Chapter 235 Temptations And Triggers
Liam kept his gaze moving, eyes flitting from one image to the next with a growing sense of disbelief. Each pinned photo, each smeared bloodstain, and every article headline told a chilling story. There were at least thirty separate murders—thirty—brutal, grotesque, and disturbingly artistic in their violence. All of them recent. All of them signed with a word that haunted him: Nightcrawler.
And they had all happened within a single week.
"This... this doesn’t make any damn sense," Liam muttered under his breath, his jaw tightening. "I’ve only been out of the loop for seven days. Just one week."
Vanessa stood beside him, arms crossed, eyes dark with frustration. "Yeah, and in that one week, all hell broke loose. It’s a national matter now, Liam. You don’t even know. The city’s flooded with detectives. FBI, special units, forensic teams. Everyone’s crawling all over this like ants."
Liam’s mind reeled. He’d been inside, secluded in his house, sleeping, recovering, explaining things to Dickson and avoiding complications. Somehow, he’d been completely unaware of a storm building right outside his door.
"Detective Ryan..." he said slowly. "Does he still think I’m the Nightcrawler?"
Vanessa shook her head. "No. They ruled you out. Said they checked for any gunshot wounds on your body after your supposed ’accident.’ Found nothing. And on top of that, we confirmed you were in Russia during the killings."
Liam raised an eyebrow and gave a slow nod. That was at least one thing off his shoulders. No cops breathing down his neck, no tracking, no suspicion. He could walk free.
"Good. That simplifies a lot," he muttered.
Vanessa tilted her head toward the wall of chaos. "So... what do you think about all this? About the Nightcrawler?"
Liam glanced back toward the images. He took a step forward, squinting at the small details most would miss. The positioning of a corpse’s arms in one. The consistent angle of incisions. Another had the word Nightcrawler scrawled with blood in perfect symmetry. His eyes moved like scanners, processing quickly.