“We need to find out where he was attacked and tortured,” Megan said.
The two previous victims had no visible marks until their clothing was removed. Then dozens of tiny pinpricks were obvious. “He plays before he kills.”
“Excuse me?”
Megan had forgotten that she wasn’t alone. The members of Squad Eight-the Violent Crimes/Major Offender Squad that she headed-were used to her talking to herself; she had to remember she was out of her element here, assisting SPD.
“Just thinking out loud.”
Megan itched to inspect the victim’s feet, but she didn’t want to touch the body until the coroner’s unit arrived.
First Austin, Texas, then Las Vegas, Nevada. Now Sacramento, California. The only thing those three places had in common, on the surface, was that they were large cities. The victims were single, male, between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five, tortured and murdered in their homes. While most serial predators stayed within one race, the first victim was black and the second and third were white. The first vic owned his own business and, though divorced, was by all accounts a devoted father. The second vic had never married, had a rap sheet for minor drug charges, and worked as a mechanic. There was some indication that he had a gambling problem, which delayed the local police from reporting the crime to the national database, mistakenly believing it was payback for an uncollected debt. The hot sheet possibly linking the two had only been sent out late last week.
As if reading her mind, or simply breathing too deeply, Black got on the radio and said to someone, “This body is cooking and it’s only going to get hotter. ETA of the coroner?”
A gender-neutral voice replied, “On scene.”
“Great.” Black looked around, frowned, and said to Megan, “I’ll find him.” He stalked off.
It wasn’t standard procedure for an FBI agent to go out to crime scenes alone, even aiding the local P.D., but there had been no initial certainty that this homicide was connected to the two other murders. Because her squad was already spread extremely thin, Megan had opted to check the scene herself.
But there was no doubt in her mind after viewing the body that the murder of this homeless man was connected somehow to the murders in Texas and Nevada. Why and how were the two big questions other than, of course, who.
She would wait to call it in until she had more information.
Megan frowned as she visually inspected the body again. Something else struck her as odd. Because the victim was homeless and had been living on the streets long enough to disappear into the backdrop of Sacramento, his age was indeterminate. At first glance, he could be as young as thirty, but the ravages of drugs and alcohol or simply the hard years living on the streets aged him. His clothes hadn’t been washed in weeks or longer, so his hands stood out.
They were clean.
She looked around for someone from the CSU or SPD, but all she saw were uniforms, and they eyed her apprehensively. Her boss, Bob Richardson, had made great inroads working with local law enforcement, but there were always a few who blamed the “Fibbies” for everything bad that happened on a call.
She took out her BlackBerry and snapped a couple photographs. Not SOP, but she didn’t plan to use the photos as evidence. She wanted to remember to ask the CSU about the hands, and this was Megan’s reminder.
Were clean hands part of the killer’s ritual? Or was this something new? Or special for this victim? Did this homeless man have some sort of hand-washing compulsion?
Or maybe there had been evidence on his hands and the killer had cleaned them. Very little could destroy evidence if the lab and technicians were good enough. But bleach or another caustic cleanser could be a sign that the victim had fought back and the killer had tried to conceal the evidence.
She knelt down and sniffed close to the hands.
From behind, a man cleared his throat. Megan looked over her shoulder. The tall Detective Black stood next to a short, light-skinned black man with a medical kit in hand.
She stood. “No bleach.”
Black raised an eyebrow.
“His hands are clean.” She was met with skepticism, so added, “He appears homeless. His face, his clothes, his hair-but his hands are clean.”
Black said with a tone of self-recrimination, “I didn’t notice.”
The deputy coroner mumbled an introduction- Roland Stieger-before squatting next to the corpse.
They watched in silence as Stieger inspected the body. He made notes on a preprinted form.
“Help me turn him,” he commanded.
As Black helped Stieger flip the body, Megan heard a slight rattle of metal, but when Black and Stieger started talking, it was clear they hadn’t heard it.
She stared at the body and saw a distinct chain pattern around the victim’s neck.
A veteran.
The prongs were so familiar she knew they were attached to dog tags even before she saw the tags themselves. She’d been raised in a military family, had buried her father with his dog tags, and she would never forget the sight of the chain or the sound the tags made as they slid up and down the metal chain.
Megan had always prided herself on her even temper and logical approach to problems, but suddenly her vision blurred and she wanted blood-the blood of the killer, the blood of a society that didn’t value those who fought for them. Men like her dad …
She pushed him from her mind and focused on the homeless veteran. “John,” she said, wanting an I.D. as quickly as possible. Wanting to know how this soldier had ended up homeless and dead.
Black looked at her quizzically. “Something wrong?”
“He’s a veteran. The dog tags.” She gestured. “We might be able to get a quick I.D.”
“That’d be nice,” Stieger said. “We have a few dozen unidentified homeless filling the deep freeze right now.”
While Stieger pulled the chain out, Black asked, “So how do you want to handle the investigation?”
“It’s your case, but I’d like to be involved. I’m fairly confident this is connected to the hot sheet cases.”
Black agreed. “We’ll need to have your boss and my boss talk, but I’m game. Joint task force?”
They both cracked a wry grin. There were so many “joint task forces” between local and federal law enforcement agencies that it was impossible to keep all of them straight. As a supervisory special agent, Megan herself sat on more than a dozen.
Stieger pulled out the chain. “Price, George L.,” he read. “This looks like U.S. Army. No medical restrictions, blood type A negative. Christian. Have the Social as well.”
Both Megan and Black wrote down the information. One of Simone Charles’s crime techs snapped pictures. Stieger put the chain down and Megan didn’t hear anything. “Wait,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“There’s only one tag.”
Stieger held up the chain again and felt along the chain. “Right. One.”
Megan said, “There should be two tags. Either attached and separable, or the second tag on its own small loop.”
“There’s only one tag,” Stieger repeated. “Maybe he lost it.”
“Not likely,” Black said. Megan glanced at him, and he added, “My girlfriend is a veteran. She still sleeps with hers.”
He got it, and Megan didn’t have to explain.
“Maybe the killer took it for a souvenir,” she said.
Or maybe the victim did lose it. Or maybe he’d been injured or there was some other reason the second tag had been removed while he was a soldier. The missing tag felt odd to Megan, but she didn’t have any facts to back up her instincts, so she kept her mouth shut.
“How long has he been dead?” Black asked Stieger.
“Decomp is telling me about twenty-four hours, but with this heat, could be as few as five or six.”