Der Schädelring: Thriller (German Edition)

and no connection had ever been made between them.
    "Did you ever try to connect the dots?" Julia asked. "These murders have several things in common."
    "Yeah, once I asked old Budgie if I could spend a few weeks running with it. You know what she said?"
    Budgie was the less-than-fond nickname for the Appeal's news editor, Bridget Lawrence. She had a reputation for having greater concern for the paper's budget than for her reporters' pay rates. Plus, when Lawrence made up her mind, she wouldn't budge from her opinion, hence the nickname.
    Julia drooped her jaws in imitation of Budgie's sour bulldog face. "What are we going to run in the meantime, press releases?" Julia said in a high-pitched, cigarette-scarred voice. They shared another laugh.
    For a wild instant, Julia thought of moving back to Memphis and taking up her old life here where she had left off. She could probably get her job back and work on these clues in her spare time. She could get right back to normal, or the closest thing that passed for normal for someone with panic disorder.
    Except such straight roads from the past and future didn't exist. Everything had changed. Julia was losing touch with Mitchell, but she had found Dr. Forrest. And being healed was more important than anything else right now.
    To be healed, she needed to be in Elkwood with her therapist. Sobered, Julia studied the notes again.
    "Well, two things jump out at me," said Julia. "First, all the victims were killed with knives or sharp instruments."
    "Yeah, one M.E. says an ax was used to hack open the chest cavity. Other than that, everything from serrated edges to surgical blades. None of them were shot or bludgeoned first, so we assume the victims were carved up while still alive. So, what's the other connection?"
    "You're slipping a little, Susie Q. You'll never get your Pulitzer at this rate."
    "Sacrilege. What do you see?"
    "The chief investigating officer. The same for each case."
    Sue snatched the papers away and shuffled through them. "I'll be doggoned. Our old friend Lt. Snead."
    "I guess he moved up to Homicide. He headed all these cases and then happened to move to Elkwood right after I did. What are the odds when you cross several one-in-a-million coincidences?"
    "I never was good at math. That's why I went into journalism."
    "Let's just call it 'right next to impossible.'"
    "Works for me. Sounds like we need to do a little digging on Mr. Snead."
    Julia stood, stretched, and rubbed her eyes. Her stomach muscles had clenched without her realizing it. She was on edge, wound tighter than the strings inside a baseball. She wanted to keep moving so the panic didn't have a chance to swoop down over her.
    "We'll have to leave that job for later. I owe you a lunch, remember," Julia said, though she herself wasn't hungry.
    "A reporter never turns down a free meal," Sue said. "It's a long and honorable tradition."
    Julia smiled at her friend, though their closeness had waned through the geographic distance. Julia would be back in Elkwood this evening, in that strange land of mountains and forests and cold water running over boulders. How different this city was, with its plate glass and steel and asphalt, its teeming strangers. She longed for a breath of the sweet mountain air she'd quickly come to love.
    They ate at The E-String, as elegant a lunch counter as Memphis could offer. Sue agreed to do a little background on T.L. Snead, and then asked when Julia and Mitchell were "gettin’ hitched."
    "I don't know anymore," Julia said. "He was so supportive for so many years, but lately he's been acting strange."
    "Honey, I hate to say it, but you haven't exactly been jumping into his arms every chance you get. Can you really blame him? If guys aren’t getting their pipes cleaned out often enough, they get a little cranky."
    Julia pushed her plate away, her chicken salad half-finished. "I know. I feel awful about it. Six months ago, I couldn't imagine life without him. He was so kind and supportive. But lately he's been impatient, trying to rush me into marriage. I just wish he'd understand that once I'm better, I'll be able to give him all of me."
    "Probably in the meantime, all he wants is a piece of you." Sue leered and wiggled her eyebrows.
    Julia looked outside at the crowded street and the bumper-to-bumper traffic. "He's too desperate. He wants to own me."
    "A lot of women would kill to have Mitchell own them."
    "That's one thing that worries me. The more possessive he gets,