14 - J. T. Ellison [21]
Taylor swallowed her chicken salad and mused. She also needed to talk to the reporter who’d handled these cases from the beginning. She’d been trying to reach the man but had been stymied; he was in Europe. He was due back tomorrow, and he was aware that she needed to talk to him. Those were her next steps, talking to Martin Kimball and Frank Richardson, the Tennessean reporter.
She put down her sandwich and started in on her Kettle chips.
“So,” she crunched, “the crime scene was clean. No new evidence. Talk to me. Why are we so sure that this isn’t the Snow White Killer?”
“We’ve gone over this a million times,” Fitz grumped at her.
“I just want to have all the information in front of me to think on. Start talking, old man.”
“Naw, I’ll go. He still has half a sandwich left.” Marcus threw the older man one of his trademark puppy-dog grins, and Fitz nodded his thanks.
“Yeah, let the little man speak,” Lincoln teased.
Marcus responded with a halfhearted “Shut up, Lincoln.” Taylor was reminded of two wildly diverse brothers, two boys who loved to razz each other. They all interacted in a family dynamic. The closeness of their unit simply escalated their success rate. Taylor oversaw all of Homicide, Fitz was her sergeant—the troops reported to him. But this core group of four was responsible for an eighty-six percent close rate on their individual cases, a record unheard of in the rest of Metro.
Marcus was running the case down. “Okay, here’s what we know for certain. Snow White was left-handed. He attacked from behind, pulling on the hair of the victim to expose the throat. The knife moved across the girls’ necks from the right side, severing the exterior carotid artery and moving across, through to the internal carotid, to the left. The knife impressions were deeper at the end of the slash. This was consistent on all of the victims.
“Our new killer is right-handed, though he’s trying to make it look like he’s left-handed. He’s cutting their throats from the front. The knife enters the right side of the victims’ necks, moves across, severing both carotid arteries. But the knife slash is deeper at the point of origin, instead of at the end. So it’s safe to conclude that this new killer is right-handed.”
“That’s a biggie, too. Good. What else?” Taylor finished her last chip, pushed her plate away.
“The DNA hasn’t come back yet, but the blood types match. The rope fibers lifted from the victims’ wrists and ankles are inconsistent with the fibers from the earlier cases, though the knots are nearly identical. Obviously the original Snow White killer didn’t leave presents in his victims’ hoohahs, either.”
Taylor suppressed the urge to laugh. “Hoohahs? Something wrong with the technical term?”
Lincoln and Fitz cracked up when Marcus blushed.
“No, I just hate that word. It sounds so, I don’t know. Fine, never mind. He didn’t leave news articles in the victims’ vaginas. Happy now?”
“Very, puppy, very. What else?”
“Tox screens on the first three new victims show high levels of Rohypnol, and elevated BALs. So they all drank doctored drinks. That wasn’t something the original killer did, either.”
Taylor fished a piece of paper out of her pile. “Make that four. Giselle’s lab work was identical. He’s getting them wasted to lower their inhibitions.”
Fitz chimed in. “You’re right. I was in uniform when these cases were ongoing. The word from Homicide was Snow White was a charmer, he sweet-talked the victims instead of drugging them. All the reports say he’d approach them in a safe environment, was someone they could trust. Girls nowadays aren’t as trusting, they’ll need a little extra incentive to go with a stranger willingly.”
Taylor nodded in agreement. “Well, now we have the makeup of this cream found on their temples. Arnica, frankincense and myrrh? What’s up with that?”
“I think we’re dealing with a religious nut. Look at the biblical aspects—the gifts of the Three Wise Men were gold, frankincense and myrrh. They also used myrrh oil in Roman times to cover up the smell of dead bodies. I looked