The 5th Horseman (Women's Murder Club 5)

She was “looking” out onto Chestnut Street with wide-open blue eyes. As with Caddy Girl, she’d been posed to look as though she were still alive.

“God, Jacobi,” I said. “Another one. Has to be. Jag Girl.”

“It was in the low fifties last night,” he told me. “She’s cold to the touch. And here we go again with the high-ticket clothes.”

“Head to toe.”

The victim was wearing a blue scarf-type blouse and a subtle blue-and-gray plaid tulip skirt. Her boots were Jimmy Choo, the kind that zip up the back. It was an outfit that would cost about three months’ of a cop’s salary.

One little discrepancy though. The dead girl’s jewelry struck me as wrong.

Her tennis bracelet and matching ear studs flashed with the prismatic light of fake diamonds. What was that all about?

I turned at the wail of sirens. I watched both the EMT and CSU vans roll up, park next to the lineup of squad cars.

Conklin crossed the lawn toward the EMTs. I heard him tell the driver, “She’s gone, buddy. Sorry you wasted the trip.”

As the ambulance shifted into reverse, Charlie Clapper stepped out of the scene-mobile with his kit and camera in hand. He walked over to where we were standing, said, “Another day, another body,” and asked us to kindly stand aside.

Jacobi and I stood a few yards from the Jaguar as Clapper shot his pictures.

I was thinking that I knew what he was going to find: a ligature mark at the young woman’s throat, no handbag, no ID—and that the car would otherwise be clean as a whistle.

“Smell that?” said Jacobi.

It was faint at this distance, but I’d smelled it before: a musky fragrance that made me think of orchids.

“Caddy Girl’s eau de toilette,” I said to my former partner. “You know, the first one you think, maybe it’s personal. But again? Another girl? Similar physically. Another immaculate crime scene? They’re getting off on the killings, Jacobi. They’re doing it for fun.”

We watched Clapper’s team dust the car for prints in silence. I knew that Jacobi and I were cycling the same unspoken questions.

Who were these two girls? And who was the kinky tag team that had murdered them?

What had triggered the killings?

What was the meaning of the odd dress-up tableaux?

“The balls on these guys,” said Jacobi as the ME’s van arrived. “Putting the vics on display like this. They’re not just having fun, Boxer. They’re giving somebody the finger.”

Chapter 37

I GRABBED THE PHONE in my office on the first ring when I saw that it was Claire.

“I’ve got some preliminary findings on Jag Girl,” she told me.

“Want me to come down?”

“I’ll be up in a few minutes,” she said. “I’m ready for a change of scene.”

The smell of oregano and pepperoni preceded Claire, who ambled into my office with a pizza box and a couple of cans of Diet Coke, saying, “Lunch is served, baby girl. Nature’s most perfect food. Pizza.”

I moved files from the side chair, cleared the stuff on my desk onto the window ledge, put out my finest paper napkins and the plastic cutlery.

“I took the stairs,” Claire said, dropping into the chair, beginning to carve up the pie.

“Well, give them back. We’re gonna need them later.”

“As I was saying before your awful joke,” she said, laughing at me, “I climbed the stairs. Three steep flights. That’s about a hundred calories, wouldn’t you think?”