the body was from fixed objects around the room and from the back door at the end of the short hallway that led to the restrooms. They plotted the distances and directions on a diagram. Seventy-eight feet separated the back door from the woman’s body.
While everyone waited for the coroner’s investigator to show up, Murphy managed to talk one of the techs, a middle-aged black woman who he guessed weighed about 130 pounds, into letting him drag her around the bar. Murphy paced off eighty feet of empty floor. He dragged her one way, then the other.
“Not this method-acting shit again,” Gaudet said as he watched Murphy hauling the crime-scene tech around by her ankles.
Murphy stopped. He was breathing hard. “I’m telling you, it works. You get inside a person’s head and you can figure out how and why he does what he does.”
“How do you know he dragged her? Maybe he carried her.”
“They call it deadweight for a reason,” Murphy said. “If he choked her unconscious while they were outside, he had to get her in here somehow. Lifting and carrying an unconscious woman by yourself is a lot harder than it looks on TV.”
Gaudet grinned. “Have you carried around a lot of unconscious women?”
“If you don’t believe me”-Murphy pointed to the crime-scene tech lying at his feet-“try carrying her from the back door to here.”
The tech shook her head as she climbed to her feet. “That’s enough of this bullshit.” She began banging her palms on the back of her blue utility pants. “I didn’t know this place was so dirty.”
Gaudet ignored her. “Maybe the killer and the victim walked in together.”
“Maybe,” Murphy said, “but I don’t picture our guy as a smooth talker. Not like Ted Bundy. I picture him as shy around women. I think he approached her on the street, told her what he wanted. He showed her some money and they made a deal. Then he led her to the back of the building where they could take care of business. But he choked her or slugged her with something and he dragged her in here, unconscious.”
“How did he know he could get into the building?”
“He’s a planner,” Murphy said. “He probably took the door off the hinges long before he ever approached her.”
The crime-scene tech finished dusting herself off and gave Murphy a disgusted glare. “You owe me a new pair of pants if I can’t get these clean.”
Murphy turned to her. “Can you check the hinges and the pins on the back door for fresh tool marks?”
“Did you hear me about my pants?” she said. When he didn’t answer, she stomped off toward the back door.
It was almost five o’clock when the coroner’s investigator showed up. By that time Murphy was so hot he had stopped sweating. From his Boy Scout days he seemed to remember that was one of the signs of heat exhaustion or heat stroke… heat something.
The coroner’s investigator examined the woman’s body by flashlight. He started with her scalp and began working his way toward her toes. He stopped halfway. Murphy, who was looking over the investigator’s shoulder, saw the tip of a dark object protruding from the woman’s rectum. “What is that?” Murphy said.
The investigator angled his head down for a better look. “I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
The man flicked at the object with a latex-covered fingernail. It clinked. “Sounds like glass.”
“Glass?”
The investigator probed with his finger, then nodded. “It feels like a bottle.” He cast a quick glance around the abandoned bar. “Probably a beer bottle.”
“An entire bottle?” Murphy said.
“That’d be my guess,” the coroner’s man said. “The tapered neck would make insertion easier, but we’ll have to wait until the autopsy to remove it.”
“That’s a new twist,” said Gaudet, who stood behind Murphy. “None of the others had anything like that done to them.” He paused for several seconds. “You still think it’s your guy?”
“He’s not my guy,” Murphy said. “He’s our guy.”
“You know what I mean.”
Murphy stared at the dead woman and nodded. “It’s him. He’s getting off on causing more pain. That’s why the cable tie is gone. He cut if off so he could keep her alive while he tortured her.”
“He must have left something behind,” Gaudet said. “He either raped her, or jacked off on her, or licked her, or just jizzed on the floor. One way or the other, though, he had to have left behind some
DNA.”
“Don’t you think he knows about DNA?” Murphy said.
“Maybe he’s not a CSI fan.”
“He hasn’t left any yet.”
Gaudet pointed to the body. “He’s never done this before, either. You said he’s getting off on what he’s doing.”
“We’ll see,” Murphy said, though he didn’t believe they would find any DNA evidence. This killer was too smart for that.
Gaudet shifted his feet. He looked uncomfortable.
“What’s wrong?” Murphy said.
“When are you going to talk to the captain?”
“As soon as we get back to the office.”
“He shot you down twice already. You keep fucking with him, he’s going to see to it you get fired… again.”
Murphy gazed around the filthy, abandoned bar. Then he stared again at the dead woman. “Maybe,” he said. “But I’ll do whatever it takes to catch this son of a bitch.”
CHAPTER TWO
Tuesday, July 24, 8:00 PM
“Whatever you’ve got to say, Murphy, say it quick,” Captain Michael Donovan said as he stood behind his desk, packing his briefcase. “I’m on my way home.”
Murphy and Gaudet squeezed into their commander’s office, a converted closet in a corner of the cramped Homicide Division, which was itself jammed into a corner of the police academy on City Park Avenue.
Since Katrina, the homicide cops had wandered like Bedouins, first working out of a commandeered cruise ship, then out of a pair of trailers in City Park, and finally from a set of cluttered rooms at the police academy.
A pair of Goodwill chairs stood in front of Donovan’s desk, but he did not ask the detectives to sit down.
Murphy cleared his throat. “I need resources, Captain. Money, investigators, support staff, enough for a task force.”
“A task force?” Donovan said. He dug a fingernail into a small sore on his head. He was nearly bald but tried to disguise it by keeping his remaining hair buzzed close to his scalp. “Are you still beating that dead horse?”
“Captain, there’s a serial killer out-”
“Bullshit,” Donovan barked. “The murders you’re talking about are unrelated and were committed by different perpetrators.” He sounded like he was reading from a departmental press release.
“How the hell can you say that?” Murphy snapped. “You haven’t been to even one of the crime scenes.”
“Watch your mouth, Detective,” Donovan said. His boozer’s nose was flushed. “I’ve read all the reports and I’ve seen all the photos. It’s obvious these cases were not the work of the same killer.”
Murphy glanced at his partner, standing beside him like a silent, 260-pound Buddha. “You got anything to say?”
Gaudet rolled his eyes. “I’m going to let you two crazy Irishmen fight it out.”
Murphy took a deep breath. Sometimes his partner’s lack of passion for the job infuriated him. He stared back across the desk. “Captain, these cases are linked, and the killer is getting more vicious. This time he kept the victim
