I leap to my feet, hoping nobody notices the way getting up too fast still makes me wince. Then I take his hand. What I want to say is always a pleasure, but that’s not what you say to the guy who comes in to tell you about a mutilated young girl, so… “Detective. I’m sorry we always meet under such unfortunate circumstances.”
“Comes with the territory.”
“You know where I am if you need anything.”
He narrows his red-rimmed eyes, just a little. “Absolutely.” Then he strides out of the room.
The door creaks shut.
More silence.
I take my seat at the head of the table and deliberately seek out eye contact with each of my editors. They’re pale and nervous, and not just through lack of sleep. In my pocket, my phone gives a single, brief burst of vibration; that will be the crime scene photographs from Posner. A little parting gift from one man to another. The ultimate you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
“So.” Camden puts his tablet down and rubs his knuckles together. “How do you want this played? I mean, this is a young girl. We have to be careful—”
“We have less than six hours before this stops being exclusive,” I cut in. “We’re going to establish ourselves as the authority on this batshit fucker, and milk it for all it’s worth.”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“But what?” Sometimes, I think people forget how nice it is to have gainful employment. “Let’s look at the best case scenario here: they don’t catch him this time.”
Leo, who is already ashamed of herself for seeing my point, pretends to shield her eyes in the morning sunshine. I guess we can’t have that smoky makeup smudged.
“If they don’t catch him,” I go on, “he’ll kill again. And then we really have a story.”
“Serial killer,” mutters one of the editors toward the back.
A ripple of curses makes its way around the room.
“We’re going to play this like he’s already serial. Get ahead. I want to name him—something a little dirty, maybe, get under people’s skin—and then we do analysis. Get psyche consultants back in again. Criminologists. Evaluate the shit out of his ritual, or modus operandi, whatever you want to call it. As long as we do it before everyone else.”
For the first time since we sat down, Leo looks directly at me. Her English accent sharpens each of her words to a razor-thin point. “And what are you going to call him?”
I shrug, gesturing to the rest of the team. “Suggestions, anyone?” I value their input. Ha.
The thing is, in this job, you spend a lot of time with the collective Death. As far as newsworthy stories go, mass murders are far more interesting than the singular kind; nobody gives a crap unless it’s a school shooting or terror attack. Police, social workers, forensics buffs; they’re the ones who choose an intimate relationship with death—not journalists (unless they’re part of the hard core that swans into warzones for funsies, but trust me, the rehab bill is steep). This kind of death is intimate, though. It makes you uncomfortable in your own skin to see someone literally spilled from theirs, and here I am, asking my staff to prostitute the memory of an innocent because that’s how I make their salaries. A nicer boss would give everyone a moment to process all this. Too bad there are no nice bosses in the room.
I slip my phone from the pocket of my navy blue suit jacket and flick through to Posner’s email. There are nine photographs attached, each showing the victim in various angles. The lighting is pale and watery, classic cheap motel, so these aren’t official—the good detective shot these as soon as he reached the scene, exactly as he found it. The world around me dims a little as I click on a close-up of the girl that displays her injuries in stomach-churning detail. Posner must’ve treated himself to a cell phone upgrade because you can see the brushstrokes on each letter of the bloody Darling, the sliver-thin track lines dragged across her cold skin. The caked crimson mess between her legs extends to the faded sheets beneath her, and farther up, in some unholy tabloid effect, the camera flash catches against the exposed whites of her eyes.