“That isn’t possible,” I said. And it wasn’t. It was much too soon for anyone to respond to the query she had sent out. It should have taken days, even weeks for some cop somewhere in the country to get around to reading it, checking his files, finding a match, and then responding. Most cops have a life, and a caseload that is already overwhelming, and so although professional cooperation with a brother officer is a great idea, it’s never quite as important as finishing a report before the captain chews your ass, with a little time left over to make it to your kid’s soccer game.
But Deborah was claiming she’d had not one but two replies, and before I could question her any more she said, “Now,” and she hung up.
Deborah was alone when Robert and I got back to her desk. She was frowning at her computer screen, and she looked up and tapped it to show me her e-mail when we walked in. “Look at this,” she said. “Two of ’em, in two different cities, and it’s absolutely our guy, no question.” She flipped her finger at the screen. “Body found in a Dumpster, right nipple missing, same kind of marks on it-”
“What about the eyes?” I said.
She nodded. “The first one, over a year ago in New York, both eyes ripped out; one found near the body, the other never found. The second one, um …” She looked down at the paper, nodded. “Yeah. Vegas. Like, four months ago.” She looked up and smiled triumphantly. “One eye missing, semen traces on the face. It’s him, Dex. It’s gotta be.”
I nodded. It probably was him. But knowing that didn’t catch him, and it left a crucial question, maybe the most important of all. “New York, Vegas, and now Miami,” I said. “Why?”
“He’s harder to catch if he moves around?” Robert offered.
“Most serial killers don’t even think about getting caught,” Deborah said. “They stay in one place, even in one neighborhood.”
Robert looked at me. “Really?” he said.
I nodded. “Yup, pretty much,” I said. “So if this one doesn’t, it’s for an important reason.”
“Okay. So why?” Robert said.
“He could be chasing something-or someone-specific,” I said. “Or …” A very small idea popped into my head. “Those are all cities that have a lot of conventions,” I said.
“Right,” Deborah said. “We can cross-check the lists, see if anything matches.”
“What are you saying?” Robert said. “He could be going to all these conventions, like, he’s a Shriner or something?”
Deborah shook her head wearily, and I took pity on her and came to the rescue. “Shriner sounds plausible,” I told Robert patiently. “He could make his getaway on one of those little tricycles they ride in parades.”
“The case files are coming by e-mail,” Deborah said. “But I got detectives in two different cities wanting to fly down here and shoot somebody.”
“Tell them to stay home,” I said. “We have enough of our own shooters in Miami.” I looked around the room, and it felt a little bit empty. “Where’s Jackie?”
Debs waved a hand. “She had an interview,” she said. “Matthews told her she could use the conference room.”
Before I could arrange my face to show that I was impressed by Matthews letting anyone use his conference room, Robert blurted out, “Interview? With who?”
It might have been my imagination, but it seemed to me that his face lost a little bit of color, and he definitely looked unhappy.
“She didn’t say who,” Deborah said. “One of the magazines, I think.”
“Magazine,” Robert said. “Like a local one?” he added hopefully.
“The captain would never let her use the conference room for a local magazine,” Debs told him, and she said it with such a complete lack of expression that I realized she had picked up on Robert’s apprehension and was playing him a little.
“Shit,” he said. “They should have- She really didn’t say which one? I’ll be right back,” he said, heading for the door. “Gotta call my agent.”
Debs and I watched him go, and I said, “You have a very nice wicked streak, sis.”
She nodded, stone-faced. “It passes the time,” she said. She turned to her computer, and after scrabbling at the keyboard for a moment, she said, “Case files are here.” She frowned and hit a few more keys, mumbling, “Goddamn it” under her breath; my sister had many sterling qualities, but computer competence was not one of them. Even so, after a moment her printer began to whir, and she pushed back from the computer with a look of satisfaction.
“New York got here first,” she said.
“Naturally,” I said, and I leaned forward to look at the pages as the printer spit them out. The first few pages came out quickly; they were standard typed cop report, and Deborah snatched them up and began to read eagerly. Page three took a long time to print-a photograph, probably of the victim as she had been found-and I waited impatiently as it came out one line at a time. It finally sputtered all the way out and I grabbed it eagerly.
Nowadays, digital technology has made police photography much more colorful and detailed than in days of yore. My adoptive father, Harry, had been forced to look at grainy black-and-white pictures of dead bodies. It can’t have been nearly as much fun. Because of the high-resolution color cameras we use now, I could see the wonderful rainbow of pigments left by the various punches, bites, and slashes on the body, ranging from bright pink down through the spectrum to deep purple. In fact, the image was clear enough that I could make out the mark of individual teeth in one of the bites, and I made a mental note to tell Deborah to check dental records for a match.
I studied the picture carefully, looking for any hints that might tell me something new. The similarities were striking. This victim, like ours, was a young woman who had almost certainly been attractive before the series of unfortunate events that had led to this picture. She had a very nice, trim figure, and shoulder-length hair of the same golden color our local victim had. I worked my way down the body, noticing that the knife wounds were in the same places, and I was so engrossed that it was several moments before I became aware of a soft floral aroma nearby, and realized that somebody was standing behind me. I glanced up quickly, startled, to see that Jackie had come silently back into the room and was standing very close to me, peering around my shoulder at the photograph. Her hair was down now, hanging around her face in a way that was disturbingly like the victim’s. “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t hear you.”
“I was a Girl Scout,” she said. “Merit badge in woodcraft.” She didn’t move away, and for a very long moment I forgot about the photo in my hand and just inhaled the subtle perfume she was wearing. Jackie finally reached a finger around me and tapped the picture. “This is different,” she said. “I mean, it’s not the one we’ve been working on.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“What is it?” she said, sliding her finger down the image of the body.
“We got an answer to the query Deborah sent out,” I said.
“Really,” Jackie said. “I thought it was supposed to take a while?”
“It always does,” I said. “Unless it’s a really high-profile case.”
“What would make it high-profile?” she said.
“A lot of things,” I said. “She might be somebody’s daughter.”
“Almost certainly,” Jackie murmured.
“Or it could just be because she’s young, pretty, not a hooker.”
Jackie looked up and raised one eyebrow at me. “And white?”
I nodded. “Sure. But nobody ever admits that. How did you know?”
She looked back at the picture. “I did an after-school special about that,” she said. “An African American girl goes missing, and the family can’t get the cops to do anything.”
“I’m sure they did something,” I said. “Just not as much.”
“Where did this come from?” she asked.
“New York,” I told her, and I realized that this was a wonderful opportunity to further her forensic education. And to be truthful, I didn’t want her to move away, either. So I added, “How many things do you see that are different?”