A Chip and a Chair (Seven of Spades, #5)(23)
He’d been immersed in the mind-numbing tedium of his ketamine investigation for a while, so he had to check the time before he could answer-a few minutes before nine a.m. “About two hours.”
Martine set down her coffee mug and slung her giant purse onto her desk, which adjoined his. “Your shift doesn’t start for another five minutes.”
“I woke up early and couldn’t fall back to sleep. Figured I might as well get a head start.”
He turned his attention to Natasha. She had a large Tupperware container tucked under one arm-which wasn’t unusual, because she often brought in home-baked goods to set people at ease during their counseling sessions. But she was also juggling a few small bags with her other arm.
“I was just telling Martine that I experimented with a new cookie recipe last night, and I ended up making way too many,” she said. “I was hoping you guys could take some off my hands so I don’t eat them all myself.”
Martine eagerly accepted the bag Natasha handed her, opening it right there and snagging a cookie. Levi put his own bag in the lower drawer of his desk.
“Thanks. Dominic goes crazy for everything you make.”
“I have something for you too, since I know you’re probably not interested in cookies.” She placed half of a wrapped loaf of banana bread on his desk and grinned.
He smiled back, touched by her thoughtfulness. It was true that he didn’t have a sweet tooth, something which baffled all of his friends. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, weirdo.” She tugged one of his curls affectionately. “Have a good day, guys.”
After Natasha headed for her office, Levi returned to his task, comforted by the familiar sounds of the bullpen’s increasing activity and Martine settling in across from him. He’d vetted a handful of controlled substances licenses this morning, but his progress was as slow as ever, and the pair of uniforms Birndorf had assigned to the project weren’t faring any better. He was beginning to despair of ever seeing results from this painstaking investigation. Maybe his time would be best spent doing something else-
“Hey, did you read this report from Dr. Paquin yet?” Martine asked.
“No. What does it say?” Even as Levi spoke, he clicked through to his own email and opened the report from the forensic anthropologist working the Seven of Spades case.
“Mm . . .” Her eyes flicked back and forth across her computer screen. “Preliminary profiles for the victims: age, sex, stature, approximate time of death. Looks like Dr. Maldonado was right about the time frame. Most recent body’s been dead about one year, oldest five or six.”
When Paquin had first arrived, she’d briefly met with the task force to caution them on the difficulties of identifying human remains against an open population. Without a list of known victims to compare the bodies to, identification would be lengthy, complicated, and potentially impossible.
Several factors were in their favor, however. If the Seven of Spades had chosen mostly criminals as their original victims, the way they did now, the victims’ biological information might be on file with the LVMPD. There was also a possibility that the victims could be identified from local missing persons reports or the NCIC’s Missing Persons database.
Levi scanned Paquin’s other updates on her progress. Fingerprints were mostly a bust, as she’d warned; the majority of the bodies either didn’t have skin left on their hands, or the friction ridges on the fingertips were too degraded. But she was optimistic about her chances of rehydrating a couple of the corpses’ fingers enough to get decent prints.
Dental records and X-rays would only be helpful with something to compare them to. One of the X-rays had revealed traumatic fixation plates on the radius and ulna of J. Doe #2’s arm, though. Paquin suspected she’d be able to trace the plates to their manufacturer and then to the surgeon who’d implanted them, once she was able to remove the mummified skin to get a better look-ugh, gross.
All in all, it seemed DNA would be their best bet, even if the only usable samples could be obtained from bone marrow. But that kind of analysis would take weeks.
He and Martine took startled breaths at the same time, and he guessed she’d reached the same part of the report he had.
She looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Some of the earlier bodies were stabbed?”
“The Seven of Spades doesn’t stab.” According to Paquin, though, several of the older corpses displayed indications of stabbing wounds to the trunk of the body, delivered from the front.
“They stabbed Grant Sheppard.”
“That was because they had to conceal their identity so his murder wouldn’t ruin their plan to lure my attackers here.” Levi narrowed his eyes at his computer. “The stabbings were earlier in the timeline. The later victims all had their throats slit, at least the ones with enough tissue remaining for Dr. Paquin to be sure.”
“So . . . the Seven of Spades started out stabbing people, but realized along the way that they preferred slitting throats?”
“Could be. Rohan did say that one of the defining features of slitting someone’s throat from behind is that it allows the killer to avoid eye contact with the victim. That’s not the case when you stab someone head-on.” Levi continued reading as he spoke, until he reached a section that made him bolt upright. “Paquin says two of the bodies show signs of torture.”