“How often did she come in?”
“Every two weeks, per her parole requirements. She never missed. She had her regular medicals, was always available for random testing. She was cooperative in every way. Lieutenant, she was an average woman, a little lost and out of her element. She was not street savvy as she’d been accustomed to a more select clientele and routine. She enjoyed nice things, worried about her appearance, complained about the rate restrictions at her license level. She didn’t socialize any longer because she was embarrassed by her circumstances, and because she felt those in her current economic circle were beneath her.”
Tressa pressed her fingers to her lips a moment. “I’m sorry. I’m trying not to be upset, not to personalize it, but I can’t help it. One of the reasons I was no good out there. I liked her, and wanted to help her. I don’t know who could’ve done this to her. Just another random act, on one of the weaker. Just a whore, after all.”
Her voice threatened to break, so she cleared her throat, drew air through her nose. “A lot of people still think that way, you and I both know it. They come to me beaten and misused, humiliated and battered. Some give it up, some handle themselves, some rise to a different level and live almost like royalty. And some are tossed into the gutter. It’s a dangerous profession. Cops, emergency and health workers, prostitutes. Dangerous professions with a high mortality rate.
“She wanted her old life back,” Tressa said. “And it killed her.”
Chapter 2
She stopped by the morgue. It was another chance, Eve thought, for the victim to tell her something. Without any real friends, known enemies, associates, family, Jacie Wooton was presenting a picture of a solitary woman in a physical contact occupation. One who considered her body her greatest asset and had chosen to use it to attain the good life.
Eve needed to find out what that body would tell her about the killer.
Halfway down the corridor of the dead house, Eve paused. “Find a seat,” she told Peabody. “I want you to contact and harass the lab guys. Plead, whine, threaten, whatever works, but push them on tracking the stationery.”
“I can handle it. Going in. I’m not going to lose it again.”
She was already pale, Eve noted. Already seeing it once more—the alley, the blood, the gore. She’d stand up, Eve was sure of it, but at a price. The price didn’t have to be paid, not here and now.
“I’m not saying you can’t handle it; I’m saying I need the source of the stationery. The killer leaves something behind, we follow up on it. Find a seat, do the job.”
Without giving Peabody a chance to debate, Eve strode down the hall and through the double doors where the body was waiting.
She’d expected Morris, the chief medical examiner, to take this one, and wasn’t disappointed. He worked alone, as he often did, suited up in clear protective gear over a blue tunic and skin-pants.
His long hair was corded back in a shiny ponytail and covered with a cap to prevent contamination of the body. There was a medallion, something in silver with a deep red stone around his neck. His hands were bloody, and his handsome, somewhat exotic face set in stone.
He often played music while he worked, but today the room was silent but for the quiet hum of machines and the spooky whirl of his laser scalpel.
“Every now and then,” he said without looking up, “I see something in here that goes beyond. Beyond the human. And we know, don’t we, Dallas, that the human has an amazing capacity for cruelty to its own species? But every once in a while, I see something that takes even that one hideous step beyond.”
“The throat wound killed her.”
“Small mercy.” Understanding, he lifted his head. His eyes behind his goggles didn’t smile, as they usually did, nor did they show any spark of fascination with his work. “She wouldn’t have felt the rest that was done to her, wouldn’t have known. She was comfortably dead before he butchered her.”
“Was it butchery?”
“How would you define it?” He tossed the scalpel in a tray, gestured with one bloody hand over the mutilated body. “How the hell would you define this?”
“I don’t have the words. I don’t think there are any. Vicious isn’t enough. Evil doesn’t cover it, not really. I can’t get philosophical now, Morris. That won’t help her. I need to know, did he know what he was doing, or was it a hack job?”
He was breathing too fast. To steady himself, Morris yanked off his goggles, his cap, then strode over to wash the sealant and blood from his hands.
“He knew. The cuts were precise. No hesitation, no wasted motions.” He stepped to a friggie, took out two bottles of water. After tossing one to Eve, he drank deeply. “Our killer knows how to color inside the lines.”
“Sorry?”
“Your deprived childhood continues to fascinate me. I need to sit a minute.” He did so, scrubbed the heel of one hand between his eyebrows, up to his hairline. “This one got to me. You can’t predict when or how it might happen. With all that comes through here, day after day, this forty-one-year-old woman with her home-job pedicure and the bunion on her left foot got to me.”
She wasn’t sure how to handle him in this mood. Going with instinct, Eve dragged over a chair, sat beside him, sipped water. He hadn’t turned the recorder off, she thought. It would be up to him whether he edited it or not.
“You need a vacation, Morris.”
“I hear that.” He laughed a little. “I was due to leave tomorrow. Two weeks in Aruba. Sun, sea, naked women—the sort who’re still breathing—and a great deal of alcohol consumed out of coconut shells.”
“Go.”