“Possible,” Ruby said, knowing that it would hardly narrow down their suspect pool, even if it was an accurate guess.

“He walked around all over the place, blood on his shoes, and nobody noticed until they found the body. Nobody seemed to think he didn't belong. Either she knew him and it wasn't strange to see him here or—”

“Or he's very good at luring people in,” Ruby said. “You're right. People would have seen him and they would have had to see him as someone who wasn't a threat, someone who looked like he belonged.”

The life of the party or a proper wallflower.

Ruby stepped outside the open patio doors to the backyard, the barbeque ready to serve up food to the gaggle of guests. It still smelled like bacon and beef, the grills not properly cleaned after the crime scene was cleared out.

“So, somebody who likes thirteens, who you wouldn't expect to kill you. Has a lot of time on his hands,” Gabe said, “I'll just ask all these witnesses about that.”

Ruby looked out at the party guests, huddled at the fence line waiting for their turn to be interviewed.

“She'd have to have been in relationships with a lot of people, so probably a social butterfly or maybe a party animal,” Ruby said, thinking of the crime scene.

“She wouldn't have been afraid of this person,” Gabe added. “She would have trusted him.”

The killer had been in the house. These people had seen him, they just didn't know that yet.

How did they draw the right memories out of them?

Ruby glanced at Gabe, his face sour. Considering his demeanor around interviewing family and friends, this must've looked a lot like his nightmare scenario.

“We have to talk to them. Someone knows something,” she said.

“This time, I really want you to be right. I just don't think that's going to be true. He's not just screwing with us. Now he's wasting our time looking at people’s shoes instead of hunting him down,” Gabe said.

The problem used to be a lack of direction, with no suspects or witnesses. Now, they were flooded with them.

Ruby scanned the crowd, looking at the puffy, red faces of people in mourning. Someone had to stick out. There were so many people to fingerprint, to check the shoe size of. Maybe they would get lucky and one of them really would be a match.

She spotted a shifting, nervous figure in the crowd. The man’s face wasn’t tear-stained, but he did keep looking nervously around, still clutching a burger flipper in his hand.

“I’ll start with him,” Ruby said. “He’s got the perfect alibi. Everyone would remember the guy at the grill being too busy to kill someone.”

And if it wasn’t him, he certainly looked like he had something to hide.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ruby carefully taped up a picture of Pearl Helman, added her to the wall of victims.