I picked up the picture of the girl found at the treatment plant and scrutinized the parallel cuts and the symbol carved onto her chest. That shit had to hurt like crazy. And the knife had to be insanely sharp, judging by the precision in the cuts.
I sighed and pulled out the pictures from the very first body, seven years ago. This one was a young black male in his mid-twenties who’d hit three of the four factors: homeless, prostitute, and drug addict. I flipped through the pictures quickly until I found one of the symbols. It had been meticulously burned into the inside of his left upper thigh, just below the scrotum.
I replaced that file, then grabbed up the next: a white male in his sixties, homeless, no family, mentally ill. His symbol had been seared directly onto his genitals. More torture. Not just a brand, but one that was meant to cause incredible pain as well.
But why should that surprise me? It didn’t tell me anything new about the killer. But maybe it told me something about the symbol itself. If it was an arcane marking, then maybe the pain involved in its placing was important. Somehow generating more potency?
I replaced the files, then pulled out the one on the victim I’d actually seen when I was a road cop. But I didn’t need to look at the pictures. I remembered vividly where that symbol had been. In fact, at first the detectives hadn’t believed it to be the same killer, because no symbol had been found on the body. It wasn’t until the pathologist removed the tongue and trachea during the autopsy that it was found—seared onto the base of her tongue.
I jumped at the knock on my door and bit my tongue against the yelp. “Come in,” I called, then had to work to control my expression when Cory Crawford opened the door. His flat brown eyes flicked over the files and pictures scattered around my desk, then he looked at me, a sour expression curling his mouth.
“Dr. Lanza called to say he has court in the morning, so he’s not cutting your latest until tomorrow afternoon.”
“Okay,” I replied, guarded. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
Cory’s gaze swept my office again. “You making any headway?”
“It’s … a lot to go through. I’m trying to find a link between the victims now.”
He gave a stiff nod, opened his mouth to say something, closed it, then shook his head. “Kara, I was a dick the other night. You’re going to do just fine. Sorry.”
I let my breath out. “It’s cool.”
He nodded again, then closed the door. I could hear his footsteps fading down the hall as I leaned back in the chair, feeling as if a bit of the weight on me had been lifted. Yes, all better now. Now you only have to stress about the chief thinking you’re an inadequate nutjob, Agent Kristoff thinking you’re incompetent, your one-night stand with a demon … oh, yeah, and a serial killer still on the loose. I made a face and sat up again, pulling the scene pictures to me and wishing for the millionth time that there was some way to photograph those arcane smudges.
I can’t photograph them, I thought with a growing realization, but maybe I can sneak Aunt Tessa in to look at them. If Doc wasn’t going to cut until tomorrow afternoon, that would give me the time to do it.
I chewed my lip as I mulled over the utter stupidity of such an idea. “Ah, screw it,” I muttered, grabbing my bag. “It’s only my career.”
CHAPTER 8
Breaking into the morgue was painfully easy. The coroner’s office suffered from a lack of funding more than any other agency, mostly due to the fact that people didn’t like to think about death and thus didn’t want to fund it any more than absolutely necessary.
“I’ve done my share of crazy things in my day, kiddo,” Aunt Tessa remarked dryly as she watched me work the lock, “but I don’t believe I’ve ever broken into a morgue in the middle of the night.”
“Yes, this would normally be far too tame for you,” I replied as I slipped the edge of my folding knife into the doorjamb, noting with wry amusement that the jamb was already scored a dozen times over, probably from people who worked for the coroner’s office. The door clicked open and I stepped inside, wrinkling my nose at the ever-present odors—the combination of cleaner and decomposition and bleach, each struggling to overpower the others.
I quickly flicked on my key-chain LED flashlight, then stepped inside and pulled Aunt Tessa in, closing the door behind her.
“Needs incense,” I heard her mutter from behind me.
I swung the tiny flashlight in an arc, blue light reflecting eerily off the metal table and stained walls. “Let’s just hope no one gets brought in while we’re doing our little bit of breaking and entering.”
The cooler was locked, but I knew that the key was oh-so-cleverly hidden in a drawer right next to it. A wave of cold dead air rolled out as I swung the door open, and once again I pulled my aunt inside, this time propping the door slightly ajar with an office chair. I panned my flashlight around the cooler, relieved to find that there was only one stretcher with a body bag atop it. I checked the tag on the outside of the bag to be sure. Yep, this was my victim, Mark Janson.
The bag was secured with a plastic zip tie, which I sliced through with my knife. I quickly tugged on latex gloves, then unzipped the bag, exhaling as the sight of the young man struck an emotional chord once again. Then I grimaced. The arcane smudges had faded drastically, as I’d feared.
“There’s not much left of them, Aunt Tessa. Can you see anything?”
Tessa leaned over the bag, slowly scanning the body, nose wrinkling at the faint odor of sweat and blood and death. “I see what you’re talking about.” She frowned. “Turn your flashlight off, please.”
I switched the flashlight off, suppressing a shudder at the near-absolute blackness inside the cooler, broken only by the faint illumination sneaking past the propped-open door. But I could see why my aunt wanted less light. The smudges were far more visible to othersight in the dark.
“There’s not much to see,” Tessa said, “but it’s definitely a male who left these.”
“The profiles that were done all indicated a white male in his thirties—”
“Lives alone, parents divorced, yeah yeah yeah,” my aunt cut in with a laugh. “Isn’t it funny how every profile is darn near the same?”
“No shit! But I was going to add that I also got the impression of a male.”
“Hmm … But that doesn’t mean he’s the killer.”
“Sure, but that’s some pretty damning evidence.” I shrugged. “I mean, if any of this were admissible in court.”
Tessa made a low noise in her throat. “They.”
It took a second for my aunt’s comment to register. “Wait, there’s more than one?”
“Yep. At least, there are two different sources on this body.” She sighed. “But I can’t really tell anything about the second one. Can’t even tell gender or species.”
“Species?” I said, startled. The dark shape of my aunt’s head turned toward me.
“Yes, dearie. Not necessarily human.”
I groaned. “Aw, crap. So this guy could be teaming up with a demon?”
“You weren’t listening,” she chided. “I said I couldn’t tell. It could still be a human, it could be a demon. It could be a squid person from Mars.”
I snorted softly and smiled. “Of course, Auntie Dearest.”
“Oh, please,” she groaned. “Enough of that. Now gimme some light, Darling Niece.”
I flicked the flashlight on again, only to have Tessa pluck it from my fingers and shine it directly on the symbol on the man’s lower abdomen. She stared at it, mumbling softly under her breath, then finally sighed and shook her head. “I can’t figure that thing out at all.” She handed the light back to me. “We’ll have to ask one of the demonic ilk for advice on that one. I wish we knew how you muffed up the Rysehl summoning.”