Free The Edge of Dreams by Rhys Bowen

Poor man. What an awful way to die. And that note—it shows a character completely devoid of human feeling, wouldn’t you say? Pleased with his own cleverness.”
    “I’m afraid you’re right. A warped and twisted person who delights in killing. All I can hope is that he meant what he said when he talked about saving the best for last—that he really intends to stop this killing spree.”
    “Going back to the meat packer—what do we know about him? He didn’t supply meat to the judge or any of the others, I take it?”
    “He had married and moved to the city about a year ago. Until then he ran a butcher’s shop in the Catskills. From what his wife tells us, it was an extremely happy marriage, a second for him after his first wife died. A first for her, somewhat late in life, but they were both looking forward to a bright future.”
    “If he was locked in the meat safe all weekend, didn’t she report him missing?” I asked. “Isn’t that suspicious?”
    “That’s the thing. He had told her he was going up to Woodstock to visit his mother. She didn’t want to come, not being too fond of his mother. So she thought she knew where he was.”
    “And she hadn’t recently taken out a life insurance policy on him?” I asked.
    Daniel laughed. “What a gruesome little thing you are. Most women would have reached for the smelling salts at the very start of this conversation, not discussed it as calmly as if it concerned the price of sugar.”
    “You know I’m not most women.” I turned back to the mirror to put a final pin in my unruly hair. Then something struck me. I put down the hairpins and leafed through the papers.
    “There’s one missing,” I said, waving them triumphantly.
    “What do you mean? You’ve read them all.”
    I shook my head. “The murders are all about three weeks apart, right up to yesterday’s train crash, if we include that. But there wasn’t one in early August. Why not? Could that have been one murder he couldn’t pull off, or a note that somehow didn’t get delivered to you? Or was he off on vacation at the seashore?”
    Daniel took the papers from me and examined them, frowning. “That’s an acute observation, Molly. But if there was one murder he couldn’t commit, how would we ever find out about it?”
    “I don’t know, but it seems that’s your best chance of solving this,” I said. “Because at the beginning of August, somebody might have lived to tell the tale.”

 
    Seven
    Downstairs a clock chimed with a sweet, melodious ting .
    Daniel stood up. “I should be going. The commissioner wants me at today’s briefing and will no doubt be annoyed that I’ve come up with nothing new.”
    “Apart from the missing date in August,” I pointed out.
    “That may have a perfectly simple explanation,” Daniel said. “It was devilishly hot. There were the usual summer epidemics in the city at that time. Our killer could have caught some disease and been too sick to carry out his planned murder. Or he could have decided to let the early-August victim live. Or it could be that he hadn’t actually planned these murders to be three weeks apart, and the dates were purely circumstantial.”
    “I think he sounds like the sort of meticulous individual to whom dates would matter. It’s also important that several of these deaths, if not all, could have been ruled as accidents. Feebleminded Dolly stepping out in front of a tram; the overbearing mother accidentally knocking her lamp into the bath; the judge’s wife dying of gastric trouble; the butcher accidentally locking himself into the safe. Only your university student’s cyanide would have shown up as a deliberate murder.” I looked up at Daniel. “This is a game to him, Daniel. A game of cat and mouse, and he wants to make sure you stay on his trail.”
    “You can say that again.” Daniel sighed as he walked toward the door. “He is enjoying taunting me, showing up my inadequacies.”
    “All the more reason to