What Have You Done(46)

Detective Grimley was standing outside the medical examiner’s office when Liam and Jane pulled up. He was a portly man, forties, whose thick beard swallowed the rest of his face, leaving only tiny black dots for eyes recessed in the back of his skull. He smelled of cigars and cheap cologne. Strands of thinning brown hair tossed about in the morning breeze. His dress shirt had the remnants of an old stain under the breast pocket. Exploded pen, no doubt. Happened to the best of them.

Introductions were brief but friendly, made in the parking lot before the local detective led the way inside the building. They walked down a narrow corridor made up of sky-blue subway tiles and what had once been a bright-white grout that had stained to a nasty mustard yellow over the years. Fluorescent lights hovered above. The space was completely functional. No room for anything other than the task at hand.

Grimley pushed through a set of double doors and ushered his guests inside. The medical examiner was standing over the exhumed body of JB, who was lying on the stainless steel operating table, a sheet covering her body.

“Here she is,” Grimley said. “Just like you asked.”

Liam walked toward the girl and could feel his heart beating in his chest. His body was shaking, so he kept moving. He didn’t want the others to see.

The medical examiner took out his file and opened it. “I know you guys wanted a tox screen and autopsy,” he said. “We didn’t do one originally, and she’s been embalmed, so we’re going to have to take bone samples and go from there. Results will take a bit longer, but that’s the only option we have at this point.”

“No tox at all when you first found her?” Jane asked. “Not even a general screen?”

“No.”

“That’s too bad.”

“It was coded as a homicide when she came in with clear cause of death being strangulation. She was a prostitute, and we could see how she died. At the time, we didn’t think anything more was necessary. Obviously we had no idea this could’ve been a part of something bigger.”

“I get it,” Liam replied. “Hooker with no next of kin to care that she’s dead. No one to ask any follow-up questions. Get her in the ground and move on. Don’t waste the taxpayers’ money. We would’ve done the same thing.”

Liam pulled back the sheet that was covering the girl. A small squeak of breath escaped from his pursed lips. It was as if he were staring at Kerri all over again. The haphazard nature of the hair cutting. The neck that was just slightly out of place from the noose. It was all so horrifically familiar.

“According to some old ID we found at an apartment she shared with a handful of other girls, her name was Jamie Buffucco,” Grimley said from the edge of the room. “She was found hanging from a ceiling fan in the motel room by the cleaning crew the next morning. Uniforms cut her down, and my partner and I spent about a week following up on leads that went nowhere. No one saw anything. She worked her area alone, got picked up, and was found dead the next day. We went to the address on her ID, but no one there knew who she was, and no one in the area knew her, either.”

“And nobody saw anything at the motel?” Jane asked.

Grimley shook his head. “No. Guy who checked in paid cash and left a fake name. Elvis Costello. No one saw the girl.”

“Elvis Costello,” Jane said. “Sounds like our guy.”

Liam couldn’t take his eyes off the victim. “She was probably unconscious in the car. This motel the type of place you drive right up to your room? No lobby to walk through?”

“Yup.”

“Then no one saw anything.”

“We did the best we could with what we had,” Grimley said. He closed his file. “The trail went cold at the motel. We filed unsolved soon after.”

Jane walked up and stood next to Liam. She pulled pictures of the crime scene at the Tiger Hotel from her file and held them up next to JB’s body on the table. They were almost identical. “I think he was practicing,” Jane whispered to herself.

Liam turned. “Say again?”

“He was practicing. This girl was a nobody. She was a hooker, a throwaway as far as he was concerned. Kerri wasn’t. Kerri had a family, a job, a life. The killer had one chance to get it right with her, and he didn’t want to screw it up.” She looked at Liam. “So he drove down here, picked an anonymous woman no one would miss, and practiced on her. He did everything to this girl he would eventually do to Kerri to make sure he got it right. This girl was the sketch before he put actual paint to canvas. He cared enough to want to murder her exactly the right way. After all, she was the mother of his child. She was special. He didn’t want to screw anything up.”

Liam slowly reached down and brushed a few strands of the girl’s hair from her brow. He tried desperately to recall her features, to see something that might be familiar, but there was nothing. He was certain he’d never seen this girl in his life.

“You might be right,” Liam replied. “He was either practicing, or we have a serial killer no one’s picked up on yet. Kerri Miller could’ve been the prize, or she could’ve just been another victim like this girl here. Could be a crime of circumstance instead of one where he was working his way up to a victim who counted for something. We just don’t know.” He walked to Grimley, who was still standing near the examination room doors. “Can you take us to the motel and the area of town where this girl normally worked?”