“Nate,” she said, hoping that he would accept the fact she was calling him again and not demand an apology or something before he would listen to her. “I just saw something. Where are you?”
“I was on my way to the evidence – oh.” Nate stopped, putting the phone down and waving at her with a kind of sheepish motion. They’d almost run into one another at the top of the stairs. The arrested motion left Laura breathless and restless, feeling like she still needed to hurry somewhere but having nowhere to hurry to. “Hi. Uh. I just… I was going to say, I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”
“It’s fine,” Laura said, even though it hadn’t been – because she cared more about their relationship than about who was in the wrong. “I shouldn’t have run off.”
“You said you…?” Nate trailed off with a small smile, prompting her to resume what she had been saying on the phone.
“I saw something,” she repeated, then glanced around. There was no one in sight, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be. “Let’s go to our little office.”
Nate nodded and led her there, a rushed and strangely silent journey through the halls and up the stairs of the precinct, both of them holding in everything they needed to say – Laura with her story and Nate, she had to imagine, with questions. As soon as the door shut behind him, Nate whirled around and fixed her with an intense gaze.
“Well?” he asked.
Laura shook her head quickly as if to dismiss what she was about to say even before she said it, well aware that she had more questions than answers from the vision. “Look, I don’t know what it means yet,” she said. “I was in a big, dark space. I couldn’t see anything at all, really. But then as my eyes adjusted, I could make out all of these men – all of them just standing there, staring right ahead towards me. It was like – like standing in front of the Terracotta Army, I guess. That was the kind of vibe I got.”
“Like a warehouse full of mannequins?” Nate suggested.
Laura stared at him with wide eyes for a moment.
Of course.
Of course.
She hadn’t put two and two together on her own, because of two key differences. First, because the mannequins she had seen hadn’t all been still – when one of them moved, it had thrown her off, made her think she was looking at real people. And second…
“It wasn’t like the mannequins we found at the crime scenes,” she said. “This was different. They were all dressed in clothes – and they had faces painted on. Until you said that, I didn’t even think about them being mannequins – I just thought I was looking at people. And another thing – one of them moved. But now that I think about it more clearly – what if that one was the killer, and the others were all mannequins?”
“You would know better than me,” Nate shrugged. “You’re the one who saw it. Was there anything else?”
Laura shook her head slowly, reaching for any more detail she could give him. “I don’t know. The space – it was huge. Like, not just your average storeroom – a warehouse or bigger. There must have been hundreds of them there.”
“Who would have access to a space where mannequins are getting dressed up like that?” Nate asked. “I mean, a department store, sure, but we already know only one of them in the local area has reported thefts. And in that one place alone, we had – what was it, seven? - employees to look into. We can’t just tackle every single store that has mannequins.”
“We need to think about the individuals who actually work with them,” Laura suggested. She wasn’t sure if that was even right, but it was something that she felt kind of moving through her, an idea that came to the forefront naturally. “Someone who works with a lot of mannequins. Like, I don’t know… isn’t there a job where you just dress up the mannequins for the windows of stores?”
Nate made a face, a kind of maybe-maybe-not expression. “Yeah, but they only usually work with the fancy stores. And even then, it’s mostly at Christmas. Smaller stores or chain stores would normally just ask an employee to do it. And they wouldn’t work with that many mannequins – they just have their own in the storeroom, like at the department store.”
“So, then, who does work with a large volume of mannequins?” Laura asked. “Someone we haven’t thought of before, I guess – someone we’ve overlooked until now. Not the obvious.”
“What about tailors or people who work with clothes? Like designers or whatever?” Nate asked. “Don’t they need to have specific mannequins that suit their customers?”
It was Laura’s turn to make the face. “I don’t know. Don’t they just have a single, adjustable mannequin?”
“Not if they’re working on a whole collection at once, or if they have lots of customers coming through their business who all have different needs but the work has to be done simultaneously,” Nate pointed out. “Can your visions be, I don’t know… symbolic? Like maybe you’re not seeing an actual scene that will happen, but more like all the mannequins he’s ever worked with?”
Laura opened her mouth but then swallowed back the no. She wasn’t sure, really. The lack of a headache. It was strange, wasn’t it? It didn’t make any sense that she hadn’t had one. Even when she’d seen the past, she’d had a headache.
Something symbolic – or even something that took place in the killer’s mind – his own mind palace of all the mannequins he’d ever dressed… was that even possible?
“Maybe,” she hedged, not sure if she was being honest or not. “I don’t know.” She could call Zach, she supposed, but – not in front of Nate, who didn’t even know about Zach yet, and she would rather have been solving the case than making yet another call. Even though he’d told her to call any time, she still felt like she was imposing.
“Well, let’s look it up,” Nate suggested, leaning over the crappy old computer the precinct had loaned them and firing it up. He waited a few minutes for it to load, impatiently moving the mouse when nothing happened, and then started to type as soon as the screen lit up.
He put a few search terms into the computer and nothing was coming up. Laura couldn’t even see the screen from where she was standing, but she could read it all easily in his body language: the frustrated sighs, the way he ran his hands back over his close-cropped, kinky hair. He slammed an open hand against the desk when his last effort brought no results, clearly frustrated that they still weren’t getting anywhere.
“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. There was a knock on the door, brief and almost timid, even as he spoke. “What do we do? Just search for tailors nearby and start visiting all of them?”
The door opened just a tiny crack, as if whoever was on the other side was hesitating.