Deadly Fear (Deadly #1)(8)

The engine kicked to life, and the car shot forward.

Vance, buckled in the passenger seat and with the radio at his mouth, glanced back at him. “That’s cause there wasn’t much left of Sally to see.”

? ? ?

Morgues sucked. Luke hated ’em, always had.

And the dead—they were everywhere. Hell, he’d joined the Bureau to save lives. Not to sit with the dead.

But Monica, she sauntered around the room, those heels tapping, staring at the dead woman from every angle, her bright eyes narrowed and intense—and not the least bit hesitant as she fired question after question at the ME.

“Time of death?”

“What was the killing wound?”

“Any drugs in her system?”

“These marks on her face… that look like a pattern to you?”

Her white-gloved fingers pointed right above the woman’s left cheek.

The ME, Doctor Charles Cotton, was a balding man with some of the palest skin Luke had ever seen. Cotton eyed her with a worried stare as she circled the table like a vulture coming to pick apart her prey. The two deputies were there, huddled at the back of the room. Lee kept glancing at the floor, and not the body, and old Vance had his lips pressed so tightly together Luke thought the guy might draw blood soon.

Not morgue guys. He didn’t blame ’em, not one bit.

Luke swallowed and tried to ignore the scent of death that shoved up his nostrils.

“So our killer took his time and did all of this…” Monica motioned to the criss-cross of wounds on Patricia “Patty” Moffett’s face and chest, “before he decided to kill her.”

A prick who liked to play.

“That’s what my report says.” Cotton crossed his thick arms over his chest. The guy’s half-eaten pizza sat on a table behind him.

The guy ate in here with the bodies? Jesus.

Monica glanced over at Luke.

Ah, his cue. Luke took a step toward the body. The stiffs really weren’t his specialty, and he hadn’t thought they were Monica’s either.

The killers—those guys were all hers.

But if one thing had been drilled into him in those profile classes at the Academy, it was that even dead victims could talk. You just had to know how to hear them.

He glanced at Patty’s wrists. Saw the purple circles.

Restraints.

Luke stalked to the end of the table and lifted the sheet. The same circles mottled her ankles.

“No drugs.” At least not when the slicing started. You didn’t restrain someone who was out cold. “She was awake and aware while the * carved her up,” he said, fury boiling through him. The woman had been small, petite, and she’d just turned twenty-nine.

Hell of a way to die.

“The wounds on her face are so precise,” Monica whispered.

He heard the shuffle of feet behind him. A look over his shoulder showed the deputies craning their necks and inching closer.

“No hesitation.” Monica inhaled sharply. “Pleasure cuts.”

The ME’s jaw dropped and so did both of his chins. “What?”

Luke nodded because he knew exactly what she meant. Cuts to make the vic suffer and to give the perp his sick thrill.

The door of the morgue shoved open.

“Pope, Monroe—get your asses back out on the street!” Luke turned at the snarl and saw the sheriff, his uniform perfectly pressed, his hands balled into fists on his hips. “Billy Joe is drunk down at Taylor’s again, and Ron needs backup.”

The two deputies shot to attention. “Sir!”

“Now!”

They flew past him.

When the door slammed behind them, the sheriff marched forward and faced Luke. “You here to tell me what the hell is goin’ on in my county?”

They were there to try.

“Guessing you’re Dante,” the sheriff muttered. The sun had tanned his skin a dark brown. Lines cracked the planes of his face and gray dotted the black hair near his temples. “And you…” His gray eyes drifted to Monica. “You must be Davenport.”

Her head inclined toward him. “Sheriff.” Monica’s cool-as-you-please voice. A brief pause, then, “We’re going to need to see the other body.”

But the sheriff, Luke remembered his name was Hank Davis, shook his head. “Not gonna happen. Sally Jenkins was buried yesterday.”

Luke clenched his back teeth. Exhuming bodies was a bitch. Especially in these small-ass southern towns. Folks didn’t like it when their dead were jerked back out of the earth.

Not that he blamed them.

Monica’s eyes narrowed, and she stepped away from the slab. “She’s been buried? You knew the FBI was coming; you’re the one who called us! The body shouldn’t have been released—”

“Wasn’t a body to release.” His jaw flexed. “Just pieces of little Sally…”

Emotion there, lurking in the eyes and in the voice.

The guy had known the victim.

“You didn’t send a lot of information about Sally’s death to our office,” Luke said, trying to choose his words carefully now that he knew the connection was there for the sheriff. “I’ve got to tell you, I’m confused as hell. Why would you figure a woman who’d been stabbed to death…” Pleasure cuts. “And a woman who was killed in a car accident were linked?”