ID that may have been left behind.
'It's Jane Doe A,' Racine finally said, pulling out the tag. 'This one was found in Rock Creek Park. A wooded area down away from the running trail. A woman and her dog found it. She called it in and gave the directions. Said her dog stumbled upon it.'
'It was preserved fairly well for being in the woods.'
'It was covered with leaves and dirt.' Racine was checking her notes from the file.
'Did you say a woman called it in?' Maggie didn't remember seeing a name in the file and now she realized it may have never been given. 'She didn't take you to the site or meet you there?'
'No, she didn't even come in to file a report,' Racine said. 'Called it in to 911 and the dispatch operator took all the information,'
'And she didn't leave a name?'
'No name.' Racine looked up from her notes and met Maggie's eyes.
She could see the detective was thinking the same thing she was. Had it been the same woman caller who directed them to the bank of the Potomac on Friday? To another one of the killer's dump sites?
'Did a woman call in the other one?'
Racine pulled out another file folder and started riffling through it. 'Here it is. Jane Doe B was found outside a construction site for a new parking garage. The owner, a Mr. Bradford Zahn, contacted the police. Hmm… no mysterious woman caller.' She wasn't pleased and shrugged when she looked up at Maggie. 'So much for our theory.'
Bonzado appeared unfazed by it all. Instead, he had laid the head on its side and was examining the marks at the base of the severed skull.
'I can't be certain what he used to cut off her head, but I'm thinking it was more like he chopped it than cut.'
'Chopped and ripped,' Maggie added. 'The last victim's neck had a lot of rips and tears.'
'This reminds me of a case I had a couple of months ago,' Bonzado told them. 'All that was found was the right leg. It was fairly decomposed, too. Somebody fished it out of the Connecticut River. The chop marks were very similar to this. I kept trying to reproduce the marks, using just about everything I could think of. The closest match was a small hatchet, the kind you'd use for camping.'
'So it was literally a hatchet job, huh?' Racine laughed at her own joke.
Bonzado didn't. But he did smile even though he went on to point out gashes on what was left of this victim's split vertebrae. 'Usually when a body's dismembered, the joints and bones are sawn or cut with a blade. A sharp, blunt object like a hatchet or ax __ or he could have even used a machete __ leaves gashes in the bone from the attempts that didn't quite slice through. That probably explains the rips and tears you were seeing in the skin and tissues, too.'
'There's one thing that bothers me,' Maggie said as she watched Bonzado add some cleaning solvent to the bone. The liquid seemed to highlight the chop marks. 'This guy has to be disciplined and organized enough to plan not only the murders, but the drop sites. And yet, it's almost as if he completely loses it after he's killed them. The last victim showed signs of being strangled and hit over the head with a ball-peen hammer. A hatchet or machete just contributes to this idea that he sort of loses it.'
'Yeah, and what about that? Why not a saw or knife?' Racine asked. 'Is it poor planning? Does he use whatever is handy?' Racine asked, but she was directing her question to Maggie, the FBI profiler, instead of Bonzado.
'He has to take them someplace safe to cut them up,' Maggie said. 'Where could he go that just happens to have a hatchet or machete handy?'
'My dad keeps a machete in his garden shed,' Bonzado offered. 'He claims it works for anything from hacking off tree branches to plucking up dandelions. As for the hatchet, someone who camps a lot might actually carry one around in his trunk with other camping supplies.'
'Even if he keeps it in his car, where the hell does he take them?' Racine wanted to know. 'Cutting off someone's head is a messy job. And it's not like there's a whole lot of gardening sheds in the District.'
'We can't assume he kills them in the District,' Maggie said. 'Just because their heads are dumped there.'
'Fair enough,' Racine said with no argument. Maggie thought she was awfully agreeable this trip. 'So he could possibly have access to a cabin or toolshed, but he probably lives in the District, right? From what I know about serial killers, they don't usually display their handiwork too far from where they live or work.'
'Excuse me, ladies.' Bonzado now had forceps and was bent over a patch of loose flesh, pulling it away from the base of the skull. 'I might have something here. Mind if I pluck this off?'
'Whatever you need to do.'
Maggie came in close over Bonzado's shoulder, but she wasn't sure what had gotten his attention. The flesh was so decomposed it had turned gray and black in the areas where it remained attached. Even the cleaning solvent couldn't help here.
'What is it?' Maggie finally asked, thinking something had been embedded in the flesh.
Bonzado carefully ripped off a piece of tissue about two inches in diameter. He held it up in the sunlight, but Maggie still couldn't tell what it was that had gotten his attention.
'The epidermis is gone and I need to clean this up.' He was grinning now and it reminded Maggie of a proud schoolboy with a show-and-tell project. 'If I'm not mistaken, I think this may be a tattoo from the back of her neck. The killer may have thought he removed it when it ripped off the top layer, but tattoos actually show up better deep under where the ink settles.'
'You think there's enough to figure out what it is?'
'Hard to tell.' And now he was holding it up under a fluorescent desk light. 'But if there is enough, tattoos can be pretty unique. We've identified victims by their tattoos in other instances.'
'So maybe the killer slipped up.' Racine sounded hopeful.
'Oh, yeah. I'd say he may have made a big-time boo-boo.'
CHAPTER 28
Tommy Pakula left Clare and the girls outside under the canopy in their backyard. They eagerly excused him so they could discuss plans for the big Fourth of July bash later at Memorial Park without him breaking into his off-key rendition of the Beach Boys, just one of the has-been entertainment lineups for the event.
He didn't mind. He had the family room to himself. Even better, he had the TV remote to himself. He clicked the TV on, switching channels, and leaving it on Fox News for background noise while he pulled out the file folders he had brought home. He didn't usually bring home files, but something about this one bugged him and Weston's taunt only made him anxious.
He pulled out crime scene and autopsy photos along with the reports he had downloaded from the Minneapolis
Police Department. With no leads in their investigation they seemed to welcome his inquiries. Right now Minneapolis considered it random, but Pakula wondered if the killer knew that his victim was an ex-priest.
The Douglas County Crime Lab hadn't much for him yet. It was too early. Medina had, however, tagged and labeled some of the trace she had collected. Locard's Principle had come through for him many times in the past. No matter how careful a killer was, there was an exchange of debris that took place between the killer and the victim. It was inevitable. Unless the killer came to the scene in a sterilized suit he was bound to leave something _ mud from his shoes, fibers from his shirt or if they were really lucky, hairs from his head.
Pakula looked over the plastic evidence bags Medina had included. The first one looked like bread crumbs. He held up the bag to read Medina's note on the back label:
Location: Front of victim's shirt.
Lab Test Conclusive __ white unleavened bread.
