“Dr. Sanders,” I said and motioned to the medical examiner. “This is my wife, Felicity O’Brien. Felicity, Dr. Christine Sanders. The doc here is the one that stitched up my head.”
“O’Brien, huh,” Dr. Sanders said as she canted her head in my wife’s direction. “Maiden name?”
“Aye,” she answered.
“Good for you,” the doctor approved. “I kept mine too.”
Felicity smiled and then returned her own nod. I’m sure she was relieved at not having to explain the difference in our last names for once.
“Thanks for comin’ down, you two,” Ben said, once the introductions were over.
“No problem,” I replied and then motioned to the covered body. “Same as before?”
“Not entirely,” he answered. “That’s why I called you.”
“What’s different?” I queried.
Ben nodded to Dr. Sanders, who skirted around us to the other side of the bed and grasped the corner of the sheet.
“You gonna be okay with this?” He directed the question at my wife. “The real thing’s different than pictures, ya’know.”
“Aye,” Felicity drew in a deep breath and let it out heavily. “I’ll be all right, then.”
“You must be really tired,” he observed aloud.
“Well it IS the middle of the night.”
“Yeah, and yer doin’ the accent.”
“I don’t have an accent,” she replied. “You do.”
“Yeah, right.” He nodded then turned. “Go ahead, Doc.”
Dr. Sanders threw back the covering to reveal the nude corpse of a young blonde woman. The victim’s glassy, dead eyes stared up at the ceiling, frozen for all time in sheer terror. Her torso had been flayed but not completely as with the previous two. This time the killer had removed only patches of her skin, carefully arranged in a geometric pattern that formed a Pentagram.
“The killer removed the heart in a fashion similar to that of the Barnes woman,” Dr. Sanders began, “but the removal of the skin was much more precise than the previous cases. I would venture to say he’s getting better at it.”
“I was wrong,” I said, kneeling down to have a closer look. “Karen Barnes was just lesson number two for him.”
“Whaddaya mean?” Ben asked.
“He’s still practicing,” I explained. “Lesson one was Ariel Tanner. He taught himself to skin a living human. Lesson two, Karen Barnes. How to remove a still beating heart… Now, lesson three… He’s refining his technique. Making it more complex… More exacting…” My words trailed off as my eyes roamed over the mutilated remains of the young woman. My stomach revolted against the sight, and I forced it back down, fending off the nausea.
“There’s another twist to the whole thing,” Ben told me then turned his attention to the medical examiner. “Doc?”
“There is trace evidence of semen on the sheets,” she explained. “I’ll have to check her back at the morgue, but the preliminary exam indicates that she was subject to sexual intercourse very recently.”
“Maybe the asshole is startin’ to get off on what he’s doin’ to these women,” Ben spat.
“I don’t think so,” I told him. “The killer is too involved with the ritual. To defile his sacrifice would make no sense.”
“Skinnin’ people alive then rippin’ their hearts out doesn’t make any sense either.” Ben was becoming angry with the situation, and it showed in his voice.
“To you and me, no it doesn’t,” I calmly stated. “To him, I think it does.”
“Well, when I find this son-of-a-bitch, it’s gonna stop makin’ sense to him real quick,” Ben returned. “As for the semen, I have to assume he raped her, and that might let us ID his blood type and maybe narrow the field down.”
“I know,” I answered, “but I don’t think that’s what happened.”
“Who is she?” Felicity, who had been silent until now, asked somberly. “Do you know?”
She was facing the wall, avoiding the hideous display. I could see that the color was just returning to her pale cheeks.
“Ellen Gray, per her driver’s license and work ID in her purse,” stated Detective Deckert who had been observing quietly. “According to the neighbor, she’s separated. Her old man moved out about two weeks ago.”
“Does he know yet?” she pressed.
“No. Not yet.”
“I take it the door was propped open like the others?” I questioned.
“Yeah,” Deckert answered. “Lady across the street works the three-to-eleven and noticed it when she got home. She came over to see if something was wrong and found her. Luckily, she had enough wits left to dial nine- one-one. By the time the paramedics showed up, she was so hysterical they had to sedate ‘er and take ‘er to the hospital.”
“Any ideas about how the killer got in?”
“Sliding doors on the basement,” he returned. “Looks like someone popped the latch with a pry bar or something.”
“Then she probably didn’t know him,” I submitted.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Ben announced. “She was a nurse at County Hospital.”
“Where R.J. works,” Felicity almost whispered.
“‘Zactly,” Ben replied.
“Did you talk to him like you planned?” I queried.
“He wasn’t home. And it was his day off, so he wasn’t at work.”
“That still doesn’t prove anything, Ben,” Felicity told him.
“Maybe not, but he sure as hell just moved another coupl’a bricks over to the other side of the scale.”
“Has anything turned up to indicate that R.J. knew Karen Barnes, then?” she asked.
“No, not yet,” Ben answered, “but we’ll be talkin’ to the husband and neighbors again in the mornin’.”
“Ahem,” Dr. Sanders cleared her throat, and we all turned to her. “I hate to interrupt, but if you’re finished with the body, I need to get her to the morgue.”
“Sorry ‘bout that, Doc,” Ben told her. “Go ahead. We’re done.”
“Any revelations, Mr. Gant?” she said, looking at me.
“Excuse me?”
“You were correct about the fingerprint on the Barnes woman, even if it was smudged,” she explained. “I was just wondering if you had any new ideas.”
“Not at this point in time,” I answered. “Sorry.”
“Just checking,” she said with a thin smile.
We moved off to the side and allowed Dr. Sanders and her assistant to carefully place the lifeless young woman into a body bag and zip it shut. They expertly placed her on a gurney and proceeded to wheel her out.
“I guess she’s been reading what the papers have had to say about me,” I stated after they left.
“She’s okay with it,” Ben told me. “She doesn’t necessarily believe in it, but she’s okay.”
Felicity was still looking a bit pale, but she seemed to be holding up well so far. She had retrieved a camera from her bag and was going about the task of photographing the back area of the room where the killer had performed his atonement ritual. We knew the pictures would be redundant, but cameras were like a focal point for her, probably due to her profession. Simply peering through a lens brought an entirely different clarity and dimension to the world around her, and she used it to her advantage.
“When do you think you’ll be notifying the husband?” I asked.
“We’ll be contacting him as soon as the M.E. gets to the morgue,” Deckert told me. “It shouldn’t be long. Why?”
“Something just doesn’t feel right,” I answered.
“You think the old man did it?” he questioned. “Like a copy cat or something, to cover it up?”
“No, that’s not it,” I replied. “I think it was the same guy, but I’ve got a really weird feeling. The whole sex thing just doesn’t fit with what this guy seems to be up to. Maybe she and the husband got together for a fling, or
