The Darkness of Evil (Karen Vail #7)(96)
All he knew is that when he was face-to-face with Jasmine, touching her, he wanted to break her neck. End her life.
That was the rage he was accustomed to.
All in all, his encounter with her was not a complete loss. He showed her he could still find her, which was undoubtedly unnerving. If it made for anxious, sleepless nights, so much the better.
But he no longer had a bead on Jasmine, and unless he could follow Vail again it would be difficult tracking his daughter down. Since Vail had to have her guard up now, tailing her carried a lot more danger. He had done it successfully once, but attempting a repeat performance might be going back to the well too many times. While he was skilled at not getting caught, he knew when to back off. His ability to outsmart, to outthink, the cops was what had gotten him this far.
One thing being locked away in a prison cell taught him was how mind-numbingly tedious life could be. Staying free presented its challenges, for sure, but they were good challenges.
He might have difficulty feeling certain types of emotions, but excitement was not one of them.
51
Vail stood at the entrance to the apartment and pulled on a pair of booties while watching members of the crime scene unit ply their trade. Curtis was parking the car as Vail stepped inside and found Johnson in the bedroom, right hand on her chin, studying the victim’s body from several feet away, as if trying to make sense of it.
“I’m here,” Vail said.
“Yeah. I can see that.”
“Are we sure this is a Blood Lines kill?”
Johnson did not move. While still staring ahead, she said, “Oh yeah, I’m sure. Go on, take a look for yourself.”
Vail snapped on a pair of gloves. “Who is this?”
“Aida Cerulli. Thirty-nine-year-old pharmacist. Roommate, a factory worker who has the overnight shift, discovered her this morning. Best I can tell, Aida finished up at the drug store, an independent in Manassas, around 6:30 last night. I can’t account for her whereabouts after that. A neighbor thought she heard her come home around nine, but wasn’t sure.”
Vail advanced on the bed and saw the familiar dried blood pooled, soaked into the sheets and mattress pad. “Do we have a time of death?”
“ME said last night, probably between 11:00 PM and 1:00 AM. There are tool marks on the front door lock.”
“Really. Forced entry.” That’s new. Why? Is this merely the evolution of MO? Or is it because this kill was done by Gaines or MacFarlane and we had his bottle of ether, so he couldn’t use it to subdue her?
“What are you thinking?”
“Hmm?” She turned around and saw that Curtis had entered. She told him what her thoughts were. “Take a stealth entry, get into the apartment while the vic’s asleep. Surprise her, no screams.”
“This is so different,” Johnson said. “The guy we found in the barn, hacked up and buried. William Reynolds. Greeling, the cop. Tammy Hartwell, Nathan Anderson. All different.”
“Not all are different,” Vail said. “And in some cases the change in MO was logical and purposeful—and situational. In many ways the kills are reflective of the offender’s instability. He’s on the run, homeless. He’s adapted his MO to ensure success and meet his needs. William Reynolds is an example. Nathan Anderson was opportunistic. I don’t think he planned to kill Nathan. But once he used him to get away, he became an asset—for sex—and then a liability because he’d be taking a risk in letting him live.”
“So you think this fits with the other kills?” Hurdle asked. “Is Aida one of Marcks’s victims? And Gaines’s?”
“I think it’s consistent with Marcks’s ritual. The difference in MO can be explained. Now, whether Gaines is involved, we may need to rely on forensics. And I need to go back and look at this entire case, rewinding to his first kills, to see how I’d assess him—and see how I’d look at the case if he had a partner. I basically worked off Thomas Underwood’s assessment because I was new. I’d never do that now. So I think it’d be good for me to step back and take a fresh look at it, from the beginning.”
“How long is that gonna take?” Hurdle said.
A lot longer than you’d like. “There were fourteen murders, not to mention all the recent ones. And the fires. Normally it’d take weeks, but we don’t have weeks. I’ll do it as fast as I can. Meantime, let me take a better look at Aida.” Vail started a few feet away from the bed, taking it all in. She moved closer and resisted the desire to study the “blood lines” first, looking over her face. No unusual markings.
What’s that?
She pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight, shined it into the mouth, which was minimally open, teeth parted. “Hey, we got tweezers?” She moved into the hallway and called to a crime scene technician. “Tweezers?”
The woman reached into her kit and handed a pair to Vail, who rushed back into the bedroom. Curtis saw her and said, “What’s going on?”
“Found something, I think.”
Vail maneuvered the prongs between the lips and slowly extracted a piece of paper. She flashed on a prior case where she had found notes hidden in a victim’s orifice, a case that caused her a great deal of pain in more ways than she cared to think about.