14. J.T. Ellison

Hindered by the fact that they couldn’t do their own DNA testing, Sam was still waiting on DNA results. The DNA would tell the truth—a copycat or the original killer. Taylor leaned toward the former. The differences were subtle, but there.

      “Yo, earth to Taylor? Can I get some help here?”

      “Oh, gosh, Sam, sorry. I was thinking about something else.”

      Sam gave her a sharp glance, then pointed at the girl’s lower body.

      “Can you pull up her right leg for me? I should put her in stirrups, but since you’re here …”

      “Sure, of course. Yeah, no problem.”

      Taylor reached for the dead girl’s leg, ignoring the bizarre sensation of dead flesh against her thin latex gloves. It felt a bit like the skin on a store-bought chicken breast, rubbery, loose. Her hand almost slipped, and she chided herself. Jeez, girl, get a frickin’ grip already. She took a better hold and pulled the leg back, exposing the girl’s genitals. Sam was already at work, swabbing, following the necessary indignities. Taylor tried to watch the back of her friend’s head, but saw something glint, a reflection of the light. She looked closer.

      “A clit ring?”

      “Yeah,” Sam replied, a bit of disgust in her voice. “You’d be amazed at how many I see. Not someplace I’d particularly enjoy having a needle shoved through, but hey, that’s just me.”

      Taylor shuddered at the thought. Ouch.

      “Here it is.”

      Taylor’s heart sank as she watched Sam ease a small package out of the girl’s vagina. Wrapped in cellophane, it was coated in junk—blood, sperm and whatever else—Taylor really didn’t want to know. Sam eased the package, no bigger than a business card, onto a stainless-steel tray. She gestured to Taylor.

      “It’s all yours, if you want.”

      “No, I think I’ll let you dissect it for me, but thanks.”

      “You’re never going to get the hang of this, are you?”

      “Sweetie, that’s the reason I didn’t go to med school and you did. Open it up, let’s see what we have.”

      Sam picked the packet open gingerly, putting aside the cellophane for later testing. “Trace is going to have a field day with that,” she murmured.

      Taylor gazed at the body. What was it about this one that felt different?

      “How long had she been dead, Sam?”

      “By the time I got there? No more than an hour.”

      “So we just missed him. Why did he change his MO?”

      “Beats me, T. You’re the detective. Detect.”

      Taylor gave her a brief smile, then grew serious again.

      “How is no one missing this girl? All three of the other victims had missing-person reports on file. She looks maintained—fresh manicure, eyebrows shaped, hair’s healthy and well cut. She got drunk somewhere, with someone. She’s not lost. We should have a report on her.”

      “You’re right, we should. She’s younger than the earlier victims. Look at her X-rays over there. The dental series shows that her third molars are still developing. If I had to wager, I’d say she was between fifteen and seventeen. I don’t know, sweets. Maybe the system just hasn’t been updated, or her parents are out of town and don’t know she’s missing.”

      Sam finished tweezing out the contents of the little cellophane package. It was a piece of paper, newsprint. They both knew what it would say once they got it open.

      They were right.

      Murder in Nashville

      Snow White Killer Strikes Again

      The date on the article was December 14, 1986.

      Sam was staring at the body, a troubled expression clouding her face. Taylor watched as she bent over the girl’s neck, then stood abruptly and walked out of the suite. She disappeared for a moment, came back bearing a large magnifying sheet. She held it over the spot she’d been staring at before, her lips white.

      “Sam, what is it?” Taylor bent over the girl’s neck wound and looked through the magnifier. Her finger shook as she pointed toward the lower edge of the slice, horrified.

      “Is that what I think it is?”

      Sam’s face was pinched. “I’ll have to do a swab, but it looks like it.”

      That was enough for Taylor. She held up a hand in apology, scooted to the nearest sink and lost the latte.

      Twenty minutes later, once she was feeling better, Sam handed her the details of the LCMS findings. The amount of slick material on the earlier bodies had been minute, but their newest victim had plenty to test thoroughly. The base compound was an arnica emulsion. There were traces of other ingredients; more tests would be needed to confirm all the components of the matter. But two listings from the LCMS stood out from the rest.

      Frankincense oil and myrrh oil.

      Taylor sipped a pygmy-size ginger ale and reread the LCMS findings. “What in the world do you think this is about, Sam? Should we be looking for three wise men?”

      “You’re hysterical, you know that? Feeling better?”

      Taylor swallowed hard and nodded. She despised throwing up.

      “If I had to guess, there’s something sacred about the oils. But its base is arnica cream, which is a common homeopathic remedy for bruises and sprains and such. Those are the initial findings, they could be off the mark. Without a control sample and more tests, I can’t be absolutely positive. They could be separate items or they could all be from one place.”

      “Frankincense and myrrh, though? Surely there’s something more important there. And the fact that’s it’s on their faces, like he’s anointing them …”

      She trailed off. Sam met her eyes and nodded. “That makes the most sense. He’s done so much to their bodies. Maybe he feels guilty and is trying to redeem himself. Maybe he’s just a sicko and likes the way it smells on them while he’s raping them. I don’t know, Taylor. Go catch him and you can tell me. No matter what, this latest girl was treated differently. Could be her age, could be she said or did something while he held her, but she was marked.”

      Taylor nodded. “And by marking her, he deviated from the pattern.”

       Five

      Taylor was on overdrive, the new information spinning in her head. She called Baldwin the minute she hit the truck.

      “Baldwin, I need you. The basic elements of this murder are different from the first three. And wait until you hear this. This one was special. She meant something to him. He rimmed her neck wound in lipstick. Like he did her lips. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. I mean, it’s already such a gory wound, I would never have noticed, but Sam did, and she swabbed it and looked under the microscope and there was lipstick mixed in with the blood. It was, it was … really. It’s like he dressed her up. And there was a lot of the creamy stuff on her face.

      “Sam’s going to send out the full tox screen and finish the autopsy now. She’s already confirmed the high BAL and the Roofies. She said she’d get back to me if anything major popped up. I can’t imagine what would be more major than this, I mean, it was—”

      “Fascinating.”

      “Not exactly the word I was going for. Sick, is more like it.”

      “But ‘sick’ is fascinating, Taylor. Talk to me about the neck wound. This is definitely the first time he’s done it?”

      “As far as Sam can tell. She’s going back through all the wound swabs now, but she didn’t see anything like it before. Why would