7

Amelia sat in the chair across from me and watched youtube on my phone. I looked over the autopsy reports of all the girls who died. All had been hit in the same places and were strangled. They all couldn't scream because of the gag he put in their mouths. It only took him thirty minutes to kill Daila so it must have been the same amount of time for the others. They were all dead for thirty minutes before they had been found. Huh, they all had been found by their mothers except Daila. She had been found by another student.

"Daddy?" Amelia said.

I looked up. "Hmm?"

"Are you working on the case you were talking to Papa about?"

"Yes."

"I have a suggestion about the killer."

"Oh?"

"What if the killer only went after the girls because he once had a girlfriend that has the same colored hair?"

I blinked. "Maybe."

"And the height because he's pretending his girl is growing up?"

Why hadn't I thought of that? "Are you sure you aren't an adult inside a three-year-old body? A detective in a three-year-old body?"

She giggled. "No, I'm tiny."

I smiled and wrote what she said down in a notebook. "It's possible."

"Too many maybes."

I chuckled. "Your grandma had me on speaker, didn't she?"

"Yup, she was cleaning while talking to you."

I sighed. "Go back to your videos." She did while smiling.

Lisa came over. "Hey, Am."

"Hi, Auntie Lisa," Am said without lifting her eyes from the screen.

Lisa looked at me. "So Mrs. Ruth had been about to call our boss while Mr. Ruth had been about to call you."

"He had been about to call me?" I said confused.

"Yes, he had your number halfway typed out before he died."

"Anything else?"

"Yes. Mrs. Ruth had been talking to a guy named Henry Rong. I looked him up and he was an old friend of hers. They had known each other since they were kids."

I stood. "Do you have an address for him?"

"Yes." She handed me the paper with the address on it. "You aren't planning to go now, are you? It's late and you have Amelia."

I had been about to go but she was right. "I know. Am? You ready to go home?"

She looked up and nodded. "Yes, please."

When we got home I started making dinner. Jasper got home an hour after we did. I had food on the table by then. He kissed me. "Hey."

I smiled. "Hey. Did you look at the Ruth bodies?"

Jasp sat at the table. "I did. They both had no drugs or anything bad in their systems. Mr. Ruth did have a good amount of alcohol in his bloodstream."

"Enough to get him drunk?" I sat down.

"No, I'm pretty sure he was sober. After all, if he was drunk I doubt he would have been able to fight well."

I nodded. "Am? Dinner!"

She came downstairs. "Papa! I went to daddy's work."

Jasper smiled. "I heard. Did you have fun?"

"Yeah, I gave Daddy some suggestions."

"Did you? I bet they were good ones."

"She thinks Night Wolf might have had a girlfriend who had brown hair and the height difference is him pretending the girl was growing," I said. I still feel a little irritated with myself for not thinking about this. It still doesn't help us find who the next victim will be.

Jasper nodded. "So they were good suggestions."

"Do you think I'm right?" Am asked.

"I don't know. Daddy finds those things out. I just look at the bodies and see how they died."

Amelia turned to me. "Could I be right?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. You might be. I still have stuff to find out about him."

After dinner, Jasper put Am to bed and sat beside me on the couch. "You think Am's correct," Jasper said.

"Honestly? I don't know what I think. There could be a hundred different reasons why he's doing this. Though none of them will get him out of going to jail."

He nodded. "Mrs. Ruth had a piece of glass in her throat. I think it was put there after he killed her."

"Was there in Mr. Ruth's?"

"Bo, but Mrs. Ruth was pregnant."

"Pregnant?"

"Yes. It wasn't Mr. Ruth's kid though."

I blinked. "Why do you say that?"

"Because his tubes had been tied."

"Was she far enough along that you can get DNA from the fetus?"

"Yes, and I already sent it to the lab."

"Okay," I said but I was distracted by other thoughts. Also, he was used to me interrogating him so it doesn't irritate him. He knows I'm just doing my job and trying to get all the information I can get. Maybe the father of the kid is Henry Rong. I'll add that to my list of questions for him.

Jasper frowned. "Are you okay? You seem to be distracted at the moment."

I sighed. "I am. I don't think the person who killed the kids is the same person who killed the Ruth's."

"Why?"

"Because the mirrors were intact. So were the picture frames. The jewelry hadn't been taken either. Night Wolf breaks everything that's glass minus the windows and always takes the jewelry. He wouldn't have changed the routine just because they were adults."

"But there were wolf heads."

"Yeah, except they were drawn differently. His are more detailed. These ones weren't. They didn't have the ears like all Night Wolf's heads do."

"Huh, I hadn't noticed that."

"Neither did I until I stared at the pictured for a while." I had been doing that when I was still in the room. That's why I had taken that last look around because I wanted to double-check the wolf heads.

"Is that what you were doing when my mom called you?"

"No, I had been researching the Dee family." I should have looked up Mr. Hoot while I had been at work. But the news of a new person to talk to made me forget about it and Amelia's theory did that too. I'll look him up tomorrow.

"Why?"

"Because I'm a little suspicious of Mr. Dee and Mr. Hoot who had been these kid's principal."

"Okay. Any reason for it?"

"Just the way they acted and the questions they asked." Both our phones rang and he walked into the other room so we could talk to whoever is calling us without confusing each other. I looked at the caller ID and saw it was Lisa. "What's up, Lisa?"

"They found another dead kid."