Page 83 of Little Girls Sleeping

“What do you mean?” she asked curiously.

“Well, it’s the beginning and the end. Infinite. Everything comes back around to the beginning.”

“I like that,” Katie said. “That’s a great way to look at an investigation.”

They talked about mundane things. Usually Katie hated idle chat about the weather and who would win the World Series, but today it was relaxing and she found herself enjoying the drive.

Her phone buzzed with a message. She quickly retrieved it and found the text was from John. It was short and extremely interesting:The ABO test came back from Cisco’s swab. It was type O negative blood. Someone has a dog bite.

She thought about what that meant, her jaw tensed as she rubbed her slightly chapped lips. Was the person who had broken into her house, leaving a message on her wall as well as the letter on her window, the serial killer?

“Everything okay?” asked Chad.

She snapped back into the moment. “Oh, yes. One of the tests came back. Nothing new.” She wanted to keep the evidence to herself and include it in the report to her uncle.

She watched Chad as he took the next right turn. His demeanor was relaxed and he seemed genuinely upbeat.

“How’s firefighting?” she asked.

“They’ve been driving me pretty hard during the drills. I wish the budget would come through and they would add me to the full-time roster before they kill me,” he laughed.

Katie studied the view through the windshield. The trees seemed more menacing than before. The day was darker and colder than the last time she’d been there, easing into winter with sparse leaves and barbed-looking branches.

“Okay, the second road to the right,” she directed. “I know it looks more like a bike path, but you can still see all the tire impressions from the department’s emergency vehicles.”

Chad eased the truck to the top and parked just a couple of feet from the edge of the cliff. Loose dust floated upwards as he cut the engine.

A chilling feeling permeated Katie’s body. She shivered in her jacket but it wouldn’t have made any difference if she had worn heavier gear. Something seemed off at the location. Maybe it was just because she knew what had happened there.

The wind gusted outside, rocking the truck slightly.

“Is this it?” asked Chad as he opened the driver’s door, allowing a breeze to blow into the cab, swirling around and exiting again.

Katie stepped out and shut the passenger door.

The sun was now hidden behind heavy clouds as the gusts whistled through the trees around them. There was a part of Katie that wanted to get back into the truck and leave. She still had some things to do at the station—namely asking Denise if she was able to run down some information from the three fabric locations. It was a long shot, but she wasn’t going to give up and would keep pursuing every clue.

“I’ll follow you,” said Chad. He made an “after you” gesture with his arm and let Katie lead the way.

Still with the flight feeling, Katie moved toward the tunnel entrance, which was now cut back and heavily trampled. The pathway had been made much bigger, allowing for the easy removal of the two coffins.

The same questions plagued her.

Why here?

What’s the significance?

How long did it take the killer to create the graveyard of horror?

Why did he wait so long between murders? Or did he?

She looked up at the sky and wondered how it would look at night-time, with the infinite number of stars.

Infinite.

Staring down, she remembered every second of finding the graves. Those ticking moments of discovery. The horror. Her relief mixed with the tragedy and reality.

She felt the cold gripping her extremities, travelling up her legs and arms, as she walked through the crime-scene memory. She wondered if there was another gravesite carefully planned and tended like this one.