John Sandford - Bad blood

There were faint marks, not quite scars, on her buttocks and breasts, indicating that she had been beaten before, with a whip similar to the one that had marked her this time.

There was no indication of resistance, which, along with the earlier whip marks, suggested that her involvement may have been voluntary. Virgil didn't think the conclusion followed from the evidence: she could have also been too afraid to resist, although the earlier whip marks were hard to explain, unless she'd been thoroughly brainwashed.

There was no DNA evidence. Lubricants were found deep in her anus and vagina, of a kind used on a national brand of condoms, suggesting that the men had worn condoms. Whether they had worn them as protection against sexual diseases or pregnancy, or as a way to eliminate the possibility of DNA, was unknown.

If the former was the case, the pathologist noted, then the death may have been accidental, in the course of extreme sex play; and may have indicated that the perpetrators didn't know Baker very well-that it may have been prostitution. If the latter, it would suggest that the men involved were protecting themselves against criminal prosecution. If Baker died in the course of criminal activity, the death could be classified as a murder, depending on the exact nature of the criminal activity.

She had abrasions around her mouth, indicating that she had been orally penetrated, but no semen was found in her trachea or stomach. That might have meant that the oral sex had taken place well before her death, and the semen digested; that the man had withdrawn before ejaculation, which seemed unlikely in this kind of abusive sex play; or that he or they had worn condoms.

The latter case would again suggest protection against DNA evidence, which could lead to a finding of murder.

Even more disturbing was the lack of any kind of DNA evidence at all on the body: no sweat, no stains. There was no lubricant on the outer parts of her vagina or anus. She was wearing no deodorant. The pathologist suggested that the body may have been washed after death, and thoroughly. The care with which it had been done suggested cool deliberation, not panic.

Virgil leaned back and closed his eyes. A prostitute? The age was right. Probably half the prostitutes in Minnesota were seventeen or younger. Why was the body left in the cemetery? Was there some effort to do right by her, as ludicrous as the effort seemed? Could it have been done by panicked high school boys? But the level of sexual deviation suggested older men, with longer-standing sexual tastes. Would her parents know the older men? Could it have been teachers, or familial abuse?

The care with which the DNA had been obliterated again suggested older men, and perhaps men experienced in removing DNA. Had they killed before?

He was thinking about it when Kraus appeared with a thick stack of paper and handed it to him. "That's it. We have some paper of our own on the case; we did interviews with friends and schoolmates of hers, but most of that's in the Iowa reports. Ours might have a little more detail, but probably nothing too significant."

"What I'd really like is a list of names of everybody you interviewed," Virgil said. "Not what they said, just a list."

"I could put that together. I'll do it now," Kraus said. "You think this is really tied to Flood and Bobby Tripp and Jim?"

"Well, Flood was killed in Battenberg, and came from two miles northwest of there. Crocker lived on a farm a couple miles southeast of Battenberg, and Baker here came from a farm five or six miles south. So you could probably put all their places in a twenty-five- or thirty-square-mile area. How big is the county? Seven hundred square miles? With maybe a murder every decade or so? And you have three killings, in little more than a year, with all the victims from that little square, who knew each other? Or another way-they all lived within a mile or so of Highway 7…"

"I'll get busy," Kraus said.

Virgil did a quick scan of the Iowa file, looking for names, especially Bob Tripp's. It wasn't there.

Going back through the paper, he found photos of Baker when she was alive, as well as crime-scene shots and several autopsy photos. The autopsy photos didn't do anything but gross him out, and he put them aside. She had been a reasonably pretty girl, blond, busty. When she'd fully filled out, she would probably have been stocky, with broad shoulders and hips, and overlarge breasts.

In the early flush of womanhood, though, she looked good. Salable, Virgil thought, with a little thrum of guilt. The Iowa investigators had dug hard into the possibility that she'd been involved in prostitution, and had found nothing.

Virgil got back on the phone to Wood. "Solved it yet?" Wood asked.

"About halfway there," Virgil said. "I've been reading the file, and want to know what you thought about the prostitution angle. Your guys asked a lot of questions…"

"Let me run down the hall and grab a guy," Wood said.

He was back in a minute, and another phone was picked up. Wood said, "I've got Mitch Ingle on the phone; he worked that the hardest."

"I've got all the paper here," Virgil told the Iowans. "What I want is some opinions. Was she hooking?"

Ingle said, "It's easy to think so, looking at the whole package. But I don't believe it. In a community that size, the word would get around. You got a school full of horny high school boys in a small community, where everybody knows everything, and we couldn't turn up a hint of that. What I started to believe was that she may have been picked up by a couple of older guys who were working on turning her out, and killed her before that got done. That would also explain the other prostitution problem-there was no sign that she had any money. And she had no birth control pills, she had no condoms. She had no hooker stuff."

"Estherville can't be that big…"

"Checked every apartment and every loose male, anyplace she might have gone for sex. We concluded that she might not have actually… performed whatever it was… in Estherville. She might have been dumped there from somewhere else."

"Her car was found there."

"Yes, but we don't know that she drove it there. Nobody saw who parked it. It was alongside a convenience store and coin-op laundry, off to the side, people coming and going. Could have been her, but maybe not. The thing is, we're assuming that she was not kidnapped. She went with these guys, maybe not because she wanted to, but she didn't fight them. She met them. She left her uncle's place, and drove somewhere and met them. Judging from those earlier marks on her breasts and legs, she'd met them before."

"I haven't been through all the paper, and I'm not sure you put every name in, but do you remember if the names Jacob Flood, Bob Tripp, or Jim Crocker show up anyplace along the way?"

After a moment's silence, Wood said, "Doesn't ring a bell with me," and Ingle said, "Me neither. I can run a search on my computer."

"If you could," Virgil said.

He and Ingle exchanged phone numbers, and Ingle said, "Minor Wood has filled me in on your investigation there, and if there's anything I can do, I'll come up. If you need help down on the Iowa side…"

"Don't know where it's going yet," Virgil said. "But I appreciate it." HE WAS BACK in the paper when he heard cowboy boots coming down the hall, and Coakley stuck her head in the door: "You got the file. John said you're pulling the Kelly Baker case into it."

"I haven't found any direct connection, but it's a pretty interesting coincidence," Virgil said.

She came in and sat down at the side of the table, leaned toward him, and said, "I got to Baker about halfway back from Crocker's folks' house. I would have gotten to it quicker, if I hadn't been so run over by the murder. The Baker case is no coincidence, Virgil. You remember I told you that Crocker belonged to a private religion? Flood was a member of the same group-and so was Baker."