End of Days (Pike Logan #16)(16)
He went back to work and Lia said, “So, why Jonathan? What do you see?”
The investigator said, “Why are you asking him? All he does is take pictures.”
Jonathan snapped a photo, then let it fall to his waist on its sling. He glanced at the investigator, not wanting to pretend what he was not, then said, “I don’t know. They just look the same, despite the manner of death. No penetration, no sex assault. Just a dead body. Who kills a prostitute without raping her? If that’s what they want to do, they go through with it. This one still has her underwear on. We have three dead prostitutes, and none of them have been penetrated.”
Lia looked at the coroner’s assistant and he said, “I can’t confirm until I get her back to the lab, but from what I can see, he’s right. No penetration. Just a dead body, like the guy came in to kill her.”
What the hell.
Lia said, “So we have a man or woman killing prostitutes for a purpose. He finds them and then kills them outright. Sex isn’t the issue. The occupation is. He or she doesn’t like the chosen profession, and is now sending a signal?”
The investigator scoffed, saying, “That’s obvious.”
The coroner’s assistant said, “I don’t think so. The first death was incredibly violent. It was done in a rage. He didn’t go in there to kill her, he ended up killing her. This one is the same. Whoever is doing the killing starts out wanting the woman, and then erupts. This woman was strangled to death with bare hands. The other one was beaten to death with a lamp. Nobody plans to do that. That’s a reaction.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea. But I don’t think this guy is out killing prostitutes because he hates prostitutes. He hates something within himself. And then he kills to relieve the pain.”
He raised the woman’s head, the eyes half lidded, rigor mortis not set. He pointed at her neck, where the purple bruises were evident. He said, “Nobody plans to kill someone and then does it with their bare hands. If he hated prostitutes, why not show up with a knife?”
The investigator said, “He did on the first one.”
“No, he didn’t. He used her own Exacto knife to kill her. He didn’t show up to kill. He just snapped. The second one was done with a lamp.”
Lia heard the words and thought, So I have my own Zodiac Killer. Great. She said, “Is there anything we can use here? Right now? Or is it like the other ones, devoid of evidence?”
The coroner smiled and said, “Yes. He kissed her after she was dead. Right on the cheek.”
Now interested, she said, “How do you know?”
“I have saliva on the cheek. I can’t see how it would have gotten there before she died. It’s pronounced, and against her nose. It’s an awkward location. Nobody would have done that if the person was alive. I could be wrong, but I think he kissed her after he killed her.”
“Can you get DNA off of it?”
“I think so. It’s not a guarantee, but I think I can.”
“Do it. This asshole thinks he’s smarter than us, but he’s not.”
The coroner said, “This guy is twisted. Something is wrong in his head. He’s not hiding. And he’s not going to stop.”
Lia went around the room, cataloging everything in her mind, trying to find connections with the previous deaths.
The investigator said, “You going to do anything besides stand and look?”
She turned to him and said, “Do you have a problem with me?”
He shook his head and said, “No. I have a problem with you being in charge. You don’t have the experience for this work.”
She ignored him, seeing a Mi-Fi device taped to the window.
She said, “What’s that?”
The investigator said, “Internet connection through the cell network. They don’t have Wi-Fi here, so she paid for her own.”
Intrigued, she said, “Is it still on?”
Dismissive, he said, “Yeah, but it’s just a Wi-Fi connection. It doesn’t show anything. It’s just a pass-through for her to show porn. They all do it. You’d know that if you worked this area.”
“Does it show who’s connected to it? Did she have to give him permission to access it?”
The investigator, examining the carpet next to the mattress, realized where she was headed and stood up, looked at her, and said, “Yeah, she would have to do that.”
“Does it have a memory of people she’s given access to?”
Now animated, he pulled it off the window and said, “Yeah, it would have that.”
He scrolled through the last attachments to the Wi-Fi and saw a MAC address. He said, “This is the guy. It was registered last night. He was on this Wi-Fi.”
He laid it on the table, his face showing a new appreciation, writing down the MAC in a notebook. When he was done, he stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Franco Rossi. Sorry if I was rude.”
When she’d entered the room, she’d felt his disdain, as she had from the other men investigators in the past. She really didn’t want to get into a shoving match over who was in charge—because she was in charge. As before, she’d let her abilities do the persuading. She’d found out early on that she had a knack for this, and all she had to do was show it.