CHAPTER EIGHT

The Dover Medical Examiner’s Office had all the charm of a Soviet gulag, and half the personality to boot. Puke-green walls, buzzing fluorescent lights that were one flicker away from triggering a seizure, and a pervasive stink of antiseptic trying and failing to mask the stench of dead meat. If despair had a smell, this was it.

Ella slouched in a molded plastic chair that had been designed by some sadist with a hard-on for scoliosis, staring at a sad little potted ficus that was the room”s sole concession to any form of life. Next to her, Luca fidgeted like a kid on Ritalin, knee bouncing, fingers tapping out a nervous tattoo on his thigh.

Poor kid. Probably still had visions of CSI-style glitz and glamour dancing in his head. All neon-lit labs and sexy techs spouting snappy one-liners. Well, welcome to the real world, rook. Hope you brought your nose plugs and your big boy pants.

Ella reached out and tapped a hand on his knee. ‘Easy there, Tiger. You”re not on trial. Just relax.’

Luca shot her a rueful look, but at least he stopped bouncing. ‘I am relaxed. Totally relaxed.’

‘Never seen a body before?’

‘Loads, just not a dead one.’

‘They never took you to the body farm at Quantico?’

Luca huffed a laugh, then sobered. ‘They don’t use it anymore.’

Ella felt a pang of something suspiciously close to sympathy. She remembered her first time seeing a corpse up close and personal. The waxy skin, the sunken eyes, the way the jaw hung slack in an obscene parody of a smile. It had haunted her dreams for weeks after. But she”d learned to compartmentalize. To shove those images, those feelings, into a little box in the back of her mind and slam the lid tight. You had to look at a mangled piece of human wreckage and see a pile of slowly cooling meat, valuable only for the secrets it could reveal.

Ripley was a master at it. Could crack wise over an eviscerated torso while elbow-deep in viscera, and then go home and sleep like a baby. But Ella had never quite managed that level of detachment. A small, stubborn part of her still saw the person behind the corpse.

Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe that little flicker of empathy, of humanity, was all that kept her from turning into the very thing she hunted

Ella leaned back in the torture device that passed for a chair, wincing as her spine crackled like a glowstick.

‘If it gets too much, there’s no shame in tapping out.’

Luca shook his head, jaw setting in a way that was almost cute in its stubbornness. ‘No way. I can handle it. It”s part of the job, right?’

Ella had to give him props for that. In their line of work, grit was more valuable than gold. The ability to stare unflinchingly into the horrors that humans could visit upon one another and not go stark raving loony was a rare and precious thing. Maybe the kid had it. Maybe he didn”t. Only one way to find out.

She was saved from having to respond by the lack of sensible shoes on linoleum. The receptionist, a reedy woman with a pinched face and the air of someone perpetually sucking on a lemon, appeared in the doorway.

‘The coroner will see you now,’ she said, in a tone that implied they should be grateful for the honor.

Ella levered herself out of the chair. Luca sprang up beside her, probably running entirely on nervous energy. They followed the nurse down a long hallway that smelled of bleach. Ella breathed through her mouth, trying not to gag on the miasma of death and industrial-strength cleaners. No matter how many times she did this song and dance, she never quite got used to the stench.

At the end of the hall, a set of swinging doors loomed like the gates of Hades. The receptionist shouldered them open without ceremony, revealing a cavernous room lined with shining metal tables. Harsh white light blazed down from the ceiling, washing everything in a stark, pitiless glare.

‘Agents Dark and Hawkins?’ A reedy voice emerged from behind a surgical mask. The coroner, presumably. A small, rodentine man with beady eyes and a wispy comb-over. ‘I”m Dr. Patel. I”ll be your tour guide through this mortal coil today.’

Ella bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Gallows humor was par for the course down here in the land of the dead. You either learned to laugh at the absurdity of it all, or you ate your gun. Simple as that.

She glanced over at Luca, gauging his reaction. The kid was pale but composed, his gaze fixed on the two sheet-covered bodies with a kind of grim fascination. Good. Better a morbid curiosity than a sprint for the toilet bowl.

‘Thanks for seeing us, doc,’ Ella said.

‘You’re welcome. I just finished up on this morning’s arrival. Where do you want to begin?’

‘Most recent victim first, please,’ Ella said.

Ella snapped on a pair of gloves. Beside her, Luca did the same, his movements stiff and overly precise. Nerves, no doubt. But he”d settle. They always did, once the initial shock wore off.

Dr. Patel cleared his throat. He lifted the sheet with a practiced flick of the wrist, revealing the horror show beneath.

Georgia Bolton’s torso appeared. Ella took a moment to pay silent tribute to the poor girl. She was pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way. Or she would have been, if not for the fact she was deader than disco and lying on a slab in the county morgue.

Ella”s gaze flicked to Luca, gauging his reaction. He stumbled back a step, then another, until his perfectly sculpted backside collided with a table.

Ella couldn”t blame him. It was one thing to see a body in crime scene photos, another to be up close and personal with the reality of death.

But to his credit, Luca didn”t bolt. He stood his ground, even as the color drained from his face, leaving him as pasty as the corpse in front of them.

Dr. Patel, seemingly oblivious to Luca”s distress, launched into his litany. ‘As you can see, external damage is minimal. A few superficial cuts and bruises, nothing that would have been fatal on its own. But I did find a significant contusion on the occipital region of the skull.’ He gestured to the back of his own head. ‘And some abrasions around the throat.’

Ella leaned in, studying the bruised and abraded flesh. ‘Strangulation,’ she said flatly. ‘That”s our COD?’

Patel nodded. ‘Most likely, yes. But here”s where it gets interesting.’ He pointed to Georgia’s neck with a gloved finger. ‘Do you see those marks? The bruising pattern?’

Ella squinted, nose wrinkling at the sickly-sweet stench of decay that wafted up from the body. Patel was right. The marks around Georgia”s throat weren”t the usual thumb-shaped impressions you”d expect to see in a strangulation case. Instead, it was a perfect ring that encircled the whole neck.

‘Ligature marks?’ Ella asked, though she already knew the answer.

Patel shook his head. ‘Nope. The abrasion is consistent with a garrote, but in such cases, I usually find fibers of rope or string. I found no such thing here.’

Ella straightened up. That was weird. Killers who strangled their victims almost always left telltale signs of how they”d done the deed. Thumb impressions on either side of the windpipe, a crisscross pattern from a ligature, fingernail gouges from the victim trying to claw their way free.

Luca, who seemed to have recovered somewhat from his initial bout of corpse-shock, sidled up next to her. ‘What about a garrote made of leather?’ he asked, voice only slightly strangled. ‘Could that account for the circular marks?’

Patel pursed his lips. ‘It”s possible. Whatever your perp used was thin. Most offenders who use ligatures go for something thicker, like a rope or a belt. Easier to grip, more leverage.’

Ella”s mind raced, trying to conjure up a scenario that fit the evidence. A garrote made of what, piano wire? Fishing line? It seemed unnecessarily fiddly for your average murdering psychopath. But then, when had serial killers ever done anything the easy way?

She shook her head, shelving that particular puzzle piece for later. ‘What about victim number one? Same COD?’

He moved to the second table, pulling back the sheet to reveal the wan, lifeless face of Archie Newman. Patel nodded gravely. ‘Almost identical. Blunt force trauma to the occipital region, followed by strangulation with the same unusual bruising pattern.’

Ella stared down at Archie”s slack features, trying to imagine the terror he must have felt in his final moments. The helplessness, the fear, the dawning realization that this was it. That he was going to die at the hands of a monster for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Ella was about to turn away from Archie”s corpse, ready to file his death under the depressingly thick ”senseless tragedy” tab in her mental Rolodex, when Dr. Patel cleared his throat.

‘There is one more thing,’ he said, in the tone of a man who knew he was about to drop a bombshell. ‘The strangulation marks on Mr. Newman were more pronounced than on Ms. Bolton. And I found traces of PVC in the bruising.’

Ella”s head snapped up, eyebrows climbing towards her hairline. ‘PVC? Like, the plastic?’

Patel nodded, looking insufferably pleased with himself. ‘The very same. It may be unrelated to the strangulation itself, but it”s definitely present in the wounds.’

Ella frowned, leaning in to get a closer look. Patel was right. The bruising around Archie”s throat was dark purple in places.

Her mind whirred like a well-oiled machine, trying to slot this new piece of information into the puzzle. PVC in the strangulation marks. What the hell did that mean? Did the unsub use some kind of plastic cord as a garrote? But why bother, when good old-fashioned rope or piano wire was deadlier?

She chewed on her lower lip, worrying at the chapped skin with her teeth. Beside her, Luca shifted from foot to foot, clearly buzzing with theories of his own.

‘Hawkins?’ she prodded.

‘Could just be a difference in strength,’ Luca mused. He still looked like he was one or two heaves away from losing the battle with his gag reflex. ‘Archie was our unsub’s first kill, so his adrenaline would be pumping harder on the first go-round.’

‘Good thought,’ Ella said. ‘Stands to reason the marks would be more pronounced on Archie. Unsub was probably still working out the kinks, figuring out how much pressure to apply, how long to hold it.’

‘He wanted to make sure his first kill was a success,’ Luca added.

‘What about time of death?’ she asked, turning back to Patel.

The coroner flipped through his notes. ‘Based on liver temp and rigor, I”d estimate both victims had been deceased approximately six to eight hours before they ended up on my table.’

Six hours. The gears in Ella”s head spun faster, greased by the thrill of the hunt. So, the killer was on a tight schedule. Snatch, kill, pose, dump, all in the span of a few short hours. Which meant he was organized, efficient, and driven by a compulsion that wouldn”t let him rest until his grisly work was done.

The worst kind of monster. The kind that didn”t stop until someone made them.

Ella stripped off her gloves with a snap, tossing them into the trash with a flick of her wrist. ‘Thanks for the breakdown, doc. We”ll be in touch if we need anything else.’

Patel inclined his head, bushy eyebrows waggling in what might have been a parody of a bow. ‘You’re welcome. Toxicology reports will be over ASAP. Do try not to darken my doorway again too soon, hmm?’

‘No promises.’ She flashed him a razor-edged smile, then turned to Luca, who looked like he was mentally chewing on all of the unpleasant facts. ‘We need to get to the precinct. Compare notes with the local badges. See if anybody”s shaken any leads out of the trees yet.’

Luca nodded, clearly relieved for any excuse to exit stage left out of this place. ”Yes, please.”

Ella caught Dr. Patel”s eye, who was watching them with a sort of detached, clinical fascination. Like they were some novel new species of colorful bug, he”d found skittering under a rock. She spun on her heel to stalk out of the morgue. She”d had about as much of the house of the dead as she could stomach for one day.

Luca fell into step beside her, his shiny shoes squeaking on the urine-colored linoleum. He was holding it together admirably well, considering it was his first journey into the mouth of hell.

Ella pushed through the swinging doors, out of the cold storage and into the slightly less frigid hallway.

‘Great gag reflex,’ Ella said.

But away from prying eyes, Luca leaned against the wall and began panting. ‘Jesus wept. That was tough.’

‘You’d never know.’

Luca caught his breath then wiped a layer of sweat off his forehead. ‘I’m suddenly reminded of my own mortality.’

‘Yeah, that’ll happen.’

Her partner composed himself. ‘Who wants to live forever?’

‘True.’

‘Right. Precinct.’

Something told her Luca Hawkins wasn”t the washing-out type. He might puke his guts up later when the adrenaline wore off and the nightmares came calling. But he”d be back in the saddle come morning light, ready to do it all over again.

He had to be. Because the way this case was shaping up, Ella had a feeling she was going to need all the back-up she could get. Even if it came in the form of a green-around-the-gills rookie who still had that new car smell.

‘Precinct. Let’s go.’