Page 11 of Secrets Along the Shore (Beach Read Thrillers #1)

CHAPTER

SIX

“You’re okay with this?”

Reuben’s question was belated and probably meant to assuage his guilt than out of concern for me.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

Dickson cleared her throat and she raised an eyebrow. “Just show her the photographs.”

Reuben laid a series of photos in front of me.

I was trying to ignore the room we were in.

The station had the talent of an interior designer who loved steel and gray and more steel.

The only thing missing, as I sat at the table, were handcuffs fastened around my wrists and hooked to the bar that spanned the table.

But hey, I’d agreed to help—if I could—to see if I noticed any similarities between my case and Sophia’s.

So I shouldn’t feel like I was guilty of something.

I figured it was just the room’s aesthetics.

They needed help. A throw pillow or something.

Sophia gave me an encouraging smile. She stood in the corner of the room, behind Dickson and Reuben. Her arms crossed, she waited to see what evidence might be presented.

I looked away from my imaginary vision of the dead woman.

“These are the four windows of the bedrooms where the women were taken.” Reuben tapped the first one with his finger. “This was Sophia’s.”

There it was .

The infamous snake.

“These are the other windows.” Reuben pointed.

The remains of a snake lay beneath each. All of them were the typical garden snake variety. All of them were fully intact and appeared to have died naturally.

I studied the photographs, sensing Reuben and Dickson’s eyes as they studied me. I really wanted to provide them with something. Something that would help make sense of these disappearances, of Sophia’s murder, and shed light on what had happened to me years ago—not to mention the other victims.

“They’re belly up.” I traced one of the images with my index finger. “See?”

“Yes.” Dickson approached. The reflection of her movement was distorted in the stainless-steel tabletop. “We noticed that also. They’re not coiled or in any sort of striking imitation.”

My eyes met Dickson’s and her expression was searching but also understanding. I struggled to find the words, to grab a hold of what I even wanted to say. Trauma had a way of stealing more than your memories. It stole your ability to process logical thought too.

I tried again. “The snake is different.” It was all I could come up with, but Dickson seemed to comprehend.

She looked at Reuben. “It’s what I’ve been telling you. The original victims of the Serpent Killer had a snake carved into their necks. These snakes—” she waved her hand over the pictures on the table, “—are actual snakes.”

“And yet they are technically representative of a serpent,” I mumbled.

Both detectives twisted from facing each other to look at me.

I met their stares. “There is the commonality of a serpent, whether a carving or the actual remains. Ten years ago, the carving resembled a snake in a basket, with its head ready to strike to the left and its tail posed to brace itself—but here it’s a snake laid out unnaturally straight and belly-up.

It is completely defeated.” I was stating the obvious to them, but I felt like there was a message here.

Somehow. Somewhere. “They could be completely unassociated, or—connected.”

No duh .

It was like getting stuck in my car on a roundabout.

I drew in a slow deep breath through my nose to steady my nerves.

Three.

Four.

Then I released it methodically through my mouth.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

Dickson and Reuben watched me, wordless. They exchanged glances. They were waiting. Maybe they understood that pressuring me for answers would only make my mind shut down faster.

I traced the image of a snake, moved my finger to the next photo, and did the same thing.

What had the abductor meant by leaving a dead snake?

I sensed movement and shifted my attention to the corner of the room. Sophia was back, unblinking and immobile, fingers positioned in a v in front of her. Two.

Two.

Two killers.

Two different snakes. A carved symbol in my story, a stretched out dead corpse of a real snake in Sophia’s.

Two conflicting meanings.

“Submission,” I blurted out. In fact, it came out louder than I’d intended and I even made myself jump.

A tiny smile stretched Sophia’s mouth. She lowered her fingers. I’d gotten her message.

“What do you mean?” Reuben perched on the edge of the table, arms crossed.

I tapped all four photographs. “Belly to the sky, dead, defeated, conquered. It’s the ultimate submission.

They’re not in a pile like they were discarded, and they’re also not positioned in a way like the symbol where the snake appears ready to strike.

” I looked between Dickson and Reuben. “These dead snakes have been conquered. They’re— dead .

The carvings of the snake from my case are—well, they seem alive. They’re threatening. They’re defiant.”

“They’re not finished striking,” Dickson concluded .

Reuben seemed to be mulling over my observation. “So you think the killer is trying to say that they’re finished killing?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, or there’d only be one snake and one victim. I think—” Who was I to theorize? Because that’s all it was. Theory. I wasn’t a profiler. I had no experience solving crimes or getting into the heads of killers.

Or did I?

Maybe there was something innate in me—after my experience—something subconscious that I didn’t understand, that helped me get into the mind of the killer.

I was afraid to meet Dickson and Reuben’s eyes.

Afraid to shift my attention to the corner where Sophia had stood. It was one thing to imagine and connect to a victim, but what if my empathy, what if my brain conjured the image of the killer himself? What if he started talking to me?

I squeezed my eyes shut. Medication may not be a bad thing. There was no shame in admitting that I was losing it. That I needed psychological help. That I?—

“What do you think?” Dickson pressed, encouragement in her voice communicating that nothing was off the table of consideration.

I opened my eyes to absorb the images of the snakes once again. Their lifeless, rope-like bodies. I would just say it. No matter how crazy it sounded.

“I think whoever put the snakes below their windows is a submissive. They’re regretful. It’s as if they’re trying to say that they don’t want to do what they do, but they’re compelled to. They have to.”

Neither Dickson nor Reuben said anything to stop me, so I continued.

“I think the snake is their form of an apology. It’s laid out in a way that shows they’re not going to fight. That they’re not attempting dominance or control.”

“That’s a lot to take from a few snakes laying on the ground.” Dickson said aloud what I’d already been telling myself. I was stretching. Theorizing. Based on the knowledge of literally nothing psychological except my own experiences.

“Ooookay,” Reuben said. “Let’s say you’re right. If Sophia’s killer is regretful, they still abducted the other women and—in Sophia’s case—murdered her.”

“Because they had to.” I lifted my eyes.

“Something about Sophia pushed them beyond where they were comfortable going. It’s why they drowned her.

It wasn’t planned. It was impulsive.” I tapped the photo of one of the snakes.

“They know what to do with submission, because they respond to submission themselves. But if Sophia fought back or—or—threatened them , then it turned their plans on its axis. Her killer didn’t know how to process it so he just reacted. He killed her and then left her there.”

Dickson and Reuben looked at each other, their eyes speaking unsaid volumes. I waited. I’d either sounded completely nuts, or utterly like an amateur know-it-all. Either one didn’t sit well with me. I squirmed on the metal chair.

“Based on that theory,” Reuben concluded, “whoever killed Sophia wasn’t intending on killing her. Which means?—”

“The other two missing women may still be alive.” I finished his line of thinking.

I didn’t want to be guilty of encouraging false hope, but then, I was simply trying to help them out.

Nothing more and nothing less. I’d put myself out there to help as much as I had.

They could easily take my theory or leave it in this room and never revisit it.

“If you’re right—which it’s plausible—” Dickson considered. “Then Sophia’s killer is definitely not the Serpent Killer. They don’t fit the profile.”

“No,” I affirmed.

“But why a snake? I just can’t get past that.

Two strings of crimes a decade apart and both with serial abductions and homicides and both with snakes associated with them.

” Reuben’s argument made sense, and I understood why.

In a rural environment such as Whisper’s End, one abduction would seem like a lot.

But two, with a third ending in murder? Ten years after another serial crime with a very similar set of events?

It was potentially detrimental to assume they were unrelated. And yet, my gut said that they were.

“Why a snake?” Reuben repeated.

“It’s a symbol of good and evil.” Dickson’s words separated the air between us. “It’s deceitful. It’s powerful. Cunning. ”

“Maybe the snake being belly-up isn’t a symbol of submission.” Reuben shot a glance at me. “What if it’s a declaration of dominance? The killer has struck and they have conquered. The snake doesn’t represent the killer, but rather, his victim?”

I hated that theory. Really hated that theory.

If Reuben was right, then the entire meaning of the snake shifted.

Instead of a killer with some element of conscience, a killer with psychopathic tendencies was introduced.

Someone who laid a dead snake beneath the window from where he’d stolen his victim and smiled with satisfaction as he positioned the snake on its back. Complete and utter defeat.