“WTD?” Grant frowned. “What the Fuck?”
Avery shook her head. “The last letter is D.”
Grant tried again. “What the Devil?”
The M.E. shook his head. “No idea. I played with the letters. They could be a message or represent a name.”
“I agree,” Grant said. “I think the killer is leaving a message. Whether he wants us to find the devil or if WTD stands for other words, we need to figure it out.”
Avery rolled the letters around in her head but came up with nothing.
The M.E. turned to face Avery. “I meant to ask you earlier if you’d had any hits on the crime database. Are there any other murders with this kind of presentation?”
Avery wasn’t prepared to answer the man’s question. “Not yet. I’m still looking.” And she’d get on it as soon as she could get her hands on a computer with access to the National Crime Information Center database to search based on the M.E.’s findings so far.
“When were the victims found?” Grant asked.
“The first one was found a week ago by a man walking his dog on a rural route. The dog discovered her in a grove of trees beside the road east of town. She had been laid in a shallow grave lined with red rose petals. The body wasn’t buried, just lying there like the killer wanted her to be found.”
“Who was she?” Avery asked, her heart pinching hard in her chest.
“The first victim has been identified as Jessica Connely, a marketing professional for a major corporation in Dallas. She was reported missing the day before her body was found. The last person to see her was a male colleague she’d had drinks with at a bar their team often frequented after work.”
The M.E. tipped his head toward Avery. “Agent Hart interviewed that man. He left the woman at the bar and went home alone. She’d told him she had called an Uber and didn’t need him to see her home.” The M.E. shook his head. “Obviously, she did. Agent Hart said the man was shocked when he learned Ms. Connelly had been murdered. He had an airtight alibi. I’m surprised Agent Hart hasn’t filled you in on all the data she’s collected so far.”
Grant cast a brief smile in Avery’s direction, the gesture at once kind and disturbingly sexy.
“He just got to town,” Avery covered. “I’m taking him around to gather information and form his own hypotheses.”
The M.E. nodded. “Good. We could always use a fresh, unbiased perspective to help us find the killer before he strikes again.”
“What about her?” Avery asked, nodding toward the poor woman on the table.
“Ramona Sorenson, wife of a service member, mother of two small children from San Antonio.”
Avery frowned. “San Antonio is quite a bit further away than Dallas from Shadow Valley.”
The M.E. nodded. “Four days ago, she was on a shopping trip with friends in San Marcus. She went out to her car to drop her shopping bags and never came back. Her bags were found in the car. She didn’t make it back to her friends. Her body was found two days ago on the side of the road north of Shadow Valley.”
“You’ve had time to compare the two cases. Do you think the same person killed these two women?” Grant waited for the man to think, choose his words and tell him his best guess.
“Not only did he position them in similar shallow graves lined with red rose petals, but the women had very similar physical features.”
“How so?” Grant asked.
Avery leaned closer to the M.E. with morbid curiosity.
“They were both in their early thirties, slim and athletic. They had bluish-purple eyes and long black hair. They looked so much alike, it was creepy.”
Grant nodded, leaned back on his heels, automatically extended his hand but drew it back with a crooked grin. “Thank you, Dr. Murray.”
The M.E. nodded and stared down at the young woman on the table. “I hope you find the guy. Asphyxiation is a terrible way to die.”
“Is there a better way to die?” Avery asked, flipping her hair behind her ear.
“Many,” the M.E. said, his tone flat, his face a mask of stony stoicism. “Let me know what you find when you check the NCIC. I hate to think this guy might have a track record.”
Avery vowed to get access as soon as possible to the database of crimes committed across the country. Two women murdered in the same manner was bad enough. If this guy had been operating for years...
