If the previous case was any indication, she would have also lost quite a bit of blood in the attack, but a quick scan of the ground around her didn’t show any signs of it. No loose hair, either, even though she’d obviously been sheared nearly down to the scalp. That told me she’d been brought here from somewhere else.
“Do we have an ID?” I asked.
Valente shook his head. “Jane Doe, so far. Stab wounds are in the chest, abdomen, and upper thigh.”
“Just like Darcy Vickers,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Shit.”
Psychologically speaking, we were looking at a whole new kind of perpetrator now. This was my worst nightmare—someone who seemed to be getting a taste for his craft. The first murder had gone sufficiently well, which meant there was no motivation to stop. Just the opposite. The resting period between Darcy Vickers and this young woman had been statistically very short. If he wasn’t already thinking about what he wanted to do next, he would be soon.
Also, it seemed pretty clear now that our killer had a type. The nudity was a departure from the Vickers case, but the physical similarity between the two victims was striking. This girl looked like she could have been Ms. Vickers’s daughter, with her pale white skin, remnants of blond hair, and well-proportioned, athletic body.
I thought about the old man we’d seen on the security video from the parking garage where Vickers was found. Could someone like him have gotten her all the way out here? Maybe. Was that what happened?
The girl’s back and legs were streaked with mud. By all appearances, she’d been brought to the top of the bank, rolled down, and left behind. But there was something about the way her right arm was cocked over her head that I didn’t quite buy.
“Does that positioning look natural to you?” I asked the others.
“Why?” Huizenga said. “What are you thinking?”
I came around to get a better look, and shined my light down. The girl’s hand on that side was closed in a loose fist, except for the index finger, which was extended. Or pointing, maybe, straight downstream.
“How wide’s our perimeter so far?” I asked.
“Just what you see,” Valente said. There were a handful of crime-scene techs scanning the banks around us, but it didn’t look like any of them had gotten more than thirty feet from the body so far.
“What are you thinking, Alex?” Huizenga asked me.
“I’m not sure.” Maybe I was thinking too much. Maybe not. “I’m just curious. Walk with me?”
Huizenga and I left Valente and D’Auria with the girl and started picking our way downstream.
It didn’t take long, either. After a hundred feet or so, we came around a shallow bend and my light landed on something straight ahead.
It was another body, I realized all at once. It sent a fresh wave of dread straight through me. What the hell were we up against here?
“Oh . . . God,” Huizenga said, and then shouted over her shoulder. “Let’s get some backup over here! Now!”
I ran over to check vitals, but even before I knelt down I could see there was no chance. It was a young man this time. White. Fully clothed. He’d taken a single gunshot to the face, and there were several fresh stab wounds, all around the groin.
Another Cory Smithe.
He’d been left at the water’s edge, like our Jane Doe, with one arm extended out over his head. His hand on that side was clenched into a loose fist, and his index finger was pointed back upstream, the way we’d just come.
CHAPTER
31
BEFORE ANYONE REACHED US, HUIZENGA SWUNG AROUND AND SHINED HER light up into the woods on the opposite bank.
“What is it?” I said.
“Shh!”
She put a hand on my arm and pointed. That’s when I heard it. Someone was moving through the woods, breaking twigs and going at a good clip over dead leaves and soft ground.