This wasn’t going to be anything they needed to concern themselves with,UNLESSit was a Native doing the deed.
Hopefully, that was not the case.
“The second body is also a white woman,” Ethan said, brushing more snow from the next head in the pile.
That’s when he saw it.
“She’s missing her eyes.”
Oh, and already, he had an inkling as to where this was being taken. They’d seen variations of this before, just none where the victims were skinned, too.
That was new.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Ethan asked his partner.
Gene nodded.
“Yep. See no evil. Speak no evil,” Gene said. “Want to take bets the next body has no ears or they’re mutilated in some way to convey that?”
Ethan wasNOTtaking that bet.
“This is a hand,” Callen said, gently brushing the snow from a lump that was beside him. “Uh, and there’s no skin on it either.”
Yeah, this was a new one.
“They’ve been degloved,” Gene said, staring over Callen’s shoulder. “The hands, the feet, and the bodies, too. They were peeled free of their flesh, and not well. Someone did a rough job of it.”
Well, that was gross.
“Like, there are people out there who do a good job?” Callen asked.
Unfortunately, there were.
“It’s an acquired skill. Like how you can skin a deer better than I ever could. You do it more often and have the skill. I don’t.”
Callen went there.
“Uh, I hope you don’t think this was someone Native doing this.”
Honestly, he didn’t think anything yet. It was too early in the process, so he gave his brother an iota of reassurance.
“Probably not. It’s a bad job. Natives tend to do a good job at skinning once-living things.”
Who would have seen that as a plus for Callen and the other Natives?
To keep this moving, so they could get people here at some point to preserve what was remaining of the scene, Ethan got to the third head in the pile of bodies, and he cleared the snow on the side of her face.
Know what he didn’t find?
Ears.
And there it was.
Three female victims.
Three bodies with altered or missing parts. This was going to be a serial killer, and from the hatchet job on the skinning, he was hoping it would be a new serial killer.
The last thing they needed was fifty bodies in a different location.
