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He shook his head. “I’ve postponed. I want to see this one through.” He looked over at her now. “There are some you have to see through. I knew as soon as I saw her, what had been done to her, I wouldn’t be sitting on a beach tomorrow.”
“I could tell you you’ve got good people working for you here. People who’d take good care of her, and whoever else comes in over the next couple of weeks.”
She sipped the water as she studied the husk of Jacie Wooton, laid bare on a slab in a cold room. “I could tell you that I’m going to find the son of a bitch who did this to her, and build a case that ensures he’ll pay for it. I could tell you all that, and all of it would be true. But I wouldn’t go either.” She rested her head back against the wall. “I wouldn’t go.”
He mirrored her position, head resting on the wall, legs kicked out. With Jacie Wooton’s butchered body on the table a few feet in front of them.
And their silence, after a moment, became companionable.
“What the hell’s wrong with us, Dallas?”
“Beats me.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, knowing he was settling down again. “We love the dead.” When she snorted, he grinned, eyes still closed. “And not in a sick, boink the corpse sort of way, gutterbrain. Despite whoever they were when they were alive, we love them because they were cheated and misused. The ultimate underdogs.”
“I guess we’re getting philosophical anyway.”
“Guess we are.” He did something he rarely did. He touched her. Just a pat of his hand over the back of hers. But it was, Eve realized, a kind of intimacy. An affectionate contact between comrades, and more personal than any act the victim had ever exchanged with a client.
“They come to us,” Morris continued, “from babies to the doddering old, and everything between. No matter who loved them in life, we’re their most intimate companions in death. And sometimes, that intimacy reaches down inside us and braids our guts like cornrows. Ah, well.”
“She didn’t seem to have anybody, not really, in life. From the look I got at her place, the lack of—I guess you could say sentiment—she didn’t want anybody in life. So . . . it’s you and me now.”
“Okay.” He took another drink, rose. “Okay.” Setting the bottle aside, he sealed his hands again, replaced his goggles. “I put a rush on the tox, for what it’s worth. Liver shows some wear, alcohol abuse. But even with that, I’ve found no major damage or disease. Last meal of pasta about six hours premortem. She’s had breast augmentation and an eye tuck, butt lift and some jaw sculpting. All good work.”
“Recent?”
“No. Couple of years, at least on the ass job, and I’d judge that as the last maintenance.”
“Fits. Her luck took a turn, and she wouldn’t’ve had the price of good body work in the last little while.”
“Moving to the job most recently done on her: The killer used a thin, smooth-bladed knife, probably a scalpel for the throat cut, going left to right, downward stroke. From the angle, her chin was up, head back. He came in from behind, likely pulled her head back by her hair with his left hand, sliced with his right.” Morris demonstrated, using both hands on an invisible form. “One stroke, severing the jugular.”
“A lot of blood.” Eve continued to study the body, but imagined Jacie Wooton alive and on her feet, face against the dingy wall of the alley. Then the jerk of the head, the quick shock of the pull, the bright pain and confusion. “Lots of gush and splash.”
“A great deal. He got messy, even coming from behind. For the rest, it’s one long incision.” This Morris drew with a finger in the air. “Quickly, even economically done, I’d say. You can’t call it neat, or surgical, but this wasn’t his first time. He’s cut into flesh befo
re. More than sims, in my opinion. He had to have dealt with flesh and blood before this poor woman.”
“Not surgical. Not a doctor then?”
“I wouldn’t rule it out. He’d have been in a hurry, the light was poor, his own excitement, fear, arousal.” Morris’s exotic face mirrored his inner disgust. “Whatever drives this sort of . . . well, words fail me for once. Whatever drove him might very well have hampered his skill. He removed the female organs with, we’ll say, dispatch. It’s not possible to say if there was sexual contact before the removal. But from the time of death, the mutilation, there wouldn’t have been time for games as they were done minutes apart.”
“Would you peg him as a medical? MT, vet, nurse?” She paused, deliberately, cocked her head. “Pathologist?”
He gave Eve a small grin. “Possible, certainly. It took some considerable skill given the circumstances. But then again, he didn’t have to concern himself about the patient’s chances of survival. He needed some knowledge of anatomy, some knowledge of the tools he used on her. I would say he certainly studied, certainly practiced, but it may not have been with a medical license, and again may not have been with the goal of keeping the patient alive. I hear there was a note.”
“Yeah. Addressed to me, which ensured I’d come on as primary.”
“So he’s made it personal.”
“You could even say intimate.”
“I’ll have the test results and report to you as soon as I can. I want to run a few more, see if I can get a closer handle on the knives.”
“Good. Take it easy, Morris.”
“Oh, I just take it,” he said as she started for the door. “Dallas? Thank you.”
