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The Last Kiss Killer had wiped Kirstie’s mangled face with the washcloth, applied the lipstick to her mouth and tossed both onto the floor.

“This is new,” Gretchen said, peering over her shoulder. “He’s never left one behind before.”

“He also didn’t clean up after himself.” Josie wondered if he’d been sloppy enough to leave usable prints on the cap or casing.

Anya leaned over Kirstie’s face, snapping photos, her professional demeanor firmly in place. Her voice was carefully controlled but Josie saw the fleeting tremor in her hands. “He beat her into submission before he killed her. The injuries to her face are antemortem, if that wasn’t obvious from all the bleeding, bruising, and swelling.”

“I didn’t see any blood elsewhere in the house,” said Gretchen.

Josie batted away a couple of flies. They were the first insects to seek out a dead body, looking for warm orifices in which to lay their eggs. “Everything happened in this room,” she said. “He beat her, flipped her over, garroted her, then flipped her again so he could carry out his sick little ritual.”

“This guy’s got some seriously deep-seated rage that he’s not even trying to repress anymore,” Gretchen said.

The air around them felt thick with the echoes of violence. Whatever control the Last Kiss Killer had had in his initial murders had slipped with Sylvia but shattered with Kirstie. He was unhinged, and it had made him careless.

He hadn’t been subtle about breaking in. He’d left two boot prints. He’d killed in broad daylight instead of the middle of the night. Then he’d left the lipstick behind. He was unraveling. After thirteen years of suppressing his murderous tendencies, he was unleashed. It made him more dangerous than ever, but it also increased the risk of him getting caught.

Anya put her camera down on the dresser and rifled through her bag, taking out several items and lining them up on the bed alongside Kirstie’s body. Gauze pads, disinfectant wipes, a small red biohazard bag, a scalpel and a handheld digital thermometer attached to a stainless-steel ten-inch pointed probe. Josie watched as she pushed up Kirstie’s tank top and with ruthless efficiency made a quarter-inch incision on her right side, just under her rib cage. Anya used a disinfectant wipe to clean the scalpel and then dropped it into the biohazard bag. Then she pushed the probe deep into Kirstie’s body and watched the numbers on the small box in her palm as they climbed. They waited. Finally, Anya said, “Her liver temperature is 92.3 degrees.”

Gretchen glanced behind her at a thermostat on the wall. “The ambient temperature is seventy-two degrees.”

Josie did some math in her head. In the first stages of algor mortis—which was the slow drop in body temperature after death—a body typically cooled at a rate of 1.5 degrees per hour under normal conditions, meaning no extreme heat or cold. “She’s been dead about four hours, maybe a bit more.”

With a nod, Anya slid the probe out of the body cavity. She used gauze to clean the blood and tissue from it before sanitizing it with a disinfectant wipe. The soiled supplies went into the red biohazard bag before she tied it up and returned it, along with the scalpel and thermometer, to her kit. “I can do more extensive testing and precise calculations when I get her on the table but yes, her time of death is likely between 10:45 and eleven a.m.” She waved them closer. “You two help me turn her. I want to get a look at her back.”

Gretchen and Josie lined up shoulder to shoulder across from Anya. They braced their knees against the mattress. Josie gripped Kirstie’s shoulder. Even through the vinyl gloves, Josie could feel the unnatural cold that had settled deep in her body.

Gretchen hooked a hand under Kirstie’s hip. “No fire this time,” she said.

“He didn’t need it,” Josie replied. “Didn’t need a distraction. It was only Kirstie here.”

Together, they rolled Kirstie onto her side with her front facing them. Her limbs were stiff and unyielding which meant that rigor mortis had set in. It usually started about two hours postmortem.

“The question is whether he knew she was alone,” Gretchen said. “And how?”

They watched Anya climb onto the bed. She began looking under Kirstie’s clothing for additional injuries as well as in the bedclothes for any evidence the ERT hadn’t flagged.

“Assuming it wasn’t her husband,” Josie said. “He could have been watching her. Waiting for Dean to leave.”

“Let’s talk about the fact that this guy killed Sylvia and her daughter-in-law,” Gretchen said. “I know you don’t believe in coincidences.”

“Not in this line of work,” Josie said. “He’s had his eye on Sylvia all these years. He clearly knew where she lived—and she’s lived alone for a very long time—but he didn’t come after her until the interview, which means there was something about the interview that set him off.”

“This case hasn’t gotten any attention since the initial press over Sylvia’s attack died down.”

Josie shifted her knees, trying to maintain her grip on Kirstie’s shoulder to keep her in place while Anya continued her exam. “He stopped killing after that. As careful as he was in those first six killings, it makes sense that Sylvia rattled him. Things didn’t go as planned, which meant he could have made mistakes. Could have been caught.”

Gretchen adjusted her hold on Kirstie’s hip. “Would the fear of getting caught really have kept him in line all these years?”

“Maybe he found other outlets for his rage,” Josie suggested. “Maybe he wasn’t afraid of getting caught. It’s possible that keeping tabs on Sylvia was more about taunting her than making sure she didn’t bring more media scrutiny to his case.”

“It was like playing with his food,” Gretchen agreed. “She moved to a new city, transitioned into a new job, lived a quiet life. Refused to give interviews.”

“He dropped off a lipstick every year to remind her that her ordeal was never really over.”

“Not Devil Divine though,” Gretchen noted. “According to Carter?”

“Right. He didn’t describe anything close to it but it’s possible the killer didn’t want to bring attention to the specific type he used in his crimes. Any lipstick would have been enough to scare Sylvia.”