“She had renal issues at one point—her kidneys had been stressed by something she used to take. Function was somewhere around seventy percent. I doubt she even knew she had problems unless she had a blood work done in the past little while. She smoked. Had at least one child. No venereal diseases. She was fit at the time of death—I’d say in super shape. No subcutaneous fat. No fat deposits in abdomen, posterior, under the arms, or around the neck. Her heart was in stellar shape.”
“What was she skinned with?” Hauser asked.
Jake stared down at the crescent-shaped ridges in the muscle. Without meaning to, he said, “Single-edged knife with a recurve blade. Heavy, probably a hunting knife.”
Reagan looked at her notes and nodded. “About eight inches.”
Hauser shook his head. “Not an ideal knife.”
“Meaning?” Jake asked.
Hauser swallowed. “A small curve-bladed skinning knife would do the job in half the time.”
Jake nodded. “What does that tell us?”
“That he had time?”
“Bingo.”
Jake examined the thin ridges along her muscles where the tip of the knife had left its mark, removing a little more of who the woman was with each swish of the razor-sharp edge. “Vaginal wounds?”
Hauser had fallen back into a nervous silence, his lopsided stance a little more pronounced now. His eyes were no longer on the woman, but spent their time nailed to Jake.
Reagan shook her head. “Nothing. Wash, swabs, and pelvic exam were clean. Nothing was put into her vagina.”
Jake was examining the bottom of Madame X’s foot. He ran his index up the muscle as if he expected it to curl in a ticklish reflex. “Size six feet,” he said softly. “Small.”
Hauser’s head tilted to one side in that canine way that was becoming familiar to Jake. His mouth opened up and in a monotone voice he said, “Female, roughly thirty-two years of age. One old break in her wrist. Slender athletic build. Good muscle mass. Light smoker. Weakened kidney function. Bad liver from an old alcohol problem. Three fillings and an old iron deficiency. Size six feet and her killer did not interact with her in a sexual manner.”
Jake held up his hand. “Don’t say that. We don’t know yet.”
Hauser pointed at Madame X. “No vaginal wounds, Dr. Reagan’s words, not mine.” Then, seeing his arm pointing at the dead, he let it drop to his side. “Was this about sex?”
“Not in any way you or I could relate to. But to the perp? That bastard got a massive endorphin rush out of it. It’s too early to tell if this is sexual for him. Where’s her skin?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t there. We haven’t—”
“Because it was taken. Maybe it was a little porn to jerk off to later so he can feel all big and powerful and in control of the storm raging inside the fucked-up fusebox that passes for his brain.”
Hauser took a step back. “Jesus Christ.”
Jake looked at Hauser, saw his hands twitching, his face going green like last night. “Go get some air. I’ll fill you in when we’re done.” Then he turned to Dr. Reagan. “Can I get copies of her tox scans? Especially the GGT, ALT, and AST ratios,” he asked, ignoring Hauser.
Hauser spun and darted out of the room.
The sound of a kicked garbage can was the last noise before the sheriff’s steps disappeared into the stairwell. Jake ignored the sound of the metal lid rolling in faster and faster circles and turned to the smaller hump on the next table.
“Tell me about the child,” he said.
12
22,216 Statute Miles Above the Atlantic Ocean
Sent into space during the height of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the geostationary satellite began its life as a tool of the Cold War, using thermal imaging to track nuclear submarines via the heat generated by their reactors. Under the watchful eye of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, the satellite—internally designated Loki—was launched in early 1985. A few months later, perestroika began, and the Iron Curtain quickly started to show signs of metal fatigue. But Loki continued to track Soviet naval traffic in the Atlantic for eight more years, until the SDIO was retooled as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization under President Clinton’s administration. The satellite, written off the books as so much obsolete space garbage, was donated to the National Hurricane Center, and retasked to serve the people of the United States in spying on a less predictable adversary—Mother Nature.
Now, a quarter-century after it had been launched, and performing a task for which it had not been designed, Loki’s unfeeling eyes stared down at the planet from its vantage point in space. Its taskmasters had focused its vast array of attention on a massive weather system that had somehow sprung to life nine days ago off the coast of Africa, gorging itself on heat and seawater, growing into a Category 5 hurricane—a hurricane now called Dylan.
Loki’s data showed that in the past five hours, the distance from Dylan’s center to his outermost closed isobar was nearly nine degrees of latitude. Dylan was now the largest Atlantic hurricane in recorded history, with a diameter of more than 1,200 miles. This data in itself would usually have been enough to cause a panic at the National Hurricane Center, but Dylan was not yet finished reaching into its bag of dirty tricks.
Dylan soon began to generate massive vertical winds. These winds carried particles of water off the ocean up through the body of the storm with a force stronger than regular evaporation by orders of magnitude. As these vertical wind-driven water particles, known to meteorologists as hydrometeors, were slammed upward, they rubbed against one another. This friction generated a charge in the water particles. The hydrometeors separated by weight and charge—the negatively charged (and heavy) particles dropped to the lower regions of the hurricane, and the positively charged (and lighter) particles rose to the top of the massive storm turbine. This separation of positively and negatively charged water molecules created a new weapons system for the hurricane.
Dylan had just gone electric.
13
Hauser slammed through the doors and chewed up linoleum with an efficient long-legged stride. He was trying to burn off the sickening thud that had blossomed in his chest just after Dr. Reagan had pulled the plastic sheet off the three-foot chunk of bled meat that used to be a living, breathing child. Hauser’s hand was still clamped around the rubber grip of his Sig and the muscles in his long jaw pulsed like snakes under his skin. For the first time he could recall he wished he had chosen another type of work. Contracting, maybe. He had always liked taping sheetrock—the pay wasn’t bad and you never took your work home with you at night.
And it beat the hell out of looking at skinned children.
A half-dozen reporters sprang up in his path, microphones out, the bright lights from the cameras actually heating his skin. Hauser stopped, took a deep breath, and tried to look calm. “I will have a press release for you in exactly thirty minutes.”
“Have the autopsies been completed?”
“Do you have any suspects?”
“Can you release their names?”
Hauser stared down the cameras and said, “Give me half an hour to get a statement together. I promise that this will be the first release of many. Please make sure you all leave your coordinates—including your producers’ coordinates—at the front desk. We will keep you informed.” He turned away and plowed into his office, irritated at the gratitude he felt toward Jake for prepping him in how to deal with the media; without Jake’s coaching, Hauser knew he would have already fucked his relationship with the news teams six ways past repairable. And he didn’t want to confuse gratitude with like. He didn’t want to like Jake. Not one little bit.