“ Where multiple victims have been dumped at once?”
She brightened a bit, hopeful. “Has the computer told you anything along those lines?”
“ Nothing quite like this, no. Like I said, London thinks there could be a connection, but I don’t see it.”
“ What do you think he’s trying to tell us, Eriq, sending us three bodies at once?”
Eriq shrugged and pushed a door open for her. “Your guess is as good as mine. But I would hazard a guess that he’s not quite as in control of himself as he was earlier.”
“ He’s getting careless; that’s for sure.”
“ Not so much careless as uncaring, perhaps.”
“ Which could be made to work in our favor, if we work swiftly.” She stopped him in his tracks and looked deeply into his eyes, asking, “He’s become bored with the game that he’s played thus far, hasn’t he? That’s what you’re driving at, isn’t it?”
“ Let’s say he’s altering the routine of his fantasy. If it holds true that all three of this morning’s victims were his to give up to us whenever he chose, its clear that he’s become more interested in… well, in us…”
“ Good Christ, you don’t suppose he’s stepped up his killing spree as a direct result of reading about our coming in on the case, giving the case a high profile, do you? So he plays to the press even more than ever, which means he steps up his killing agenda?”
“ It is a distinct possibility, Jess.” She dropped her gaze. “God… so, he jazzes it up a bit. To what end?” To make it that much more challenging, exciting, dangerous maybe.”
She nodded, relenting. “Yeah, J can see that.”
They continued along the corridor, coming to the Miami- Dade Crime Lab, one of the finest in the nation, where Coudriet had already made arrangements for Jessica to view the additional two bodies that’d washed ashore that morning.
She had instantly wanted to know more about the freshest of the three kills as soon as she’d learned of the three- in-one deal allotted them by the murdering Night Crawler. That body had turned out to be the one Coudriet had attended to. The most recent kill could quite possibly tell them far more than any other body turned up thus far.
“ I’ve had an opportunity to reexamine my corpse from the Flamingo Hilton Beach Resort,” Dr. Coudriet told them. “She hasn’t been in the water for longer than a week and a half, maybe ten, twelve days at the outside, but she had a condition as a child which medication has over the years stabilized-Addison’s, which bloats the skin. Without her medication, bloating set in, along with the natural expansion of the tissues by the water. It’s how and why I was able to get fingerprints from her.” He held up a single vial with a tiny lump of flesh in a preservative gel. “It’s one of Tammy Sheppard’s fingertips. It was enough to ID her with a missing persons report. You want a witness list?”
Thorn hung back, but Powers rushed them with a long- bone X ray, the left femur and knee. “It’s from our victim. She once had a compound fracture. You can see it here, just below the knee; and just above, here, you also see a simple spiral fracture,” he said, pointing with a ballpoint pen. “It has gone a long way in IDing Jane Doe number three.
” Thorn momentarily joined them, piping in with, “As for your victim, Dr. Coran, we found absolutely nothing to distinguish her. Her insides are as clean a slate as her out- sides.”
“ And all three were strangled, repeatedly?” she asked. “The water in the lungs-”
“ Lungs full to bursting, but yes, signs of multiple lacerations and strangling,” added Thorn.
“- about the throat and wrists, just like the others, and that information was not released to the press,” added Powers.
“ So, there’s little chance any one of these was a copycat killing,” surmised Santiva.
“ Virtually none…” Coudriet put aside the little vial he’d been tightly holding, a dark shadow coloring his features.
“ Parents of the IDed Jane are on their way.” Jessica only half heard Powers’s last remark as she stepped into the autopsy rooms, where all three victims lay beneath sheets, well within view of one another, separated only by glass partitions. The three bodies looked like an endless trail of reflected images here, as if a mirror were being held up at each end.
Three in one, one after the other; the bastard had cut them loose close enough to shore to insure that they would float straight into the hands of authorities. Had the SOB learned via TV or newsprint of her and Santiva’s arrival and the organization of a task force? Was that the cause of his sudden rage? Either way, all three victims had been long dead before their arrival. It was like stepping into a dark theater in the midst of a play about insanely vented evil. She stood silent vigil over the bodies for a moment, looking into each room from where she stood, realizing anew the enormity of the moment. In each death room lay a separate victim of the Night Crawler, three young women who had most likely not one thing in common before now, and who now had everything in common.
“ If they could only talk,” whispered Coudriet in her ear.
Peeling back the sheet in the first room, Jessica recognized the remains of the young woman she had earlier examined in the field. She went next to the second room and looked into the bloated face of another victim, this one with features still adhering. This one was Coudriet’s subject, the young woman he was calling Tammy Sue Sheppard. Jessica lingered, looking over the remains and instantly agreeing that this woman’s body was in far better shape than the one she had examined. Thorn and Powers, like children anxious to show off a favorite pet or toy, led her to the third body, the one they had taken charge of in the field. “Want to show you this,” announced Powers, his glasses bobbing as he tore away the sheet covering the swollen, draining body. There was a terrible gash in this one’s left side, just below the rib cage.
“ Looks like another shark bite,” said Thorn.
“ Measures up rather shallow for a large shark, but a small one might’ve done the damage,” Powers instantly added.
Jessica’s mind worked over the possibilities: auto crash wounds sometimes looked bad, but seldom was so large a section of flesh missing from the torso; she’d seen hatchet- type weapons such as meat cleavers do as much, but the cut would be clean-cleaved in two. “It’s more than a simple fall or collision,” she agreed. “And the edges of the wound are really quite jagged.”
“ In keeping with a shark bite, I’d say,” Thorn quickly defended, as if his reputation were on the line.
“ Try an outboard motor,” said Dr. Coudriet. “I’ve seen outboard motor cuts a lot down here; somebody, or something like a manatee, gets tangled in one of those things, it can take out a hell of a chunk of flesh.”
“ Along with the sailor’s rope and knot, it all points back to a boat being the killing ground,” suggested Santiva.
“ The bodies may’ve traveled a good distance across the channel, too, in which case a speeding boat may’ve hit her,” cautioned Coudriet.
Jessica agreed but did not say so. “We have lots of work to do here, Eriq. I’ll see what I can learn from the Sheppard body in particular.”
Eriq nodded as he said, “Word’s come down that her parents are on their way to ID the body, so I wouldn’t do any carving until-”
“ A little late for that,” said Coudriet, recalling his bag of fingertips, “but not to worry. We’ll have her presentable at the window.”
“ I’ll go talk to the parents,” Eriq said, “and I understand there were a couple of young ladies with her the night of her disappearance. I’m seeing them today; see what they can give us. Touch base with you later.”
“ Right, and good luck.” Eriq nodded and disappeared through a corridor, led by Powers to where civilians, and parents in particular, awaited officialdom. “No doubt having the FBI on the case will do wonders putting the concerns of the victims’s relatives on hold,” Coudriet mocked.