Chapter 24

TWENTY-FOUR

Beckoning them to follow, Anya walked over to one of the exam tables and folded the sheet down until Cleo Tate’s upper body was visible. The constellation of moles on her left cheek stood out against the unnatural pallor of her skin. Her eyes were closed. She looked as if she’d drifted off to sleep—except for the large stab wounds visible on her torso, one on the upper left side of her chest and the other in her abdomen, just below her navel. All the insects had been washed away.

Anya said, “As I told Josie at the scene, there is a superficial laceration on her left hand. There are a total of four stab wounds, but the one here on her chest was likely the one that killed her. The knife pierced her skin, the sternum, the pericardium and punctured the aorta. She would have bled out in minutes. The average amount of time it takes to bleed out from a rupture or tear in the aorta is between two and five minutes. Based on the temperature of her body, taking into account the temperature where she was found, the condition of her body, and accounting for the accelerated decomposition, time of death was between eleventhirtya.m. and onethirtyp.m. on Monday.”

Noah said, “He killed her within two hours of abducting her.”

“Yes.” Anya pointed to the lump on Cleo’s head. “The head injury was significant. I wasn’t able to narrow down the weapon. Only that she was struck with a blunt object. Regardless of what was used, the blow would not have been fatal. However, it likely would have been severe enough to cause a loss of consciousness, a concussion, and disorientation.”

“Making it difficult for her to try to escape him or to fight back,” Josie said.

Anya nodded. “Yet, there was no sign of sexual assault.”

Noah’s gaze snapped toward her. “Really?”

“Yes, really. I know. I was surprised, too. Usually, sexual assault is the reason why a man abducts a woman and takes her to a remote location. There was not even evidence that she had had intercourse recently.”

Which made sense, given what they knew about Cleo’s marriage and Remy’s recent extramarital activity.

“He always intended to kill her.” Josie stared at the wound on Cleo’s chest. “It must have taken a significant amount of force to reach her aorta.”

“Yes,” Anya agreed. “An extreme amount of force.”

“Which means this guy is either very strong or he was very enraged,” said Noah. “Or both.”

“Given the characteristics of the wounds, it looks like he was standing over her when he stabbed her.” Anya’s gaze swept over the additional wounds. “She never stood a chance.”

The killer had taken Cleo into the woods. He’d either pushed or tossed her into the boat’s broken hull and descended on her in a fury strong enough to pierce bone. There was something both precise and incredibly messy about Cleo Tate’s murder. The killer had clearly planned the entire thing carefully but then once he had Cleo where he wanted her, he lost control.

Noah pushed a hand through his hair. “How about Stella Townsend?”

Anya repositioned the sheet over Cleo Tate’s body and went over to the other autopsy table, uncovering Stella Townsend. Dark purple and red stained the skin of her torso and one of her cheeks where the blood had pooled until the discoloration became fixed.

Anya said, “I estimate her time of death—again taking all factors into account—as Monday between four and sixp.m.”

Which meant that he had abducted and killed Stella Townsend only hours after Cleo Tate.

Anya motioned toward Stella’s head. “You can’t see it because of her hair, but she, too, had a significant head injury. This one was at the base of the skull. Again, caused by some sort of blunt object.”

The killer had attacked Stella from behind.

“In addition to that, just like Cleo Tate, there was no sign of sexual assault.”

Josie exchanged a glance with Noah. If these crimes were sexually motivated and Cleo had been his first attempt, there was always the chance that things hadn’t gone the way he fantasized and that he’d ended up killing her before he could assault her. That sometimes happened with sexually motivated killers when they finally decided to try to make their violent, deviant fantasies into reality. However, if his second victim was also not sexually assaulted then that meant the killings were not sexually motivated. It wasn’t unheard of, but to a degree, it was unexpected.

Anya continued, “As you know, the weapon was a knife. The knives at both crime scenes were identical. Same brand, same size. Hummel told me you can find them at almost any store that sells butcher block sets.”

Josie quickly counted five stab wounds in Stella’s chest and stomach as well as another in her throat. “We won’t track the killer down through the knives.”

Noah said, “These seem like pretty straightforward stabbings. Is there anything else we should know?”

Anya waved a hand across Stella’s torso. “Yes. All of the wounds on Stella’s body were here, along the front of her body. Torso and neck. Given the characteristics of the wounds, I believe that the killer was standing over her when he stabbed her, just like with Cleo Tate.”

“He hit her in the back of the head and knocked her down,” Josie said, remembering the way they’d found Stella’s body. “She turned over and he stabbed her. Then she flipped back onto her stomach and tried to crawl away but bled out before she could.”

Anya held up one finger. “Except she couldn’t have crawled away. The stab to her throat was deep. It nicked her cervical spine, severing the nerve that innervates the muscles from the chest down. She would have been paralyzed.”

Noah raised a brow. “What if it was the last wound? What if she was trying to crawl away and then he turned her back over and stabbed her in the throat?”

“He still would have had to reposition her,” Josie said. “He moved her.”

“Yes,” Anya said. “Regardless of the order of the stab wounds, Josie’s right. Whether he administered the paralyzing wound first or last, before he left her he would have had to put her onto her stomach.”

The image of Stella’s hand reaching for the grass flashed through Josie’s mind. “He staged her to look like she was trying to crawl away.”

But why?

“He’s trying to tell us something,” said Noah.

Anya gently covered Stella Townsend’s body. “I sure hope you figure it out soon. I’d really prefer not to have another one of his victims on my table.”