CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Outside the apartment complex, Ella paced the parking lot as she surveyed the exterior walls. “A place like this must have CCTV,” she said.
“Not on this side,” said Paige. “Dreed has already spoken to the maintenance people.”
“Goddammit. Then we’re going to have to profile this guy from scratch. What did the forensic guys say?”
Ella began walking to their vehicle and Paige followed, reading from her notes.
“The neck wound was probably made with a butcher’s knife. Stainless steel, available in a million different places.”
“Great.”
“Compared to the other scenes, there was a lot less blood from the leg wound here. They can’t be sure, but they estimate that the mutilation didn’t occur for around thirty minutes to an hour after Kate died.”
Ella got in the front seat and instinctively rolled down the window despite the door being open. “He’s getting braver. He’s spending more time with the victims' corpses. He’s progressing. Getting more confident.”
Paige jumped in the passenger seat beside her. “And this one’s pretty weird. He used a different tool to sever the leg this time. In the other cases he used a manual hacksaw or scalpel, but here he used an electric bone saw.”
Ella gripped the wheel, even though she hadn’t started the engine. She felt at a loose end, like she couldn’t think linearly. The ideas spun around like a carousel, with new thoughts joining the ride with every rotation. “A bone saw? Like, a chainsaw?” she asked.
“Apparently so. But one designed to cut through bones. Obviously.”
This little tidbit of information came with pros and cons. The con was that this killer was evolving into his final form. He was experiencing what the FBI old timers called the serial killer identity change, leaning into his reputation as a leg-cutter and therefore perfecting his craft. Before Kate’s death, the act of murder was merely a byproduct of his ritual, that being the dissection. Now, he was beginning to savor the murder aspect of his crimes, harnessing his discovered nature as a serial offender. This was his primary identity now. If he once saw himself as a husband, father, plumber, blacksmith, hockey player, or whatever, then he did no longer.
The pro, as Ella had mentioned to the chief, was that this could lead to mistakes. Confidence and cockiness were interchangeable within the realm of serial murder.
“Aside from being young and hot, what do these victims have in common?” Paige asked, as though she was reading her partner’s mind. Ripley always told her that once you start thinking the same questions at the same time, that’s when you’ve connected on what she called the agent’s level.
“Women. White. Lived in top-floor apartments. All blonde or light-haired.”
“Tattoos?” Paige asked.
“No. Kate Sutton didn’t have any.”
“Partners?”
“Cassie Sullivan was single. We don’t know about Teri Harper, but since no boyfriend has come forward, we can assume she was too.”
“Jobs?”
“Cassie worked in an office. Teri was a chef, apparently. Kate was a sex worker,” said Ella.
“Huh? The chief said she was a web designer?”
Ella gave her a negative shake of the head. “Come on.”
“Is that what her boyfriend told you?”
“Yup. Her escort name was Rena, so we need to check her out. Don’t mention that name to anyone else. I promised her boyfriend I’d keep it secret.”
Paige made a note of it. “So if Kate was an escort, couldn’t the others have been too?”
Ella chewed over the possibility, but before she could make any headway, movement in her wing mirror caught her attention.
It was an elderly man in a gray bathrobe. The ensemble was completed with a pair of brown slippers. He had wispy hair, endless wrinkles, and a pair of glasses with perfectly round frames.
“Excuse me. Are you the cops?” the man asked, appearing beside her door.