“Could be,” Gitan said. “The shape is right, but I’m not seeing clear individual tooth marks. Maybe he bit her through something like sheets or a light blanket, to obscure the marks. Maybe he’s smart.”
“Maybe he’s done this before,” Landry said.
That was a very bad thought. They wouldn’t be talking about some random horny bastard who didn’t want to take no for an answer. The crime wouldn’t be about a situation that had gotten out of hand. It would be about something done methodically, which required organized thought and enough cool in the heat of the moment to take precautions against self-incrimination.
Gitan moved on to the ligature marks around the girl’s throat.
“What do you think?” Landry asked. “A rope? A wire?”
“First,” Gitan said, “we have thumbprints on either side of the larynx. See here? So we know her killer choked her manually at some point in the attack. But then we have the ligature marks as well. Not a wire. There’s too much abrasion. It had to be something with texture. If it was a rope, it was quite thin. I’m not seeing any natural rope fibers, but she’s been in the water. Fiber evidence is a lot to hope for. Or the rope could have been synthetic. Nylon cord, maybe.”
Looking through a lighted magnifying glass, she studied and studied the deep grooves cut into the girl’s neck. The skin had broken in places.
“Huh,” she said, as she took a tweezer and very carefully clucked a piece of something out of the wound.
“What is it?”
“Dried coagulated blood. Look.”
Landry looked at the scab through the magnifying glass. Stuck in it were several fibers so small they were all but invisible to the naked eye. Short, superfine, dark. Almost like short hairs.
“The lab rats will have an answer when they can get it under a microscope,” Gitan said.
“I’m surprised you found anything,” Landry said.
“Sometimes we get lucky. Her killer didn’t dump her right away, the wounds had time to dry and harden.”
When Gitan was satisfied she had examined every inch of the front of the body, Landry helped Cecil turn the girl over. Gitan moved Irina Markova’s hair out of her way to examine the marks on the back of her neck. There weren’t any.
“Okay,” Gitan said. “Either there was something behind her and between her and the killer, or maybe the killer was on top of her, holding her down with the ligature.”
“In my experience, the kind of guy who does this kind of thing wants to watch the victim’s face as he chokes her,” Landry said. “The fear gets them off. Watching the lights go out in the eyes is a big power trip.”
“Looks to me like he strangled her to the point of unconsciousness, then let her regain consciousness, only to ‘kill’ her all over again.”
“Sick fuck,” Landry muttered.
“He let her lie somewhere for quite a while before he dumped her in that canal,” Gitan pointed out.
With no heartbeat to move it through the circulatory system, the girl’s blood had pooled down her back and the backs of her legs and arms in a huge purple stain. The body had remained on its back long enough that the blood had clotted and set, which took hours. No matter what had been done with the body after that, the lividity wouldn’t move or change.
“Maybe he had to wait to dump her,” Landry said. “Or maybe he’s one of those freaks that likes to play with them after they’re dead.”
Landry stayed until Gitan was ready to make the incision across the top of the girl’s head. The scalp would be pulled back and the interior examined for evidence of trauma; the cranium would be checked for fractures. He didn’t need to hang around for that. He didn’t need to wait for Gitan to make the primary Y incision across the chest and down the torso. He didn’t need to watch as Irina Markova’s sternum was split in two and her chest was cracked open like a clamshell. He didn’t need to watch as her organs were lifted out of her body and weighed.
He had seen it all before. Everyone had a liver. Everyone had intestines. Everyone had a brain. None of that was of interest to him. The organs were examined and weighed, and notes were written down, because that was procedure. But no internal disease or defect had killed Irina Markova.
Someone else’s disease had killed Irina-whatever malignancy it was that took up residence in the minds of murderers.
With that thought foremost, he went across the parking lots to the sheriff’s offices and Robbery/Homicide.
“The interpreter is here,” Weiss said.
They went into the interview room Weiss had exited. The older man standing at the end of the table wore no readable expression. His long face might have been carved from stone. Dressed in black, he was tall and narrow and wore a clipped-close white mustache and goatee that had been sculpted to a point just below his chin.
His left eye was piercing blue, the right milky white, ruined but left bare for all the world to see. No patch, no glasses to hide behind. The old priest put it out there like he was proud of it, like it was an ugly badge of honor. A scar split the eyebrow above it.
Weiss introduced him. “Father Chernoff, this is Detective Landry, who is also working on this investigation.”
Landry let the remark slide. He didn’t need to whip his cock out and put it on the table in front of a holy man just to put Weiss in is place.
He held out his hand to the priest, who had quite a grip on him for a guy who had to be in his seventies. His fingers were gnarled and twisted like the branches of an ancient windblown tree.
“Father Chernoff. Thank you for coming in on such short notice. Unfortunately, that’s the only kind of notice we get at the start of a murder investigation.”
The old priest looked down his nose at him as they took their seats. Landry flashed back on Catholic school, where he had spent much time on his knees, saying Hail Marys for one sinful infraction of school rules or another while Father Arnaud glared at him.
“This is a Russian girl who died.” His accent was heavy, but his English was crisp.
“Yes, sir. Irina Markova. She worked on a horse farm outside Wellington. Do you know of any Markovas in the area? If she has family here, we’d like to contact them.”
The priest ignored the question.
“This one,” he said, tilting his head in the direction of Weiss, played for me the tape from the answering machine.“
“Yes. Are you able to translate for us?”
Again, the priest ignored the question, as if Landry’s agenda held absolutely no interest for him. “This girl, she was a criminal?”
“Not to my knowledge. Why? What does the man on the tape say?
“His name is Alexi, yes? This one told me.” Again he tipped his head at Weiss without bothering to even look at him.
“We believe so, yes. Why did you ask if the girl was a criminal?”
“Play the tape again, please.”
Weiss touched the button on the machine, and the Russian voice spewed forth in staccato bursts.
“He says, ”Why the hell have you not called me? Are you too fucking good for me now with your fancy, soft American men? Don’t forget who you are, Irina. Don’t forget who owns you. I have a job for you to do. It will pay well, greedy girl.“”
“Do you recognize the voice?” Landry asked.
“There are many Russian men called Alexi,” the priest said.
“Do you have any idea which one this guy might be?”
The priest looked around the room as if suspicious one or more of these men named Alexi might be hiding in a corner, listening in.
“Are you familiar with Russian organized crime, Detective Landry?”
“I know about it.”
“Then I don’t need to tell you these are very ruthless and violent men. They are a disgrace to our community.
