Mindhunters 4 - Deadly Intent (55 page)

“Will do.” The investigator shot her a smile that was probably supposed to be boyish, but to her jaundiced eye looked more than a little smarmy. “You’re welcome to stay and help.”

“I’ll pass.”

Her response didn’t seem to faze him. He set down the VTA on one corner of the concrete pad before approaching the body with an evidence kit. “Hey, where’s Cass?” The comment was directed at Nate and brought, to Risa’s mind, a definite reaction.

The detective’s lips tightened momentarily before he turned away. “She’s running late.”

“Reason I ask, I thought maybe the lovely Miss Chandler was her replacement.” Brandau deftly managed flirting with his other duties. He was already kneeling beside the body and opening his kit before looking up at her again. “It is miss, isn’t it? As in unmarried? Or really, really unhappily married?”

“No, it’s dis.” When both men looked at her, she gave them a small smile. “As in disinterested.”

“Ouch.” But there was no offense in the man’s tone as he carefully cut off a sample of charred fabric from the corpse and dropped it in a glass container. “On the other hand, I miss Cass.”

“I’ll wave Chin over since you seem so desperate for companionship.” Nate turned and gestured toward a slight Asian woman leaning against the medical examiner’s van who headed toward them with surprisingly long strides.

“No.” The panic on the man’s face was mirrored in his frantic movements as he sped up his collection process. “Seriously, no. I’m going as fast as I can here.”

“Concentrate,” McGuire advised blandly.

“You try to concentrate when you’ve got a pint-sized she-devil standing over you . . . hey, Liz.” His movements were almost a blur of motion as he quickened his pace even further.

The ME stared down at him with her hands on her hips, eyes narrowed. “How long are you going to be, Brandau? We’ve only got about a dozen hours of daylight. I’d like to start my examination before nightfall, so if you can just give me an approximate timeline . . .”

“A few minutes. Ten at the most.”

The diminutive woman cast a quick look at Risa then at Nate. “Where’s Cass?”

“Running late.”

“Uh-huh.”

Mystified, Risa was getting the distinct impression there was something in the air regarding the absent Cass, but it was apparent no one was going to enlighten her about it.

“I appreciate you coming yourself, Liz.”

Nate’s words spiked Risa’s interest. Normally an assistant from the ME’s office was sent to collect the bodies. The appearance of the ME herself was unusual. Not for the first time, Risa considered that this homicide might be one in a series.

He went on. “When Jett’s done here, you can start your examination. Pinning down time of death would be very helpful to us, so the sooner . . .”

The medical examiner shot him a look that would have scorched metal. “You want me to pronounce time of death before I even get back to the lab with this? No problem, I’m a magician. I also pull elephants out of my ass in my free time. Which trick do you want to see first?”

“I don’t have to eat sarcasm to recognize the flavor, Chin. I was just saying.”

“You know I don’t deal in assumptions. After I get the remains back to the morgue and do a proper exam, you’ll be the first to know.”

“But they’re still warm, right, Jett?”

“Air around the corpse is about one hundred thirty-six degrees. Liz is going to have to use a shovel to transfer it to the gurney. You find the ID yet?”

“I just got here, remember?”

From the easy banter between them it was clear they’d worked together before. Risa was the outsider here. And that was fine with her. She was still regretting the impulse that had made her accept McGuire’s invitation to begin with.

And fighting a similar impulse to gaze at the steaming remains on the cracked cement pad beside her.

Back in her rookie days, she’d responded to her share of house fires or fiery car accidents. It was impossible to forget the sickeningly sweet, metallic smell of burned flesh. She would have recognized it even had she not known the circumstances surrounding the callout today.

The pitted concrete square on which the body lay had once been roofed, and meant to hold a couple picnic tables. But roof and tables had disappeared long ago, leaving only skeletal wooden posts and rafters. The rafters were completely scorched, and fragments from them littered the cement pad. The pavement had kept the fire from spreading into the neighboring trees and brush. Risa wondered if the choice had been intentional.

She forced herself to gaze at the burned figure clinically. This close, there was no mistaking it for anything other than human. Its limbs were drawn up in a hideous fetal position, wrists and ankles close together.

Intrigued despite herself, she sank to crouch beside it. “Were the wrists and ankles bound?”

The ME threw her a quick glance. “You mean because of the positioning? I won’t know for sure until I get back to the morgue. But the limbs will shrivel on a burn victim, and they’ll draw up toward the body.”

“Pretty damn hard to set someone on fire if they aren’t bound,” Nate observed.

She thought of the agonized dance of the victim in her dream. From its movements, at least the legs had seemed to be unfettered. But those visions might have nothing to do with this homicide. Especially if this death were related to other similar ones.

“Even if his limbs were completely secured, he could still roll, trying to put out the fire.” She nodded toward the area in question. “There’s no evidence of that. Which makes me wonder—”

The detective followed the direction of her gaze, and her thoughts. “—if he were kept in place by a rope thrown over those rafters.”

“We’ll know more after the body cools down and I can examine all sides.”

Risa nodded at the ME’s words. Had the person been burned while lying down, it would be reasonable to expect the burns to be uneven. It wasn’t unusual for burn victims to look relatively normal on the side pressed against the ground, where the flames had been unable to wreak their damage.

But the figure in the dream hadn’t been prone.

She looked at the detective. “How many others like this have you found?”

At first she thought he wasn’t going to respond. Instead he watched as the ME rose and strode rapidly toward the city van, snapping out orders to her assistants. But finally he responded, “This makes the third, although it’s too soon to tell if it’s connected to the others.”

“What linked the first two?”

He shot her a grim smile as he rose. “The first victims were found in remote areas. A combination of gasoline and diesel fuel was used as an accelerant. Both had their hands bound with duct tape but not their feet. They weren’t gagged.” His frown sounded in his voice. “That’s hard for me to figure. It’s easier to control the victims if they’re completely secured. Gagging them would ensure their cries wouldn’t summon help.”

“But neither would be as satisfying.” Her voice was soft, but from the sharpness of his gaze she knew he’d heard her. “The remote locations give a guarantee of privacy. And even if someone comes . . . by that time it will be much too late to save them.”

“You think he needs that? Their screams? But that still doesn’t explain why he wouldn’t bind their feet.”

“Maybe he needs that, too.” The death dance, she thought sickly, her eyes on the charred victim once again. The frenzied movements of panic and agony. She’d felt the watcher’s ecstasy as he surveyed the spectacle. The near-orgasmic exultation from seeing what’d he’d wrought. “It might be part of his signature.”

Something shifted in the detective’s expression, leaving it impassive. “Signature. You’re a profiler then?”

She rose, scanning the area. “All of Raiker’s investigators are trained in profiling, too.” Memory of the dream skated along the hem of her mind, and she sought to gather it in, to examine the details more closely.

That had been the last thing she’d been thinking of when she’d wakened from it this morning. Although she had art supplies in her bedroom closet, she’d gotten out of the habit of keeping an easel in her room with fresh drawing pencils and paper, to sketch the visual elements.

The dreams had been gone for months. She hadn’t missed them.

And although Risa was far from accepting this one as anything more than a subconscious mind bump, it was second nature to draw on it to wring any useful information from it that she could.

If it were the victim’s death alone that had so satisfied the watcher, a gun or knife could have been used with far less effort. Her shoulder throbbed, as if in agreement. No, his pleasure had been linked to the particular type of death he’d arranged. The flames had driven him delirious with delight, and he’d stayed as close to them as he’d dared.

Like there was an affinity there. Not just a murderer, but also one who chose fire deliberately because it satisfied a need inside him.

“It has to be death by fire,” she said finally. “And he needs to watch.” To
experience
it, deriving a sort of vicarious thrill from the flames. One of the crime scene investigators was photographing the area. Another was sketching it. Two others appeared to be waiting for direction from McGuire. “What’d the crime scene techs turn up in the other two deaths?”

“No wallets but IDs were left nearby.” When she turned to him, brows raised, he said, “Yeah, just far enough away to be sure they weren’t destroyed in the flames. Whoever the son of a bitch is, he wants to make it easy on us.”

His jaw was clenched, and Risa suddenly realized there was more going on here than a killer choosing random victims.

“So you’ve established a pattern in the victimology?”

Nate’s face was a grim mask. “Pretty hard to miss. If this one follows the same pattern, we’ll discover the victim is either currently on the job, or he used to be on the force.”