Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 114419 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 572(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114419 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 572(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Okay, but she’d been placed in that particular spot for a reason. Their Danny Boy hadn’t gone to the trouble of dragging a dead woman up an incline and sitting her there randomly. What had she been facing? Sienna cast her mind back. A building that made . . . she flipped through her notes and printouts. Tools. They made tools. Armstrong and Sons. She tapped a key, bringing her computer back to life, and did a search on the company. No one had been there the day Reva had been murdered, but perhaps there was some meaning to the fact that she’d been facing that particular building. And if that was the case, the spot where the body had been left made sense, because from what Sienna could remember, two sides of the building were flanked by two-lane, somewhat busy streets and the back by another business. That area under the overpass was really the only mostly private place where a body might be positioned facing the tool company, if that in itself was meant as a clue.
Why here? It’s weird.
She read through the description of Armstrong and Son’s products. They designed and manufactured vanadium steel hand tools, including clamps, cutters, files, saws, and knives.
Knives . . . hmm. Mother had used a knife. Mother had been quite proficient with a knife.
Sienna clicked on another page and scrolled through the photos of their vanadium knives. Vanadium . . . vanadium. She brought the picture of the periodic table back up, her heart giving a small jump. Vanadium. There it was. Symbol V, atomic number 23.
Iodine was to the right. Symbol I, atomic number 53.
In order of the scenes they’d gone to, the letters were VI. “Roman numeral six?” she muttered.
Or possibly 2353? Another address?
Or maybe . . . the beginning of a word? Video? A name? Vincent?
Ouch. A particularly piercing pain emanated from her temple to the back of her neck.
She pulled the file for the second victim they’d found, Bernadette Murray, otherwise known as Queen Bee. Like Reva Keeling’s scene, nothing had been found connected to the murder, other than that left on the victim’s body. She, too, had been sitting upright facing a building, though. It was through a fence and didn’t offer a great view, but it was the direction she’d been posed in, as if staring directly at it. She flipped pages. Med Plus. Again, she turned to her computer. Oxygen tanks and equipment. They sold oxygen. She pulled up the periodic table and found oxygen, symbol O, atomic number 8. VIO. So not a roman numeral. And 23538 was getting a little long to be an address. She did a quick computer search. There was no such zip code in the US.
VIO . . . a word? Oh Lord, her head hurt.
She glanced up, but Kat was on the phone, talking in low tones as she leafed through papers on her desk.
The fourth scene they’d been led to was the house on Bluebell Way where they’d found Sheldon Biel, a.k.a. Mr. Patches. She glanced through the forensics report, looking at the photos of what had been found, including the radio and . . . the extra battery. She brought it closer. It was a Panasonic lithium battery with the i in Panasonic scratched or worn off.
She pulled up the periodic chart again. Lithium, symbol Li, atomic number 3. 235383? Or . . . VIOLi. But the i was scratched off the battery. Did that mean the i in Li should be discarded? VIOL. A word? Violence, violin, violets. A name? Viola?
Wait, there’d been another scene. Reva Keeling’s apartment. Her head pounded so hard she almost let out a moan. That place had been a wreck of stuff strewn over every surface. If there was something else there relating to an element, it’d probably be like looking for a needle in a haystack. They’d found the other clues there because they’d been pointed specifically to them. Certainly they couldn’t be expected to catalog every button and random bottle top?
Oh God. This suddenly felt ridiculous and crazy. An exercise in futility.
Sienna’s phone dinged, thankfully interrupting her disconnected thoughts, and her friend Nellie’s name showed on her screen. Nellie was her ex-partner Garrod’s daughter, just about her age. Sienna had gotten close with her over the years she’d worked with Garrod and been invited to his family functions. She picked it up as Kat did the same with her phone, making yet another call, likely returning messages. Maybe someone had called in with something useful. They could only hope. Sienna opened the text: How are you settling in in Reno? Miss you! How’s the long-distance thing going so far? Lots of phone sex I hope? ;)
Phone sex. Jeez. She hadn’t even thought about phone sex. The truth was, she and Brandon hadn’t even had regular sex for months and months leading up to her move. She’d been stressed and under an extreme amount of pressure regarding the arrest she’d broken protocol to make. She’d been waiting for the hammer to drop at any moment, which didn’t exactly lend itself to feelings of sexiness. Then she’d gotten the offer from Reno and only had a month to prepare to move across the country, back to the place that brought forth so many conflicting emotions. So . . . yeah, there’d been a major dry spell, and frankly . . . now that she thought about it, she hadn’t really missed him in that regard. Which she supposed didn’t say great things.