“Does that mean anything?” Tully asked.
“It could help us if he’s done this before. We might be able to match up something already on VICAP. Sometimes killers use the same kind of knot each time. That was one of the identifying factors of the Boston Strangler. He used the same knot on all thirteen of his victims.”
“O’Dell, you sure know your trivia about serial killers,” Racine jabbed.
Maggie knew she meant it as an innocent joke, but snapped back, “It wouldn’t hurt you to know some. You can bet the killers know.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them.
“Maybe I need to come to Quantico and take a couple of your classes.”
Oh, wonderful, Maggie thought. That was all she needed-to have Julia Racine as a student. Or was that what Racine was hoping for? Did the detective have aspirations of being an FBI agent? Maggie shoved the thought aside and concentrated on the girl’s throat.
She ran an index finger over the deep, red scars. As she did this, she noticed a bump. Not just a bump, but a swollen area in the soft underside of the girl’s throat. “Wait a minute. Stan, did you check her mouth yet?”
“Not yet. But we’ll need to get dental prints if there was no ID.”
“I think there’s something in her throat.”
She hesitated. Both men and Racine hovered over the body and over Maggie, waiting and watching. As soon as Maggie pried open the mouth, she could smell it, a sweet almond scent. Again, she hesitated and glanced up at Stan.
“Do you smell that?”
He sniffed the air. Maggie knew not everyone was capable of smelling the scent, actually about fifty percent of the population. It was Tully who finally answered, “Cyanide?”
Maggie used an index finger to scoop inside both cheeks and removed a partially dissolved capsule. Stan held up an open plastic bag.
“What’s with cyanide these days?” Stan said, then noticed the warning look Maggie shot him.
“What kind of crazy son of a bitch gives his victim a cyanide pill after he’s strangled her? Or is that the cause of death?” Racine sounded impatient. She didn’t seem to notice the exchange between Stan and Maggie, who had both recognized the red-and-white capsule. Enough of it was intact to see that the capsule bore the same brand name they had extracted from the five boys in the cabin just last weekend.
“I haven’t gotten that far yet,” Stan finally answered.
He was growing impatient, too, but for the moment he was keeping what he knew quiet. Evidently he had read Maggie’s urgent look accurately. If there was a connection between this girl and those boys, Racine would know soon enough. For the moment, it was one of the few things they had managed to keep from the media, and Maggie wanted it to remain that way.
“Her mouth was taped shut,” Stan continued. “I bagged the duct tape.”
“He probably stuck the pill into her mouth and taped it shut while she was unconscious,” Tully said, trying to explain the partially dissolved capsule. The girl’s saliva glands would have still needed to be working for the capsule to have started dissolving.
Maggie glanced at Tully and could see that he had recognized the capsule, too, and had guessed what was going on. So Racine was the only one in the dark. Not a bad game plan. Maggie refused to feel an ounce of guilt over keeping this from the detective, especially after their last case together.
“Seems like overkill,” Racine said.
“Or insurance.” Stan was playing along.
“I hate to interrupt your brainstorming, everyone,” Maggie said. “But there’s something else in here. Stan, could you hand me those forceps?”
She opened the woman’s mouth as wide as the rigored jaws allowed, then squinted as she pinched onto an object that was lodged halfway down the girl’s throat. What she extracted was covered with blood, folded and crinkled, but still recognizable.
“I think I just found her ID,” Maggie told them, holding up what looked like a mangled driver’s license.
CHAPTER 27
Tully sipped his Coke, grateful for the break. Wenhoff had taken the seventeen-year-old’s driver’s license and fingerprints upstairs to the lab. But Tully knew they wouldn’t find any priors or runaway reports on Virginia Brier. From the bikini wax and the girl’s mid-November tan lines, Tully knew Virginia was not the typical high-risk victim. She wasn’t a prostitute or some throwaway or a homeless street kid. He guessed she came from a good home, a middle-to upper-class family. Somewhere a father and mother were still waiting for her to come home from last night or going crazy because it was too early to file a missing person’s report. It reminded him of waiting up for Emma last night. She had been only twenty minutes late, but what if…
“Hey, Tully?”
He realized O’Dell was staring at him again with a look of concern.
“Are you feeling okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired. Stayed up too late last night.”
“Oh, really? Hot date?” Racine hoisted herself up onto an empty countertop, her long legs allowing her to do it in one smooth motion.
“My daughter and I stayed up watching Rear Window.”
“Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly? I love that movie. I guess I didn’t realize you were married, Tully.”
“Divorced.”
“Oh, okay.” The detective smiled at him as if she was glad. Most people automatically mumbled some sort of apology, which he didn’t really understand, either.
He glanced over at O’Dell, who was pretending to be occupied with some evidence bags instead of paying attention to Racine’s flirting. Or at least, he thought Racine was flirting with him. He’d never been good at it himself or even good at detecting it, for that matter. At least O’Dell was trying to behave herself with Racine, as if being nice to the detective would make up for them keeping her in the dark about the cyanide capsule. He wasn’t sure he agreed that they should be withholding information. This was Racine’s case, after all. Not theirs. They were here only to assist and offer consultation.
Tully still wondered why Cunningham and BSU had even been called in on this case. Who had made that call and what did they know? Had someone already suggested a connection between this girl and the five young men from the cabin raid? And if so, who was it and how did they know? Evidently, it wasn’t anyone at the District PD, because Racine seemed clueless.
His stomach still felt queasy, though the Coke was helping. He was fine as long as he concentrated on the case and not the fact that the dead girl could just as easily have been Emma. He found himself wondering what had made this girl different. Why had the killer chosen her?
“Okay, you two,” Racine said. “Tell me what you know.”
Tully shot a look at O’Dell. Had Racine finally figured out they hadn’t told her something? Before either of them could answer, Racine continued, “Since we have some time, tell me about this guy from what we’ve learned so far. I have to get out there and start looking for this fucking psycho. You guys are the profilers. Tell me what I’m supposed to look for.”
Tully relaxed, almost sighing. O’Dell hadn’t flinched. She was good, impressive. They hadn’t known each other for very long, but he did know that O’Dell was a better liar than he was. He’d let her have the first shot at Racine’s question.
“Everything so far points to him as being organized.”
Racine nodded. “Okay, I know about organized versus disorganized. You can save me the textbook stuff. I’m after specifics.”
“It’s awfully early for specifics,” O’Dell told her.