“Assuming that the killer took Zoe four days ago when she went missing, he kept her for several days. The Doves were missing for less than a day before their bodies were found. He’s escalating, keeping them for longer,” Allina mused.
“Why?” Heidi demanded.
Jonathon shrugged. “There’s no way to know yet. Maybe he tortured Zoe before he killed her. Maybe he sexually assaulted her. Maybe Tracey can shed some light on it when she’s finished with the autopsy.”
“He’s organized, he abducts his victims without anyone seeing him. He has someplace secluded to keep them where he’s confident no one will stumble upon them. He takes forensic countermeasures. From the first crime scene, Kane wasn't able to find us anything, so far it looks like this scene is the same.”
“What's with this nursery rhyme thing?” Heidi asked. “It’s weird. Why is he obsessed with them? And what about these particular people connected them to those particular rhymes?”
“He could be picking his victims at random,” Allina suggested.
“But why the nursery rhyme thing at all?” their boss repeated.
“It makes sense to him for some reason,” he replied.
“A killer obsessed with nursery rhymes seems at odds with the sophisticated and organized perpetrator of these crimes,” Heidi protested.
He nodded, it did, but for whatever reason, the nursery rhymes were important to this guy. “I'm a little teapot,andJack and Jill went up the hillare both from different eras, one from the 1930s and the other from the 18thCentury or possibly earlier. Is there a connection between these two particular nursery rhymes and the killer, or did he just choose them at random? Was there something about the victims that in his mind linked them to those specific rhymes?”
“All the murders were violent, but it’s hard to tell whether he was taking out his rage on his victims, or simply fulfilling his picture of the nursery rhymes. And although he kills them in such a violent—unnecessarily violent—manner, he then seems to express some level of remorse when leaving the bodies for us to find. He covered Zoe Kitter’s face with a cloth, and he covered the Doves’ faces with the hats they’d been wearing when he took them,” Allina pointed out.
“Could mean the Dove murders were more spontaneous,” he thought aloud. “He killed them almost immediately, and he used what he had on hand. With Zoe, he took her, kept her for a few days, then killed her someplace he had prepared, and again he was prepared when disposing of her body.”
“Something about the Doves was the catalyst,” Heidi said. “It set him off, and he killed them. Then for whatever reason he decided he couldn’t stop and killed Zoe Kitter.”
“We’ll go through their lives with a fine-tooth comb looking for connections,” Jonathon said, trying to find a connection would be the focus of their investigation for the next few days. If they could find what connected Adam and Macy Dove with Zoe Kitter, they would find where the killer came into contact with them and hopefully find the killer himself. Unless Kane could find some sort of forensics that gave them the killer’s name, they would only be able to find him through his victims.
“So, the teapot murder, he boils her alive. But how did he keep her in the water?” Heidi asked.
“Restrained her somehow,” Allina replied.
“So, we think she was alive when he did it?” Heidi’s eyes were stark.
“Yes.” His partner gave a single nod making her blonde curls bounce around her head, her blue eyes every bit as stark as their boss’.
“And we definitely think it’s the Nursery Rhyme Killer? The teapot could be a coincidence.”
“Why would it be there if someone didn’t put it there? It wasn't broken so it didn’t fall,” Allina said. “And why would someone leave it there?”
“Even if there was a reason for someone to have left it there, why would they have put a piece of paper with theI’m a little teapotrhyme written on it inside the teapot right next to a body that was burned with boiling water?” Jonathon said.
“He left the rhyme at theJack and Jillmurder scene too,” Heidi murmured unhappily. Indeed the killer had, which was why he’d been dubbed the Nursery Rhyme Killer.
“In a pail beside the bodies,” he added. “Just like the pail in the rhyme.”
Five weeks ago, a hiker had reported finding two bodies at the bottom of a rocky cliff just outside the city. At first glance, it appeared that a couple in their forties had somehow fallen while out walking.
Until they found the pail.
And the rhyme inside.
At first, they hadn’t been sure if theJack and Jill went up the hillrhyme had anything to do with the bodies, but once they suspected foul play and looked at the scene in a different light, there had been a lot of signs pointing to murder. The couple hadn’t been dressed for hiking, the woman had on high heels. Ligature marks around both their wrists indicated they hadn’t been up on the hill of their own free will. The beanies that covered their faces had chunks of brain and hair on the inside that showed that they were on the heads of the victims as they fell down the cliff and didn’t come off in the fall but rather someone had removed them once the victims hit the bottom and placed them over their faces.
Adam and Macy Dove had been murdered.
But there had been no leads on the case. There was no forensics, they hadn’t been able to come up with anyone who had a grudge against the couple, and no one had seen anything.
Now their killer had struck again.