Page 142 of Cold, Cold Bones

“These are the remains of a young man found near Lake Wylie in 2008. The victim had been killed, decapitated, and disemboweled.”

O’Reilly winced. “They catch the skeeve who did that?”

“Yes,” I said, not wanting to elaborate at that moment.

Everyone studied the Sanchez and Lake Wylie remains. The parallels between them were undeniable.

I selected a third and fourth folder and removed two sets of pics. The first featured the eyeball. The second showed the privy skull, knife projecting from one socket.

“This was actually the body that started it all,” I said, thumbing the new prints onto the board below those of Sanchez. “At least from my perspective.”

“Body part,” Henry corrected, a bit too blithely for my taste.

“Veronica Kwalwasser died of natural causes in 2020. Sometime in the year following her death, her head was stolen from the Happy Trails crematorium, eventually discarded in a privy behind MiraVia at Belmont. One of Kwalwasser’s eyeballs was kept and frozen, then left at my home this past January thirtieth.”

“Christ,” O’Reilly whispered under his breath.

I stepped to the board bearing my old cases and tacked up a photocopy of a story that had appeared in a Montreal tabloid calledAllo Police.

“Years ago, I stabbed a serial killer in the eye to save my life.”

“Don’t mess with her,” Ryan said, perhaps to break the tension in the room.

I gave him The Look.

“The murders got a lot of press at the time.” I added, “In Canada.”

“How would the killer find media about a case from so long ago and so far away?” Henry asked.

Slidell snorted. Not a pleasant sound. “Nothing ever dies on the Weird Wide Web.”

“You think Kwalwasser was symbolic?” Henry asked. “An eye for an eye?”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Why hadn’t I? “Maybe.”

New folder. New pics.

“On February seventh, Francis Leonardo ‘Frank’ Boldonado was found hanging from a tree in Lake Norman State Park. He’d been reported missing in 2019. My skeletal analysis determined that Boldonado had been murdered by garroting.”

Board three. Another old case.

“In 2006, a PI named Noble Cruikshank was garroted, then hanged to make his death appear to be a suicide.”

Fourteen eyes moved between the Boldonado and Cruikshank pics. Again, the similarities were unmistakable.

Next, I tacked up shots of the bucket sent to me by Deputy Santoya. Added close-ups of the Joker mask Hawkins and I found inside the hollowed-out concrete. A copy of the snapshot showing me on the steps of the MCME.

“This bucket was discovered a little over a week ago in the Pisgah National Forest in Burke County.”

Stepping right, I posted photos of the bucket found in Burke County in 2015. Added images of the head-shaped mold inside the concrete fill.

“The copycat bucket is clearly a taunt,” Ryan said, voice now tight.

“Or it could just be a prank?” Henry suggested.

Ryan and Slidell both looked at her. She shrugged.

I could hardly bear to view the next series of images. Charlie Hunt at the wheel of his Porsche. In a body bag. On stainless steel at the MCME.