Kovacliska - Ashes To Ashes Part 10

"He played with the others this way?" Quinn asked, referring to themultiple ligature marks on the throat.

Stone nodded and moved down the body.

"Is this roughly the same amount of fire damage as the other bodies?"

"Yes."

"And the others were clothed."

"Yes. After he killed them, we believe. There were wounds on the bodieswith no corresponding damage to the clothing-what clothing wasn't destroyed by the fire."

"And not in their own clothes," Kovac said. "Stuff the killer picked outfor them. Always synthetic fabrics. Fire melts the fabric. Screws traceevidence on the body."

Undoubtedly it meant more to the mind hunter, he thought with a twingeof impatience. As valuable as he knew profiles of murderers could be,the flatfoot cop in him held the reservation that the brainiacssometimes gave these monsters a little too much credit.

Sometimes killers did things just for the h.e.l.l of it. Sometimes they didthings out of curiosity or pure evil or because they knew it would jamup the investigation.

"We gonna get any fingerprints?" he asked.

"Nope," Stone said as she examined the back of the left hand. The toplayer of skin had turned a dirty ivory color and was sloughing off.

The underlayer was red. Knuckle bones gleamed white where the skin hadseared away entirely.

"Not good ones anyway," she said. "My guess is he positioned the bodywith the hands crossed over the chest or stomach. The fire instantlymelted the blouse and the resulting goo melted into the fingertipsbefore the tendons in the arms began to constrict and pull the handsaway from the body."

"Is there any chance of separating the fabric residue from thefingertips?" Quinn asked. "The fabric itself might bear an impression ofthe friction ridges."

"We don't have the capability here," she said. "Your people back inWashington might be game to try. We can detach the hands, bag them, andsend them in."

"I'll have Walsh call ahead."

Coughing like he had tuberculosis, Walsh had begged off from theautopsy.

There was no need for the whole task force to attend. They would all bebriefed in the morning and would all have access to the reports andphotographs.

Stone moved methodically down the length of the body. The victim's legswere bare, the skin seared and blistered in an irregular pattern wherethe accelerant had burned away in a flash.

"Ligature marks at the right and left ankles," she said, her small,gloved hands moving tenderly, almost lovingly, over the tops of thevictim's feet-as much emotion as she would show during the process.

Kovac took in the appearance of the wounds the bindings had made aroundthe victim's ankles, trying hard not to picture this woman tied to a bedin some maniac's chamber of horrors, struggling so frantically to getfree that the ligatures had cut grooves into her flesh.

"The fibers have already gone to the BCA lab," Stone said. "They seemed consistent with the others-a white polypropylene twine," she specifiedfor the benefit of Quinn and Hamill. "Tough as h.e.l.l. You can buy it inany office supply store. The county buys enough every month to wraparound the moon. It's impossible to trace.

"Deep lacerations in a double-X pattern to the bottoms of both feet."

She went on with the exam. She measured and catalogued each cut, thendescribed what appeared to be cigarette burns to the pad of each toe. "Torture or disfigurement to conceal her ident.i.ty?" Hamill wondered aloud.

"Or both," Liska said.

"Looks like all of this was done while she was alive," Stone said.

"Sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Kovac muttered.

"If she got free, she couldn't have run," Quinn said. "There was a case

in Canada a few years ago where the victim's Achilles tendons were severed for the same reason. Did the other victims have similar wounds?"

"They had each been tortured in a variety of ways," Stone answered.

"Neither exactly the same. I can get you copies of the reports."

"That's already being taken care of, thank you."

There was no hope of removing the victim's clothing without taking skin with it. Stone and her a.s.sistant snipped and peeled, coaxing the melted fibers gently away with forceps, Stone swearing under her breath every few minutes.

Antic.i.p.ation tightened in Kovac's gut as the destroyed blouse and a layer of flesh were worked away from the left side of the chest.

Stone looked across the body at him. "Here it is."

"What?" Quinn asked, moving to the head of the table.

Kovac stepped in close and surveyed the killer's handiwork. "The detail we've managed to keep away from the stinking reporters. This pattern of stab wounds-see?"

A tight cl.u.s.ter of eight marks, half an inch to an inch in length,

perforated the dead woman's chest roughly in the vicinity of the heart.

"The first two had this," Kovac said, glancing at Quinn. "They were each strangled and the stabbing was done after the fact."

"In that exact pattern?"

"Yep. Like a star. See?" Holding his hand three inches above the corpse, he traced the pattern in the air with his index finger. "The longer

marks form one X. The shorter marks form another. Smokey Joe strikes again."

"Other similarities too," Stone said. "See here: amputation of the

nipples and areola."

"Postmortem?" Quinn asked.

"No."

Stone looked to her a.s.sistant. "Lars, let's turn her over. See what wefind on the other side."

The body had been positioned on its back before being set ablaze.

Consequently, the fire damage was contained to the front side. Stoneremoved the undamaged pieces of clothing and bagged them for the lab. Apiece of red spandex skirt. A sc.r.a.p of chartreuse blouse. No underwear.

"Uh-huh," Stone murmured to herself, then glanced up at Kovac.

"A section of flesh missing from the right b.u.t.tock."

"He did this with the others too?" Quinn asked.

"Yes. With the first victim he took a chunk from the right breast.

With the second, it was also the right b.u.t.tock."

"Eliminating a bite mark?" Hamill speculated aloud.

"Could be," Quinn said. "Biting certainly isn't unusual with this kindof killer. Any indication of bruising in the tissue? When these guyssink their teeth in, it isn't any love nip."

Stone took up her little ruler to measure the wounds precisely. "Ifthere was any bruising, he's cut it out. There's considerable musclegone."

"Jesus," Kovac muttered with disgust as he stared at the shiny dark redsquare on the victim's body, the flesh cut out precisely with a smallsharp knife. "Who does this guy think he is? Hannibal f.u.c.king Lecter?"

Quinn gave him a look from the headless end of the body. "Everybody'sgot a hero."

CASE NUMBER 11-7820, Jane Doe, Caucasian female, had no organic reasonto die. She had been healthy in all respects. Well fed, carrying theextra ten or fifteen pounds most people did. Although what her last mealhad been, Dr. Stone had not been able to determine. If this was Jillian,she had digested the dinner she'd eaten with her father before herdeath. Her body was free of disease and natural defect. Stone had judgedher to be between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. A young woman withmost of her life ahead of her until she crossed the path of the wrong man.

This type of killer rarely chose a victim who was ready to die.

Quinn reviewed this fact as he stood on the wet tarmac of the morgue'sdelivery bay. The damp cold of the night seeped into his clothes, intohis muscles. Fog hung like a fine white shroud over the city.

There were too d.a.m.n many victims who were young women: pretty youngwomen, ordinary young women, women with everything going for them, andwomen with nothing in their lives but a sliver of hope for something better. All of them broken and wasted like dolls, abused and thrown awayas if their lives had meant nothing at all.

"Hope you're not attached to that suit," Kovac said as he walked up,fishing a cigarette out of a pack of Salem Menthols.

Quinn looked down at himself, knowing the stench of violent death hadpermeated every fiber of his clothing. "Professional hazard. I didn'thave time to change."

"Me neither. Used to drive my wives crazy."

"Wives-plural?"

"Consecutive, not concurrent. Two. You know how it is-the job and all.

.. . Anyway, my second wife used to call them corpse clothes-whatever Ihad to wear to a really putrid death scene or an autopsy or something.She made me undress in the garage, and then you'd think she'd maybe burnthe clothes or stick 'em in the trash or something, 'cause she sure ash.e.l.l wouldn't let me wear them again.

But no. She'd box the stuff up and take it to the Goodwill-on account ofit still had wear in it, she'd say." He shook his head in amazement.

"Underprivileged people all over Minneapolis were walking aroundsmelling like dead bodies, thanks to her. You married?"

Quinn shook his head.

"Divorced?"

"Once. A long time ago."

So long ago, the brief attempt at marriage seemed more like a halfremembered bad dream than a memory. Bringing it up was like kicking apile of ashes, stirring old flecks of emotional debris insidehimfeelings of frustration and failure and regret that had long sincegone cold. Feelings that came stronger when he thought of Kate.

"Everybody's got one," Kovac said. "It's the job."

He held the cigarettes out, Quinn declined.

"G.o.d, I gotta get that smell out of my mouth." Kovac filled his lungsand absorbed the maximum amount of tar and nicotine before exhaling,letting the smoke roll over his tongue. It drifted away to blend intothe fog. "So, you think that's Jillian Bondurant in there?"

"Could be, but I think there's a chance it's not. The UNSUB went to ah.e.l.l of a lot of trouble to make sure we couldn't get prints."

"But he leaves Bondurant's DL at the scene. So maybe he nabbedBondurant, then figured out who she was and decided to hang on to her,hold her for ransom," Kovac speculated. "Meanwhile, he picks up anotherwoman and offs her, leaves Bondurant's DL with the body to show whatmight happen if Daddy doesn't cough up."

Kovac narrowed his eyes as if he were playing the theory through againfor review. "No ransom demand we know of, and she's been missing since Friday. Still, maybe .. . But you don't think so."

"I've never seen it happen that way, that's all," Quinn said. "As arule, with this type of murder you get a killer with one thing on hismind: playing out his fantasy. It's got nothing to do withmoneyusually."

Quinn turned a little more toward Kovac, knowing this was the member ofthe task force he most needed to win over. Kovac was the investigativelead. His knowledge of these cases, of this town, and of the kind ofcriminals who lived in its underbelly would be invaluable.

Trouble was, Quinn didn't think he had the energy left to pull out theold I'm-just-a-cop-like-you routine. He settled for some truth, instead.

"The thing about profiling is that it's a proactive tool based on thereactive use of knowledge gained from past events. Not a perfectscience.

Every case could potentially present something we've never seen before."

"I hear you're pretty good though," the detective conceded. "You nailedthat child-killer out in Colorado right down to his stutter."

Quinn shrugged. "Sometimes all the pieces fit. How long before you canget your hands on Bondurant's medical records for comparison with thebody?"