William Bernhardt - Dark Eye

He frowned, then sniffed.

“Anything on my breath?”

“About half a tin of Altoids, unless I’m mistaken.” He gave me a long look, and believe me, I didn’t need hyper-empathy to know what he was thinking.

“Who’s the victim?” I asked, hoping to redirect his scrutiny from me to, well, anything. I stepped closer to the body, which the coroner’s assistants were in the process of transporting. She was young, probably sixteen or seventeen. Something odd about the way her face was set, but she had been a pretty thing, that was obvious, and she still had her hair, unlike the last one. Fingernails, too. Her skin was an icy white, so drained of color her lips were almost invisible. There were no apparent wounds or injuries.

“Don’t know. She was found with no identification. We’ll run her picture in the paper and with luck someone will recognize her.”

“What makes you think this is the same killer?” I asked, although I was certain it was. “Seems like an entirely different MO.”

“He left another note.”

O’Bannon handed me the evidence, already encased in a transparent sheath. It was similar to the one I’d spotted last night-letters and symbols and general nonsense on a sheet of lined notebook paper. “Any idea what this is?”

“No. I’ve got some of our biggest eggheads working on the first one, trying to see if it’s some kind of code. So far, no luck. It may just be psychotic rambling.”

“Can I get a copy? I know someone who might be able to help.” I surveyed the crime scene. “Who was the first responder?”

“Harrelson. Lucky choice, really. He did a solid, clean job.”

The first responder has the job of securing the crime scene. This is critical, not only to obtaining pure and useful information, but to being able to use that information later at trial. He or she must protect the evidence, then initiate safety procedures-in this case, make sure the killer wasn’t still around-and then contact the proper criminalists and finalize the relevant documentation, which with a homicide, was enormous. Once the crime scene experts and homicide investigators arrived, supervisory authority passed to them.

Contrary to what everyone thinks from watching C.S.I., the Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has no department called a C.S.I. Level III. Or for that matter, a Level II or Level I or Level 427.5. Those TV creations are a blanket fiction that allows characters to do the work of a wide range of criminalists: forensic lab techs, photo techs, latent print examiners, firearms experts, medical examiners, document experts, hair and fiber teams, and evidence custodians, just to name a few. The only thing the TV show doesn’t exaggerate is the importance of this work. Most cases are solved-and proven in court-thanks to the work of these technicians.

“How was she killed?” I asked O’Bannon.

“Naturally, Dr. Patterson won’t offer an opinion this soon. But judging from her skin tone, she bled to death.”

I was puzzled. “You mean, she had internal bleeding?”

“No.”

I glanced again at the body. “I don’t see any injuries.”

“Right. That’s the mystery.”

I stared down at the corpse, hoping to get some kind of fix on who she was or what she had been doing. What happened to you? I wondered. Who did this? And why?

I scrutinized the whole picture, the neck, the chest, the legs. Not only were there no signs of a wound, there were no signs of any kind of struggle. No signs of restraint, except perhaps some faint redness across her upper arms. Were you too scared to fight? I wondered. She looked healthy enough. Why didn’t she claw his eyes out?

I put the coroner techs on hold and, against their heated protest, took a closer look at the body. I found signs of a body piercing on her navel. But the stud was gone. Ripped out.

A pattern was forming in my mind. Far from a complete picture-a hint at best. But something. Taking two tongue depressors from one of the coroner’s boys, I pried open her mouth. And gasped.

Now I knew why there was something odd about the set of her jaw. Her teeth had been removed. Every single one. The tearing of her mouth, her gums, was enormous; the extraction had not been executed by a trained professional. This was how she had bled to death. Not from any bodily wound. From the mouth.

Thank God I’d had no time for breakfast. Throwing up would not only be unprofessional, it would convince O’Bannon I’d been drinking. I’d seen some seriously twisted, weird, ugly stuff in my time, and it took a great deal to get a gasp out of me, even on a day like this when I was well off my game. But I was sickened by the thought of the pain she must have endured, both mental and physical. This was not the work of any ordinary killer. Not even an ordinary psychopath. This was something-someone-altogether different.

“I’ll want to see the coroner’s preliminary report,” I said, letting her mouth relax. “As soon as it comes in.”

“Natch.”

“I’ll want the files on the first victim, too. Everything you’ve got.”

“I’ve already had them sent to your office.” O’Bannon coughed. “Your temporary office. Downtown.”

“Criminalists got anything useful yet?”

O’Bannon shrugged. “Not that I’ve heard.”

“What about blood splatters?”

“Do you see any?”

“No.”

“Neither do we. Even after we went over the area with leucocrystal violet.”

Which confirmed my feeling that the young lady was killed somewhere else. And cleaned up afterward. “Firearms?”

“No indication.”

“Forensic entomology? Botany? Zoology?”

“Possible they’ll turn up something. But so far, no.”

“Hair and fiber evidence?”

“Nope.”

“How could the guy bring a corpse all the way out here without leaving something behind?”

“By being very careful.”

And that in itself was telling.

I searched for, spotted, then approached Crenshaw. He was crouched on the ground, going over the metal floor of the plane with a small brush. Beside him was his fingerprint examiner’s field kit, a five-level tool chest filled with everything he might possibly need-powders, lifting tape, ink, flashlights, petri dishes, baggies, tweezers, distilled water, and a lot of other stuff I couldn’t identify. “How’s it hanging, Tony? Seen any exciting friction ridges lately?”

He smiled a little. “Are you working this case?”

“Strange but true. Got any identifiable prints?”

“Not yet, but I’m still working. I’ll have to take some of this stuff back to the lab before I can be sure.”

“I would’ve thought the killer would get his paws all over the place, dragging a heavy corpse into the plane.”

“I would, too, but he didn’t. We found nothing inside the plane-except for one little smudge. On the body.” He pointed down at the corpse with which I was now altogether too familiar. “Probably touched her before he transported her. Possibly even before he killed her. Maybe when he undressed her.”

“Could the print belong to someone other than the killer?”

“Anything’s possible, but I got it off her back, so it isn’t her own. If she’s been captive for a while, it almost has to be the killer’s.”

“What is it? Index finger?”

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be a finger at all. I can get a print off any section of volar skin-fingers, soles, lips, ears. This is a palm. It could be worse-some courts won’t admit non-hand or -foot prints. But it could be better, too. Although palms are just as unique in pattern as fingerprints, no one is databasing them.”

“So even if your print pays out, we won’t be able to run it through VICAP.”