The Nursery Rhyme Killer had struck again.
“Who are they?” he asked.
“Megan and Timmy Hunter. They were reported missing yesterday morning when Megan never showed up at her nanny’s house to drop off her son. Rylla and Matthew were working the case, they didn’t have any leads until the bodies were found.”
“How did we ID them?”
“We still need to make an official identification with a family member, but we matched them to their missing persons pictures,” Allina replied.
“Any links that we know of between the Hunters, Doves, and Zoe Kitter?”
“Not so far.”
“Little Miss Muffet,I'm assuming he did something spider-related.”
“You would be assuming correctly.” Allina nodded at Kane who held a glass jar in one hand.
“Is that the spider?” Jonathon asked. He normally didn’t mind spiders, but the thing in the jar was a huge black monstrosity. Its body was about two inches long, its legs probably another three inches each, it had fangs, a hairy abdomen, and the rest of its body was hairless. The sight of it made him shudder.
“Yep.” Kane grinned. The crime scene tech loved spiders and owned a couple as pets. “It’s a Sydney funnel-web spider. They’re from southeastern Australia. There have been thirteen recorded deaths in Australia attributed to the Sydney funnel-web spider in the last hundred years. Death can occur in as little as fifteen minutes, up to three days.”
“Megan Hunter has only been missing a day, so she died fairly quickly,” Allina said.
“Tracey said she saw several bites,” Kane said. “There is an extremely effective antivenom. If she’d been bitten by accident she probably would have survived.”
“But it wasn't an accident,” he reminded the crime scene tech. “He wanted to kill her. How did he get the spider? And why did he leave it for us?”
“He’s done with it, it served his purpose,” Allina suggested. “And we thought he might have restrained Zoe Kitter in a wooden box of some sort. That could have been how he got the spider to bite her so many times. Lock her in, toss the spider in with her, and let it do its thing.”
Jonathon nodded, that was a plausible scenario. “You said it’s from Australia?”
Kane nodded.
“Same as the snakeskin you found. Is that significant, or just a coincidence? Australia is known for its snakes and spiders so he might have just gone with the spider because of that, but if the snake’s a pet maybe he’s from Australia,” he wondered aloud.
“Maybe,” Allina agreed. “Or maybe he just likes pythons because they’re not venomous and decided to go with that one.”
“You're right. There’s no way to know right now whether the snake and spider both being Australian means anything or not. What about theLittle Miss Muffetnursery rhyme? What do we know about it?”
“First appeared in print in the early 1800s. Some speculation it might date back as early as the 1500s,” Allina supplied.
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“Google.” She grinned.
“So far, he’s used rhymes from the 1930s, the 19thCentury, and the18thCentury. What did he use for the baby?” Jonathon didn’t want to think about the dead infant, it hit too close to home. As a first-time father to a young baby, his greatest fear was something happening to his child. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to read the rhyme that the killer had used to stage the child’s death, but he was going to have to deal with it. It was his job to bring this killer to justice.
“Rock-a-bye baby,” Allina replied.
“Did he drop the baby to kill him?”
“Unclear at the moment. Tracey said she won't know until she does the autopsy, but she said there were no visible injuries,” Allina told him.
He prayed at least the baby’s death was fast and painless. “Did you look up that rhyme too?”
“Yep. Another 18thCentury one. I don’t think he’s choosing them for any reason other than in his mind the rhymes match the people.”
“We need to know where he’s coming into contact with them. He has to see them somewhere. We have to figure out where their lives intersect.”