As the wheeled stretcher neared her, Anne was, as always, stricken by the peculiar anonymity of the body bag that hid the corpse from the eyes of the public. Rather than delicately concealing the victim’s wounds from the public, the bag had the effect of instantly making everyone who saw it wonder what it covered. Though Anne knew the modern plastic bags were far more efficient for their purpose, she still couldn’t help thinking the old-fashioned blanket had been far more humane, at least offering a kind of comfort to the victim, rather than advertising the violence of death; even after a decade of seeing them, she had never gotten used to them. Still, she had her job to do.
“Any chance of getting a quick look?” she asked the detective, who was almost as casually dressed as Anne herself.
Lois Ackerly shook her head. “Once they’re in the bag, they stay there until the M.E. takes them out.” As Anne started toward the stairs to the second floor, Ackerly stepped in front to block her way. “And the apartment is still a crime scene,” she added firmly.
“Can’t blame a girl for trying,” Anne observed, grinning, and a flicker of humor glinted in the detective’s eye.
“And you can’t blame a girl for stopping you, either. Come on, Jeffers — you know the rules.”
Anne cast a wistful eye at the second floor, but knew better than to push. In the four years she’d known Lois Ackerly — since the first day Ackerly was assigned to the Kraven killings — Anne had rarely known the detective to bend a rule, let alone break one. And letting her or anyone else not connected directly with the Seattle Police Department enter a crime scene was a rule Ackerly never even dented. “So how about answering a few questions?” Anne ventured.
Ackerly shook her head. “No time.” Turning her back, she started back up the stairs. Anne briefly considered trying to grab a few words with the detective on the stairs, but her attention was diverted as the engine of the vehicle that would take Shawnelle Davis to the morgue roared to life. Maybe she should follow it downtown and see if she could weasel her way into the autopsy. Then, from behind and above, she heard a familiar voice teasing her.
“Don’t even think about it. Reporters still can’t get into medical examinations.”
Feeling herself flush, Anne swung around and looked up to see Mark Blakemoor grinning down at her from the long gallery that provided access to all the apartments on the building’s second floor.
“So they did call out the A team,” Anne deadpanned.
“No rest for the wicked, to coin a cliché,” Blakemoor said. “Did the paper call you, or were you listening to your own trusty scanner?”
“The paper,” Anne confessed. “I gave up on the scanner after they convicted Kraven. So what’s the story? I assume there’s no connection.”
“How about a cup of coffee?” Blakemoor countered. “We’re about done here for now, and Ackerly can baby-sit the lab guys. Want to see what you can pry out of me?”
“You’re on,” Anne said. “Dutch treat, though. The press can’t be bought.”
Blakemoor made an exaggeratedly sour face. “And cops can’t even take doughnuts anymore.”
Five minutes later they went through the back door of Charlie’s, barely even glanced at the three people already nursing drinks although it wasn’t yet ten A.M., and went to the front of the restaurant to take one of the tables next to the windows facing Broadway. “I love this place,” Anne sighed, glancing around at the vaguely Victorian decor decorated with an eclectic collection of posters, pictures, and objects. It was a restaurant style that had both come and gone twenty years earlier.
Charlie’s, though, had remained, slowly evolving from its original celebrity as Broadway’s newest-and-nicest restaurant into its current status as a nostalgic relic from a long-ago past when something called “Three-Steak Charlie” wasn’t considered politically incorrect.
“Double-tall, no foam?” Blakemoor asked Anne as the waitress came over. When Anne nodded, he held up two fingers. As they waited for the lattes, Anne reached into her gritchel, fishing out her tape recorder.
“Uh-uh,” Blakemoor grunted, shaking his head. “You might be able to pry something out of me, but it won’t be in my voice, on tape. No interviews until we know a lot more than we do so far. Okay?”
Anne dropped the recorder back into the depths of the leather bag. “You know me — I take whatever I can get. So, what’s going on? The rumor is that the task force may have been broken up prematurely.”
Mark Blakemoor’s eyes rolled scornfully. “Don’t believe everything you hear from the dispatcher, okay?”
“Not a problem,” Anne replied. “On the other hand, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask why the dispatcher would say something like that. What’s the scoop? Copycat?”
The detective hesitated, and Anne could almost see him going over the crime scene in his head. Finally he shrugged. “If it’s a copycat, it’s the worst one I ever saw. And copycats usually start up right away. Richard Kraven’s been out of circulation for two years, and even when he was working, we didn’t have any copycats.”
“You’re sure?” Anne asked, eyeing the detective suspiciously.
“I’m sure,” Blakemoor told her. “There are still things no one knows about Kraven’s M.O., and that includes you.” He fell silent as the waitress arrived and set two steaming glasses of mocha-colored liquid in front of them. Without even tasting it, the detective added two spoonfuls of sugar to the latte, stirred it and took a sip. “The bitch of it is, there were certain resemblances between this one and Kraven’s work.”
Anne’s reportorial antenna began to quiver. “Such as?” she prompted, trying not to let her eagerness creep into her voice.
Once again Blakemoor’s face took on a look of intense concentration, and then he began slowly ticking several points off on his fingers: “First, there was no sign of a struggle. Remember how Kraven’s victims used to just disappear, as if they’d gone with him voluntarily? Well, it was the same way with Davis. ‘Course, she was a whore, so she probably thought she’d picked up a John.” He moved on to the next finger. “Her chest was opened up, and her organs were torn out.”
Anne’s jaw tightened, and, as always, she felt sickened by the carnage man was capable of inflicting on his fellows. “Exactly like Richard Kraven.”
“Except that compared to Kraven, this guy is an amateur,” Blakemoor went on. “Also, he broke her neck first.”
Anne frowned. “That’s nothing Richard Kraven ever did. He never killed them until after he opened them up, did he?”
“Not as far as we know,” Blakemoor agreed. He glanced around as if to see if anyone was listening, then leaned forward. “The thing is,” he added, his voice dropping, “from the amount of blood that came out of the wounds, it looks like this guy opened Davis up before she died, too.”
Anne’s unblinking eves fixed on the detective. “So what are you saying?” she asked. “Is it a copycat, or isn’t it?”
Blakemoor fingered the rim of his coffee cup, thinking hard. He knew he really shouldn’t be talking to a reporter at all, at least not this early in the investigation, but he was confident that Anne Jeffers wouldn’t print anything that would get him into trouble. Besides, during all the years he’d been on the trail of Richard Kraven, he’d always found her to be a good sounding board. And, of course, he just plain liked her. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “If he hadn’t cut open the chest and spread her organs all over the kitchen, I’d say it was someone Davis knew, who was pissed off at her. No sign of a struggle, no sign of a forced entry. But with that kind of killing, the creep usually just makes the hit and takes off.”