Eve went with her, rattling off basic information. Age, name, TOD, COD. “I haven’t found whatever he used to knock her out. He may have taken it with him, may have brought it with him. He likes a baseball bat, and the injury may indicate that. Morris will know.”
“Yes, I’m sure. He brought the tape, the cord, you said.”
“Yeah, he prepped for it.”
“Planned rather than impulse. More like his father than his mother. But different than that, too. He didn’t just want to kill her, destroy her. He wanted to hurt her, terrorize her, humiliate her. And I imagine you’ve concluded the same.”
“Yeah, but it’s good to have the opinion. Cutting her hair this way. There’s a meanness there, a small-minded one, from one who understands what a woman’s hair means to her.”
“Yes. I agree.”
“I’m pretty sure she’d just gotten it done, changed the color and style.”
“Ah, even more so. She isn’t allowed to look attractive. I see no overt signs of sexual abuse—but for this bruise on her right nipple.”
“He came in his pants, left his boxers in the bathroom after he cleaned up.”
Mira nodded. “The killing aroused him, or the torture. Both would have. He left evidence of that, as well as his DNA behind. He wants you to know he’s a man—not gender, but a man. You understand me?”
“Okay, yeah.”
“He struck her, primarily the face. To hurt her, to mark her, to feel the power of it. Shopping bags. She’d been shopping?”
“Yeah. I figure he dumped the stuff out, tore it up.”
“She can’t have anything, and he’d have done that before he killed her. Hurting her again. New shoes … wearing them so she looks pornographic perhaps.”
“That’s my take.
“The strangulation, face-to-face. That’s intimacy. The bow he’s tied there, that’s small-minded again, mean again. Eve, I think he took some of her hair.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I don’t want to touch anything, but you see the length of some of these hanks he cut off? I think there should be more hair. Your sweepers will confirm that if I’m right.”
“So he took something of her, a trophy. I didn’t see anything like that at the first scene. Maybe I missed it.”
“I doubt it. She meant more to him than they did. They were just in the way, an annoyance, and dead a means to an end.”
“That’s how I saw it,” Eve agreed.
“She was more important than that. He slept with her in this bed, had sex with her in this bed. And she denied him, rejected him, sent him, like a little boy, back to his parents. And she shops for new things, gets new hair? No, that would never do.
“So young,” Mira said quietly, and moved back to the living room.
“If you’re done in there, I want to let the sweepers get started, and bring the morgue team in.”
“Yes, I’ve seen enough there. Did he do this?” She gestured to the little kitchen area.
“Yeah, he ate after. At least some of it after. He used the AutoChef after TOD.” Eve signaled the sweepers.
“Junk food. Fun food. Party food. His little celebration, all the more enjoyable as she’s dead so close by. Did he take anything else?”
“Her wallet, her tip money, her comp, her new ’link. That’s all I’m sure of for now. Probably some jewelry. I think, out shopping with a girl pal, getting new hair and stuff, she’d’ve had on some earrings, maybe a couple of other pieces.”
“I agree. She’s a young woman, a waitress, so it’s doubtful unless she had a family piece, she had anything particularly valuable.”
Watching Mira wander, Eve felt it build up. “I screwed up.”