Rita Herron - In the Flesh

Black extended his hand. “Thank you for coming, Dr. Madden. My friend Agent Steele and his wife, Claire, recommended you.”

The woman smiled. “Yes, I worked with Claire before. I can’t believe she’s married now and has two kids.”

“We’re not interested in chitchating about your friends’ families,” Raul cut in.

She whirled on him. “Yes, I can see that you wouldn’t, you’re probably not a family man.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “As you can see, we have a dead woman on our hands,” he snapped.

“Detective,” Black said in a warning tone.

Jenny threw up a hand. “It’s all right. I’m sorry to hear another girl has been murdered.”

Black clenched his jaw. “Yeah. We have to find this guy before he strikes again.”

She slanted her gaze toward the body, and her expression softened. “You’re right. Let’s get to work.”

Raul grunted, and she gave him a glacier look but refrained from comment as she addressed Black. “Do you want to tell me the details first or want me to assess the situation for myself?”

“Why don’t you look first, then give us your thoughts,” Black said. “We want your gut reaction, your unbiased, professional opinion.”

Raul frowned at the word we but knew better than to argue, so he kept his mouth shut. Instead he braced himself to steer the woman to the side if she got sick, or to catch her if she passed out.

Hell, he halfway hoped she did. Then Black could see she didn’t belong here, and they’d be rid of her.

Jenny tried to tamp down her anger at Detective Raul Cortez. Even though he was easy on the eyes, he was rude, insolent, and the perfect example of why some people called policemen pigs.

She was accustomed to some adversity, but no one had ever taken such an instant dislike to her before. If she didn’t have a job to do here, her feelings might be hurt.

Or she might spit in his face and walk away.

But Jenny had never backed down from a fight or let anyone bully her, and plenty of male patients had tried. She sure as heck didn’t intend to play scaredy-cat now.

Irritation at the detective morphed into horror and anger at the person who’d killed this girl as she picked her way through the weeds and spotted the body. The detective and Captain Black eased up beside her. Cortez was probably waiting for her to fall apart so he could laugh in her face.

She refused to give him the pleasure.

Forcing a calm to her expression that belied the trembling inside her, she knelt by the woman and mentally made notes of the scene. She was young, mid-twenties probably, blond, and she’d been strangled to death with a pair of silk panties just as the paper had reported that the first two victims had. However, they had omitted details. The way her body was posed, the bruises on her torso and neck, the bugs nibbling at her flesh.

“What is her name?” she asked softly.

“Judy Benson,” Detective Cortez said. “We found her purse over there behind those oaks. She’s twenty-two, lives in an apartment in town.”

A commotion sounded behind her, and Captain Black cleared his throat. “It’s the press. I’ll take care of it. Stay here, Cortez.”

The air stirred with humidity, made hotter by the tension humming between her and Cortez. A fly buzzed around her face, and she swallowed back bile at the acrid smell of the decomposing corpse.

Determined to hold herself together until she was alone, she honed in on the visual details of the crime scene. His MO, his choice of the underwear as a killing tool, the way he’d left the body exposed, all were signs that would help her get inside the killer’s mind and create a profile.

The perpetrator had spread the girl’s legs as if to suggest a sexual crime, but he’d folded her hands together as if she was saying a prayer and laid them across her bare breasts. Maybe he was conflicted?

A prayer or was she supposed to be asking for forgiveness? Maybe she was supposed to be worshipping him? “Was she raped?”

“We won’t know for sure until the ME gets her on the table. With the other two, there were indications of sexual intercourse, but not clear signs of rape. Sex could have been consensual but something snapped with the guy and he killed her.”

“Or he may have killed her during sex—some men can only achieve sexual satisfaction through violence,” Jenny said. “Were the other two girls posed like this? Legs spread, hands folded?”

“Identically.”

She tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. “How long was she missing before you found her?”

“Her roommate said she disappeared Thursday night after happy hour from a bar on River Street.”

“And the other girls?”

“The first victim, Dodie Tinsley, a waitress, disappeared after work one night. She was found two days later. The second girl, Penny Ann Wayling, was last seen at the Java Monkey where she was supposed to meet a date. A coed discovered her body the next day while jogging.”

Jenny angled her head. “Any leads so far?”

He shook his head, his jaw tight. “We’ve interviewed old boyfriends, roommates, neighbors, friends. And we’re checking their computers for e-mails, chat rooms, to see if the girls might have tried one of the online dating services. But so far we don’t have any viable suspects.”

“How about the underwear? Did it belong to the victims or did he bring it?”

“He brought it. We think he took the victims’ as a trophy.”

“I see. Did he always use black?”

Raul nodded. “We’re trying to trace where he purchased them.”

Jenny pushed to her feet, needing to escape. The girl’s sightless eyes screamed for help and were tormenting her. The cops would have pictures of all the crime scenes. She’d review them, compare them, see if she noticed anything else.

The detective cleared his throat. “Now what can you tell us, Dr. Madden?”

Again he said the word doctor as if it was a four-letter word.

“Listen, Detective Cortez,” she said, facing him. “I don’t know if you’re always this rude, or if you’ve just decided to grace me with your bad attitude, but I didn’t ask to be here today. So if you don’t want my help, that’s fine. I can leave now.”

She started up the path, trembling as she tried to escape the awful smell and the image of that poor girl lying so hopelessly dead. Because no matter what she or he did, they couldn’t bring her back.

And she didn’t intend to show her grief for the victim to this cold-hearted bastard.

R AUL WANTED to let her go. But Black was approaching with a scowl on his face, and he knew he’d better shape up.

“Captain Black requested you come, so he’ll want to hear what you have to say.”

Her eyes blazed, and she hesitated. “And you, Detective?”

He couldn’t lie. “You like sexual deviants. I have trouble with that.”

“Like?” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “If that’s how your thought processes work, then you like criminals.”

His eyes glittered with disdain. “I hunt them down and put them behind bars to get justice.”

“And I treat sexual deviants to alter their negative behavior.”

“They don’t deserve to be coddled or to be released on some stupid insanity plea.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But they’re human, and if I can help one of them, keep one from committing a crime, from killing an innocent person or themselves, then I’ve saved a life, and that makes my job worthwhile.”

Captain Black strode toward them, his jaw set in granite. “Dr. Madden, is there a problem here?”

She turned her gaze toward him, and Raul scowled. Let her run to his boss, whining that he’d insulted her pride.