#oldsh

Raleigh, his partner, didn’t smile. Leaning back against her desk, she drummed her fingers as she studied the board. Looking at the photos they’d collected---ones provided by friends or family of the victims before the attacks, and ones taken afterwards---she could hardly reconcile it in her mind that they were the same girls. She moved closer to the photo of Rowan Goode, beaming and with her arms slung around her two dark-haired siblings. “Have we gotten anything back from CSU where Goode was found?” she inquired.

Hooper flipped open a file, then read, briefly. He shrugged. “Nothing exceptional. All the Goode girls were familiar with the area, though. It was somewhere they were known to go, it’s not surprising that Rowan Goode was there on her own. If she wakes up, hopefully we’ll get more.”

Raleigh glared at the board, as if some new clue would pop out of nowhere. “We have to find something. I know these are connected, I feel it, but the only similarities are... insubstantial. That none of the girls had any idea how they were attacked, why, or by whom. The forms of attack vary... but they’re never outright murder. Someone is being very careful not to have these attacks traceable, but then why always the same demographic in victim?”

“A fetish?” Hooper suggested. “Or... maybe it’s a warning.”

“A warning?” Raleigh tilted her head, thinking it through. “Don’t be vulnerable and on your own. Hell of a warning.” She snorted.

“It was just a suggestion.”

Raleigh ran a hand through her hair. “I know, I know. It’s just...” She was so tired. “We can’t really tell people to guard against this. We don’t even know what we’re looking at, here, Stevie.” Her frustration was evident in her tone.

He frowned, brow knitted with thought. “The attacks vary so much---one estimate gave the attacker’s height at approximately 1.8 m, that was on Ashworth, and another was struck repeatedly from lower down---it does suggest multiple assailants.”

Grace was nodding. They’d been over the possibility before that it might be a group rather than a single individual.

“So... what if each assailant had a different motive?” He hurried around to his desk, pulled open a drawer, and drew out a note pad. “It could be like, a sacrifice, if we’re looking at cult activity. Speaking historically, they fit the profile for sacrificial virgin types.”

Raleigh came up beside him, watching as he flipped through the sheets of information they’d gathered on any close associations the victims had. “If that’s the case, then it might have more to do with their assailants than the victims.” Her eyes drifted back to the board. “Instead of looking at what connects them to each other... look at what connects their connections... six degrees---”

“Exactly. And look, I already found one---Rowan Goode’s sister Astor attended school at the same time as Miranda Blackbourne.” He punched a finger at the page. “I know this area. The schools are only a minute’s walk from each other, they’re practically neighbours. These girls could have known each other. Even though Blackbourne said she didn’t recognize Rowan Goode, she might know Astor. Hell, the academy where Calla Goode was enrolled is in the same district, too.”

Raleigh moved closer to the photo of the three sisters. They all looked so young... but if Hooper’s hunch was right (and they often were, though he didn’t like to admit it) then all three could be involved in something much larger than it seemed on the surface.