Daddy's Little Killer (21 page)

Odd.  I didn't realize a morgue had
regular hours per se, but understood the gist.  It didn't
matter.  My only interest was in the search.  And coffee
perhaps.

"Is there somewhere that I can buy a cup of
coffee in here?" 

He scowled.  "Why?"

"This search might take awhile.  I
could use an infusion of caffeine in the meantime."

"This way."

I followed him to a room marked "staff only"
and found a coffee machine and assorted goodies in the vending
machines.  Two steaming large coffees and a handful of
chocolate treats later, and we were on our way back to Maya's
office.

Surly guard's demeanor had softened
considerably by the time we reached the door. 

"I can tell what bonded you and Dr.
Winslow."

"Oh?"

He pointed to the booty from vending. 
"She's addicted to the same junk.  I don't know how you girls
eat that stuff and stay thin.  My wife so much as looks at a
bag of M&Ms and she gains fifteen pounds."

"Your wife probably has the good sense to
keep normal hours and not work forty-eight or longer at a
stretch."

He shuddered and grinned.  "I'd hate to
see her if she didn't get a full eight every night.  Give me a
call if you need to head back for more java.  We usually send
one of the guys on a run at around two for something better than
that horrible machine."

I pulled a twenty out of my purse and handed
it to him.  "Triple shot, non-fat, sugar free cinnamon
latte.  No whipped cream."

"Triple shot skinny cinny.  Got
it."

I dug into the search, never dreaming that
the results would keep me ensconced in Maya's office until she
returned to work the next morning.

Chapter 19

My experience with forensic pathologists is
not limited to Maya Winslow alone.  And what I do for a living
predisposes me to profiling more than criminal behavior.  It's
a hazard of the job I suppose.  What I've observed over the
years is that medical examiners, those who've gone the extra mile
into forensics specifically, tend to be overly organized. 
Everything has its place.  The trash reaches a precise level
before it must be emptied.  Files are properly catalogued and
stored.  Not so much as a stray ink pen is found lying on a
desk. 

It's that organizational skill and attention
to detail that make good medical examiners become great
pathologists.  It was my opinion that the only thing that held
Maya back in Maryland was her refusal to be a politician in
addition to a top notch forensic clinician.  She had become my
platinum standard for all medical examiners.

What I did to her office by the time she
rolled in at six-thirty might be considered a crime in some circles
of the country.  I had effectively papered every square inch
of her desk with printouts from my ViCAP search.  Coffee rings
stained some, and cups served as paper weights on others.  I
really meant to clean up before she arrived, but had lost complete
track of time until Randy informed me at six that there would be no
more coffee runs.

The security staff were all grateful for my
hourly generosity that kept them running back for more tall, triple
shot skinny cinnies all night.  If they went for me, it was
only fair that I bought for them after all.

He glanced at his watch.  "We go off
duty at eight, Eriksson.  If I have any more coffee, I'll be
up until noon a week from Sunday.  Besides.  Dr. Winslow
will be here in about an hour, and if she finds this mess in here,
she's gonna blow a gasket."

"Right.  Maya hates messes."  I
was buzzing from all the extra espresso, not to mention leads that
could very well answer every question I had about the Bennett
assault, particularly the gap in time.

After several successful hits on rape cases
with matching DNA (which Maya would've eventually uncovered through
CODIS), I expanded my search of young girls who were status missing
persons.  That was the motherlode.  Twice the number of
missing girls who matched my criteria in this state alone, within a
75 mile radius of Darkwater Bay no less, popped up in ViCAP.

No wonder somebody wanted to halt my
search.

"And Eriksson?"  Randy wrinkled his
nose.  "I hate to be blunt but …"

"What?"  I tucked an oily wisp of hair
behind my ear.  Curse this weather.  Humidity has never
been a friend to my hair.

"You might wanna hit the shower before you
go to central this morning."

I grinned.  "A little ripe, huh?"

"In a delicate and beautiful sort of way, of
course."

"Your wife has trained you well,
Randy.  Do you suppose Maya would object if I absconded with a
pair of scrubs?  There's got to be a locker and a shower in
this place.  Knowing all her little neat-freak-isms, I am
positive that she doesn't wear her perfect clothing to and from
home without a good sterilization in between."

He chuckled.  "C'mon.  I'll show
you where you can abscond to your hearts content."

I was on my way down the hall to her office,
freshly scrubbed and decked from head to toe in blue green scrubs
when I heard the shriek.  I glanced at my watch.  Hadn't
Randy said she would be in the office at seven?

Inside her office, Maya stood with her hands
clasped over her mouth. 

"I was just coming in to straighten up."

"Helen!  I said you could use my
computer, not destroy my office!"

"Oh, it's not that bad.  Some
paper.  A few coffee cups."

Then she noticed me.

"You're wearing
scrubs. 
Randy!
"

"Don't blame him.  You've got some
great people guarding the goods, Maya."  I reached for a half
eaten Snickers.  "Chocolate?"

"Oh.  My.  God."

I started tossing empty coffee cups into the
trash, aware of her jerking posture every time one of the cups
wasn't quite empty and sloshed on impact.

"You better have solved this case,
Helen.  Jesus Christ and General Jackson!"

The top of her desk appeared, along with
several M&Ms that had eloped to safe cover.  I swiped with
one hand and sent them skittering to the pile of coffee cups. 
I clutched my stack of papers to my chest.  "All better. 
See?"

"It is not all better.  My God."

Randy poked his head through the door. 
"You rang?"  He winked conspiratorially at me.

"I need environmental
services in here
STAT
."

My lips quivered.  STAT
housekeeping.  Oh my.

"Let me empty that for you, Dr. Winslow," he
offered.  "That way you won't have to wait.  Eriksson,
are you ready to head out now?"

"Not just yet, Randy.  I think I've got
some serious groveling to do before I leave."

She relaxed marginally when the overflowing
bin was emptied, smoothed her suit and sat in her chair after
careful inspection.

"Maya, I'm glad I didn't accept the offer to
bunk at your house.  You'd probably kill me before I could
solve this murder."

"Are you close?"  Her ire
evaporated.  "Did this … atrocity help you make progress?"

"Like you wouldn't believe," I
grinned.  "Can you put a rush on the DNA you pulled from Gwen
Foster's body?"

"Sure, but without a known sample for
comparison –"

I waved my stack of papers.  "Believe
me when I tell you that I have more than reasonable suspicion to
think you'll get hits, Maya."

"You found other cases that match this
M.O.?"

"Not exactly."

Maya rolled her eyes.  "Well which is
it?"

"I had to enter the information for Brighton
Bennett's murder into ViCAP.  Nobody bothered to do it fifteen
years ago."

"Nice."

"So the only match when I searched was the
case that I entered.  But fifteen years is a long time for
someone who escalated to that level of violence to go between
murders, right?" 

"You're bouncing on the balls of your
feet.  What size shoes do you wear?"

"Huh?"

"Heels and scrubs.  Not a good fashion
statement.  We've got a bunch of spare sneakers around
here.  I'm sure we can find a pair in your size."

"I'm not wearing sneakers from a stiff."

"They're from the morgue's softball team,"
Maya rolled her eyes hard enough for them to get stuck. 
"Honestly, Helen.  We don't keep personal effects that come in
with the bodies.  Take those heels off before you fall
over."

"Anyway," I toed out of my heels and started
pacing.  "I got to thinking about the first murder, how
unusual it would be for a one shot kill with that kind of skill,
and I figured we might find other cases in ViCAP, which there
weren't any.  So I started comparing the similarities between
Bennett and Gwen Foster, and I made an assumption that can't be
verified thanks to the laziness of your predecessor."

"You searched for rape victims."

"Right.  Reports, unsolved cases, a
specific age range.  Broke my heart, Maya.  There are
thousands of them."

"Color me surprised.  Please tell me
we're not going to be combing through thousands of DNA
results."

"I narrowed my search, first to the west
coast, and eventually to a three county area surrounding Darkwater
Bay."

"You got hits?"

"Almost two dozen.  So then I started
thinking about this guy's skills dismembering the victims we have,
or had in Brighton Bennett's case."

"And?"

"She couldn't have been his first
kill.  Didn't you tell me that what little Storm recorded
supported the theory that Foster was dismembered the same way?"

"Well he didn't make any notations regarding
the type of weapon, serration or anything like that, but he
indicated that the blows were single, without hesitation."

"That is somebody who knows what they're
doing.  How do we get skill?  Practice."

"He could be a hunter or a butcher."

"True enough, but unless he's hunting human
beings, our anatomy differs significantly from the average
deer."

"Another good point."

"So I started thinking about where Brighton
Bennett's body was discovered.  By the way, I had a
fascinating discussion with Tony Briscoe and Crevan Conall last
night about the history of Darkwater Bay."

"Oh boy.  No more caffeine for you,
princess."

"Don't call me princess."

"All right,
doctor
.  But you're
acting like you've snorted a kilo of coke."

"Brighton Bennett was found in the Elegiac
River, which empties into Darkwater Bay, which in turn, is a hop
skip and a jump from the Pacific Ocean."

Maya sat up. 

"You follow?"

"They didn't find more bodies because the
final resting place was the sea."

"Exact-a-mundo."

"Don't make me call you the Fonz."

I grinned.  "So I started searching,
well, re-searching if you want to be picky.  I narrowed the
search on one hand, but added missing persons cases, status
open."

"God, please tell me you didn't find more of
them."

"A lot more.  Close
to
three dozen
.  Well, initially there were more than that, so I went
back to this rudimentary profile I've been cooking up since I
walked into that crime scene, and really, it's the one thing that
didn't fit.  It's been nagging me from go."

"Breathe Helen.  Organize your
thoughts."

See what I mean?  Sticklers for
neatness right down to thoughts.

I sucked in a deep breath. 

"All of my searching was within very
specific age parameters, because sexual predators, the serial
types, are extremely preferential.  They watch for their
type.  They stalk.  They plan, and execute in an effort
to find that one that meets the fantasy."

"I think I've read that somewhere."

"Don't be flip."  I jerked my head at
her computer.  "You need a color printer by the way. 
Black and white doesn't do justice to photographs."

"I'll see if I can fit that into the budget
next year."

"Wake the monitor, Maya."

She jiggled the mouse and started clicking
her way through the chaos I left on her monitor. 
"Incredible."

"His type:  petite, blonde hair, blue
eyes, almond in shape, and not a short haircut in the bunch of
them."

"And Gwen Foster looks like … whoa."

"She and her cousin weren't that far apart
in age.  Just four years.  They look remarkably similar,
don't you think?"

"Yeah," Maya said.  "So that makes you
think this guy abandoned his age preference?"

"Not abandoned.  Revisited.  Think
about it, Maya."

"I'm trying to follow you, but really,
you're not particularly cogent this morning.  Is this
caffeine, stress, sleep deprivation, a sugar high or all of the
above?"

"The episiotomy scar.  The absence of
any mention of her having a baby in her medical record.  The
fact that her friend – who mind you, isn't particularly trustworthy
– insists that Gwen never had children."

"She was a victim when she was a teenager
too."

"A survivor.  A woman who was left with
a memento of the event."

"Jesus Christ and General Jackson," Maya
murmured.  "How in the hell did you put all of this together
in less than eight hours?"

"I have no proof."  My lip was growing
tender from all the gnawing and debate through the night. 
"It's only a theory."

"It's a pretty compelling theory.  So
you're thinking that for some reason, this guy came back and
revisited the first crime on Gwen and killed her this time. 
Why after all these years?"

"I don't know."

"Sit down.  You're making me
dizzy."

I flopped into a chair, one leg still
bouncing wildly.  "If I can figure out what made him abandon
his preference, I'll be a step closer to understanding all of
this."