“Thought I’d use overlapping tape affixed to white card stock. Soon as it dries a little more.”
“Sounds like a winner. Thanks.”
I stayed another hour or so, chatting up the techs, the ones who would talk to me, and trying to learn whatever I could. For the most part, I just absorbed. The place, the victim, the whole scenario. Tried to get inside the killer’s head. What was he playing at? What made him do the things he did? I don’t like to admit it, but I was more than a little creeped out. Maybe it was just the effect of being hung over on a body that was already in poor condition, but I couldn’t shake this ominous feeling. I mean, I’ve worked some horrible crimes in my time, but that business with the teeth-who would be capable of that?
At the edge of the crime scene, I saw O’Bannon motioning to me.
“I’m on my way back to HQ,” he explained. “Will I see you there when you finish up here?”
“Sure.”
“I’d like it if you could drop by my house tonight. Maybe around nine-thirty.”
My eyes narrowed a bit. “May I ask why?”
“Well, I’m not coming on to you, if that’s what you’re thinking. Bring a chaperone, if you like.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“I want to review the case. Get your preliminary thoughts. You know the press is going to be all over this case. I want to be ready to tell them something.”
“And it couldn’t wait until tomorrow morning?” I looked him straight in the eyes. “You don’t want to hear my thoughts on the case. You want to make sure I’m not drunk.”
“I’m trying to help you, Susan.”
“You think if I’m alone tonight, I’ll drink. Do you know how offensive, how utterly-”
He cut me off with a harsh glare. “Don’t be stupid, Susan. When people offer you help, take it.”
“I don’t need help!”
“See you at nine-thirty,” he said curtly. He waved to Granger, and together the two of them left the scene.
When I got back to headquarters, I was in for a few surprises. The temporary office set up for me was a desk, an old crappy one, wedged into an alcove just a few feet from the men’s room. This not only guaranteed that I would be constantly bombarded with manly odors, but also ensured that every guy in the building would trip over me at least twice a day.
Fine. Let O’Bannon play his little games. I was going to solve his case.
First thing I did was call that pettifogger of mine and tell him I was gainfully employed.
“So how much are you going to make as an LVPD consultant?” Delacourt asked.
“I’m a little fuzzy on that.”
“Not as much as your previous salary.”
“Probably not.”
“Well, it’s better than nothing.” Man was damn hard to please. “Look, I got you a hearing. Two weeks from yesterday.”
“Two weeks? Why so long?”
“In case you haven’t heard, Susan, the Las Vegas family courts are swamped, and there was no emergency.”
“I think there’s an emergency!”
“The child is not in danger.”
“I think she is. The longer Rachel is forced to stay with Darby and Joan, the more they’re going to warp her mind.”
“Susan, I had to pull a lot of strings to get two weeks. Would you just ride with it?”
I closed my trap. “Anything I can do?”
“Yes, since you ask. You could become a model parent. Keep regular hours. Stay sober. I got a report from NDHS that says you’re not going to the IOP classes.”
Goddamn spies. “I can’t very well earn a living and support my niece if I go to classes all day long.”
“A sound point, but not one they’re likely to be sympathetic to. I’ll let you know if anything else turns up. In the meantime-keep your nose clean. For your sake, and Rachel’s.”
After that entertaining badinage, I got to work. My desk was already buried in paper. The reports on Murder Victim Two were just trickling in, but O’Bannon had sent over the voluminous reportage on Murder Victim One. I started at the top and tried to become familiar with the case, all the while pretending that I didn’t feel as if I’d been buried alive myself, as if my head weren’t throbbing, as if I didn’t desperately want a drink. Not to get drunk-that had been a stupid mistake and I wouldn’t do it again. I just needed a little pick-me-up, something to take away the pain so I could focus on my business. I’d stop after one.
I started with the autopsy protocols for the first murder and what little preliminary information they had provided regarding the second. I’d done this often enough to know I could safely skip the pages of minutiae on the body organs and glands, which would probably not be helpful and which I wouldn’t understand even if it were. In both cases, the coroner reported an increase in serotonin and histamine levels. In the first murder that was to be expected. She had a long, painful time to be terrified before she finally suffocated. But it was present in the second victim, too. What’s more, the second victim’s gum wounds showed much higher histamine than serotonin. So she lived a good while after the teeth were removed. O’Bannon was right-she’d bled to death, aspirating blood making it increasingly difficult to breathe. A slow, painful passing.
With considerable reluctance, I opened the envelope marked PHOTOS. Death had caught Victim One’s face in a hideous rictus, eyes and mouth wide, terrified, like that Edvard Munch painting. She died screaming, with no one to hear her.
The forensic analysis reports on Murder One were not helpful. The criminalists had vacuumed and grid-searched thoroughly. Even taken the trap from the vents and examined them. Found a few soil deposits, but nothing useful. Organic stains were unavailing. The preliminary victimology reports were even more of a joke. We didn’t know who either victim was, making it almost impossible to speculate as to motives or why the victims were chosen.
Now here was an interesting tidbit-Victim Two was pregnant, just barely. Did the killer know? Was that why she had been chosen? Or why she had been killed?
I read the handwriting, ink, and paper analysis that had been performed on the two messages left with the corpses. Although the notes were handwritten-probably a necessity given that many of the characters used don’t appear on a standard keyboard-the writer was probably not using his usual hand. A rightie using his left, or vice versa. It was the most common way of concealing handwriting. It would account for the shakiness of the lines, the inconsistency in character size. But that made it impossible for the expert to draw any conclusions regarding the personality being masked.
The handwriting expert did provide one interesting bit of information: the writer was using a fountain pen, gold-tipped broad nib. In this day and age. When you could find a fifty-cent Bic in any drugstore. He was using a fountain pen and a blotter.