The 7th Victim

up. But you know what? This message could be bullshit, too. There was a case where the offender wrote ‘Death to the pigs’ in blood. It was so Hollywood, it was weird. It scored pretty high on the bullshit radar for me. Turned out he took the phrase from a Life magazine article, and he wrote it at the scene to throw us off. You know how long people spent mulling over ‘Death to the pigs’? Was it meant for cops, or did he just hate pork?”

Robby laughed.

Vail placed a hand on his forearm. “Listen to me, Robby. Right now we can’t make any assumptions about it. You want to help Hancock look for the missing hand, go for it. Maybe you’ll find it—or you’ll find something else. I don’t know. But to me, the most significant thing to consider from that message is that the offender took the time to write it in the first place. It meant a lot to him, and it’s my job to find out why.”

“He didn’t finish the sentence,” said Sinclair, who had just walked in the door. “You’re talking about the message, right? What I want to know is, why didn’t the fucker finish the sentence?”

“Good question,” Vail said.

“Maybe he wants us to finish it for him,” Robby said.

Hancock threw up his hands. “Which is what I’ve been trying to do. It’s in the kitchen, it’s in the drawer, it’s in the closet. . . .” He walked out of the bedroom, still muttering.

“He okay?” Sinclair asked.

“He’s never been okay.”

Robby asked, “So what do we do next with this message?”

“We can run it through VICAP. Bureau keeps a database of crime stats just for this reason. It’ll give us a rundown of other cases where offenders have written messages in blood—in any bodily fluid, for that matter. It’ll tell us what we know about those cases and those offenders. Maybe we can make some connections or establish some patterns or parallels. Offenders don’t leave messages very often, so it’s a pretty isolated type of activity. Database is going to be small.”

“Meantime, we keep plugging away and asking questions.”

“The day we stop asking questions,” Vail said, “is the day we should turn in our badges.”

TWO HOURS LATER, the task force members were huddled in their new base of operations, which had been haphazardly thrown together over the past two days.

It was an old brick house two miles from the latest victim’s home, on a mature street with seventy-five- year-old houses. The rooms were dark, lit only by incandescent lamps standing on the floor. Long shadows loomed across the walls, and everyone’s faces—being lit from below—looked like something out of a Bela Lugosi horror flick.

A couple of plastic folding tables had been opened in the middle of what had previously been a rectangular living room. There were no shades or blinds on the windows, and the continuous pelting of the glass by the wind and rain created streaks of water blown across the slick surface.

“We got a telephone here?” Mandisa Manette asked.

“Not yet,” Bledsoe said. He lifted a medium-size cardboard box from a stack in the corner of the room and dropped it on one of the card tables. He leaned back and swatted at the dust that rose from the box. “I ordered five lines. Four for voice and DSL, one for fax. Be here in a day or two. Till then use your cell.”

Bledsoe ripped open the box and removed a few rubber-banded markers. He looked around the room and craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the kitchen. “Who are we missing?”

“Hancock,” Vail said. “I say we start without him.”

Bledsoe smirked, then leaned close to Vail’s ear. “Lay off, okay? The guy may be an asshole, but I’d rather not poison the pool. Let the others find out for themselves. I don’t need any trouble, none of us do. Just cooperate with him.”

“Yeah, yeah, fine.”

“You okay, your knee? Hernandez said you twisted it.”

“Went down in the vic’s yard.”

“You need to go? Get it taken care of?”

“I’m good. Don’t worry about it.”

Bledsoe nodded, then spun around. “Okay, everyone into the living room. Let’s get started.”

The front door swung open and in walked Chase Hancock. He closed his umbrella and shook the water onto the linoleum floors that were already slick from the detectives’ muddy shoes.

Hancock glanced around, then crinkled his nose. “Who chose this rat hole?”

“We wanted to make you feel at home,” Vail said, “but we can’t get the stench right.”

“Cute, Vail, very cute.”

Bledsoe waited for everyone to situate themselves, then took his place at the head of the room. “This is going to be our home until we catch this guy. The accommodations are pretty crappy. I’ve got eyes, I can see. You don’t have to tell me. I’m having some stuff done on the place over the next week or so, to make it functional. One thing it won’t be is nice or comfortable. They don’t want us getting too cozy here. Feeling is, if we like our surroundings, we won’t be in any rush to solve the case.” Moans erupted. Bledsoe held up a hand. “I know it’s crap, but I’m just telling you how it is. Now, I know it’s late—what the hell time is it?” He pulled back his sleeve to see his watch.

“Eleven-thirty,” Bubba Sinclair said.

“Jesus. Okay then,” Bledsoe continued. “Let’s get started so we can all get home sometime before the sun comes up.”

Vail thought of Jonathan and remembered she had an appointment with an attorney in the morning. She had already called in to get the time off, and she would have to pull Jonathan out of school. But it was the first step in getting him out of Deacon’s reach.

“Our guy struck again this evening. Vic named Sandra Franks. Dental hygienist with a doc on the west side. Hey, Hernandez, you’re tall. Why don’t you write all this down on the whiteboard?” He tossed Robby the bunch of rubber-banded colored markers.

“What does being tall have to do with—”

“It’s late, let’s just get through this so we can go home.”

Robby stepped up to the whiteboard and wrote, “Sandra Franks, dental hygienist.”

“Dental hygienists are weird. They work P-T at lots of different offices,” Manette said.

Bledsoe nodded. “Which means our workload just increased. Sin, find out what other docs she works for and while you’re at it, round up their patient lists. Perp might be on there.”

“Will they give us their patient lists? Confidentiality—”

“Come on,” Manette said. “Who’s gonna get bent outta shape over a freaking root canal? They give you problems, lean on ’em. They’re dentists, they don’t want no trouble. Besides, we’re not asking for their records, just a list. You want, I’ll do it.”

Sinclair’s bald head flushed with anger. “I can handle it.”

“Good,” Bledsoe said. “There’s a bunch of things we’re working on, so I put together a quick summary of what’s going on and who’s doing what. You can add Sin’s assignment to the bottom.”

“How do you want to handle the perp’s message?” Manette asked.

Bledsoe pulled a small spiral notepad from his sport coat pocket, flipped a couple of pages. “‘It’s in the . . . ,’” he mumbled. He shook his head, then said, “I think we should attack this like we would any other piece of evidence. Karen, you have any new thoughts on this?”

“Nothing I’m willing to share just yet.”

“Look, I know you don’t like to guess, but right now we’ve got nothing to go on. Even a guess would send us in a direction. Might be the wrong one, but it could also be the right one.”

“I’ve got one,” Hancock said.

Vail rolled her eyes. “Here we go.”

“I think it means he’s playing with us, taunting us, daring us to find the severed hand.”

“And?” Bledsoe asked. “Did you find it?”

“Not yet, but—”