Heather Graham - Picture Me Dead

He didn’t need to dirty his own hands with the blood of others.

Planning a murder, however, could bring the same penalties as the act of carrying out the deed. But complicity had to be proven.

Five years ago, the task force had plowed through Bordon’s records, desperate to get him on something. They had never gotten him for ordering the killings, but just as, decades ago, the law had managed to put away the infamous Al Capone, they had at last gotten him on tax evasion and fraud.

Unsatisfactory, but at least he’d been locked away.

The murders had stopped. Most people seemed to assume that had been because the man who had confessed to the killings had committed suicide in a jail cell.

But now it seemed that the killings hadn’t stopped.

There had just been a hiatus, because here was another body, jarringly reminiscent of those they had found in the past.

“Jesus, Jake, don’t look like that,” Martin said softly. “Maybe you shouldn’t even be on this case.”

Jake stared at him, dark eyes hard as coal.

“All right, all right. Sorry.”

“Gentlemen, may I get back in there? I’ll give you my initial findings.”

Jake turned. Dr. Tristan Gannet made his way back over to them. Jake was glad that it was Gannet on the case. He had been with the M.E.’s office almost twenty years and had had experience with the previous murders.

“Glad to see you, Gannet,” Jake said. He quickly scanned the scene again himself before joining Gannet down by the body. No apparent materials or fabrics. No sign of footprints, but if they were right and the body had washed down here with the rain, there wouldn’t be. No obvious sign of cause of death, most likely because the body was so decomposed. Victim was most probably a young woman, a few strands of long dark hair remaining. The first patrolman to arrive on the scene had done a damned good job of taping the scene off and keeping it untainted. This was no instance of a dozen officers arriving and contaminating the area. There was just so little to be found when a body had been given time to decompose. Of course, there was always the hope that the specialized crime scene investigators could find a clue that wasn’t visible to the naked eye.

Jake had a feeling this one would be hard work for the crime scene investigators. When a murderer was careful and knew that minuscule clues could give his or her identity away, there was often little to go on.

There was still hope, of course. His associates might find a hair, a fiber, trace evidence. Doc Gannet might find a microscopic clue on the pathetic remains.

No chance of finding flesh beneath the fingernails, though. The fingernails were gone. For that matter, there would be no identification through fingerprints—no flesh remained on a single finger or on the thumbs.

“And no one will recognize her from her face,” he murmured.

“Dental records are usually our best bet anyway, often,” Gannet said. “We’re lucky here, I think. I’m willing to bet the flesh was cut from the fingers, before the animals and the environment had a chance to do their work.” He looked at Jake for a moment, and he knew they were both thinking along the same line.

In the previous murders, the ears had been slashed, and the flesh had been cut from the fingers. Why bother destroying fingerprints, then leaving the head and teeth so that an identity could be culled from dental records?

Were they back to where they had started?

Or was there a copycat killer out there?

“Could be a copycat,” Gannet said, as if Jake had actually voiced his thoughts.

“Yeah,” Jake said.

Gannet stared down at the remains, sorrow in his face. Real emotion, but under complete control. That was another thing Jake liked about Gannet. He did his work well. And though he didn’t take every single case to heart so that he couldn’t sleep at night, he had never, in all his years of work, lost compassion for the victims, whether of accident or violence. “We’ll find out who she is,” he assured Jake.

“I need your findings on this as fast as possible,” Jake said.

Gannet nodded. “Naturally,” he said, a slight touch of sarcasm in his voice. Unfortunately, untimely deaths occurred with a certain frequency in the county. He looked up at Jake again. “Don’t worry. I intend to get right on this one.” He stared at Jake a moment longer. Maybe he knew Gannet too well, Jake thought.

During the last spate of similar murders, Jake had worked the case aggressively on behalf of the victims. Even after the suicide of the “confessed” killer. And even after Bordon’s incarceration.

For the victims.

And because he’d suspected that Bordon had been involved in another death, as well.

Another death…Nothing like this. But far too close to home. Nancy’s death.

Not too many others on the force had agreed with him on that one. They’d thought he was creating scenarios of Bordon’s guilt because he had to find a guilty party and couldn’t accept a verdict of accidental death in the case of a fellow cop.

Or even suicide, as some had suggested.

Suicide. Never. It was a theory to be rejected entirely. No one who’d known her could ever even begin to accept such a possibility.

“Are you going to be all right with this?” Gannet asked softly.

“You bet. I’m a professional, Gannet. And if we do need to make comparisons to past cases, there’s no one out there who knows both the facts and the theories better than I do.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Gannet said. Gloves on, he looked over the remains. Two assistants from the morgue had arrived to take the body when Gannet and the scene-of-crime investigators had finished their site inspection. Gannet nodded an acknowledgment to the others and quietly asked them to make sure they included the dirt and scrub around the body when they removed it from the site.

“Any idea on the actual cause of death?” Jake asked.

“Not natural,” Gannet said.

“Wow. I don’t have a medical degree, and I knew that.”

Gannet grimaced at him. “Knife…big knife. Maybe a machete.”

Jake looked at him in surprise. “There’s not enough flesh—”

“A few courses in forensics and you’d see this just fine.”

“I’ve had a few forensics courses,” Jake reminded him dryly.

“Maybe. But the condition of the corpse makes it hard to see the forest for the trees. Almost literally. Shift this foliage and filth around a little and you get a good look at the bone. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s covered with dirt. But see? If you look really closely…the scratch there? I have to do a full autopsy, but I’d bet we’re talking a very large blade. And you’d need a blade to do that to the ears…and the features. The animals have been at her, but still…those aren’t teeth marks. Definitely made by a blade. And, as we’ve both seen, the flesh was removed from the fingers. You’ve been at this a while, and you seem to know more than you let on most of the time, because you want me to make what you’re already pretty damned sure you do know, official. Yeah, animals have been at her. But the flesh from her fingers was cut off, not gnawed away, or simply decomposed.”

“Hell. This is more than déjà vu. We could definitely be talking the same—” Jake began.

“From what I see so far, yes, but don’t go taking anything as absolute yet. Let me get her down to the morgue. And don’t forget, Jake, what we both already know, as well. There can be copycats out there. There have been cases where murders have been researched and studied and duplicated almost perfectly. There are victims assumed to have been murdered by one serial killer who in reality were killed by someone else entirely.”

Jake arched a brow to him.