style="font-size:15px;"> “Yeah?” she asked, answering quickly.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Speaking with the ex-boyfriend.”
“Any chance he might be the one we’re looking for?”
“Highly doubtful,” she said, continuing to watch the sorrow overtake Allen’s face in the back seat.
“Good. I need you back at the station on the double.”
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“That depends on how you look at it,” O’Malley replied. “We just got a letter from the killer.”
CHAPTER SIX
Even before Avery and Ramirez were able to get into the precinct, Avery could tell that this situation had gotten out of hand. She had to carefully maneuver the car through the A1 parking lot to not hit reporters or clip news vans. The place was an absolute circus and they had not even gotten inside yet.
“This looks bad,” Ramirez said.
“It does,” she said. “How in the hell did the press find out about this letter if it came directly to the precinct?”
Ramirez could only shrug as they got out of the car and hurried inside. A few reporters got in the way, one of whom practically stepped out in front of Avery. She nearly collided with him but sidestepped him just in time. She heard him call her a bitch under his breath but that was the least of her concerns.
They fought their way to the door, with reporters clamoring for comment and flashbulbs going off. Avery felt her blood boiling and would have given anything in that moment to punch one of those nosy ass reporters directly in the nose.
When they finally made it into the precinct with the doors closed and locked securely behind them, she saw that the inside wasn’t much better. She’d seen the A1 in a state of urgency and disarray before, but this was something new. Maybe there’s a leak in the A1, Avery thought as she walked quickly toward Connelly’s office. Before she reached it, though, she saw him storming down the hallway. O’Malley and Finley were marching behind him.
“Conference room,” Connelly barked.
Avery nodded, taking a right a few feet further down the hall. She noticed that no one else was milling around the conference room door, meaning that this meeting was going to be small. And those types of meetings were typically not pleasant. She and Ramirez followed Connelly into the room. The moment O’Malley and Finley were also inside, Connelly shut the door and locked it.
He threw a sheet of paper down onto the conference room table. It was covered in a clear plastic sheet, causing it to slide almost perfectly in Avery’s direction. She picked it up carefully and looked at it.
“Just read it,” Connelly said. He was frustrated and looked a little pale. His hair was in disarray and there was a wild look in his eyes.
Avery did as instructed. Without removing the single sheet of paper, she read the letter. With each word she read, the room seemed to grow colder.
Ice is beautiful, but it kills. Think of the gorgeous sparkle of a thin layer of frost on your windshield on a late fall morning. That same pretty ice is killing plant life.
It’s efficient in its beauty. And the flower comes back…always comes back. Rebirth.
The cold is erotic, but it maims. Think of being extremely cold coming out of a winter storm and then curling up naked with a lover under the sheets.
Are you chilled yet? Can you feel the iciness of being outsmarted?
There will be more. More cold bodies, floating into the afterlife.
I dare you to try to stop me.
You’ll succumb to the cold before you find me. And while you’re freezing, wondering what happened just like the flowers burdened with frost, I’ll be long gone.
“When did this come in?” Avery asked, setting the letter back on the desk for Ramirez to read.
“Sometime today,” Connelly said. “The envelope itself wasn’t opened until about an hour ago.”
“How in the hell did the press know already?” Ramirez asked.
“Because every local news network also received a copy of it.”
“Holy shit,” Ramirez said.
“Do we know when the media got their copies?” Avery asked.
“It was sent via email a little over an hour ago. We assume it’s so it would get there in time to make the eleven o’clock news.”
“Where was it emailed from?” Avery asked.
“Oh, this is the screwed up part…well, one screwed up part,” O’Malley said. “The email address is registered to a woman named Mildred Spencer. She’s a seventy-two-year-old widow that only has the email address to keep in touch with her grandkids. We’ve got someone talking to her right now, but all signs point to the account being hacked.”
“Can we trace the hack?” Avery asked.
“No one at the A1 has the capabilities. We’ve called the State Police to try to crack it.”
Ramirez was done with the letter, sliding it back to the center of the table. Avery slid it back over to her and eyed it again. She did not read it again, but just studied it: the paper, the handwriting, the odd placement of sentences on the paper.
“Any initial thoughts, Black?” Connelly asked.
“A few. First, where’s the envelope it came in?”
“Back at my desk. Finley, run fetch it, would you?”
Finley did as he had been asked while Avery continued to pore over the letter. The handwriting was pristine but also sort of childlike. It looked like someone had gone to great lengths to perfect it. There were also a few key words that jumped out to her as being quite odd.
“What else?” Connelly asked.
“Well, a few things right off the bat. The fact that he sent us a letter makes it clear that he wants us to know it’s him – without knowing his identity. So while it might not be a game to him per se, it’s something he wants credit for. He also enjoys being hunted down. He wants us to go after him.”
“Are there any clues in there?” O’Malley asked. “I’ve looked it over at least a dozen times and I’m getting nothing.”
“Well, the wording is weird in some places. The mention of a windshield in a letter where the only other concrete thing he references are flowers and bed covers seems strange. I think it’s also worth noting that he used the words erotic and lover. Pair that with the fact that the victim we found today was pretty much gorgeous and there’s got to be something there. The mention of afterlife and rebirth is unsettling, too. But we could go a million different ways with that until we know more.”
“Anything else?” Ramirez asked with his usual
