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“No shit,” Boudreaux answered. “I can’t believe the captain gave the murder to her. What a crock of shit.” I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear the scowl in his voice. “She’s gotta be fucking the captain. Betcha that’s how she scored the transfer too.”
Pellini sniggered, but I didn’t bother waiting to hear his response. Fuck diplomacy, I thought, as I strode up to them.
“Hi, guys!” I chirped as I reached for a coffee cup. “Whoo boy, do I ever need a hit of java right now.” I gave them both an extra-cheerful grin as I poured the coffee. “All that work fucking the captain in order to get all the good cases is wearing me right the fuck out!” I saluted the two with my coffee cup as they stared at me. “Y’all should try it sometime!” Then I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “But you two should probably practice on each other first so’s ya don’t embarrass yourselves. I mean, I know it’s been ages since either of you has fucked anything other than your hand.”
With that I turned and sauntered back down the hall. I could have sworn I heard a bark of laughter come out of Crawford’s office, although when I passed by, his back was to the door and he appeared engrossed in a report on his computer. But Wetzer appeared in the doorway of his office, and to my shock he laughed and lifted his hand in a high-five salute.
“Dude, that was fucking awesome!” he exclaimed.
I grinned and returned the high five. As I ducked into my office, I heard Wetzer as he called down the hall to Pellini and Boudreaux: “Duuuudes, she fuckin’ owned your asses!”
I laughed as I shut the door behind me. The insinuations concerning my sexual activities were more annoying than offensive. I’d grown used to that sort of thing a long time ago and had accepted that I couldn’t talk to anyone of the male persuasion without being suspected of rampant lust. However, it was a seriously cool feeling to realize that I’d just scored points with others in the department for giving the two dickheads a smackdown for stirring up that bullshit. I’m one of them now. I just proved that I can hold my own.
I squeezed past my desk and plunked down into my chair. My office was only about the size of the walk-in closet in my bedroom, but it was mine. The walls were plain white, which I kept meaning to decorate with pictures or posters, but somehow I never managed to get around to it. I had a desk, a chair, a filing cabinet, and barely enough room for one extra chair. I didn’t mind having a small office. That just meant I didn’t have to share.
I spent the next several hours typing up my notes and running more checks on missing persons, placating the twinges of hunger with the cereal bars I kept stashed in my desk for when I worked late. A few possibilities emerged among the missing persons, and those I set aside. They were probably long shots, but I’d get with Dr. Lanza later to see if we could compare dental records, if they were available. DNA comparison would be used only if we were reasonably certain that we’d found a match, since it was expensive and took forever.>I could see a muscle in his jaw twitch. He opened his mouth to reply, but Doc spoke, interrupting the brittle tableau.
“She was strangled repeatedly.”
Agent Kristoff and I both turned to Doc. I stepped over to the table. “Repeatedly?” I asked, peering down at the neck muscles that had been peeled back.
“See the bruising?” he said, pointing to clots of blood within the muscle with the tip of his scalpel. “It’s in several lines across these strap muscles. She died of ligature strangulation, but it was tightened and loosened several times.”
“More torture,” I murmured. “Poor thing.” I wanted to add, Just like his other victims, for Agent Kristoff’s benefit, but managed to resist.
Doc grimaced. “Yeah, she didn’t die easy, that’s for sure.”
I glanced at Agent Kristoff. He was watching me again, those too-pretty eyes fixed on me and an unreadable expression on his face. He shifted his gaze back to the body when he saw my attention, not speaking.
I felt another flare of annoyance. Was he looking down on me because I expressed sympathy for the victim? I’d run into that a time or two among other police officers—disdain for people who’d lived the sort of lifestyle that made them easy prey.
Well, if he’s that sort, he won’t last long on my task force, I decided. Not that I was sure I even had the power to remove people, but it made me feel better to think it.
We stepped back as Carl snapped pictures of each layer of muscle, showing the depth and position of the bruising. Then Dr. Lanza took a pair of scissors and removed the throat. I watched him as he palpated the trachea.
“Hyoid bone’s fractured. Definitely a strangulation.”
This wasn’t a surprise, since the markings had been so livid on the girl’s neck, plus there’d been so much haemorrhaging in her eyes and face. But it was still hard hearing it actually said out loud. It was almost as if it could be denied, as if the obscene cruelty had not occurred if it was not voiced.
“So that was the cause of death?” I asked.
Doc nodded and set the section of throat aside. “That’s what I’m going to put in my report. I mean, she’s suffered a ton of other trauma, but as hideous as it all is, none of it’s life-threatening. She was tortured for probably close to a week, then killed slowly.”
“Fucker,” Agent Kristoff muttered. I glanced at him, then back to the body. Finally something we could agree on.
“But I think she was bled too,” Doc continued.
A cold knot formed in my gut. “What do you mean?”
Doc lifted her arm and pointed to a notch cut in the crook of her elbow. “The vein is nicked there, and there are similar cuts in the other elbow and in her ankles.” My sick horror grew as Doc pointed out the notches in the veins. I’d missed those deeper cuts among all the other shallow ones. Had those been on the other victims? After a couple of weeks of decomposition, there’d be no way to tell with all of the other trauma.
“So she might have died of blood loss?” Agent Kristoff asked.
Doc shook his head. “No. She died of the strangulation, but she could have lost up to a liter of blood and still been alive when he decided to finish her off with the ligature.”
I suppressed a shudder, with effort. This was very unwelcome news. Especially with the arcane traces on the body and the timing of this new murder. Bloodletting and death magic were an ugly combination that could lead to all sorts of unpleasant possibilities.
Dr. Lanza stepped back and motioned to Carl to take over and sew the body up. He peeled off his bloody gloves, then stripped off the apron and plastic smock and tossed both into a wastebasket with a red plastic liner. “I’m just glad that this one was so fresh. I’d say that she’d been dead only a few hours when she was found. Rigor was beginning to recede and lividity wasn’t fixed.”
