Thea frowned as she marked it off. “Wait. Why would you go through the effort of dumping a body in a sewer when there’s a river that’s closer?”
“Does it matter?” Mikey’s face was all shadows and sharp lines in the low light.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” It did. Thea felt it gnawing at her. She just didn’t know why, and they didn’t have time to figure it out now. She chewed on the lid of the pen and searched for her next spot. “George Hegarty was found in the scrapyard just outside of town. Around here.”
“Right, but according to the article online, he was last seen leaving the Bloody Mary.”
Thea circled the spot on Hoover Street, where they had stood only the week before, and then scratched her chin. She was even more bewildered than she had been before. “They’re on opposite sides of town to one another. Who the hell drags a body all that way? This doesn’t make any sense.”
“Serial killersdon’tmake sense. If they did, there wouldn’t be so many movies about them,” Mikey said wearily.
She shook her head and then marked off Leather ‘n’ Lace on Maple Street, only a hair’s breadth away from where they stood now. She did the same for Vermillion Drive, where Hannah’s car had been found. It provided absolutely no insight into where Hannah might be. Thea had expected to find some pattern: a crossing of ley lines like in the movies, or some link between street names, victims, but this killer’s technique only translated into willy nilly circles across the map. The victims weren’t even the same age, the same gender.
“Look at where they were taken, though.” Bryce’s fingernail danced across each of the circles, the ink bleeding into the thin paper. They were clustered in a triangular formation, the arcade its point and the other two sites the base. “They were all in the center of town, where people go every day. The shopping streets. It must be someone who hangs around regularly.Someonemust have seen them hovering.”
“If they were a stranger, maybe,” Thea agreed, and then it dawned on her. “Maybe that’s it. It isn’t a stranger or a new neighbor, somebody noticeable. It’s someone who blends in, someone nobody would think twice about if they passed them on the street. Everybody knows everybody here. Nobody would ever assume someone we’ve grown up with is a killer.”
“And if the victims knew them, trusted them,” Mikey whispered, “it would’ve been easier to have them cornered. Easier to take them.”
Bryce pinched the bridge of her nose. “That narrows it down, then.”
“Well, it’s something,” Thea countered. “A start. There’s something else, though. There has to be…”
“A sewer and a scrapyard,” Bryce rattled off. “What do they have in common?”
Thea pondered it, staring down at the map through narrowed eyes for minutes on end, until the letters blurred and the ink turned tacky beneath her fingers. They were such familiar spots. Places where Thea and Bryce reported victims being found all the time.
Her blood ran cold with realization. Notallthe time. Not all the time at all. Only within the last few weeks, on the podcast.
The episode before Isaac Harmer’s death had been centered around a murderer who’d used the sewage system to dump his bodies. And then the one last week, just before George Hegarty’s death; they’d spoken about Herbert Humphrey hiding his victims in the scrapyard where he worked.
They were following the same pattern.
“Oh, God.”It’s a coincidence, Thea convinced herself.They’re going to think you’re crazy for even suggesting it. But her stomach churned, and she rarely listened to the rational part of her brain anyway.
“What?” Bryce asked.
“It’s just… it’s gotta be a coincidence that we reported the same style of murders over the last few weeks, right? That Harmer and Hegarty were found in the same places days after each podcast aired? It’s not like we have that many listeners, so nobody would… nobody would do that. Nobody would copy our episodes. Right?”
She watched as the color leached slowly, first from Bryce’s face, and then Mikey’s. And maybe itwasa coincidence. Maybe they were crazy and perhaps a little arrogant for believing someone might be taking tips fromthem. But it didn’t feel that way in the basement, staring at a map marked with places where people had died in their own town.
“No,” Bryce rasped. “No way.”
“It’s the only idea we have.” Mikey straightened up and then seemed to sway as though he was going to pass out. He didn’t, though, his eyes instead locking on Thea’s in determination. “This week’s episode was the Lady of the Lake.”
Thea gulped, feeling an icy rush through her veins as though she had been thrust into a lake of her own. There were two lakes on either side of town. The quietest was north of the river: Lake Nokona. If Thea was a serial killer, she’d bury her bodies there, where the murky waters might conceal it. The other, Lake Tunwall, was the opposite, always filled with visitors and photographers whether rain or shine.
Mikey was right. It was the only lead they had, and Thea would rather go if only to confirm she was wrong than sit back and hope.
“Thea,” Bryce pleaded, but it was too late.
Thea had made her decision.
* * *
Lake Nokona was more a swamp than a lake, all boggy footpaths and overgrown greenery creeping into dark, polluted waters. Bryce shuddered as they made their way around it, trying not to remember all of the time she’d spent here as a teenager with people who’d been no good for her. Then, it had been a place for stoners to hang out and blast bad music. Now, it was empty even of them.
They shouldn’t have been there. Bryce knew that. She’d tried to talk them out of it all the way there. But Mikey was determined to find Hannah if she was still alive, and Thea was determined to help. Bryce just hoped it was for less selfish reasons than the podcast.