chapter three
Sirius leans his head on Remus’ shoulder. His eyes are narrowed in concentration, a look Remus has seldom seen before. “Whoever took this picture should be fired.”
Remus blinks. “What?”
“The angles are terrible. I can’t see his fingers in this one! It could’ve been important!”
Remus shoves him off his shoulder. “Aesthetics of the photos hardly matter, Sirius.”
“I beg to differ, Moonshine of mine.”
“We don’t care about his fingers. There isn’t anything significant in the other photos with their fingers.”
“You wouldn’t know if he’d diverged from his original plan.”
Remus swats him away. “I’ll talk to the crime scene team. Can you focus? Do you notice anything else?”
Sirius scoots closer, peering at a new photo, the one from Paris. “Interesting.”
“What’s interesting?”
“Do you think RAB has a foot fetish?”
Remus is very close to throwing his coffee mug at him. He even reaches to do so, when Sirius catches him by the wrist. He squeezes lightly on Remus’ pulse. “I’m not shitting you. Check it out—see how she’s got her makeup all done, looking all pretty?”
“We thought it was a sign of remorse,” James says.
“Bullshit. Your man cares about beauty, not remorse. I just find it weird how he goes through the motions of makeup and doing her hair without bothering to do the same to her feet.”
“I don’t reckon he was thinking about her feet,” says Remus, flatly.
“Of course he was, see?” Sirius points. “He took the time to take her shoes off. He probably threw them away, or—”
“Took them as trophies,” James finishes.
Remus tilts his head. He struggles to see the angle, but it blooms somewhere in the back of his mind. “So why did he leave them that way?”
“Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe they were clean enough. They weren’t painted or filed or anything, so…”
“Pure.”
Sirius shrugs at James’ sudden comment. “I mean, I wouldn’t say ‘pure,’ but—”
“No, he’s right.” Remus snatches the red Sharpie and stands at the bulletin board. “The woman is already done up, see? Even her nails. RAB doesn’t have to do any work there, even if he wanted to. It’s the opposite for the girl in England, Sidney Harrison—” he circles the photo from the library, “—who has unpainted fingers and toes. She’s completely pure. Especially because she’s a child.”
“So what?” Sirius asks.
“He thinks they’re more beautiful that way,” James says, breathlessly. He chews on his lip, blood snaking onto the tip of his tongue. “Not only is he getting more practiced with each kill, but his victims are more pure and beautiful in his eyes.”
Remus draws on the first photo from Seattle. A red, bold dot goes on the man’s face. “This victim isn’t an outright criminal, but I bet if we do some more research, he’s done something shitty. Something barbaric.”
“And the woman is closer to his perfect vision. She’s professional, headstrong, intelligent. All he really does to help her reach his sublime ideal is do her makeup and hair. The rest of her is, generally, ‘pure.’”
Sirius whistles. “Fuck.”
“He won’t stop until he’s found someone perfect,” says Remus. His eyes are drawn to the last photo. The most recent kill. “Someone who fits his mold of beautiful and pure.”
James scrubs at his face. Exhaustion lines wrinkle his forehead. Purple bags paint the skin under eyes. “We have absolutely no clue where he’ll strike next. Another country would stick to his pattern, but we can’t be sure.”
“He’ll deviate from his plan at some point,” Remus says, resolute. He has not taken his eyes from the board. He can feel the stares of both James and Sirius on the back of his skull. “He’ll do anything to get what he wants.”
James is fucked.
He stumbles into the coffee shop he frequents like it’s his religion, still blinking in the harsh onslaught of sunlight. Mornings should not be kicking his ass like this, he thinks. He doesn’t get the sleep he used to.
James approaches the counter with a shaky smile and a headache. His favorite barista, Marlene, greets him in her usual fashion.
“You look fucking whipped.”
“Evil never sleeps, and neither do I.”
“I’ll say,” Marlene says, grinning crookedly, “that’s the worst saying I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth. And I’ve known you for years.”
Strangely, her voice cheers him. James shakes his head, her humor affecting him against his will. “I’ll have a cappuccino, please.”
“What if I said no?”
“You’d get fired.”
“I should say no,” Marlene muses, already reaching for a cup to mark it down. “Some day, when I’m brave enough. When I have enough money to take the risk, I’ll shock a customer.”
“I hope I’m not the customer you have in mind.”
“You’re always in my mind.”
“That’s very heterosexual of you,” James says with a wrinkle of his nose. His eyes gleam with the newfound energy in his system.
Marlene fake gags. “Don’t insult me like that. Ever again.”
“Alright.”
“You want your coffee hot, right?”
“How you know me.” James smiles. It’s even genuine.
He pays, then leans against the wall by the door to wait. Even takes the time to clean his foggy glasses on the hem of his shirt. His stained, old shirt that serves only as a pajama shirt. Until today.
James sighs. What a life, he thinks. He pinches the sleep from his eyes. Blinks, to ensure that he can see once again. He pushes the bridge of his glasses further up his nose. Ah, yes. Clarity at last.
Marlene whistles for his attention. She slides the coffee in his direction. He wraps his hands around the warmth of the cup, breathing in, the last dredges of his exhaustion slipping away.
“Give my best to Remus and Sirius, will you?” Marlene tells him.
“And you to Dorcas.”
“If I can catch her in time,” says Marlene. “She’s got that new job at the school with Pandora. Now she’s never home.”
“If you get the chance, tell her we all miss her.”
“Will do.”
He gives her a mock salute and steps into the sun.
James sets off to walk around the perimeter of the park. The smell of freshly cut grass fills his nostrils, and the fragrance of the blooming flowers comforts him. Makes him grin. The weight on his shoulders, the tension in his neck, loosens a fraction when he takes a sweeping look at the community of the park. People from all around town with their own lives. Lives he wasn’t responsible for.
If RAB kills again, you just might be, a nasty voice in his head whispers.
James promptly ignores it.
He passes the lilac bushes when his phone rings. James sighs. “What did Sirius do?”
“Nothing yet,” Remus says into his ear. He sounds burnt out, stretched thin. Scraped raw. “If we’d like to keep it that way, I’d suggest you hurry back. I think we have to call the others.”
“You don’t like dealing with other people, Moony.”
“Believe me, I’m aware.”
The situation, apparently, was dire. How much more dire could you get than murder? James hums. “I’ll be there soon. Don’t set anything on fire when I’m gone.”
“Debatable.”
The call ends.
James is shunted to the ground with the force of a tank.
What the fuck?
With shaking fingers, he reaches for his gun in his waistband. He never closes around it. Someone has gone and clasped his hand in their first.
“I’m so sorry,” a voice above him says, sounding close to tears. “I swear, I didn’t see you there. You just appeared, it wasn’t on purpose—”
James straightens. He brushes the dust from his pajama bottoms and looks, for the first time, at the person who had bumped into him.
He couldn’t have been more than James’ age. Tall and slender, coming to James’ shoulders in height, with shocking dark eyes, alabaster skin dusted with freckles on the bridge of his nose. Loose curls that ruffle in the light breeze. High cheekbones and a dimple on the left side of his face. He wears a dark green sweatshirt with the name of some school on the front.
“You’re fine,” James says. He’s surprised he says anything at all. He’s surprised he doesn’t say, “you’re angelic.”
And then, fucking then, the stranger grins.