That was all too easy to do. There were at least four guys who called Mylene a bitch, and a couple who told her that they hoped she would die. For a certain kind of guy, that seemed to simply be the way they talked to women online. Paige made a note of the names, and then went through Clarissa Bale’s messages, doing the same. There were only a couple of guys this time, but they were there, and Paige made a note of their names too. None of those names matched up.
“I understand, sir,” Christopher said. “But maybe you could tell me a little about Mylene’s friends, and any places she mentioned visiting?”
Paige could see Christopher making notes, obviously looking for anything that wasn’t in Mylene’s social media, trying to find any point of connection between her and Clarissa.
Paige was doing the same, starting to check the names she’d gotten from the messages, looking at the men’s online accounts. In particular, she was looking for any sign that the accounts might be fake, fronts used by the killer. If she did find any, then maybe the FBI’s techs would be able to trace the accounts back to real people. As far as Paige could tell, though, those pages had plenty of posts over a number of years. That suggested that these were real people, separate people.
It also meant that it wasn’t likely that the killer was targeting his victims that way.
“One more question for you, Mr. Jacques,” Christopher said. “It’s going to sound a little strange, but did your daughter have any interest in or connection to stage magic? Did she ever do magic tricks, or know any magicians? No, I understand that it’s an odd thing to ask. No, you don’t remember anything like that?”
Paige was also looking for any sign that the two murdered women had been interested in magic. She looked online for any sign that they’d been to magic shows or had wanted to learn more about it. There was the message that had lured Clarissa Bale to her death, of course, but beyond that, Paige couldn’t see anything.
“There’s nothing here about magic,” Paige said.
“And Mylene’s father didn’t think she had any interest in it,” Christopher said.
“Which means that the magic angle is only relevant to the killer.” That was an important distinction. It meant that this wasn’t about some spat within the magical community. It wasn’t about a magician who had built up grudges against the women in the course of his act. He was killing for reasons that made sense only to him.
“I still want to call Clarissa’s family,” Christopher said. “Maybe they will be able to tell me something.”
As he made the call, Paige found herself thinking about the fact that Clarissa had been an actress. She found herself trying to track down the roles that the young woman had played, and for each one, Paige went to the sites for the small theaters, trying to work out what had been playing before her shows. Were there any cases where something she’d been in had displaced a magician, putting him out of a job?
No, and the fact that there wasn’t was incredibly frustrating. It felt as though she and Christopher were working futilely, not actually achieving anything with their efforts. Certainly not finding anything that would help to catch a killer.
Christopher put down the phone. “Nothing. A few names, but none of them are on the list of people Mylene knew.”
“So another dead end?” Paige said.
“That’s what investigating on the ground is sometimes,” Christopher said. “The last couple of cases, things happened pretty quickly, but I’ve worked on cases that took weeks, even months, of work.”
Months? The idea of spending months trying to catch one killer was a frustrating one to Paige. She’d spent her entire adult life not being able to find the Exsanguination Killer, not being able to understand what had happened with her father’s death. She wasn’t sure that she could stand the possibility of not understanding what was happening here, either.
Christopher’s phone rang, and Paige half expected it to be Agent Sauer, calling to berate them for having made so little progress, and for arresting Zane Caister the night before. Paige saw the sudden tension on Christopher’s face, the worry and the fear.
“Yes, yes, I understand,” Christopher said. “Yes, we’ll be right over.”
“What is it?” Paige asked as he hung up.
Christopher looked over at her, and even before he responded, Paige could guess the answer.
“There’s been another murder,” he said. “The serial killer has struck again.”