Speak No Evil_ A Novel - Allison Brennan [72]
“I do,” he said. Of course he would observe. Knowing the victim helped know the killer.
So far, law enforcement hadn’t come up with any similar crimes. Nothing in California matched, and so far the FBI database had come up dry.
He couldn’t help but think about the Butcher’s first victim. If the investigators had followed up on every thread, talked with more people, did more legwork, maybe—maybe—the killer would have been stopped before claiming twenty-one additional lives. Because the Butcher’s first kill had been personal. Something starts the chain reaction. Something leads to the first kill. Going back to the first kill of the Butcher led them to the killer.
If Angie was, as Nick suspected, the first victim of this San Diego killer, it was personal. Something about Angie had specifically set him off. What was it? Her double life? Something else?
They walked into the overly air-conditioned laboratory and Jim Gage, who Nick had met at the crime scene the night before, approached.
“I’m assisting Dr. Chen on this one.” He stared at Becca’s prepped body on the cold stainless-steel table, his expression unusually grim.
“You okay?”
“Fine.” He looked over her shoulder at Nick. “You were right.”
“About?” Though he didn’t need to ask.
“Her entire body is covered in plastic wrap except for her vagina. There’s residue from a condom and spermicide. I’ve already sent it to the lab for identification.”
“DNA?” Carina asked.
“Don’t know yet.”
“Was her body washed?”
“Yes. But he was rushed this time. There’s a lot of soap residue. And get this: there was a head injury.”
“Maybe he hit her when he abducted her,” Nick said. “The Butcher lured his victims from their vehicles, then knocked them unconscious.”
“Possibly, but—”
Chen interrupted. “Rather than speculate, let’s observe the body.”
Carina gathered her professionalism and looked at the victim as a puzzle, not a person. Becca Harrison’s autopsy was as methodical as Angie’s, but this time Carina focused on similarities and differences.
Both victims had been sexually assaulted, including raped with a closed beer bottle, the marks on the inside of the vagina now distinctive. Both had had their mouths glued shut and secured with a black bandanna, and had been restrained with white nylon rope. Both had been released from their restraints and thoroughly washed before being killed. Both victims had suffocated in a garbage bag. Both victims were in their late teens. Both victims lived or worked in La Jolla, the upscale community in north San Diego but still within the city limits. Both had been kidnapped after dark.
Angie had been raped both anally and vaginally, Becca only vaginally. Angie had been imprisoned for more than forty-eight hours before being killed, Becca between twenty-four and thirty. While both bodies had been dumped, Becca had been returned to the library where she was last seen.
Why had Angie been dumped on the beach? Had Angie gone to the beach after Steve had followed her home? If so, why? Or did the beach hold some significance for the killer?
Carina noted that the plastic wrap on Becca was a key difference. Dillon and Nick had agreed that the plastic wrap had allowed the killer to get physically closer to his victim while still giving him a level of protection against leaving evidence on her body. Gage was taking the plastic to the lab to see if he could collect any trace evidence, because plastic attracted hair and fibers.
“We might get lucky here,” Gage said. “The plastic garbage bags don’t hold fibers as well as plastic wrap. Different properties. And the contamination at the scene with the sand is making any evidence harder to find. I’m going to prioritize this.”
“The killer has been so careful with the bodies and not leaving evidence, it seems odd that he’d change his MO to a less-safe method,” Carina said.
“You have to think like the killer,” Nick said. “It’s not about protecting him, though he