“Do you think she was alive when he …?” she trailed off and gestured at Tillie’s head.
“Yes.”
She and Matthew both turned to medical examiner Tracey Curtis. Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, her dark eyes were serious—like they always were at a crime scene—and she was on her knees beside the body.
“Yes?” Rylla echoed with dismay.
“Too much blood for her to have been dead. Her heart was still beating when he pierced her eye.”
The shoe sticking out of Tillie's head was grotesque and yet it was hard to tear her eyes away from it. It looked so surreal like something on a movie set. The shoe itself looked perfectly normal, but the six-inch heel had been embedded in the woman’s right eye.
“How did he get her to lie still while he rammed the heel of a shoe through her eye?” Matthew asked.
Tracey gave a small wry smile. “That’s your area of expertise not mine.”
“Any signs she was restrained?” Rylla asked.
The medical examiner picked up one of Tillie's wrists. “I see red marks, so yes, he could have restrained her to kill her.”
“Did he kill her here?” Matthew asked.
“No, there’s no puddle of blood under her head, and I saw blood drops leading in a path from down there,” she pointed behind them, “to here.”
“Parked the car there, then carried her over to pose her,” Rylla said.
“He was very specific in his posing of her this time around,” Matthew said.
She nodded. The killer had laid out a large piece of blue silk that looked like it matched the material Tillie’s dress was made from. Then he had laid Tillie out on it, resting her hands on her stomach, and stretching her legs out straight. On her left foot she wore the shoe that matched the one which was now stuck in her head.
“He dressed her after he killed her too, right?” she asked Tracey.
“Yes,” Tracey agreed, “there is blood on her skin under the dress.”
“He did her hair too,” Matthew noted.
“It’s important to him that she look the part of a princess,” she said.
“And yet he didn't bother washing away the blood. That seems at odds with the meticulous dressing and hair doing.”
“He’s good at doing hair,” Tracey added. “He’s done a French twist, that’s not the kind of thing I would expect the average man to be able to do.”
Rylla wasn't even sure she could put her hair in a French twist. It was long, but she never usually did anything special with it, there wasn't really any need to, she never really did much other than work and hang out with her friends. A ponytail usually sufficed otherwise she just let it hang around her shoulders in a mass of red curls. “Hairdresser maybe, or single dad with daughters, could be why he’s picking women from a dating website.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Matthew nodded.
“I wonder if he made the dress himself,” she said. “It’s not the kind of thing you’d find in many dress stores, and if it was bought, it would be very expensive.”
“Given the princess theme, he could be wealthy, consider himself a prince of sorts and is searching for his princess.”
“Where did he kill her?” she asked. “He didn't kill her here, but there are drops of blood, so he had to have moved her very shortly after death. He either killed her in his vehicle then posed her, or he killed her close by and brought her here.”
Here was an old abandoned industrial complex. There were several abandoned warehouses and more junk and garbage lying around than Rylla had seen in her life. It was quiet here, the odd homeless person slept in the empty buildings, and kids looking for a secluded place to party, drink, do drugs, or make out, but that was it. No one else came out here, which made it the perfect place to dump a body.
“Rylla, Matthew.”
Kane, Tracey’s husband and father of their fur babies, was a crime scene tech and was waving at them from the end of an alley about twenty yards away. Leaving Tracey to finish up with the body, she and her partner headed down to Kane to find out what he had for them.
“What’s up, Kane?” Matthew asked when they reached him.