to begin. My friend Annaliese, she plays viola my string quartet—she’s dead.”
“Dead? What happened?”
“I don’t—we found her, in the rehearsal room. She was—she was—”
There was a crackle of noise, and Benny heard his brother Henry’s voice next, low and deadly serious. “She was strangled. Benny, can you come down to the station? Violet and I will meet you there. I think there’s something you need to see.”
“Me?” Benny frowned. “But—why?”
“Just—” Henry sighed. “I think it’s easier to show you than it is to explain. Please, just come down to the station.”
Henry wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.
“All right.” Benny agreed. “I’ll see you soon.”
It was the work of a second for Benny to text a friend in his next seminar to take notes for him and to grab a bus down to the station. There were dozens of police stations in Boston, of course, but when Henry referred to “the station”, he inevitably meant the station to which he was assigned. It was downtown, not too far away, but between waiting for the bus and the brisk walk, it was still forty minutes before he made it into the homicide unit.
Henry and Violet were already there. Violet was pale, but the skin around her eyes was red, and Benny walked over to his next-oldest sibling and slung an arm over her shoulders. He had outgrown her sometime in his mid-teenage years, now standing nearly a head taller than her. Violet turned and hugged him, while Henry was leaning over his desk on the phone. Arguing, it sounded like.
“Jessie…” Benny heard Henry saying. “I know that it’s a big deal you’re working on, but you know I wouldn’t be calling you if it weren’t important. Are you sure?”
Whatever Jessie’s response, it couldn’t have been what Henry wanted to hear, but he sighed anyway. “Fine. Stay where you are, then. Don’t leave your building, no matter what, until I give the all clear or a police unit comes to get you. All right?”
Benny couldn’t hear Jessie on the other end, but he could imagine her response. Jessie had graduated Harvard Law a year ago and had secured a job working at one of the largest corporate-commercial law firms in Boston. On one hand, it was a dream job—on the other, it seemed like Jessie never got home before nine at night and never had a day off, which Benny knew had to be wearing on her.
“Yeah, that’s fine, Jess.” Henry rubbed the bridge of his nose, looking for a moment older than his twenty-seven years. “I’ll keep you in the loop. Thanks.”
“What’s this about, Henry?” Benny piped up, letting Violet go. “This isn’t—”
Henry handed him a folder, his face grim, and Benny’s eyebrows went up. Henry might have made solving mysteries his day job, but he was careful about revealing anything about his ongoing investigations. It wasn’t any of his siblings’ business, he normally said, and it was police work.
Rather than guessing, Benny flipped open the folder.
The front was a photo of Violet’s friend Annaliese—blonde hair, splayed around her head, her blue eyes open but empty, and she was so, so still. He swallowed, noting the red marks around her neck marking the cause of death.
He hadn’t known Annaliese very well. He was close to his siblings, so he’d seen Annaliese around before, but she was Violet’s friend and not his. Still, it was strange to see someone he knew in a cold, impersonal police photo. He swallowed, flipping through to the next few pictures, all of whom were Annaliese from a different angle.
“No viola,” he observed, after a few pictures. “She was killed elsewhere and dumped here.”
“Probably for Violet to find,” Henry said quietly. “Violet’s known to arrive early for string quartet.”
“It’s hard to move a body around, though.” Benny flipped the photo, turning to see an array of shots of the crime scene in general. The rest of the rehearsal room was bland, almost untouched—further evidence that Annaliese had only been dropped in the practice room. “Someone had to have seen something.”
“We already have people on it.” Henry shook his head, motioning for Benny to keep looking. “But we’re not hopeful. Just—keep looking, Ben.”
Ben knew exactly why he had been called the minute that he saw the photo. His breath caught, and he pulled it out for a closer view.
It was a shoebox. The lid was painted black, the remainder of the box red, and there were small, almost childish wheels drawn n the bottom. A door had been sketched in ink, visible only on the second photo where someone had clearly picked the box up, but the whole design was unmistakeable. It was a boxcar, for the Boxcar Children.
They weren’t children anymore. The summer of living in a found and abandoned boxcar in the woods was more than a decade ago now, but somehow the legacy had followed them.
With almost a sense of trepidation, Benny flipped to the next photo.
Someone had pried the lid off the shoebox. Inside, there was a huge drawn 8 on the floor, and a stopwatch which read three hours, forty-eight minutes and seventeen seconds. There were a few pieces of paper folded on one side, and Benny frowned as he paged through to the next photo.
The stopwatch in the next photo said three hours and forty-eight minutes and thirteen seconds, ticking down. It was shared with the other contents of the box—four cut-out paper dolls, and a typed note that simply read, “How good is your training?”
The dolls were the creepiest. The box itself was enough to mark that it was meant for them, but it seemed like whoever left it wanted to leave no questions about who his message was intended for. Each of the dolls had their faces, Henry and Jessie and Violet and Benny himself, which he vaguely recognized as being cut out from an article written on them right after they moved into Grandfather’s. Benny’s face then was still round and childlike, Violet’s and Jessie’s much the same, while only Henry had started growing into his adult looks.
“Henry…” Benny started, looking up when he saw that there were no more pictures in the folder. “What is this?”
Henry gestured meaninglessly at the folder for a moment, lost for words, but Benny just stared at him. This wasn’t a case where Henry could keep the details close to his chest the way he normally did—this was something that affected them, that affected all of them, and he didn’t have the luxury.
“I need context,” Benny prodded, when Henry had been silent a few seconds too long.
“The East Coast Strangler,” Henry said finally, and the words sounded like they were being twisted out of his mouth.
The name only meant something to Benny because it had been all over the news two years ago. It had been the case that moved Henry from being a street constable into the homicide, the arrest of the famed East Coast Strangler—a serial killer that always killed by strangling, in series of three victims within twenty-four hours, who disappeared for years at a stretch afterwards. He was known for targeting specific police officers or detectives, typically people who had been prominent in the news.
But he had been arrested. Arrested, confession obtained, and he was serving a lifetime in prison.
“He escaped?” Benny tried.
Henry shook his head.
“A copycat?”
“Can’t be.” Henry mouth was small. “There were details that were never released in the media—we always called him a strangler, but he uses a garotte, a custom rope made of three different fibres. We think he wove it by hand, probably using gloves while he did it since there was never any DNA evidence. No, this is either the original East Coast Strangler and we got the wrong guy, or it’s an accomplice who’s moved up in the world.”
Benny looked down at the folder, flipping through the photos again. “What do we have left on the stopwatch? Can’t be more than three hours—”
“No, you misunderstood.” Henry shook his head again, taking the folder back. “There’s no we in this, Benny. I called you down because the police station is the safest place I can think of while we resolve this, but he’s targeting me. I need you and Violet to stay here tonight—Jessie says she’ll be at work all night anyway, and her building is secured, but I need you to be out of the way while we work.”
“Out of the way?” Benny replied, his voice scaling up in a mix of surprise and a bit of anger. He reached for the folder, yanking it from Henry’s hands. “How can you say that, Henry? He’s targeting all of us—it was Violet’s friend that was attacked, and look at these paper dolls! It has all four of us, not just you.”
“Still. This isn’t like—like a missing piece of jewellery, or a mystery cave on a private island, or a treasure hunt. This is dangerous. If you have any ideas, you can call me or text me, but you have stay here.”
“No.” Benny yanked out the picture of the clues—the shoebox boxcar, the stopwatch, the notes, walking over to Henry’s desk and pushing away Henry’s keyboard and piles of papers to spread them out. “It took me at least forty minutes to get down here, and if Violet discovered the body, then based on the time she usually gets to her rehearsal and the time you called me, we have less than three hours to solve this clue. These are meant for all of us. Let us help. How much time do we have left?”
“Not enough,” Violet ventured. “It’s been—it’s been more than two hours since I found Annaliese. It’s dark now.”
“And this box—” Henry looked at the photos, his expression darkening. “The way the Strangler works, if we don’t solve the clue, someone else dies. It should lead to another location, but just from 8—”
Benny took another look at the photo of the shoebox. “What kind of places did he choose before?”
“All sorts.” Henry’s voice was grim. “They’re always the sort of thing that the targeted person sees as obvious later, but it’s not obvious, not based on a damn shoebox and a number.”
“A shoebox made to look like a boxcar,” Violet interrupted, her voice soft. “That’s a clue, too.”
“A clue for who the Strangler is targeting, not for the next location, we think,” Henry objected, but his expression wasn’t convinced.
“There’s not enough here for it to be anything but both,” Benny pointed out. Less was more, or so marketing said. Using one signifier for multiple things was efficient, more subtle, and more effective. “Especially with the dolls. The fact that they included the dolls means they were worried we wouldn’t know who his clue was meant for—it’s less likely they would have thought so if the only purpose of the box was to draw our attention.”
“Where do boxcars go, then?” Violet’s voice was quiet. “Where do boxcars belong?”
“In Boston? They usually come off the containment ships, so the harbour would be where most of the containers are kept.” Henry raised an eyebrow. “In warehouses.”
“But is that where boxcars go?” Violet asked, sounding more confident even if her voice was trembling. “I think we need to think less practically. Boxcars go on rails. Are there train yards, or places where boxcars are loaded or unloaded, or…”
“The train station,” Benny said firmly. “A train yard, anything else is hard for someone to get into quickly, and there’s less there with numbers. The train station, platform 8.”
Henry grabbed his coat. “I’ll go. The two of you—stay here. I’ll be back with anything you might need to see, text me if you think of anything else.”
“Henry—” Benny tried, but Henry was already calling for backup and heading out the door. “Well, he’s normally good at listening.”
“We can’t—we shouldn’t let him go alone,” Violet said. The skin under her eyes might have been pink, and her hands might have trembled, but her mouth was tight in determination. “What—what if he needs us there? It’ll waste so much time for him to travel back in forth between here and wherever is next.”
Benny studied his next-oldest sibling for a moment. Violet was the most sensitive of them. “Will you be okay, Vi? I mean—it was your friend…”
“I—I need to keep moving.” Violet took in a shaky breath. “If I sit still and wait here, I’ll just dwell on the moment I found Annaliese and I won’t be useful for anyone or anything. I need to do something, or I’ll freeze up.”
Benny nodded, understanding the feeling. “Then let’s go. Train station. How much have you got—can we get a cab?”
By the time their cab pulled close to the train station, the police had already set up a cordon. Yellow tape stretched in front of the station, blocking off the building up to the sidewalk, while four police cars, their lights flashing, were lined alongside the road. A curious crowd was gathering outside the police tape, while cars driving by slowed down, their drivers craning the necks in curiosity.
“Looks like it’ll be faster for you to walk from here,” the cabbie said, sticking his head out the window. “Not that it looks like you’ll be going anywhere tonight—need me to take you anywhere else instead?”
“No, sir,” Benny replied, handing over the wad of cash that he and Violet had managed to pool together, with a healthy tip. “This will be fine, thanks.”
The cabbie shrugged, taking the money while they slid out of the backseat. The poor man would probably be stuck in a bit of traffic for a bit on his way out, but Benny didn’t worry too much about it—he was too preoccupied with dodging through the crowd, Violet after him. An officer stopped him at the caution tape.
“We’re here to see my brother,” Benny said briskly, yanking up the tape and slipping under it without so much as permission. “Detective Henry Alden.”
There was a flash of recognition in the officer’s eyes—not so much at Benny, but at Violet, who looked far more similar to Henry than Benny or Jessie did. Benny and Jessie, Henry had always told them, took after their mother, a woman than Benny barely remembered; they were both blonde and blue-eyed, while Henry and Violet ran darker. “I’m not sure I should—”
If Benny let him continue, he would find a way to stop them, and Benny couldn’t afford to let that happen. “My brother’s expecting us—the clue’s meant for all of us, not just him, so he needs us there. Sorry to run.”
“If you’ll just let me—”
But Benny didn’t let him finish, instead pulling Violet along after him as they hurried into the train station.
More people crowded the station, though the police had ushered them off to one side and completely cleared out the area in front of Platform 8. They were whispering amongst themselves—most people didn’t seem to be afraid, as far as Benny could tell, but there was widespread nervousness and apprehension.
No trains were coming into or out of the station. Two of the platforms had trains in their bays, but both were still, their engines off. Platform 8 was empty, and Benny could see uniformed officers searching the rails. The chairs in front of the platform, all hard wooden benches, were empty but for pieces of rubbish: today’s newspaper left on the end of one bench, a coffee cup tossed at the trash bin but missed, an empty bag of chips tossed surreptitiously under a bench.
But there wasn’t a body. For that, Benny breathed a sigh of relief. “How much time d’you think there’s left, Vi?”
Violet shook her head. “An hour, I think, but I wouldn’t chance more than that.”
“I don’t like this,” Benny murmured, looking around for his brother. “I don’t like this at all.”
Henry was standing in a cluster of officers, giving directions on the search. As Benny watched, the officers fanned out, each of them going down one of the aisles in search.
“Benny, Violet.” Despite his stern tone, Henry’s expression only seemed resigned. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I think we should,” Benny replied, crossing his arms over his chest. “This affects us too, Henry. What’s going on?”
By the fact that Henry only turned away, Benny knew it was bad. There was nothing there—no victim, nothing obvious, and the time was ticking. Only an hour left.
“We underestimated,” Henry muttered quietly. “We guessed four hours would be to the next victim at the next location—but it is long, longer than what he usually gives, and the train station is just too crowded for a murder or a clean body dump. He has to be keeping the victim at a third location. There has to be a clue around here, somewhere, and now we’re behind on time. The officers are searching for it.”
“What’s the time left?” Violet asked, and Henry pulled out the stopwatch. Fifty-eight minutes, thirty-five seconds remaining. Violet winced, and her eyes went to scanning the benches.
If he were a criminal dropping a clue, where would he leave it? Benny looked around—the benches were a good idea, since people generally didn’t pay attention to others while they waited for their trains and people were always dropping things, but it was too well covered. It would be the first place anyone would look, and while the Strangler certainly wanted to play with them, he wanted them to fail.
But the trash bins…
He gravitated to the closest one. The garbage was stuffed to overflowing, coffee cups spewing everywhere, and Benny shook his head absently. It wouldn’t be inside the garbage—there was too much risk that the clue would be ruined by some factor outside the Strangler’s control, like a thrown heavy object or a spilled coffee or soda. The Strangler would want to befuddle them on his terms, not on someone else’s.
But the garbage was a good option. People paid less attention to the garbage than they did to anything else. Call it humanity’s disgust for their own refuse, but people saw someone heading to the garbage and their eyes turned away.
Benny knelt down. The floor around the garbage was spotted and grimy, a combination of too much bad, greasy food and spilled drinks. Under the bin, however, he caught a glimpse of dark yellow.
It was a padded envelope. He caught hold of it by a corner, tugging it out. It wasn’t labelled, but it was sealed, and there was no mistaking it. It had to be the next clue.
“Henry!” he yelled, waving the envelope in the air, but he didn’t wait to start opening it. They didn’t have time for a security screen, and if the Strangler was playing with them, Benny thought that it wouldn’t contain anything too dangerous. He wanted to play with them, not kill them too early—he wanted to prolong their suffering, deriving enjoyment from their failure to solve his clues, not kill them off.
“Benny, don’t—” Henry started, hurrying over, but he was too late. Benny had already ripped open one side of the envelope, and he was pulling out the photos inside. One look, and his eyes widened, and he shoved the photos at Violet rather than Henry.
Violet gasped. The blonde woman in the photo was easily recognizable—straight, blonde hair cut in a sharp bob, blue eyes wide in fear as neither of them had ever seen before. It wasn’t that Henry’s relationship with Celeste had ended badly, so much that it had ended in a flaming dumpster fire. Specifically, of half of Henry’s clothes and other possessions. Henry had said only that they had had serious personality conflicts that couldn’t be resolved, but his siblings had their suspicions. Though, Benny supposed they were also likely to be biased since Henry was their brother.
A poor past history wouldn’t stop Henry from going after her. Benny and Violet both knew that. Feelings were complicated, and whatever Henry and Celeste had had was as fiery as the ultimate ending had been. This was a targeted strike, specifically because Henry would likely doubt himself forever if he failed to save her.
“She’s still alive,” Violet said shakily, pointing out the signs. Celeste was bound and gagged, but clearly still alive. “There’s that. We just—just need to work out where she is.”
“What?” Henry demanded, grabbing the top photo off the stack. There was an array of photos—all of them different angles of Celeste, and Henry paled.
Benny swiped the photo back, examining it and trying to ignore Henry’s ex-girlfriend in the centre of the room. Obviously, this one had been selected for maximum effect on Henry, but there was a clue here. There had to be a clue here.
The room was wood-panelled, with a polished wooden floor. Benny couldn’t see much by way of furniture in the background, but it looked like there was a countertop along one wall with cabinets underneath. Adorning the walls were pictures, all of them too blurry and indistinct to be made out. Benny squinted at them, considering that they were his best shot at a clue, but even on the third one he couldn’t make out any of the pictures. There was a window in half the photos, but it was dark—not covered, but the photo had clearly been taken at night.
“That one,” Violet said suddenly, quick fingers pinching one of photos. “Look on the handles to the cabinets. It’s the clearest.’
“What?” Benny chanced a look at Henry, whose lips had tightened. Henry shook his head—the most reaction he felt capable of expressing at the moment, Benny guessed. “Sorry—the handles on the cabinets?”
The photo Violet was holding up had the clearest view of the cabinets, which Benny had glanced at only briefly before. The handles were decorated and hung with rope, and if he squinted, he could make out knots. Not detailed ones—there was one summer, long ago, when they had lived on an island and Henry had learned about eight different kinds of knots, but these were too unclear to tell.
“The back of the photo, too,” Henry said, his voice as tight as his expression. “Read the back of that photo.”
Violet flipped it over. Knot too shabby, the script said in faded pencil, but the clock is ticking.
“If that isn’t obvious,” Benny said, a little disparaging. “Knots? These kind of contained spaces? The wood? They’re on a boat, somewhere in the marina.”
“This is Boston,” Henry reminded him sharply. “Do you realize how many marinas there are in Boston? We have less than an hour, we can’t possibly search them all!”
“Let me see the rest,” Violet said, reaching for the pile of photos. “There has to be more. Remember—he wants us to go the next place. He wants us to solve this, but he wants us to just miss it, so that we can feel worse about ourselves.”
“It’s working,” Henry muttered, looking away. “Well, there’s little point for the army here—I’ll keep a smaller group here to interview people to see if they saw anything suspicious and to keep searching for clues, but most of the rest will have to come with us. We’ll need to guess, if we can’t find anything. Which marinas are open right now?”
He disappeared, calling for one of the other officers, while Violet bent over the stack of photos. A lot of them were the same—some of them could have been there just to provoke fear or to waste their time, but at least some of them would have meaning. Violet gravitated towards the closest light, staring at each picture as if there was nothing else.
Benny followed, peering over her shoulder while trying not to block her light. They all looked the same to him, all ten or fifteen photos, but Violet was picking out the differences. He didn’t want to rush her, but he could feel the time slipping by as if it was physical. A minute, maybe two minutes, five or ten or more and he shifted.
“The Lady Paradise,” Violet said finally, holding up two photos. “Through the window, in these shots. I can’t see the full name, but that’s my best guess. You can see the letters A, D, and Y on this shot, followed by a space, and in this picture here, you can see the first four letters of the next word, which I’m guessing is paradise just because it makes the most sense. No other photos—it must have peeled away too fast. If we call the marinas—”
“We don’t have time,” Benny groaned, pulling out his cell phone and looking up the marinas in the Boston area. There had to be a dozen. “We have, what, half an hour left? We can’t find it.”
“A dozen marinas is nothing if we have more than a dozen people to call them,” Violet replied grimly, waving at Henry. “I just hope I got it right.”
A dozen phone calls went quickly—there was only one marina, a privately owned one, that had a boat called the Lady Paradise registered. However quickly it went, however, Benny couldn’t help but feel like they were moving too slowly. Half the marinas were closed, and Henry’s orders to their emergency numbers, demanding that they wake up their administrators or interrupt their dinners and so on still delayed the search. They inevitably wanted to speak to the officer in charge, and while Benny wasn’t counting, it had to have taken at least fifteen minutes. Twenty.
“How long do we have left?” he asked anxiously, following Henry to his car.
“Not enough,” came the grim response. “Just—not enough.”
“No more than fifteen minutes, I think,” Violet whispered in Benny’s ear, climbing into the back of Henry’s car behind him. She was still clutching the photos in a white-knuckled grip. “Henry, let’s go—I might be able to narrow down the line of sight based on the pictures.”
Henry didn’t reply, but his wheels screeched as he peeled away from the curb.
The traffic seemed too busy, even with the sirens blaring. Cars crowded the roads, and only a few of them pulled off to make way for the police. Benny tried not to count the minutes, but it was hard—every time they stopped for traffic felt like too long, probably because it was too long.
The marina was too dark, and too quiet. The headlights of their cars barely penetrated the darkness, the private marina poorly lit despite its private nature. Judging from the shadows of the boats he could see, the clientele here was well-off, but not wealthy—there were no yachts, but a mix of fishing boats and sailboats.
Henry stopped the car in front of pier thirteen.
“The Lady Paradise normally berths about halfway down the pier,” Henry said, taking a deep breath before he opened his car door. Around them, uniformed officers were pulling up and getting out of their cars. “On the left side.”
“We can ignore pretty much everything closer to shore than the Lady Paradise, I think.” Violet glanced down at the photos again. “The Lady Paradise had to pass it appear in the window. Probably coming in after day out.”
“We can also ignore anything that doesn’t have a closed interior,” Benny added, opening the car door. “He isn’t taking these photos in an open-top boat. We don’t have time. Let’s go.”
Henry went ahead of them, along with a few uniformed officers with flashlights. The wind blowing off the water was icy, almost as if it were still February instead of April. Benny wished he had worn his winter jacket, which held out the wind better, but all he could do was hurry after the officers with one eye on the boats. The sound of water slapping against the pier and the boats was loud in the silence.
The Lady Paradise was indeed anchored halfway down the pier, its windows dark. That wasn’t the boat they were interested in—the boat beside it was too close to see the view as seen in the photos, and the two beyond it were fishing boats, probably newly in water after winter and without any closed interiors. Beyond that, though, were another dozen boats, any of which could have been the one.
“Search them,” Henry ordered, motioning at the boats further down the line. He made a beeline to the closest one—Benny hesitated, looking around, then followed.
The first boat was wrong. The inner décor was all wrong, too comfortable and full of cheap fabric couches covered in stains. The next one was little better, being slick and modern, and one look said that it had never seen wood panelling in its very short life. They were on their way to the third when they heard a shout from almost the end of the pier.
“Detective Alden!” The woman waved, motioning for them to follow him. Based on the expression on her face, grim and resigned, Benny steeled himself for the worst. “It’s this one.”
“And?” Henry asked, and Violet grabbed his arm. Benny doubted anyone other than family would have heard the subtle note of dread, since Henry went out of his way to portray himself as responsible and in control. Jessie was much the same way, come to think of it.
The woman shook her head, motioning for them to follow him.
The boat was called the Speed Freak, and it was an old, battered rust bucket. Benny doubted that the boat was even seaworthy, but then, the Strangler didn’t need it to be particularly seaworthy. It needed to float for a matter of hours, after all.
It did have an enclosed interior. Benny took one nervous step onto the boat after Henry, noting the worn, wooden planks beneath his feet, and approached the rusted, metal door. Officers were already sealing off the berth with yellow caution tape, and Violet was following him. She nodded, a little stiff, and gestured back to Henry.
Henry seemed to be steeling himself for a moment, then he shoved open the door with a huge, heavy screech.
Inside, it was as bad as Benny had imagined. It took a few minutes to find the lights, but when he did, the room appeared in stark relief. The wood panelling and floors were just as he had seen in the photos, as well as the wooden floors. The pictures lining the walls, even if he could see them clearly, were just the same ones as in the pictures—just more pictures of ropes in case they had missed it earlier. Some of the ropes were odd, three strands of unfamiliar fibres twined together in a way that Benny had never seen before.
There was only one thing that was different, and it took Benny long minutes before he was able to look at her. Celeste Westwood, Henry’s ex-girlfriend, lay on the floor. Her blue eyes, which once flashed with vivacity, were blank in death, and her blonde hair was splayed over the floor. Henry was leaning against a wall, breathing deeply.
Violet shut the door behind her. Henry wouldn’t have wanted the other officers to see him as he was now, and he needed a few minutes or more to collect himself. She walked over the rested a hand on his arm.
“This isn’t your fault,” Violet said softly. “It’s—he wants you to think it’s your fault. But it’s not. It’s no one’s fault but his.”
“I know that,” Henry snapped, even if his face said otherwise. “I just—I need a few minutes. And then we need to examine—examine the body and the room…”
“Of course,” Violet agreed. “Just let us know what you need, and when you’re ready to open the door for the other officers to come in. We’ll look in the meantime. Ben?”
Benny was already on it. Henry said that the Strangler killed in series of three, and Celeste, as hard-hitting as it was, was only two. There had to be another clue around here.
Clues were curious things. Benny thought there were probably two different kinds of clues: the ones that were planted and the ones that were unintentional. He ignored the body, not only because he didn’t want to go anywhere near it—the actual act of murder would probably be too unpredictable, given the possible struggle and so on, for the Strangler to arrange the body or anything near it to be a clue. In this case, since they could guess that Celeste had been alive until fairly recently, Benny guessed he also didn’t have time to do anything after the death to make a planted clue.
Plus, it wouldn’t have been consistent with the past clues. Both of the past clues had been carefully prepared and planted ahead of time, and there was no reason why this one should be any different.
With that thought in mind, Benny ransacked the cabinets. There were eight of them, eight completely empty cabinets—no packages, no envelopes, no suspicious shoeboxes. No lifejackets, fishing equipment, or rope. Not even any messages, because Benny got down on his hands and knees and put his face in every cabinet to scour them clean. Absolutely nothing.
The countertop was equally bare, no tokens or trinkets at all. The trash bin in the corner was empty. Looking around the room, the only hint of any kind of decoration was in the pictures and the knotted ropes hanging off each cabinet. The ropes held nothing further, but the pictures…
Benny grabbed the only remaining chair in the room, climbed onto it without thinking of the probable last use of the chair, and began pulling pictures off walls. For the most part, they were images of more knots and ropes, or even samples—nothing that Benny would consider a clue. The backing of each was plain cardboard, no note or drawing or any other indicator. Inside each picture was nothing at all—no hidden sheets, no hidden photo or anything at all.
Uniformed officers were beginning to swarm the small room, a woman dressed in light blue plastic starting to examine the body, so Benny left them to it. If there was a clue inside Celeste Westwood, they would find it, and it wouldn’t be the sort of clue that Benny wanted. There was a third victim, and there had to be time because the Strangler wanted them to find the clue and to try and save the third victim he had picked. And to fail, but Benny didn’t want to think about that part.
Instead, he searched the deck. It wasn’t quite as bare as the room had been, too much minimalism standing out just as much as too much clutter. There were a few buckets resting under the wooden benches, with nothing inside them; an ancient cooler that must have been at least as old as Benny himself, which gave off an abominable smell, was similarly empty. A bin held three worn, dusty and torn lifejackets, and there was a lifesaver hanging on the wall.
A circle of the boat’s exterior found only the same. A few painted designs, of nothing special at all—the name of the boat was painted on twice more, and there were two more life preservers on each side. A few coils of unused rope, heavy with damp. The front deck was as empty as the back, with only a few rope adornments hanging on the low railing.
There as nothing. No third clue, and there should have been.
Benny was about to move onto the dock to continue his search when Violet came out and caught him by the arm.
“Celeste was dead before the time ran out,” she whispered in his ear. “Or that’s the preliminary guess, based on her body temperature. He never expected us to solve it, or he knew he didn’t give us enough time, and in fact we missed it by about fifteen minutes—but we made him nervous enough to act ahead of schedule. He panicked and needed to get going earlier for his next step than he had expected.”
“How’s Henry?” Benny asked, glancing down at his next-older sibling. “Is he all right?”
“As all right as he can be, I suppose.” Violet shrugged. “You know Henry. Always has to be the strong one. That’s why he and Celeste blew up all the time, she couldn’t stand it. He’s focusing on the fact that it’s a case so he doesn’t have to process it right now. He’ll be worse later when there isn’t a third victim out there.”
Benny nodded. It was nothing he didn’t expect from Henry. “Speaking of the third victim, did you find a clue?”
Violet raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t, no. You were looking, weren’t you?”
“I was, but…” Benny shook his head in regret. “Nothing. Maybe it’s with the body, or in the body.”
“Hmm…” Violet looked skeptical, but she didn’t argue when they went back into the tiny room.
It was still too crowded, with at least three officers surrounding the body. They were busy, but without a clue either inside the room or outside on the boat, Benny didn’t have much choice but to interrupt.
“Is there a clue with the body?” Benny asked, swallowing hard when he stepped in the circle of investigators. “I didn’t find one anywhere else…”
One of the men looked up at him, then glanced at Henry who only nodded, before replying. “Nothing obvious, not as far as we can tell,” he said, his voice slow and considered. “But we might know more once we bring her back to the station for an autopsy. We can’t really say anything yet.”
Benny sighed, then he went back to stand with his siblings along the countertop.
The problem was, without a clue, there was nothing for them to do but stand and wait. If there was one thing Benny hated, it was standing about uselessly and waiting. He didn’t have the knowledge to contribute to the examination of the body—indeed, the mere thought of having to dissect anything had firmly dissuaded him from taking any biology classes in high school, though he had muddled through some computer science for the credits. The investigators around them, primarily police photographers and forensic techs, murmured among themselves, but they didn’t speak to the Aldens at all.
Benny trusted that if they found anything important, they would tell Henry as soon as possible, but it didn’t make the waiting any easier. He shifted from one foot to the other, while Henry was stone-faced, his arms crossed over his chest. Violet’s eyes flickered between her brothers in worry, gnawing on her lower lip.
The ring of Henry’s cell phone startled them all.
“This is Detective Alden,” Henry said, then he paled, held out his phone, and put it on speaker.
The voice on the other end was immediately recognizable.
“’The road to hell is paved with all of your good intentions’,” Jessie said, sounding wooden and remote. It was clear that she was reading off a note or a sign, even without evidence of it in front of them—and then her voice changed.
“Cincinnati, ten-forty-five depar—!”
The call cut off.
“She wasn’t supposed to tell us the last part,” Henry murmured, after a pregnant pause. Violet looked sick, and Benny didn’t feel so well himself. He had no idea how the Strangler would have managed to kidnap her, seeing as she worked on a secured floor in a tall skyscraper. But then, he didn’t think it mattered—the Strangler had her, and what else mattered but that?
Jessie had always been there for them. Benny had been only six when their parents had died in the accident, and for him, Jessie had been almost closer to a mother than an older sister. Violet and Henry saw her differently, both being closer in age and both of whom remembered their parents better than he did, but the fact remained that they all remained very close.
He couldn’t think about that right now. “She made the call, so she’s alive,” he added, after a pause.
“This—this is also different from the past patterns,” Violet pointed out quietly. “No clue here. He didn’t have time. He underestimated us, so he’s off his playbook, he doesn’t even want to give us the chance to solve it. That’s why Jessie’s instructions were only that one sentence, which tells us nothing. But her breaking it to give us more information can’t work for her. We need to move fast.”
“But she did give us information,” Benny countered. “A city, and departure time. Cincinnati, in less than an hour.”
“Yes, but—” Henry took a deep, steadying breath. “There are only so many places she can be. We know that the Strangler was here less than ninety minutes ago, and he needed to get to her office tower. Even by car, that would have been probably half an hour, and then he needed to lure her out, and Jessie would never have gone quietly. Downtown is always busy, especially in the evenings. He wouldn’t have been able to take her very far.”
“A city and a departure time means that it has to be a transportation hub. Can’t be the train station, either, since the Stranger already used it.” Benny muttered, trying to make himself think.
“Train station still also has uniforms all over it,” Henry added, already straightening and striding off the boat. He signalled for another group of uniformed officers to come with them with one waved hand, while Benny and Violet hurried after him. “The main bus terminal is the only transportation hub downtown that would travel to Cincinnati. We have to go.”
They piled back into Henry’s car, listening as Henry called in orders for more backup while peeling out of the marina. The trip back downtown was as torturous as the trip to the marina, or it was worse because this was Jessie. This was Jessie, who was far closer to Benny than Celeste had ever been, and his stomach was a roiling ball of fire. Henry had to have broken a dozen driving rules heading back downtown, while Violet leaned forward in her seat, gripping the back of his chair in a white-knuckled grip.
They didn’t talk. There wasn’t anything to be said.
They reached the downtown bus terminal before any of the other police cars, making it there in only twenty minutes when it should have taken longer. Henry’s seatbelt was unbuckled almost before his car was put into park, with no time wasted. Benny and Violet exchanged a look—Benny knew that they should wait for backup, but with Henry already going in…
“He has a gun,” Violet pointed out, her voice shaking. “He’s not—he’s not defenseless. And the police are right behind us, we can hear the sirens. They’ll be here in just a few minutes.”
“A few minutes is too long, and we shouldn’t let him go alone,” Benny replied stubbornly, his mind made up in an instant as he unbuckled his own seatbelt. “The police will be right behind us, and someone needs to go after Henry.”
Violet hesitated, but it was only a second before she swallowed. “Fine. Lead the way, Ben.”
The inner bus terminal was crowded, and it seemed like no one had noticed anything amiss. People were scattered throughout the waiting area, reading, chatting, and keeping one eye on the huge electronic board keeping track of the departures and arrivals. One glance showed that no one here had seen anything amiss.
“Not here,” Benny said, shaking his head. He couldn’t see Henry in the crowd either. “It’s too crowded, everyone here is too calm—no one could have possibly come through here.”
“Look at the sign, Ben,” Violet added, pointing out the sign for the departures. Behind them, they could see other police officers swarming in, and people were starting to comment and stare. “The next departure isn’t for Cincinnati—it’s for New York City, in fifteen minutes. Wherever Jessie is, she probably didn’t see this sign, just the one for Cincinnati.”
“It has to be somewhere outside.” Benny took another look around the room, but with the entrance of the police, it was too hard to tell. There was too much noise, too much disaster, the earlier calm shattered like so much glass.
If the Strangler was still there, he couldn’t have missed it. And this room was too crowded, with too many people. While it was possible that Jessie was somewhere in the public areas of the bus terminal, Benny thought it was unlikely—it would just be too busy and risky. The Strangler needed somewhere more isolated, or as isolated as he could get in the area. Somewhere where Jessie could still see a sign for a departure for Cincinnati at 10:45pm.
There was a line of counters at the back, the space above covered with a tinted plastic or glass barrier hiding the customer service representatives. One glance, and Benny dismissed it—while it was certainly possible that someone at the station was collaborating with the Strangler, he doubted that all of the employees at the back would be involved. There would be too much risk that a non-involved employee would stumble on the situation, and Benny’s sense was that the Strangler worked alone. There had to be somewhere else.
One side of the bus terminal was made of windows, where the rows of bus bays were clearly visible. A few of them, presumably the buses that would be leaving soon, had people lined up and waiting to board; others were empty, the lights on each bus dark. Making his way closer, Benny could see that each bus bay was labelled with a number and an electronic sign above flashed the location and the departure time.
“Out there,” Benny said, pointing it out. “Look. Cincinnati is in the first bus bay, to the far left. It’s far enough away from the other people that I don’t know if anyone would notice anything. The sign above it matches, too.”
“There’s no telling if the people were out there when she saw the sign either,” Violet noted grimly. “Where’s Henry?”
“He probably took off outside when he saw how crowded it was in here,” Benny replied, trying to convince himself that it was true. “Come on.”
He skirted by the rows of hard, plastic chairs lining the waiting area, heading for the doors towards the bus bays. Outside, in the shadows, the air was colder. People muttered as he and Violet shoved through them, looking for anything: a hidden alcove, or better yet, a room, or anywhere isolated enough that it could work.
Henry was coming around the corner from the other side, his sidearm already drawn. Benny caught his eye, and Henry shook his head. A subtle sign for Benny to stay back, but too bad that Benny had no intention of complying.
The far side of the bus bays were out of sight of the crowded waiting room inside. Already a good start, Benny couldn’t help but note. As he hurried closer, he could see a series of locked, metal doors. If the Strangler could get into one of them, that would be ideal.
It was too loud. Benny was on high alert, listening for Jessie yelling, or screaming, or anything, but between the sound of the running buses and the chatter of disgruntled people as Benny and Violet pushed his way through them, he couldn’t hear anything important at all. He saw Henry break into the first of the locked metal doors, but he couldn’t have found anything inside, because he didn’t do anything other than poke his head in and move onto the next one.
Henry went into the second one, and Benny and Violet finally caught up just as Henry was coming out of the room. It seemed to be a private bathroom, small with only two stalls, and from the peek inside Benny could see that the stall doors were swinging. Empty, from the look on Henry’s face, and Henry said nothing as he moved onto the next door.
It, too, was locked. Henry wasted no time, slamming his boot into the door close to the lock, but the door only dented. The last two doors hadn’t seemed to give Henry any trouble, and Benny felt his breath catch as he heard familiar, if hoarse, yelling from inside the room. That was a good sign, and Henry only hesitated a second before he threw himself at the door again, this time with his full weight.
The door shuddered but held.
“Both of us,” Benny said, grabbing Henry’s shoulder. “Both of our weight might do it, especially with a bit of a running start.”
“Fine,” Henry said tersely, and by the fact that he didn’t argue, Benny knew that he was desperate.
It took a moment for them to set up, a few feet away, and Benny ignored the stares of the people waiting in the bus bay. On their first slam, more than three hundred pounds hitting the door at once, Benny felt the door give a little, then hold—on the second, he thought he heard a crack from inside the locking mechanism.
“One more,” Henry panted, and Benny knew he had heard it too. “Just one more.”
On the third slam, the door fell open, and Benny caught sight of Jessie flopped over on the floor, still tied to her chair, as he went down to the ground. Violet hopped over her brothers, making a beeline for Jessie, setting her upright and starting to untie her from the chair.
“What happened?” Violet demanded, as Benny climbed to his feet and threw himself at Jessie. It had been a long time since he had outgrown her, but she still patted him on the back in comfort just as she had years ago, as soon as her hands were free.
“I was an idiot, is what happened,” Jessie snapped, her voice hoarse though her blue eyes were flashing. “You know the policy at my firm—free dinner if we are working past seven-thirty in the evening, and I always order from the same Thai place down the street. He must have been tracking it. I ordered it a little earlier than usual today because I was hungry, and he got me as I went downstairs to get it. Stupid of me, since Henry had already called to warn me.”
“It’s fine, you’re fine,” Benny said, trying to be reassuring, but Henry was taking over. His older brother had gotten back to his feet with a little more decorum, and he was staring at Jessie with a relieved, though serious expression.
“What happened then?” he asked, back to Detective Henry Alden. “He grabbed you from your law firm, and then what? Description?”
“Stuffed me in a car and drove here, then dragged me in here.” Jessie coughed. “Light brown hair, brown eyes, but the plainest face that you could imagine. Maybe five foot nine or so, not as tall as either you or Ben, but taller than Violet, and he had a plain face, the kind of face that you could see a hundred times and not recognize it. He was wearing blue jeans, a heavy canvas jacket, and brown boots. He smelled like—like brine, or fish, or the sea. I’m not sure.”
“All right,” Henry replied, taking the description down in a notebook that had appeared from a suit pocket. “What happened next? How did you—”
“He got me here,” Jessie interrupted, shaking her head. Blonde curls flew loose around her face. “I made it hard for him—made him drag me more than he wanted to. He wasn’t very strong, and I think he was rather weedy in build. I saw the sign for Cincinnati when we were here, right before he shoved me into this room and made the call. He made me read off a sheet of paper he had written—oh, I should say he never spoke to me, not even once. Completely silent.”
Henry nodded, taking the notes down. “But after the phone call… He didn’t expect you to give the clue. That was incredibly dangerous, Jess.”
“I know,” Jessie replied grimly. “But I figured I didn’t have much choice. It was the clue and hope you got here in time, or it was wait for him to kill me. Of course he tried to kill me right after, but even tied to the chair I managed to throw my weight at him and knock him down. I got lucky. The chair fell over in such a way that I managed to hit him in the balls, hard enough to knock him flat and make him curl over in pain for probably ten minutes. When he got up, he had a spooked look on his face, and I was yelling like nothing else of course, and when he came back at me, we could hear the sirens. He hesitated a minute, while I was yelling at him that you were coming and he would go down for it, and then he ran. Went out the door, shut the door, and ran for it.”
“You have no idea where he could have gone?” Henry asked, then he winced.
“I was tied to a chair and on the floor, Henry,” Jessie reminded him, her voice more amused than annoyed. “I don’t know. He locked the door after him, and with the police sirens getting louder, I don’t think he could have gotten on a bus. I didn’t hear any buses leaving, either. He probably got back in his car and drove off.”
“Can you describe the car?”
Jessie flexed her wrists, which had to be sore from being tied in one position for too long, as she shook her head. “Black SUV, but I didn’t see the plates. Sorry.”
Henry sighed. “He’ll probably ditch it soon, anyway, since you’ve seen it. Are you all right, Jessie? He didn’t—he didn’t do anything else to you, did he?”
Jessie shook her head again. “No time. I think he wanted to, but he was too panicked, so all he did was smack me around a little. I’m fine, or as fine as I can be in the circumstances.”
At that, Benny’s arms went a little tighter around her. “We can do the rest at the station, can’t we? Violet and I can go get you something from Starbucks, the coffee at the station is awful, and we can—we can go from there, can’t we? It’ll be a little more comfortable, right?”
Henry paused, then he let out a deep breath and nodded. “We should let the forensic techs sweep this room anyway.” One hand gestured in a circle, and for the first time Benny realized that he was in an office, or some kind of break room. A bulletin board hung on one wall, and there was a stained table in the corner with three more chairs and a few empty cups of coffee. “Hopefully he was panicked enough that he left some evidence behind. And someone will need to sweep you for DNA evidence, I think.”
Jessie grimaced, her blue eyes flickering to Benny and Violet, but she nodded and agreed.
The trip back to the station was made in silence, with a pause for Benny and Violet to get out at the nearest open Starbucks to collect everyone’s favourite orders. Black Pike Place roast for Henry; a mocha cappuccino for Jessie. Violet favoured chai tea lattes, and Benny sugary sweet caramel frappuccinos. They said little to each other, and Benny knew that the impact of the night in full was beginning to hit Violet hard.
All he did was sling an arm around her as he walked back, and he didn’t comment as she leaned into him. Henry would need them too, later, and Jessie would say nothing about her experience at all because it wasn’t in her nature. But they had each other, and that was, now as it had been in the past, all that mattered.