Page 83 of Silent Bones

Noah exhaled sharply, jaw clenched. “Langley called it before he tested.”

Addie pulled off her gloves and tossed them into the bin. “I’ve already looped Rishi in. He’s compiling a list of theatrical and prop supply companies within a 200-mile radius. Places that sell fur fabric, adhesives, costume tools, anything with a production or SFX application.”

McKenzie ran a hand through his hair. “So our perp’s not just smart. He’s patient. And twisted.”

“He didn’t just want to kill them,” Noah said. “He wanted toshape the story.Control how the news spread. Buy himself some time. Push the town into panic mode.”

McKenzie gave a sharp nod. “Which worked. You seen the message boards? Half the county’s convinced we’ve got a cryptid on the loose. It feeds into the lore of this area.”

Noah grunted. “All because some guy walked into a Michaels, bought fur and glue, and staged a horror show.”

“Not just glue and fur,” Addie added, more gently now. “Tools. Planning. Time. He didn’t panic and lash out. He plotted.”

She hesitated, then tapped another file open. “There is one… potential caveat.”

Noah raised a brow. “Let’s hear it.”

“I ran the fiber samples against every known synthetic on file, FBI, CDC, even old DHS records. Everything says it’s commercially available… but one of the glues used on the tentsample? It’s odd. Industrial-grade epoxy, not sold in hardware stores. Usually used in… prosthetics or certain military field kits.”

McKenzie straightened. “That narrows the suspect pool.”

“Maybe. I’m flagging it for a deeper chem run, but there’s a possibility this person had access to restricted-use materials.”

A beat passed.

“You’re saying we might be dealing with someone who used to work in defense?” Noah asked.

“Or wilderness training. Or even the film industry,” Addie replied. “I’m not leaping to conclusions, but I wouldn’t call this amateur hour.”

Noah chewed it over.

McKenzie broke the silence. “So where does that leave us?”

Noah folded her arms. “Next step is connecting the materials to a buyer. If Rishi’s scraping supplier databases and regional purchase orders, you’ll want to look into anyone local with wilderness accessandtheater or SFX experience.”

Noah’s gaze lingered on the image of the synthetic fibers. “This changes the direction of the case.”

Addie nodded. “It should.”

He looked to McKenzie. “Time to hunt the puppeteer.”

McKenzie’s face hardened and gave a nod.

And with that, the illusion began to unravel.

21

Rishi hunched over his keyboard in the sheriff's tech room, surrounded by the quiet hum of servers and the blue glow of multiple monitors. Empty coffee cups formed a defensive perimeter around his workspace, and the whiteboard behind him was cluttered with fiber analysis photos, trail maps, and crime scene overlays.

Noah stood behind him, arms crossed, studying the digital chaos on screen. McKenzie leaned against the doorframe, both men feeling the weight of too many questions and not enough answers.

"Take a look at this," Rishi said without looking up, his fingers dancing across keys.

He pulled up a window displaying a DEC incident report. It had a government header, an official seal, but most of the text was obscured by thick digital redaction bars. At the top, a subject line read: Field Incident: Landslide / Wallface Region.

“I found this buried in a maintenance folder on a remote DEC server," Rishi continued. "Took some serious scraping to locate. It's not in any official archive, not indexed properly. Someone wanted this forgotten."

Noah stepped closer. "That's the Wallface landslide from last August?"