“Uuh,” the officer flipped open her notebook, “May 13th, 1991.”

Ruby shot Gabe a look.

“Okay,” he conceded, “but what does that mean? How does that tell us who the killer is? Do we issue a warning to all people with an association to the number thirteen?”

Ruby wanted to answer that, but she couldn’t. There was no point in releasing such a vague warning to the public.

“Where would he have seen her?” Ruby asked instead.

Gabe looked back to the calendar. Her work schedule was all penned out. It looked like Pearl Helman was organized, and wrote down her locations. Unfortunately, consistency made people easy to stalk. Her organization may have been her downfall.

“She's a server at The Star,” he said. “It’s a little diner. I’ve seen it before. Pretty easy place to get eyes on her.”

“But a pain to narrow down people who would have contact,” Ruby said.

“We have no idea how long he's watching any of them, but if he really did know her birthday, clearly he's been paying close attention.” Gabe crossed his arms. He leaned back against the kitchen counter, his eyes moving over the small details in the room.

Ruby saw all the moments for Pearl that were supposed to come next. The box of cheap candles Pearl was supposed to blow out, the deadlines on her calendar she was supposed to meet. Everything had been interrupted.

One small, odd detail caught Ruby’s eye. A magazine lay on the kitchen counter. It was just out of place enough to spark her curiosity.

Ruby gestured toward it, her gaze falling to the nearest police officer.

“Your reading material?” Ruby asked the uneasy police officer.

The cop shook her head. She looked uneasy with dozens of witnesses present and all, but she didn’t look like she would blatantly move things around in a crime scene.

“What are you thinking?” Gabe asked.

“Not thinking, just a gut instinct,” Ruby replied. There was no other way to explain it. Someone else may have just as easily interpreted it as completely normal.

Ruby pulled on a nitrile glove, just to be sure she wasn’t contaminating evidence.

She flipped through the pages, many of them beautiful table spreads of homecooked meals. She leafed through pages of recipes and de-cluttering tips.

Gabe looked idly over her shoulder, disinterested until the mid-issue spread. They both froze.

A hostess proudly offered up a plate of pie, but her head and face had been cut out of the photo. There was a gaping hole left instead, giving a sneak peek to the pulled pork recipe on the next page.

Goosebumps rose across Ruby’s skin. The bathroom upstairs was a bloody mess, but there was something deeply unsettling about the idea of the killer wandering through Pearl’s party, clipping magazine models out of pages and leaving the evidence behind. There was a patience to it that Ruby didn’t like.