Jenna waited for an explanation of that quote, but Leith seemed lost in thought.“What do you mean by that?”she finally prompted.
Leith blinked, as if surprised to find them still standing there.“Oh!It's fromHeart of Darkness.Joseph Conrad.It refers to the Thames near London—suggesting that even the centers of civilization were once savage places.”Suddenly animated again, she continued, “Conrad understood that the veneer of civilization is paper-thin.'The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.'“
Those words hit too close to home for Jenna, resonating with her own experiences of the darkness that could lurk in seemingly ordinary places—and people.
Then, like a light switch being flipped, Leith's demeanor brightened.“Would you two like some coffee?Perhaps a pastry?On the house, of course.The least I can do for Trentville's finest.”
The abrupt shift was jarring, but Jenna was growing accustomed to Leith's conversational whiplash.
“Thank you for the offer,” she said, “but we should be on our way.You've been very helpful.”
“Have I?”Leith asked, her smile suggesting she knew exactly how helpful she'd been.“Well, that's good to hear.Do come back if you need more...literary insights.”
Then with a sly wink, she added, “And, oh, by the way—in case you’re starting to think I’m … well, a suspicious character, I was here in this building whenever Claudia was killed.I live upstairs, and I practically never go out.Any of these people here can tell you that.”
Jenna knew that Leith had that sort of reputation, and as weird as the conversation had gotten, she didn’t doubt that Leith was no killer.Her every instinct told her that Leith was too otherworldly, too lost in her world of words to commit murder.
Jake held the door open as they stepped out into the afternoon sun.The brightness felt cleansing after the dimness of the bookstore, but the shadows in Jenna's mind remained.
She and Jake walked in silence to their parked cruiser.Once inside, with the doors closed against the outside world, he turned to her.
“That wasn't a coincidence,” he said, not bothering to specify what “that” was.He didn't need to.
“No,” Jenna agreed, staring through the windshield at nothing in particular.“Our killer is recreating the Grimm version of Little Red Riding Hood.The scissors, the cutting open...”She couldn't finish the thought aloud.
“So what does that tell us?That we're looking for someone with a fairy tale fixation?Someone who's read the original Grimm stories?Who’s determined to show us the real story?”
“It tells us we're dealing with someone deliberate.Someone who wants us to make that connection.They're not just killing—they're communicating.”
“But communicating what?”
“I don't know.”Jenna frowned, frustration tightening her jaw.“It could be a warning.It could be a challenge.Hell, it could be their twisted idea of art.”
The implications settled over them.If this was just the beginning—if the killer was working through some kind of fairy tale compulsion—there would likely be more victims to come.
“There's something else,” Jake said after a moment.“In the story, the wolf swallows the grandmother and Red Riding Hood whole.They're still alive when they're cut out.”
“That’s right.But Claudia was already dead when she was...when the killer stuffed her inside.So our killer is adapting the story, not following it exactly.”
“Which means what?That they're improvising?Or that there's more to their plan than we can see yet?”
Jenna had no idea what to say, or even to think.
“Let’s go to the station to regroup,” she said.
As she started to drive, she knew that the once-peaceful community she'd sworn to protect was changing, growing darker, threatened by something she didn't fully understand, something that seemed to be drawing on dark currents she couldn't quite grasp.And whatever that was, it was just getting started.
That quote from Joseph Conrad echoed through her mind …
“And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The afternoon sun slanted through the windshield as Jenna guided her patrol car through Trentville's quiet streets.As she drove, she was considering connections and possibilities—fairy tales and murder, wolves and woods, predator and prey.The image of Claudia Kingsley's body lingered in her mind—the violence of it, the strange arrangement, the ancient story being retold through flesh and blood.
Beside her, Jake sat in contemplative silence, his gaze fixed on the road ahead, no doubt processing the same disturbing thoughts about what they'd just learned from Leith Walsh at the Dénouement Café.
“Little Red Riding Hood,” Jenna murmured.“It sounds absurd when I say it out loud.”