Chapter 10

The corners of his lips were torn up to the middle of his cheeks, exposing the lateral portions of his dental arch. His eyes, which she hadn’t noticed before, were wide open because his killer had placed small clamps to keep them that way. It was him, though his corpse looked nothing like the man in the photos his wife had provided. It was as if he were a terrifying puppet, his face molded according to his creator’s will.

"The medical examiner found this note inside Andrew’s skin."

My world stopped.

Inside his skin?

What the hell were they saying?

"What…?" I took a deep breath. "What do you mean by that?"

I was terrified to hear the answer, but it inevitably came.

"Coraline," he said, his eyes fixed on me in a way that unsettled me. "We need to know if you recognize this note."

Slowly, I went over the facts in my head:

Someone enters through the back of a bookstore and nails to the shelves the body of the man I had been seeing for a few months. He leaves him there for me to find, to see the torn smile and the wide eyes, but he doesn’t kill me. He returns to the crime scene and risks leaving a witness alive without any logical reason. Five days later, on the day of that man’s funeral, the killer enters my house and leaves a photo in my bathroom.

And then, the note and the chess pieces.

Suddenly, everything made sense.

The killer had left that piece on the counter and the swing.

I didn’t know how to deal with grief and fear, but I knew what to do with the anger bubbling in my stomach. Maybe he was challenging me to a game of chess, but unlike what that piece in my hand might signify, this game wasn’t played with wooden pieces—it was played with people.

I closed my eyes and placed my hands over my face. Before, when all of this consisted of isolated incidents in a series of misfortunes, I hadn’t understood, but a closer look at the bigger picture made me realize what was truly happening, and that’s when I understood that the truth was infinitely worse.

I didn’t respond for long minutes.

"If you know something, you need to say it now," Eleanor insisted. "We have a new victim. If you withhold what you know, you’ll be condemning more people to Andrew’s fate."

I lifted my eyes.

"What happened?"

"We can’t divulge deta—"

"How do you know he killed again?"

She straightened her posture.

"There’s something in common in the way the victims were killed."

Something in common.

"A man was found dead in the woods. He was hung upside down from a tree by his foot. A cavity was opened in his neck, severing the main arteries, and he bled to death. It took only a few minutes," Adam said.

My breath faltered.

"Like an animal," I whispered.

Adam nodded.

"What’s the similarity with Andrew’s death?"

Eleanor cleared her throat.

"We shouldn’t discuss this with you."

"I need to know," I insisted. "Tell me what you know, and I’ll do the same."

Adam looked intrigued.

"Are you bargaining for information? You know I can take you to the station, right?"

I extended both arms and crossed my wrists, offering them to the investigator. I saw the shadow of a smile on Eleanor, but she said nothing. Adam let out a loud sigh and ignored my mock surrender.

"There was a cut below Andrew’s neck. It was stitched," he explained. "That’s how we found the note. It was under the skin, rolled up in a piece of plastic. But that wasn’t all. We discovered that the killer removed his clavicle after he died. We didn’t know exactly what it meant, but today’s victim was missing his femur."

I took a deep breath.

"Where’s the other note?"

Eleanor furrowed her brows.

"How do you know there’s another one?"

"It was in the cut he made to remove the femur, wasn’t it?" Eleanor opened her mouth but stopped. "Show me, please. I’ll tell you what I know."

Eleanor exchanged looks with Adam and finally handed me another Polaroid.

Evelyn connected with the killer when she understood what he felt about that man. Henry Gulliver’s body was hanging from the tree, in an area that strongly resembled the farms and rural properties of the city, and he had bled to death. To the killer, he was no different from an animal, and in fact, he was even inferior, because while animals died for human consumption, that man was left there to wither and rot, his flesh too unworthy even to be eaten, his body too useless to be treated with dignity.

"His fantasy," I murmured softly.

"What do you mean?"

I lifted my eyes and stared at him.

"The real fantasy, the reason he does what he does, is in those bones."

"You’re suggesting we ignore everything he did to the two victims just because he removes bones?"

"How he killed them won’t help you catch him, but the bones will. I’m sure the murders were well-organized and methodical—he won’t leave clues on the bodies—but the bones are part of what he desires to obtain from the crimes."

Our desires say a lot about who we are.

"Explain," Adam demanded, unyielding.

I took a deep breath before saying what I had to say because even I couldn’t believe it. When the first crime happened, I was too involved to pay attention, to look beyond my own feelings and see what was right in front of me. It had been so many years that, for some reason, I had even forgotten that book existed, but the note was undeniable proof that, yes, I knew what the killer was doing.

What he was trying to do.

"He’s copying the way other killers have murdered."

Adam raised an eyebrow, skeptical.

"He’s copying the killers from my books, detective."

Eleanor took a step forward.

"What are you saying?"

It was so, so hard to say it out loud.

"I wrote and published a collection of short stories a few years ago. One of them was about a serial killer who stabbed and carved macabre smiles on the faces of his victims with a knife. The note you showed me has an excerpt from that story."

I watched the transformation on their faces.

"I published another book two years ago about a serial killer who kidnapped people and bled them to death in public places. The second note contains an excerpt from that book."

"And the bones?"

I shook my head.

"Fuck."

"The bones are the only part of the crimes I didn’t write about. That must be important to him. The bones, I mean."

They exchanged significant glances.

"How many books have you written?"

"Published?" He nodded.

"Twelve."

Adam showed no reaction. Eleanor swore under her breath.

With my grandmother’s death and, less than a year later, the loss of my parents, my already lonely life became almost depressing. I was alone in the world once again, with nothing but dreams to keep me going. One of them, and perhaps the strongest, was to become a professional writer. I had published a book before graduation, but it wasn’t successful, so I gave up for a while. The need to write returned with their deaths. I moved to a new city, bought a house, and shut myself in for months on end. The year I spent grieving was also the year I wrote the most—four whole books in twelve months. Thanks to the house and the small inheritance my parents left, I had the chance to focus on writing. Without them, books were the only thing I had.

"I have a lot of readers," I said impulsively. "I can make a living from writing nowadays, but I’m not that famous. I don’t understand why someone would choose my books to copy, out of all the others out there."

And it was true. I made enough money to support myself, but I wasn’t successful enough to be widely recognized in literature—let alone by a killer. He could have chosen anyone, anyone, but he was copying my books.

"Why me?"

None of them had an answer.

"Two victims within five days. He’s escalating very quickly."

He.

"She’s going to need police protection," Eleanor said.

"We’ll arrange it. If this connection is real, there’s a good chance the next crime will involve another one of your books."

"We’ll have to check all of them," Eleanor added. "Try to figure out if there’s a pattern or if they were chosen at random."

"I don’t see a connection between the two," I said.

"You are the connection, Coraline."

Eleanor pressed her lips together.

"We probably won’t find an obvious link between the victims and the killer. He didn’t make any effort to hide them, so he likely has no traceable connection to them. On the contrary, he wants us to find the bodies."

I hadn’t understood it until Adam spoke.

"The victims aren’t important to him," Adam whispered, looking at me. "You are."