‘You ever seen anyone bore through a victim before?’
Ella checked her mental rolodex of historical killers and came up with two names.‘Jack the Ripper did something similar to his final victim.Andrei Chikatilo would sometimes rip out his victims’ guts.But they both attacked in frenzies, and they certainly never took the time to chain their victims up.This killer is much more controlled.’
Bartram edged closer.‘How would someone pull this off?What kind of instrument could tunnel into someone’s stomach like this?’
Ripley slipped on a pair of latex gloves and traced one finger around the inside of the wound.‘Something bigger than a knife but smaller than a chainsaw.’
Ella added, ‘Even a chainsaw would struggle to do this.He’s cut through flesh, bone, muscle tissue, internal organs.A surgeon would struggle to pull this off.’
‘The whole thing is uneven and jagged,’ Ripley pointed out.‘It’s like the killer was digging for something, but with no precision.It’s like an animal clawing its prey.’
Ella locked onto the wound again.There was certainly a ritualistic component carried out here, yet it bore the hallmarks of a psyche that hadn’t yet crossed the threshold into insanity.Despite the brutality, he was still in control.‘Whoever did this, he’s not some deluded maniac.He’s got brains as well as brawn.He would need some serious physical strength to abduct an adult woman and restrain her like this, and he’s got the self-awareness to scope this cabin out in advance.He’s sadistic, organized.Nothing here is an accident.’
Ripley patted down the victim's pockets one by one.'Nothing.No wallet, no phone, no keys.'
‘Our killer must have taken them.He knows what he’s doing.’
Ella stepped back and worked through the details.This had to be much more than a simple thrill kill because the circumstances were too specific.Thrill killers did the deed and maintained as much distance from their victims as possible.They didn’t hang around, nor did they take the time to restrain their victims and unleash the contents of their innermost sadistic fantasies.By the same token, this was more than a lust killing because sadists usually incorporated elements of sexual assault.
Which left one conclusion.
They were dealing with an abnormal psychology type that didn’t fit neatly into any box.
‘We need to wait for forensics to finish up before we jump to any conclusions,’ Ripley said.'First, we need an ID on the victim, and if we can find out what tool he used to do this, it might give us a little more insight.’
'Agreed.We need to look at who owns these cabins too.They're old as hell, but they might still be registered to someone.'
Ella turned away from the victim and swept over the cabin's interior once more, taking in every detail.The dust on the floor caught her attention.It was disturbed, but not in a way that left any recognizable footprints.Someone had taken care to sweep away their tracks, thus leaving a barren landscape devoid of any meaningful traces.
She walked the perimeter, guided by instinct.In the corner, still covered in dust, she saw something.
‘Ripley, look at this.’
Her partner crossed the room.'What am I looking at?'
There were four perfectly-symmetrical marks in the dust.'Something was here.Something heavy enough to leave impressions.'
Ripley leaned closer.‘Our guy brought his own apparatus.’
‘But what apparatus?What’s so big that it needs to be placed on the ground like this?’
Ripley turned towards the victim, then back to the marks in the dust.‘Maybe it’s from the table?He could have stored it in the corner then set it up at showtime.’
‘Maybe.’
A new chill settled in the room, colder than the Wisconsin air outside.Their unsub didn't just find this place.He brought his own equipment.He came here to work.
‘Okay,’ Ripley said, ‘first we find out who this woman is.We’ll head to the precinct and check missing persons reports.Then we’ll wait for the autopsy and forensics results and go from there.’
Ella looked around the cabin once more and committed every detail to memory.After five minutes, she found there was nothing left here for her, just an eviscerated body and a hundred unanswered questions.Whoever had killed this woman had turned this cabin into a theater of their own design, and Ella needed to uncover the story he’d written in blood.
Yes, Wisconsin was where they bred them.
CHAPTER SIX
At the Cedarburg precinct, Ella and Ripley had been given a corner table in a records room.They’d driven straight here from the scene, and Ella’s sinuses were still plagued by the olfactory assault of decomposition.She'd opened the car windows despite the cold, trying to air it out, but it hadn't worked.
Ella had just begun scouring through the missing persons reports.She’d got into the Cedarburg PD network via ethernet port and established a secure tunnel back to the FBI database through the FBI’s encrypted VPN.Then she used her CJIS credentials to access the national N-DEx portal, which gave her a direct, if sluggish, window to Wisconsin’s local databases.Ripley was doing the same, albeit much slower.Ella was convinced that her partner was still recovering from the whisky overdose on the plane.
