Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [612]
Luc had managed to stay with them, keeping up with the conversation throughout the sandwiches, exchanging forensics jokes with Bonzado and asking questions when Racine got into some shoptalk. Even when he wandered off to play with the two dogs, he still appeared to know where he was. Not bad, Maggie thought, for a man with early-onset Alzheimer’s.
“You’ve got to see the way Scrapple catches this ball,” Julia told Maggie and grabbed the dirty yellow tennis ball Luc had brought along, using it, Maggie suspected, as an excuse to be with her father.
“He worries about her,” Bonzado said when it was obvious both father and daughter were out of earshot. “You know, whether she’ll be okay without him? They’re pretty close. I don’t know if Julia would admit that to you or not.”
“No, she probably wouldn’t,” Maggie said. “I really don’t know her that well.”
“Really?” Bonzado seemed genuinely surprised. “She talks about you quite a bit. I guess I thought you two were pretty good friends.”
Maggie didn’t say anything. She wondered if Racine actually had any good friends if she considered Maggie one. Chalk it up to the job and to the crazy schedule. After all, how many people, other than another cop, could you go out with for drinks and to shoot the breeze, sharing your day, when the day included maggot-riddled heads on the edge of the Potomac? Again, it struck Maggie that Racine wasn’t that much unlike herself. Other than Gwen, and maybe Tully, what good friends could she claim? She noticed Adam watching her.
“What? Do I have mayo on my face somewhere?”
“No, no. Your face is fine. Actually your face is quite perfect.”
It took his follow-up smile to realize he was flirting with her.
“Why do you suppose he leaves the heads?” It was better to keep it business. She wasn’t sure she remembered how the flirting thing worked anymore.
“Excuse me?”
“The killer. It’s probably more convenient and much easier to transport and display the heads, but is he making a statement? Is he telling us something by leaving only the heads?”
Adam shook his head. “Always on duty,” he said with another smile.
“It’s a habit.” But she tried not to make it sound like it was an excuse. She loved her work. Anyone who knew her accepted that. Perhaps she expected that anyone who wanted to know her would also need to accept it.
“The head’s about as personal as you can get. As for what kind of a message he’s sending, well, that’s your expertise. One thing that has been nagging at me,” he said, laying his hands flat on the top of the picnic table, “is the angle. He didn’t just cut straight across her neck.” His fingers emphasized his point, the right hand’s index finger moving along the surface in a straight line. “Instead, he cut from just below the left ear—” and he brought the same index finger to his own throat to demonstrate the angle “—went across, dipped down and back up, almost like a notch.”
“Does it mean anything?”
“I have no idea.”
“Could it just be a part of his rage, a glitch, a haphazard zigzag?”
“Possibly. But it’s exactly the same on both. The rest of the neck is jagged and ripped in sort of a maniacal style and yet here’s this very precise, squared-off notch at the base of the throat. It’s just odd. It seems out of place. You might have the M.E. check to see if the third has the same thing.”
“Yes, I’ll do that.” She let it sink in, trying to figure out what kind of symbol the killer might be leaving behind. Adam was watching her again.
“The national forensic conference is in D.C. next month. I’ll be spending over a week there for the conference and also doing a little work at the Smithsonian. How about having dinner with me?”
This time his smile wasn’t quite as self-assured. His soft brown eyes seemed a bit vulnerable, and Maggie wondered if it had taken some effort for him to get to this invitation. Was it possible the handsome,