When engaging in wayward activity, likely to result in some form of serious trouble, it’s best to do it with very little fear and as few witnesses as possible. Understanding this better than the general population, Cindy found herself, yet again, one of the few people who had bowed out of the celebratory luncheon thrown by the paper’s top execs in honor of their recent EPpy.

The clicks and subdued grumbles coming from the office of her boss served as an unfortunate reminder that there was at least one person at the paper who might be more diligent than she was. But that was hardly grounds for surrender. Cindy was quite accomplished at getting away with subversive behavior under the noses of people whose jobs it was to catch her at it and reprimand her accordingly. She also knew the man in question well enough to trust he was much more interested in ensuring the paper was put to bed with a warm glass of milk and pleasant bedtime story than anything she might have stayed behind to do in the absence of her co-workers.

“Okay. Here they are,” her always willing partner-in-crime whispered over his shoulder.

Cindy grasped, with barely controlled anticipation, for the mouse in his hand, pouting as it glided out of her reach just before she made contact.

“You know I’m not supposed to do this right?” Danny reminded her. The delivery was deceptively stern, but his blue eyes regarded her with unmistakable amusement.

“Yeah Danny,” she nodded quickly. “I’m well-versed in the rules. You have to know them pretty well to break them as regularly as I do.”

“Then why do you always ask me to do it?”

“Why’d you stay behind when you could be dining on prime rib and lobster to celebrate your contribution to The San Francisco Register’s award-winning website?” she lobbed back.

He didn’t respond to the question. Just smiled at her with a small shake of his head.

“Because you want to,” she answered for him. “It sucks to snap all kinds of good shots at a crime scene, have two pulled for the story, while the rest go off into digital file cabinet limbo, never to be seen or heard from again.” Cindy managed to finagle the mouse from his hand. “You’ve got to show yourself off to someone. And I’m a willing audience.”

“Yeah? You think that’s why I want to, huh?” he asked.

“I know it is,” she replied, scrolling and clicking through images at a breakneck pace, ever aware of the possibility that the boss might decide to take a mind-clearing stroll through the office.

Danny grunted casually, backing away to lean against the edge of the desk behind her. “You know you’re going to owe me a drink for this, right?”

“Sure,” Cindy agreed without argument.

Several crime scenes. At least two dozen photographs of each. Black and white snapshots that were eye-openers to say the least.

“Do you like darts?”

“Huh,” Cindy returned distractedly, her eyes holding on a blonde in the picture, experiencing a strange sense of déjà vu, though she knew she’d never seen the woman before in real life.

“Darts? Do you like to play?”

“Um…” Cindy scrolled back up, reopening a picture she’d already looked at, instantly realizing why the woman from the photograph four rows down seemed so familiar. “Maybe,” she uttered, eyes moving back and forth between the images.

Leaving the pictures open, Cindy returned to the thumbnails, opening and closing until she found the woman again. In another photograph. At another crime scene. Jumping between the shots several times, she determined she was actually seeing what she thought she was seeing.

 “I’ve got a great technique. I’d love to show you.”

“That sounds good,” Cindy responded distractedly.

On a mission, she moved through the entire folder, sitting back in disbelief once she’d uncovered comparable images from every crime scene. She wrote down the slide numbers, and turned to find Danny behind her, with a grin that seemed somehow out of place in their current surroundings.

 “Could you print these for me?” she asked.

Caught off guard by the request, Danny’s smile faded as he took the list, glancing in the direction of the boss’ office. Cindy could practically see a scale in his head weighing the consequences.

“Yeah, sure,” he finally conceded.

Closing all evidence of their transgressions on her computer, Cindy followed Danny to his. At the sound of the photo printer humming to life on his desk, Danny’s eyes darted around the room, and he plucked each photo off the printer as quickly as it finished.

“Thanks,” Cindy said as Danny turned and handed the lot to her. “I owe you a drink.”

“I think you owe me a whole dinner now,” he said with an uneasy laugh.

“Deal,” Cindy agreed, taking the prints from his hand with a smile before heading to her desk.

Even the most expensive meal in San Francisco would be well worth it. How often did a few photographs blow a huge, ongoing case wide open?

ACT I

Lindsay smoothed her fingers across her eyelids, trying in vain to rub away the massive throbbing behind them.

No new bodies in three weeks should have been a blessing. But considering Dellan was held for three weeks, beaten a little everyday and left to suffer the injuries, it wasn’t exactly cause for celebration. It was possible that Hallelujah Man – because apparently every serial killer in her career had to have a pet name – hadn’t struck again, or it was possible that he already had someone and was slowly torturing them. Even if Dellan may have deserved everything he had gotten, and that really wasn’t her place to say, there was no way of knowing if the next victim would be more Dellan or more Blake. And maybe it shouldn’t make a difference. Either way, it was her job to find the killer.

He wasn’t going to stop. Not on his own. For that to happen, there would have to be guilt, and it was difficult to feel guilty and justified at the same time. Those words he left behind, the Bible verses so carefully selected and tailored to each crime, those were his justification. Remorse was too much to hope for.

So, apparently, was a decent piece of evidence.

Grateful as she was that the fibers found with Blake and Martin provided the physical evidence needed to force Tom to pull his head out of his ass and admit that they were dealing with another serial killer, they did very little to help solve the crimes. In fact, they seemed so much more hindrance than help that she almost wished they hadn’t found them at all. Then Tom could go back to living in his little fantasy world where there were acceptable hiatuses between serial killers, and she could pretend that she’d been wrong all along, and the Biblical associations with the three deaths were just a disturbing coincidence.

The silk fibers possessed no distinguishing properties at all besides the color, which, worse than being common, was virtually non-existent.

Tyrian purple. First harvested by the ancient Phoenicians from mucous secretions of sea snails, exploited for the aesthetic pleasure of royalty and the incredibly wealthy, with a value several times that of gold. Useless information stuck in Lindsay’s head due solely to the fact that Cindy was so fascinated by the historical significance, and remarkable exclusivity, of the dye.

Lindsay would love to have shared in her excitement, but when the stakes were this high, it was kind of difficult to appreciate the puzzle. She would rather someone just tell her the solution.

Though still sporadically produced, Tyrian purple was hardly used in modern times. Certainly not in anything average or everyday. No silk shirts, scarves, sheets. Nothing common or readily available. So what incredibly expensive item those threads came from, and what in the hell it was doing in San Francisco, was anybody’s guess.

“Linz, you still with us?” Jill asked quietly.

Lindsay looked up, meeting a worried gaze. Turning toward Claire in an effort to avoid the look, she wasn’t all that surprised to find that Claire’s expression wasn’t any different.

 “Yeah,” she answered. “So, Jacobi and I have a few new leads.”

“That’s good,” Claire said at once.

“We’re going to check them out,” Lindsay told them, nodding distractedly, pausing to chew her lower lip for a half a second. “So, I might not be able to make dinner.”

“No,” Claire’s firm response verified Lindsay’s fear that she wouldn’t get out of the morgue without a debate.

“Claire, I have to work.”

“You’ve been working. For weeks. We all have.” Seeing Lindsay preparing to interrupt, Claire raised a finger to her. “We planned this. Everyone agreed. We are doing dinner. It will not kill you to take a few hours.”

“Yeah, well, it might kill someone else,” Lindsay mumbled, wrapping her arms around herself, trying to fight the sudden chill creeping over her.

“Do you really believe that you are going to solve this case tonight?” Claire asked.

Lindsay sighed. Of course they weren’t going to solve the case tonight, especially with the laughably bad intel they had. But at least she would feel like she was doing something. She couldn’t just sit around and wait for another clue, knowing that it would come attached to a fourth dead body.

“You really should take a night off, Linz,” Jill took Claire’s side. “You never know when a plague might come along and wipe out your entire office, and you’ll be forced into the kind of schedule you’re keeping. It could be oozing down the elevator shaft as we speak.”

“How many people are out now?” Claire asked.

“How many people are out?” Jill countered, voice and eyebrow rising in unison. “There are only four of us left, two clerks, me, and, as my fabulous luck would have it, Denise.”

“That virus is supposed to be seriously unpleasant,” Claire made a face. “You’re lucky you escaped it.”

“Since I’m the only person with a law degree left in an office with Denise, I think I’d prefer vomiting up my organs.”

Lindsay snorted quietly. “You’d want to throw up every time you threw up.”

Jill tossed Lindsay a playful glare, so normal it seemed abnormal in their current reality.

“Well, I feel fine.”

“You’d better,” Claire uttered, leaving zero room for argument. “Because we ARE having dinner. No excuses. It’s going down.”

“Are we scheduled for a rumble I don’t know about?” Cindy came through the door, her gaze meeting Lindsay’s at a distance. A single soft smile and the pounding in Lindsay’s head eased to a dull thud, the insistent chill gradually dissipating. Something else she couldn’t quite deal with at the moment, she chalked it up to coincidence.

“There will only be a rumble if I get stood up tonight,” Claire answered her.

Lindsay reluctantly pulled her eyes from Cindy to meet Claire’s unyielding expression.

“Understood. We’re going to dinner,” she conceded, stopping short of grabbing the lab report beside her and making it her white flag. “Which means I should probably get back to work.”

“Actually,” Cindy cut in as Lindsay pushed up from the counter. “I have something for you.”

“A lead?” Lindsay asked hopefully

“Yeah. It’s…”

“Thank God,” Lindsay interrupted, drifting in Cindy’s direction. “What is it?”

“It’s not about HM, Linz,” Cindy quickly informed her, though, as she watched Lindsay’s face fall, she desperately wished that she had something that could help Lindsay find the religious freak and bring him in. “It’s about the arsons in Potrero Hill.”

Tugging the photos free of her bag, Cindy nodded toward Claire’s office, heading in that direction, realizing after a few steps that she wasn’t being followed.

“That’s not my case. No one has died in them,” Lindsay stated.

Somewhat slighted, and somewhat irritated, Cindy turned back and tried to remember who it was she was dealing with.

“Well it is my story, so could I get five minutes?” she gently requested. “Please?”

Shame hitting her like a battering ram to the esophagus, Lindsay took a steadying breath and looked Cindy in the eye. “Yes. Of course you can,” she murmured. “I’m sorry.”

Jill and Claire watched as they disappeared into Claire’s office, then, through mutual, unspoken agreement, Claire stripped off her gloves and they went in pursuit.

Cindy spread the 8x10s over Claire’s desk with care, ensuring the important parts were visible.

“What am I looking at?” Lindsay said softly, positioning herself behind Cindy, and gazing over her shoulder.

“These are photos from all nine fires,” Cindy’s voice came out an abnormal rasp, and she paused to clear her throat, “that are attributed to the Potrero arsonist.”

Lindsay nodded her understanding, though Cindy couldn’t see it. Distracted by a scent she couldn’t identify, it took her a moment to process the common object in the photos.

“Who is this woman?” Lindsay questioned, hand brushing Cindy’s hip as she leaned in to point.

Flanking the desk across from them, but seemingly unseen, Jill and Claire exchanged a look.

“I don’t know,” Cindy responded, trying to keep her voice steady. “But I do know she’s not a cop, a firefighter or any other city employee, and she’s been at every crime scene.”

“Where did you get these?” Lindsay husked close enough to Cindy’s ear that goose bumps broke out down her neck.

“Staff photographer,” Cindy answered, sliding out from in front of Lindsay. She escaped the imposing presence and turned to rest on the edge of Claire’s desk.

“And no one noticed before now?” Lindsay asked.

“When a story is going to press, there is a limited amount of time,” Cindy explained, looking up at her, slightly light-headed. “The editor chooses the photos for the article and the rest are filed in Never Never Land. But they reassigned the story to me, and I figured out a while ago that the editors rarely remember what they chose. If you make friends with the photographers, you can usually make a substitution and no one is any the wiser.”

“So you went back through all the old photos,” Lindsay deduced.

“Of course,” Cindy responded.

Jill and Claire chuckled, and Cindy spun around to grin at them. Turning back to Lindsay, she was more than surprised to see the light smile on her face too.

“Couldn’t you get fired for that?” Lindsay wondered aloud.

“Better fired for quality than commended for tripe,” Cindy shrugged.

“That’s my girl,” Lindsay shook her head, returning her attention to the evidence. Only the ensuing silence made her realize how it might have sounded to everyone else in the room. Incredibly grateful when her phone buzzed on her hip, Lindsay reached for it, grimacing slightly when she glanced down at the text.

“Jacobi’s been waiting for me for twenty minutes.”

“Sorry,” Cindy cringed. “I know it’s not your case, but I thought maybe you could, you know, pass it along. Maybe they can stop the fires.”

“Sure,” Lindsay agreed, gathering up the copies. “I can keep these?”

“Yeah. But when you finish with them, just…” Cindy made a ripping motion. “Get rid of them. They don’t exist.”

“The usual then,” Lindsay smiled. The urge to stay warring with the overwhelming need to make something – anything – happen with the Dellan, Blake and Martin cases, she slowly started away. “I’ll see you tonight,” she promised, getting as far as the doorway before her conscience got the better of her and she eased back around. “Thanks for the tip.”

“That’s what I do,” Cindy shrugged.

Lindsay actually laughed lightly as she took her leave. Watching the place where she’d been long after she was gone, Cindy finally turned to Jill and Claire, both of whom were staring so intently at her it was as if they’d been taking lessons in laser vision from Lindsay.

“What?” she asked, fidgeting under their probing stares.

“Nothing,” Jill shook her head. “Awesome work, Nancy Drew. I should probably get back to work too. Denise is expecting the work of ten Jills.”

She was already halfway out the door. She could have pretended she didn’t hear the question and left Claire to fend it herself, but the vulnerability in Cindy’s voice drew Jill to a halt.

“Is this how it started before?”

As Jill turned back, Claire’s desperate eyes swung her way, and Cindy looked back and forth between them as if they were trying to hide something from her.

“Come on you guys,” she pleaded. “Is it?”

Feeling a responsibility to make Cindy less worried, Jill stepped back into the room.

“This isn’t Kiss-Me-Not, Cindy. Things will be different this time.”

“Will they?” Cindy questioned. “I have barely seen Lindsay in like two weeks. I’ve hardly seen any of you. We haven’t been hanging out. We’ve had hardly any club meetings.”

“It’s not a club,” Claire said, cracking a grin when Jill’s voice harmonized perfectly.

“It just…” Cindy uttered weakly. “It feels like she’s pulling away.”

“She’s not pulling away from you.” The words were out of Jill’s mouth before she had a chance to censor them, though part of her was glad it was out in the open.

“She isn’t?” Cindy begged reassurance, her fear at the thought as blatant as she wore all of her emotions.

“No,” Jill said simply. From what she’d witnessed, when Cindy was in the room, Lindsay’s rule of thumb was less about creating distance and more about eliminating it. But it really wasn’t her place to share that.

Claire shook her head in silent agreement. The unanimous assurance seemed to work as Cindy tentatively nodded.

Feeling as if she’d just won a big case, with all the relief and exhaustion that went with it, Jill tilted her head toward the door. “Gotta go,” she declared. “Don’t forget dinner. Apparently there are no excuses.”

****

Blue and purple are not the same color. That had never bothered Lindsay before, but she’d never before had to waste half an hour of her life trying to explain the fact to Tom. When he wanted to know why she and Jacobi had left to look at choir robes and didn’t bring one back to test against the fibers, Lindsay actually thought the answer really was that simple. The robes were blue, and blue and purple are not the same color. Apparently, Tom thought it needed thirty minutes of repetitive explanation.

What had he expected? Did he really think that they would find a robe dyed with a substance several times the worth of gold in a high school in Oakland? They would be getting along better if they could both just admit that, right now, her job was more about collecting a paycheck than solving actual crimes. She would chase unlikely leads, she would even stoop to listening to the tip line, but she couldn’t make impossible connections just to appease him.

As much as she wanted to find Hallelujah Man and get him off the streets, the conversation with Tom was so exasperating, she was actually glad she had somewhere to go outside of work. It was only when she stopped at her desk to grab her jacket and keys that she remembered the photos. Figuring it would take only a minute to drop them with the lead officer, Lindsay snatched them up, and headed down the hall.

The department was busy, but not busy enough to justify waiting five minutes with no acknowledgment. Annoyed, she approached the nearest desk.

“Hey. Is your Lieutenant in?”

Barely looking up at her, the guy didn’t bother to return her greeting.

“Nope,” he said shortly, looking back down.

“Well, could you tell me who’s investigating the Potrero arsons?” she requested.

The guy looked up at her again, hesitating, and glanced away for a moment before focusing back on her, humorlessly.

“Clifford and Bryan,” he answered.

Lindsay would have thanked him if it felt anything like she was being assisted. Instead, she got the distinct feeling she was being brushed off. Turning to scan the room for Clifford and Bryan’s nameplates, she saw two men already coming forward to meet with her. Clifford and Bryan, she assumed, though she didn’t know who was who.

 “I’ve got something for you,” she informed them, holding the photos out in offering.

“Yeah? What?” either Clifford or Bryan, whichever one it was, asked, leaving the photographs dangling in Lindsay’s hand.

“They’re pictures from your crime scenes,” she responded.

“We have pictures from the crime scenes,” Clifford or Bryan returned, crossing his arms across his broad chest.

“You don’t have these ones,” Lindsay explained.

“And what’s so special about those?”

Trying not to roll her eyes, and wondering if the other guy ever spoke, Lindsay brandished the photos again to no avail. “Look at them,” she said.

Neither Clifford nor Bryan took them, and a growing sense of discomfort twinged at the back of her mind.

“What are you doing here?” the arm-crossed spokesman for the duo asked her.

“Passing along evidence about your case,” she stated plainly. “I would hope you would do the same for me.”

“Not all of us have a need to one-up everyone else on the force.”

It shouldn’t have, but the clipped reply surprised her. There was some departmental rivalry, but what exactly she’d done to piss off the entire property crimes division, she wasn’t sure.

“I have information pertinent to your case. I would think you’d be grateful for it.”

“Where’d it come from?”

Lindsay felt challenged, and she combated the desire to just turn around and leave.

“A source,” she answered him smoothly.

“Seems like you have a lot of sources none of the rest of us have access to.” It seemed an accusation. “The Potrero… that’s Bucci territory isn’t it? Aren’t they friends of your family? Dominic Bucci and your old man, they were tight weren’t they?”

Heart constricting at the unexpected mention of her father, Lindsay set her jaw tight against remembered sorrow.

“Guess they wouldn’t want to see their livelihood going up in flames. Did they promise you a few thousand if you could keep them in business?”

If it hadn’t been such a long day, she might have stayed and taken the abuse, but she was far too tired and overwhelmed to deal with their crap.

“You know what,” Lindsay said, not caring if it was giving up. “Use it, don’t use it. It really doesn’t matter to me. But since you have brought in a dozen men in a row for questioning, I’m guessing you don’t have the slightest idea what you’re looking for.”

“We’re good,” the spokesman declared, refusing the offered items with resounding finality.

 “They’ll be at my desk if you need them,” Lindsay forfeited, walking off.

“I try to keep my distance from dirty cops’ kids.”

It was an arrow in her back, but she pretended it didn’t sting as she walked out of the room to the sound of laughter. Halfway down the hall, she was pummeled by the fact that the anger wasn’t strong enough to keep the pain at bay. She hadn’t thought about that part of her father’s past in recent months. After his death, any indiscretions in his life really didn’t seem all that important.

Refusing them the satisfaction of reducing her to tears, she stalked down the hall to her desk, throwing the photos in a drawer. Whether or not they solved their case really wasn’t her problem.

****

Logically, Jill knew that Denise was going to be pissed. Realistically, she also knew that it would be easier to deal with her anger after the fact than get permission beforehand. That in mind, Jill peered out her office door before stepping into the hallway and rushing to the restroom.

Preoccupied with making sure Denise was nowhere in the vicinity, it wasn’t until the door closed that she heard the telltale signs of someone vomiting. Just what she wanted to witness before going to eat.

“How are you doing?” the woman on her knees paused in throwing up long enough to ask the woman holding her hair back.

“I think I’m getting it too,” the standing woman responded.

Jill looked to the door, debating whether to run to the bathroom upstairs.

“How is it only Denise and Jill have avoided this?” the woman on the floor’s voice echoed in the toilet.

“Denise isn’t human.” The assessment might have made Jill chuckle if the follow-up didn’t completely dampen her humor. “And from what I’ve heard about Bernhardt, she’s probably taking a cocktail of antibiotics for STDs that could keep anything away.”

Part of her still wanted to slip back out, silently, and act as if she hadn’t heard. Then there was the part that was above these people in rank and wanted to see them squirm.

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to believe everything you hear,” she called out to them.

“Ms. Bernhardt,” the standing woman glanced back, though it must have upset the other clerk more, who promptly threw up again.

“Formalities now? Really?” Jill inquired. “If you’re sick, you should go home.”

Too proud to flee, she went into a stall, trying to ignore the sound, smell, and bad will from a few stalls down. Emerging a minute later, the two women were waiting for her by the sinks, one barely standing. They watched her wash her hands, looking anxious to say something to fix it, and even more anxious to keep their mouths shut.

“I’ll tell Denise you’re leaving,” Jill told them, grabbing a paper towel and not waiting for a reply. Whatever they had to say, she was ninety percent certain that she didn’t want to hear it.

Despite her act that she couldn’t wait to get to Denise’s office and report, she’d actually intended the conversation to take place when she returned from meeting Lindsay, Cindy, and Claire for dinner. As her misfortune would have it, though, Denise was standing in the hall, just outside her office, as Jill turned the corner. Feeling suddenly caged, Jill slowed automatically, trying not to glance around for the nearest escape route.

“I think we’ve just lost what was left of the team. There’s some definite illness happening in the ladies’ room,” she conveyed.

“Better them than you,” Denise hurriedly stated, indifferent to the update. “I need you to prep witnesses tomorrow.”

“For what?”

“The Dobbs Trial.”

“That’s not my case.”

“But the trial starts Wednesday, and who knows when Allen will be up to coming back to work. Life goes on. People continue to break the law, forcing us to prosecute, despite the state of the D.A.’s office,” Denise declared with little emotion. “Unless, of course, you’re too busy with whatever else it is you’re working on.”

Jill had known this was coming. She was actually surprised it had taken this long to get there.

“You said that it was fine for me to integrate Hallelujah Man into my caseload. We know now that it’s a serial killer and that does still make it a priority,” she reminded Denise, not fully thinking it through before adding, “You didn’t change that, right?”

Denise leveled her with a stare and Jill almost wished she could take the words back.

“It is a priority,” Denise acknowledged, “if there is a case to prosecute. You don’t even have a suspect. The Dobbs case is solid, if our witnesses don’t drop the ball. You have plenty of time before you need to think about your serial killer.”

“Depends if you mean time before we go to trial or time before he murders someone else.”

“Stopping him from murdering someone isn’t your job, Jill,” Denise stated, launching into attorney mode. “You are so intent on helping your friends catch these guys. What does it get you? It seems like every time Inspector Boxer asks for your help, you’re almost killed, which would be a lot of paperwork for me. Maybe you should consider what kind of friends ask you to risk your job and your life on a weekly basis.”

“They don’t have to ask,” Jill responded immediately. “And, you know, since they don’t get smashed and expose my private life in public, I guess I should really be grateful.”

She’d gone too far. The look on Denise’s face was testament to that fact. In the quiet and uncomfortable aftermath, she should have said something deferential, humbly apologized for her unexpected outburst. It may have been her only hope of still having a job.

Before she could make a completely insincere apology, her phone rang. Guessing who it would be, considering it was well after normal working hours, Jill ignored it in a concerted effort to save her ass, staring at Denise and waiting for whatever the queen of torture might inflict on her.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” Denise asked coldly. “Could be about a serial killer. I know how much you hate those.”

Well aware that Denise wouldn’t quit until she picked up her phone, Jill set her shoulders and stepped into her office, grabbing it on the fourth ring. The display clearly showed Claire’s name, but Jill tried for discretion.

“Bernhardt,” she answered.

“Formal, but okay,” Claire teased. “I tried to call your cell. Where were you?”

“Restroom,” Jill answered simply.

“So are you on your way now?”

Feeling Denise’s presence inside her office, Jill fought the urge to look over her shoulder.

“I have some things I really need to take care of here,” she tried.

“No excuses,” Claire reminded her.

“Give me the phone,” Cindy’s distant voice commanded, there was a scuffle, and Cindy took over. “Jill, we have essential business. We do. Now come drink.”

“Listen, I’m going to call you back, okay?”

Hearing the beginnings of a protest, Jill hung up quickly, knowing her friend well enough to hit the DND button before her phone could ring again. Bracing herself as she would for a volatile storm, she turned to face Denise.

“Somewhere you need to be,” Denise questioned, far too congenially to be authentic.

“No,” Jill shook her head.

Denise stared at her, the goal, Jill was certain, to make her feel as uneasy as possible. She hated that it worked.

“You should go,” Denise finally uttered. “It could be important.”

The wise thing would have been to say that it wasn’t. But pretending that her job was more important to her than her friends was something she wasn’t going to feign on Denise’s behalf for even a second.

Knowing it might be a very poor move, and feeling kind of like a pawn facing down Denise’s all-powerful queen, Jill walked behind her desk and grabbed what she needed. “I’ll see you later,” she said, slightly troubled when Denise didn’t say anything in response, but just nodded slowly as she walked past her out the door.

***

“I am so fired,” Jill moaned, head dropping to her forearm on the tabletop.

“Denise isn’t going to fire you,” Lindsay tried to assure her.

“Can she fire you?” Cindy asked, far too chipperly in Jill’s opinion. “She’s just, like, a temp, right?”

Lindsay and Claire laughed at the entirely off-the-mark depiction, but Jill was far less humored.

“Acting D.A. isn’t just like a temp,” she informed Cindy. “Yes, she can most definitely fire me.”

“I can’t believe you said all that to her,” Lindsay drawled. “Awesome.”

“First of all, Linz, you’re well beyond tipsy,” Jill asserted. “I know this, because you never use the word awesome.”

“I do!” Cindy interjected.

“Second,” Jill ignored her. “I very likely just cost myself my job, and if I get fired, I will never get another job with the city. Which means I’ll have no choice but to become a defense attorney. Which means you’ll have to revoke my club membership.”

“Is it a club or not?” Cindy turned to Lindsay in clear confusion. “You all say it’s not and then you call it that. It’s mean and confusing. Especially when I’ve been drinking.”

Laughing, Lindsay leaned toward Cindy, her forehead meeting Cindy’s in a gentle bump.

“It’s not a club,” Claire’s voice drew Jill’s gaze from the affectionate display. “And that’s not true Jill. I don’t think they even check references of the janitorial staff.”

“Claire!” Jill shrieked.

Cindy and Lindsay looked up dumbfounded, before both bursting into laughter.

“I’m so sorry,” Claire said, putting her hand in front of her mouth as if she couldn’t believe she’d just spoken that aloud. “That’s not my role.”

“No, it’s not. You’re supposed to be supportive and motherly, and…” Jill finally broke into laughter. “I can’t believe you said that.”

After a silent moment of companionable drinking, Cindy looked over at Lindsay.

“Did you give those pictures to the detectives working on the arsons?”

“Yeah,” Lindsay said, sobering at the mention.

“And?” Cindy prodded when Lindsay didn’t bother filling in any blanks.

“They didn’t want my help,” Lindsay pushed her drink away, sitting back in the booth. It was a tell that she would never admit to having, but that her friends knew meant she was upset.

“What did they say?” Cindy asked quietly.

“Nothing,” Lindsay returned.

“Lindsay, did they say something to you?” Claire joined the interrogation.

One look at Jill confirmed that if they didn’t get an answer, she’d voice the next inquiry. Grabbing her glass, Lindsay refused to let it get to her again.

“They said I was like my dad… a dirty cop,” she divulged, looking up to meet three pairs of equally pitying eyes and immediately looked away again. “Eventually, they’ll use it, when there’ve been a few more fires, and they still haven’t made an arrest.”

“Linz, I’m sorry,” Cindy whispered.

“It’s not your fault,” Lindsay returned, eyes holding with Cindy’s guilty ones for a moment before sliding away. “Now what in the hell is with this Tyrian purple? They don’t even use it anymore. What is this guy? A king? A time traveler?”

“Can’t we have one night off from this? Please,” Claire pleaded, waving down the waitress as she passed. “Get her another drink.”

“I’m just saying,” Lindsay continued, despite the protest. “It doesn’t make any sense. It’s completely illogical.”

“What about this is logical Linz?” Jill asked. “What about any serial killer is ever logical?”

Lindsay closed her eyes against the question, but it was still there, as effective as if she had mentioned Kiss-Me-Not by name. For a moment, she felt lost beneath the overwhelming responsibility of finding a man who’d left no helpful clues, who would certainly kill again before they had him in custody. Then, she felt Cindy’s hand, warm through the denim of her jeans, lightly squeeze her thigh, and the feeling somewhat abated. Opening her eyes, Lindsay focused on the glass in her hands, thankful when Cindy’s hand stayed where it was, grounding her.

“There was a reason Billy Harris did the things he did,” she murmured.

“It didn’t make it logical,” Jill argued. “It gave it a basis, but what he did with that basis was only logical to him.”

“Linz,” Cindy softly got her attention, breath catching when Lindsay looked over at her, silently pleading for some kind of answer. “He probably thinks he is being logical. If he believes he’s doing what God wants him to do, that’s a pretty basic principle of Christian logic.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter how flawed his logic is,” Claire quietly added.

Sadly, both of those things were right. This man thought that he was doing the work God asked of him, but he was wrong. At least no God that she knew would ask for such a sign of faith.

“I just wish…” Lindsay struggled with the admission. “I wish I had some idea.”

After a swift, internal debate, Cindy glanced around the table. She wasn’t planning to share this, not yet, but Lindsay looked like she needed something, no matter how useless it might be.

“Actually, I did have one thing,” she stated.

“You do?” Lindsay asked.

“It’s a tiny little nothing,” Cindy responded, not wanting Lindsay to get her hopes up. “I wasn’t even sure if I was going to tell you. I mean, I don’t know if it really even matters.”

“Cindy,” Lindsay interrupted gently. “What is it?”

“It’s possible that there’s a pattern to the murders right?” Cindy queried, looking at Lindsay for agreement, and swallowing nervously at just how intently those eyes were already studying her.

“You think there’s a pattern?”

“Yeah, maybe. It’s…” Cindy hesitated. “Hold on. Let me show you.”

Digging in her bag, she found the visual aids she’d created in case she ever decided to tell the rest of the club this, one of her many unsubstantiated theories.

After a moment of watching Cindy search excitedly, and Lindsay wait impatiently with the hope of getting some kind of insight into this psychopath’s mind, Claire and Jill shook their heads at each other. There was no denying Lindsay and Cindy really were cut from the same mold.

“Did you know that each of the seven deadly sins has a color associated with it?” Cindy asked, holding a small stack of index cards against her chest, without revealing them.

“No,” Lindsay shook her head.

“Well, they do,” Cindy responded. “Each sin is correlated with a color of the rainbow. Seven sins. Seven colors.” She looked down at the index cards, pulling the first one off the top of the pile. “Wrath, Dellan, the first murder,” she said, laying the card on the table.

Wrath was written in all caps across the card. Beneath, there were details of the murder, including name, location, and the select Bible verse in its entirety. The card was colored red.

“Gluttony, Blake, the second murder,” Cindy said, laying down the card filled with the details of Blake’s murder, which was orange. “And greed. Martin, the most recent murder.” She dropped Martin’s yellow index card beneath Blake’s and looked up expectantly.

It took a moment for the colors to sink in. When they did, Claire looked across the table at Cindy. “They’re in order,” she stated.

“They’re in order so far,” Cindy agreed.

“So, green,” Lindsay deduced, recalling the pneumonic device for the color spectrum. “Envy?”

Cindy laid down the next index card, green with ‘envy’ written in block letters across it. “Green is envy,” she nodded. “I don’t know how that can possibly help. Knowing a pattern isn’t going to make it any easier to catch this guy. It’s just the way my mind works. It’s where I find comfort.  But maybe it’s not anything -”

Lindsay’s extraordinarily warm hand gently clutching her forearm ceased the rambling at once.

“It’s more than we had five minutes ago,” Lindsay asserted.

Cindy met her gaze, unflinchingly, until unexpected buzzing drew both of their attention to Jill. Suddenly tense, Jill reached into her bag, pulling out her cell phone with much the same enthusiasm she would hold a severed hand. She didn’t have to tell them. The panicked expression was revelation enough.

“Bernhardt,” she answered, her voice hoarse.

Cindy, Lindsay, and Claire all looked at each other, then all eyes turned to Jill.

“I understand,” Jill said quietly. “Of course. I’ll see you then.”

“Denise wants you back there?” Lindsay asked as Jill hung up.

“No,” Jill informed them. “She’s actually going home for the night. She wants to see me in her office tomorrow morning.” She dropped her phone back down beside her, and her head into her hands. “I am so fired.”

Fearing there wasn’t much else she could do for her, because if Denise decided to go on the warpath, there would be no stopping it, Claire reached over to rub soothing circles on Jill’s back.

“You’re not fired. Relax,” Lindsay said, with very little conviction. “It’ll be fine.”

Wearily, Jill glanced up at Lindsay. “Because Denise is known for being such a forgiving person?”

Waiting for any further words of encouragement, Jill instead got three equally morose expressions. For the amount of optimism about her odds in a room with Denise, she may as well have been already fired.

*****

episode list   promotional graphics   credits   links   contact   downloads

disclaimer