Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [8]
“Discarded, as you said.” Kendra muttered when she reached the end of the stack. “Tossed out with the trash.”
“Exactly. A statement on his part. She meant nothing. Her life meant nothing.”
Kendra returned the photos to the envelope, then placed it inside the file, which she slid to her left.
“Let’s take a look at the second victim.”
“Amy Tilden. Age thirty-five.” Adam had already pulled the file. “Mother of three, two daughters and a son. Divorced from Stan. Teacher’s assistant in the local elementary school where her kids were in grades one, three, and six. Left her house on Monday evening for Home and School Night. Visited each of her kids’ classrooms briefly—long enough to say she’d been there, but since she worked at the school, she stayed current with the teachers. She walked out the back of the building to get something from her car. Two days later her body was found dumped along the side of the road leading into town. No attempts had been made to hide it. The officers who found her said it looked like someone had pulled off onto the shoulder, opened the door, and shoved her out, as you’ll see in the photos.”
“No one noticed anyone strange hanging around the school that night?” Kendra asked as she reached for the file that Adam held out to her.
“No mention of anyone in the reports.”
“The same lack of respect for his victim. And another pretty blond,” Kendra observed. “I wonder if that’s coincidence or preference. I guess we don’t have a picture of victim number three yet.”
“Not as of this morning.”
“How long between the two murders?”
“Sixteen days.”
“And between the second and the third?”
“Thirteen days.”
“Cutting his time a little. Wonder how he’s spending his time in between killings,” she said in an almost whisper as she opened the envelope holding photos of Amy Tilden’s body laying facedown and half off the shoulder of the road amid the newly green grass of early spring. A bag from a fast-food restaurant and an empty paper container that had once held french fries lay near her feet, which were still clad in shoes. The marks on her neck were identical to those on Kathleen Garvey’s.
“The food wrappers here in the photos . . .”
“Had apparently been there long before the body arrived.”
“He must have left something behind besides his DNA.”
“There were fibers on both bodies, but none that matched.”
“Meaning only that they were not assaulted in the same location. And he wasn’t wearing the same clothes. And they may not have been transported in the same vehicle.”
Adam nodded. “Maybe all of the above. There were a few hairs that matched, though, which by and of themselves, at this point, tell us only that the killer was a white male. Which we’d already figured out, since crimes such as these generally do stay within race.”
“And the marks on the neck?”
“The same. Same distance from the marks made by the thumbs to the marks on the side of the neck. Bruising on the arms, bruising on the face. He worked them both over a bit before killing them.”
“No witnesses this time.”
“None that have come forward as yet, but they’re still looking.”
“I can’t believe that no one saw him.” Kendra shuffled through the reports provided by the local authorities. “With a school full of parents, people coming and going. How could no one have seen her leave the building?”
“She was seen leaving the building,” Adam pointed out. “She wasn’t seen again after the door closed behind her.”
“Well, maybe they just didn’t