Page 166 of Forever Dead

Selena lowered herself into the chair and stretched her bad leg beneath the table.

A folder from the Ellison scene sat near the computer. Copies only. Price’s initial photographs had not yet arrived, but Selena had taken written notes before leaving the farmhouse.

She opened her notebook.

MASK: Multiple pieces. Heavy stitching. Concealed eye openings. Stitched fragment recovered at Nora’s house. Material identification pending.

Below it she wrote:

NORA: Section of skin removed from flank. Approximately four by six inches. Possible material for repairing mask. Confirm technique with Blethan.

Nora might have torn the fragment loose. The killer might then have taken skin to replace it. The sequence fitted what they had found, but neither the laboratory work nor the examination of Nora’s body was complete.

Selena turned to the computer.

Curtis’s employment history gave her somewhere to begin. Skinning, cutting, preserving. Those skills could come from several kinds of work, and she had no evidence yet that the killer belonged to a medical profession.

She searched public court records and archived local reporting, making a list of names associated with serious violence or threats. Where employment was recorded, she noted it. Meat processing. Taxidermy. Veterinary work. Funeral services. Medicine.

The first hour produced more gaps than answers.

One man convicted of assault had worked at a packing plant, but nothing in the reports established whether he had handled carcasses or loaded trucks. A taxidermist’s dispute with a neighbor had reached court without any allegation of physical violence. A former surgical technician arrested for threatening someone with a shotgun had died four years earlier.

She crossed out the dead man. The others needed checking.

For the medical names, she added public licensing and disciplinary records. One physician had injured a nurse by throwing an instrument during surgery. Another had threatened a colleague after losing his job. Neither record supplied an alibi for any of the murders, whatever their current addresses suggested.

Selena wrote down the sources and left both names on the list.

By the second hour, the limitation was obvious. She was finding people whose violence had become public. The man who killed Eleanor might never have been arrested, sued or disciplined.

She rubbed her left wrist.

A clean record would not make him harmless. It would make this search less likely to find him.

Tanya could help establish which names had meaningful local connections and which were only coincidences. Selena needed that work checked, not another page of possibilities assembled from incomplete reports.

She reached for her phone.

Meg answered after three rings.

“Raven.”

“Hi, boss.”

“How’s Connor?”

“Awake. I saw him this morning. He’s weak, but he could talk.”

“I’m glad.”

Selena let herself hear the warmth in that before continuing.

“I need help checking some names.”

“For the murders?”

“Yes. People with experience handling tissue, cross-referenced against serious violence and local connections. I’ve been working through public records.”