Sophia came and stood by him. The housekeeper had brought coffee out for the detectives, and Sophia accepted one without hesitation. The sun was beginning to fall and the wind bit at Theo’s face. Sophia held her hand against one cheek and the coffee cup against the other. The team of coroners were setting up a tent in order to protect the bodies from potential rain.

“I’ve seen too many mass graves,” Sophia said quietly and took another sip of coffee.

“What? What did you say?” Theo asked.

She looked at him.

“Do you ever get tired of this line of work? People believe England is this wonderful country and that nothing like kidnapping or organ-harvesting happen here, and yet . . .” She patted his arm. “I may have to go away for a while.”

“Why?”

“My life has recently become a lot more complicated.”

“Anything I can help with?”

She studied his eyes. “Theo, I don’t know. I may ring you for help sometime in the future, but—”

“My brother did this?” Diane Tipring asked from behind them.

Theo and Sophia turned around. Up to this point Diane chose to stay in her house rather than survey what was happening on her property. She guarded her doorway, reluctantly letting the officers in or out to use the toilet or remove bagged items from the house. Perhaps she knew this could only tarnish the family name. How would he feel if one of his family members was suspected of committing so many brutal crimes? How could one hold their head up in public?

As another body was laid beside the seven already pulled from the ground. Theo could hear Diane’s sharp inhale and wondered what went through her mind. “My brother did this?” she asked again.

“We believe so,” Theo replied.

“The bastard. He’s dead and he’s still able to ruin my bloody life.” She stomped back into the house.

The coroners all agreed on one thing: all the knee bones were missing.

“What did Tipring do with half of them?” Sophia asked.

“What do you mean?” Theo asked.

“Well, we only found thirty-two patellas buried in his garden and we know there should be two kneecaps for each body, so what happened to the other thirty-two bones? Do you think he’s kept them elsewhere?”

“I don’t know if we’ll ever find out what he has done, not completely. I can’t believe we never connected any of the murders, or came close to finding the killer of all these women. I want to go back and search through all the missing person’s files after we identify these women. I want to see why no one looked further into the cases. Someone had to have questioned him or their disappearance.”

“How could no one suspect a serial killer was loose in the streets of London?” she asked. “Twenty years or more these women lay in the cold ground. Who knows if the families ever found closure.”

“And all these women may not have been from London. We don’t know if he traveled around England collecting bodies.”

Sophia closed her eyes.

“I’m just happy it’s over and that you’ve found the missing girls,” said Sophia. “If Dorie—or whoever murdered Doc—doesn’t get charged with murder, I can’t say I’d be sorry. He deserved to die, and maybe worse.”

“I’m not sure I could find anything to charge her with. They played the game well: the strangers on a train, or in this case, lift. How they ever convinced each other to kill for one another, I’ll never know.”

“Sometimes the desire for revenge is really strong. Wouldn’t you want to kill the person who killed your wife?”

“Who killed my wife?”

“Well, you know what I mean. If you think you’re killing your sister’s murderer, you couldn’t say you wouldn’t want revenge.”

“I would want justice and not revenge. I couldn’t murder someone in cold blood. Could you?”

She looked away. Shit. He had forgotten that she had killed Marcus Masters. That must be what she was so upset about.

“I wouldn’t think anyone I knew was capable of murder but I guess we all could be. Oh, Theo, why does life have to be so complicated?”

“I don’t know. What I do know is this,” said Theo, “I now have thirty-two more cases to clean up. I hope the families can find some peace in all this.”

“I hope so. We all could use a little peace. I could be—” Sophia’s mobile let off a chime. She pulled it from her jacket pocket and stared at the screen for a few minutes. Her eyebrows creased. “I have to go.”

“Oh? Is everything all right?”

“I have something to deal with,” she said, and gulped down the last of her coffee. “I hope you find all the bodies.”

She made a fast sprint toward her car.

“Do you—” he started but she didn’t turn around.

“Well, good-bye until next time,” he said to himself and walked over and stood by Dorland.

About the Author

Clarissa Draper, a Canadian currently living in Mexico, spends most of her time composing, planning, and writing code-based mysteries. Although she has written from an early age, she started writing full time in 2006, and is currently writing her third mystery in the Evans/Blackwell series for WiDō Publishing. In her spare time, she travels, studies mathmatics and languages, and is an avid reader.

For the codebreakers among us, try to solve the puzzles along with the detectives at: http://clarissadraper.wix.com/wrbyv