Karen Rose - Die for Me

“Or who has access to a computer wizard,” Nick countered. “Or maybe we’re dealing with more than one killer.”

“Could be. Let’s see what else Jen’s dug up.”

Monday, January 15, 3:00

P.M.

They found Katherine studying x-rays. Vito stood behind her, easily able to see over her head. Andrea had been small like that. There had been times Vito was afraid he’d break her. Sophie Johannsen on the other hand… she was just a few inches shorter than he was. When she’d confronted him about the roses, those full lips of hers had been about even with his chin. Physically, it would take a lot to break her, but inside was a vulnerability that touched him. You really are like all the others. Someone had hurt her. Deeply. And she thinks I’m just like them.

That bothered Vito. Deeply. He needed her to know he wasn’t like all the others. Even if only for his own peace of mind.

“Who is this guy?” Nick asked with a frown, snapping Vito’s attention back to the x-rays at which he’d been blindly staring. “Did he push our bodies to the back of the line?”

Vito scanned the skull illuminated on the light board. “He’s not one of ours. No evidence of medieval torture. This guy took a bullet right between the eyes.”

“No medieval wounds and he took a bullet,” Katherine agreed, “but this is one of your victims, boys.” She extended one hand. “Meet victim number one-dash-three.”

“What?” Vito said.

“He’s ours?” Nick said at the same time.

“What does one-dash-three mean?” Vito added.

“Yes, he’s yours. One-three means he comes from the third grave in the first row. He was young, late teens, early twenties maybe. Cause of death was that bullet to his skull. He’s been dead perhaps a year. I’ll know more after I run some tests.”

She walked to the counter and grabbed a sheet of paper. On it she’d drawn a four-by-four matrix of rectangles and had made notes in all but three of them. “This is what you have so far. Seven empty graves, nine occupied ones. Jen’s recovered six of the nine bodies. She’s in the process of excavating the seventh body in row one, grave four, aka one-four.”

“The fourth row is empty,” Nick murmured. “Three-one, Caucasian male, midtwenties, blunt trauma to head and torso. Trauma with a jagged object to head and right arm. Right arm nearly severed. Time of death, at least two months ago. Contusions on torso and upper arms, circular in shape, approximately one quarter inch in diameter.” He looked up. “This is the third body we pulled out last night.”

“Exactly. Three-two is the woman with the folded hands.”

“Sophie told us about the Inquisitional Chair,” Nick said, his voice heavy with disgust. “Our boy has the deluxe model. Spikes and metal plates for heating.”

Katherine sighed. “This just gets better all the time. Three-three is your Knight.”

“Warren Keyes,” Vito said. “He was an actor.”

“I thought so. I finished his autopsy, by the way.” She handed Vito the report. “Cause of death was heart failure brought on by blood loss. His abdominal cavity was empty. There were no injuries to his head, but the bones in his arms and legs were all dislocated. The force was shear, not radial.”

“Meaning they were pulled, not twisted,” Vito said, scanning the report.

“Yes.”

“He was stretched on a rack,” Nick murmured.

“I’d say that’s a good guess. He was definitely drugged.”

“His mother said he was clean and sober. He’d been in rehab,” Vito said.

“That’s entirely plausible. There was damage to his nasal membranes from the coke. I found a lot more of that white mixture up in his nasal cavity.”

“So was the stuff you found silicone grease?” Nick asked.

“Silicone lubricant, yes. The lab’s going to try to narrow it to a brand for you. But there was something mixed with the silicone. Plaster. It had filled his sinus cavity.”

Nick frowned. “Plaster and lubricant? Why?”

But a memory was poking at the edge of Vito’s mind. “One Halloween when we were kids, our boy scout troop made masks by taking plaster casts of our faces. We used cold cream to make the plaster lift off better. He made death masks of Warren Keyes and the woman with the hands.”

“Then he took the cast over most of their body,” Katherine said. “But why?”

“It has something to do with medieval effigies.” Vito shook his head. “He made a tomb, maybe? I don’t know. None of this makes sense yet.”

Nick had turned back to Katherine’s diagram of the graveyard. “So what about the elderly male they brought in this morning?”

“Ah. Him.” Katherine tapped the second row from the top. “The second row had two bodies and two empty graves. The bodies were both elderly, one male, one female.” She lifted a brow. “The female was bald.”

Vito blinked. “He shaved her head?” he asked but Katherine shook her head.

“She’d had a mastectomy.”

“He killed a woman with breast cancer?” Nick shook his head. “Good God almighty. What kind of sick bastard kills an old woman with cancer?”

“The same kind that would torture and mutilate his other victims,” Katherine said. “But he didn’t torture her. She had a broken neck, but no additional injuries. Now the old man, he’s a very different story.”

“Of course he would be,” Vito muttered as she put up three new x-rays.

“The old man in plot two-two has a broken jaw, massive trauma to his face and torso. He was beaten badly, by a fist, I’m guessing. The jaw is dislocated and the cheekbones are crushed. This was a vicious attack with lots of power behind it.”

“A big fist,” Vito murmured. “He’s a big guy, our killer. He had to have been to haul Warren Keyes’s body around, even if he drugged him.”

“I agree. The man has six broken ribs. These femur injuries were made with something bigger and harder. Both femurs were broken.” She turned around, both brows lifted. “But the pièce de résistance…”

“Shit.” Nick sighed. “What?”

“His fingertips are gone. Sliced clean off.”

Vito and Nick looked at each other. “Somebody wanted the old man to stay incognito,” Vito said and Nick nodded.

“So he’s probably in the system. Were they sliced before or after death, Katherine?”

“Before.”

“Of course,” Vito muttered. “Time of death?”

“I’d say two months or more. The bodies of the elderly couple were in a similar stage of decomposition to three-one, the man whose right arm is nearly severed.”

“The one with the circular bruises,” Vito murmured. “Any idea of what they are?”

“Not yet, but I haven’t really looked too hard. One of my techs found the bruises and recorded it in the log.”

Nick rubbed the back of his neck wearily. “And now we have one-three with a bullet in his head. Decidedly postmodern era.”

“Dead for a year, not a few weeks to a few months like the others,” Vito added. “This doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“Not yet,” Nick agreed. “We won’t be able to make any sense of it until we identify more of the victims. We got lucky on Warren Keyes. Was there anything you could readily see that might identify the others?”

Katherine shook her head.

“Shit,” Nick muttered. “So, we’ve got six bodies so far, one identified. Four of the six are young, two old. One actor, one cancer patient, one who might be identified if we’d been able to run his prints.”

“Who the killer really hated,” Vito added. “And that breaks with his profile.”

Nick lifted a brow. “Keep talkin’.”

“He dug all those graves perfectly, all exactly the same. He’s obsessive-compulsive. The third-row vics were tortured, but with tools, not his bare hands. The new guy with the bullet-another tool. The old man’s injuries say he really let loose. Rage and passion aren’t the MOs of an OCD perp.”