“No, but I think he’s about to.”
They ducked under the tape that Mallory and Hollis automatically held up for them.
“If nobody minds,” Hollis said, “I think I’ll stand right here. I’ve seen all I want to.”
Nobody objected, and as they walked toward the body, Isabel murmured, “Hollis is dealing with her own guilt. She saw Jamie again, last night in the conference room, obviously desperately trying to say something.”
“And Hollis couldn’t hear her.”
“No. At the end, Jamie was so frustrated she apparently focused enough energy to scare the hell out of Hollis by scattering half the paperwork on the table across the room.”
Rafe looked at her, frowning. “I seem to remember you telling me something like that would be unusual.”
“Oh, yeah. Jamie was a very strong lady. And she was trying very, very hard to communicate. She must have known her sister would be the next victim. Which is another indication to me that Emily knew something dangerous to the killer.”
“You don’t believe she was killed just because she fit the victim profile?”
“No. She was too young, I think. Not successful enough for his tastes. I also think she would have died no matter what color her hair was. Emily snooped in her sister’s life, and it got her killed.”
“And we still have a reporter missing.”
“Who may also have found out something dangerous to the killer,” Isabel said.
They stopped several feet from where Dr. James was still examining the body, and Rafe muttered an oath as he saw her up close for the first time.
Isabel didn’t respond to that. Neither did Mallory. There wasn’t much they could say.
Emily Brower lay sprawled out almost exactly as her sister had lain and almost exactly three weeks afterward. The slash across her throat was so deep the white vertebra of her neck was visible, and the gaping wound had literally drenched her in blood. Her once-pale T-shirt was soaked with it, and her blond hair lay in a pool of congealing blood and dirt.
“You were right about the escalation,” Rafe said, his deep voice raspier than normal. “That son of a bitch. Sick, evil, twisted animal…”
The killer hadn’t just murdered Emily, hadn’t just repeatedly stabbed her breasts and genitals as he had the previous three victims. It looked as if he had stabbed her once in each breast-but had twisted and turned the knife as though trying to bore holes through her body.
And rather than stabbing her genitals through her clothing, he had pulled her jeans and panties down around her ankles, pulled her knees up and pushed them apart, and used the knife to rape her.
“If it helps,” Isabel said, holding her voice steady, “she never felt that. Never knew about it.”
“For her sake I’m glad,” Rafe said. “But it doesn’t help.”
Dr. James straightened and came to join them, his face very, very tired. “Anything you need me to tell you that you can’t see for yourself?” he asked wearily.
“Time of death?” Rafe asked.
“Midnight, give or take a few minutes. She died almost instantly with both the jugular and the windpipe slashed. Blood gushed like a fountain, the last few beats of her heart pumping it out as she fell. He didn’t touch her face, but he used something heavy to crush her skull in two places once she was on the ground.”
“Why?” Mallory wondered, baffled. “She was already dead, and he had to know it.”
“Rage,” Isabel and Rafe said in almost the same breath.
She added, “He had to make certain she couldn’t see him. Couldn’t see his sexual failure.”
“He knew before he tried that he’d fail,” Rafe said.
Isabel nodded. “He knew. Maybe he’s always known.”
The doctor looked at them rather curiously but continued with his report in a monotone. “She fell backward, and he didn’t move her much. Spread her arms out to the sides, judging by the abrasions I found on the backs of her arms. Fanned her hair out and then pressed it into the pool of blood around her head. God knows why. I don’t.”
“What else?” Rafe asked.
“What you see. Did his best to gouge out her breasts, then brutalized her with the knife. It was a big knife, and it did a lot of damage. If I had to guess, I’d say he drove it between her legs at least a dozen times.”
“Excuse me,” Mallory said in a very polite tone. She walked to the edge of the clearing, lifted the crime-scene tape and ducked underneath it, and took several steps beyond, then bent over and vomited.
“I plan to get drunk,” Dr. James announced.
“I wish I could,” Rafe said.
The doctor sighed. “I’ll write up the preliminary report when I get back to the office, Rafe. You’ll have the rest when I get her on the table. It’s going to be a long day.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Doc.”
When the doctor walked away, Rafe said to Isabel, “I’m not getting anything but rage here, and just the vaguest sense of that, not even enough to be sure it isn’t my imagination-or the training telling me to draw logical conclusions from what I’m seeing here. I don’t know how to reach for anything more. You have to do it.”
“I can’t. I’m not getting anything either. Silence. Like you, I know he was furious from what I’m looking at, not from anything I hear or feel.”
“We need more, Isabel.”
“I know that.”
“We have to stop him here and now. Before he goes after anybody else. Before he comes after you.”
“I know that too.”
You have to do her. The first chance you get, you have to do her.
He tried to ignore the voice, because it wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. All it was doing was making his head hurt even more.
She knows. Or she will soon. And he’s helping her know. Look at them. You understand what’s happening, don’t you?
“No,” he whispered, because he didn’t, he really didn’t. All he knew was that his head hurt and his gut, and it had been so long since he’d slept that he’d forgotten what it felt like.
They’re changing.
An icy jolt went through him. “No. I’m changing. You said. You promised. If I did it. If I killed them before they told. You promised.”
Then you’d better do her. Kill her. Before they finish changing. Or it’ll be too late. Too late for you. Too late for both of you.
17
IT WAS NEARLY NOON by the time T.J. and Dustin had done their work and the ME’s people had removed Emily’s body from the scene. The search of the area had produced nothing, not a scrap of anything that looked even remotely like evidence. There were still officers at the highway keeping the media and the curious away from the scene, but most of the other cops had returned to regular duties.
Isabel had spent the morning prowling the area, restless, watchful, making what she knew was a futile effort to reach through the barrier Rafe had created. To protect her.
She didn’t think the irony was lost on either one of them.
“Anything?” Hollis asked as they studied the now empty crime scene.
“Nada. You?”
“No. And I am trying.” Hollis shrugged. “But from what you’ve said about her, I doubt Emily’s is the sort of spirit we could expect to gather enough energy to come back. As for Jamie… I didn’t hear her when it mattered.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it. I’m not exactly firing on all cylinders myself.”
“Is that why the watchdogs?” Hollis asked with a slight sideways movement of her head toward an area between them and the highway.
Isabel sighed. “The taller one is Pablo. The other one is Bobby.”
“Pablo? In Hastings?”