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“No. Not at all. But I figured you’d be the one to ask.?
?? Harris waited for David to say something, but when he remained silent, she took a step toward the body. “Want to walk me through what you remember?”
David followed her to the man’s still form. His hair was gray, as was his skin. He’d been dead long enough for the blood to drain from his face. He looked peaceful, but a deep bruise around his neck meant he’d suffered as he died. His crushed legs showed he couldn’t have gotten away as someone had slowly stolen his life.
“In the early ‘90s,” David began, “we had figured out someone was killing addicts around Savannah. Within a few weeks of being released from prison, they’d show up dead. Our perp dumped the first three in the ocean. They washed up on shore soon after, and it was easy to tell they’d been killed in the same way—someone had crushed their legs, then strangled them. And pumped them full of heroin.”
“The first three?” Harris asked.
David figured she knew the answer to her own questions, but he played along. Explaining the details to her out loud would force him to remember working the case when he was still a rookie cop. Maybe he’d remember something critical that could help them now.
“We discovered the next four bodies while searching the woods for a missing girl. It’d been about two years since the three bodies had washed up onto shore. The perp didn’t bury one deep enough, and one of our dogs had sniffed it out. We couldn’t tell if the perp strangled him, but he’d crushed his legs, just like the others. When we kept looking, we found three more. Seven bodies total.”
“And then nothing?”
“And then nothing.” David gestured to the body at his feet. “Until now, I guess. Do we know anything about this guy?”
“Not yet. I’m gonna have the boys do their thing, but I wanted you to have the first look at the body and the crime scene.”
David bent down to get a closer look, this time allowing himself to grunt as his knees resisted the movement. Harris said nothing, and he was grateful. Staring into the face of a dead man not much older than himself was enough to make him feel like he was on death’s door.
He took in what he could of the body without moving it. The man had on casual clothes—jeans and a polo—and had no distinguishing features. He looked average, bordering on handsome, with a clean-shaven face. He wore a wedding ring on his left hand.
“It’s been a while.” He looked up at Harris. “But he doesn’t look much like what I remember of the other victims.”
“How so?”
“The three we found on the shore were malnourished. They were addicts and looked like it. This guy looks healthy, all things considered. And he’s wearing a wedding ring.”
“Were the others not married?”
“Not that I can remember, but we’d have to go back to the old case files to find out for sure.”
“What do you make of the wounds?”
David turned back to the body. “Strangulation. Hard to tell without a closer look, but it doesn’t look like the perp used a rope. Back then, we thought maybe he was killing people with a tourniquet.”
“And the legs?”
David’s gaze shifted to the man’s lower body. Blood had seeped through his jeans, but even without that sign, it would’ve been obvious something was wrong. The knee on his right leg was out of place, and his left leg bent at a strange angle. Broken.
“Done to incapacitate the victim. Make sure they couldn’t run away. Then the killer could take their time strangling them.”
“So, it’s personal?”
“Can’t know for sure.” David placed his hands on his knees and stood up with another grunt. “But seems likely. The killer was trying to send a message, we just never figured out what it was.”
“Think this is the same guy?”
“I don’t know. Feels similar, but that was over twenty years ago. It’s been a damn long time since we had a body. We always figured there were more victims, but we never found them. So, why now? Why him?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.” Harris waited until David caught her eye before she spoke again. “You gonna call her?”
David didn’t have to ask to know she was talking about Cassie Quinn.
“No,” he said. “Not yet. She deserves as much of a break as we can give her.”
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