A Murder in Time(61)

Some emotion flitted across her face, too quick for Kendra to define. And then it was gone, and Rebecca was smiling again. “I have never expected pretty.” Abruptly, she pivoted to face the slate board again. “Miss Donovan, I do believe you were speaking when I arrived. Pray continue.”

Kendra decided to ignore Alec’s deepening scowl. She tapped the board with her finger. Maybe if she pretended she was in a war room, and everything was normal . . .

“As I was saying, we can rule out mission-oriented. We’re dealing with a power-and-control killer. As for the victim, her being a prostitute, I believe, is significant. Killers tend to prey on prostitutes because they’re dispensable.”

Rebecca bristled. “That is a dreadful thing to say! They may be soiled doves . . . er, Unfortunate Women. But they are still human beings!”

“I’m not making a statement about their humanity,” Kendra said. “I’m seeing her as the killer would see her. Why did he choose her instead of a village girl?”

“A village girl would be missed,” Alec said tersely, clearly still not entirely comfortable with Rebecca being in the room.

“Exactly,” Kendra nodded. “And by his choice of victims, we learn something about the killer. He’s cautious. He doesn’t want to draw the kind of attention a missing village girl would. Instead, he selects a prostitute. Not a street hooker, though,” she murmured, almost to herself. “Why not? If he were really cautious, he’d take the one who’d be the least missed.”

“Mayhap he doesn’t wish to risk disease,” Alec suggested. “Streetwalkers are notoriously filthy. They tend to be a coarse lot, often drunk, diseased.”

“Yes.” Kendra gave him a thoughtful look. “This girl was young. Soft. Maybe he doesn’t want a girl who looks like a prostitute. Which means her appearance is a factor. I’d need more victims, though, before I can identify it as a signature.”

“Signature?”

Kendra hesitated. She was giving them more information than maybe she should. Though in the latter half of this century Dr. Thomas Bond would offer up a profile on Jack the Ripper, she was introducing a lexicon that wouldn’t be part of criminal investigative analysis for another century, at least. Was she changing the future?

Dammit. She didn’t know. And she couldn’t worry about it. If she was going to do any good here, she needed to think and act like an FBI profiler.

Shrugging aside her unease, she explained, “The psychological pattern of the killer. It’s something that he does that has a special meaning to him. Like Jane Doe’s appearance, or the bite mark on the breast—one very deliberate, very vicious bite mark. He didn’t bite her to kill her. He had another, more personal reason to do it.”

“What reason, pray tell?” Rebecca asked, fascinated.

“I don’t know. What does the female breast represent? Sex. Desire. Life—mother’s milk. A mother who dominated him. A lover who spurned him. It means something. And then there’s the hair. Why did he cut portions of it? Like the breast, it’s a female symbol. A woman’s crowning glory.” Unconsciously, Kendra threaded her fingers through her much shorter hair. “Female vanity. Did he do it to humiliate her? Or for another reason? I’ll need to see the body again.”

She turned to face her audience. “There’s another difference between a streetwalker and a prostitute in—what did you call it?—an academy. Streetwalkers aren’t very choosy.”

“Neither are Birds of Paradise, if you have the blunt,” Alec pointed out dryly.

“Yes. You have to have the . . . er, blunt. Does it cost the same to hire a street whore as it does a girl from an academy?”

“Hardly. Streetwalkers will offer their services in the alley for a shot of whiskey and a few shillings.”

Kendra picked up the piece of slate and wrote “money” in the unsub column. “He paid for a girl from an academy. From London, most likely. Plenty of opportunities to hunt. Why go farther?”

Alec looked at her. “You speak as though killing the girl were sport.”

“To him, it was. This was not the murder of a young girl. It was more.”

“Dear heaven,” Rebecca breathed.

“And he had to transport her here somehow.” It was too early for trains. That left . . . stagecoach or horse?

Rebecca frowned, thinking. “A public stage?”

Alec’s lips twisted. “Doubtful—not unless her benefactor made it worth her while.”

“So not a tryst with a farmer,” Kendra said slowly.

“He’d have to be a wealthy farmer. A bawd would never have let her go, and the girl would not have gone unless—”

“She could better herself,” Kendra finished, earning a raised brow from Alec.

“I never considered it in that precise way, but yes.”

“’Tis true, then,” Rebecca said, staring at her. “The outrageous rumor that this madman is one of . . . of us.”

“If you mean someone in the upper classes, then yes.” Kendra noted the other woman’s shocked expression and thought of the servants crowded around the breakfast table. “You thought he was a drifter—a gypsy, perhaps? Because the perpetrator can’t be somebody you know?”