body as soon as the gurney’s here.”
Lucy had been an assistant pathologist at the morgue as part of a yearlong internship program, and Miles had been one of her favorite people. He was two years shy of retirement and had talked often about moving to Nashville to be close to his daughter and grandchildren.
Miles smiled at her, his teeth vividly white against dark skin. “If it ain’t Ms. Lucy. Out of the Academy already?”
“I start-”
Slater cut her off. “It’s not going to get any cooler. Let’s take a look at the body before it’s hauled to the morgue.”
Lucy let Noah and Slater walk in front of her. Miles jerked his head toward the men and whispered, “You want to be one of them?”
She didn’t answer. “The report said she was strangled.”
“From behind.”
“Behind? You’re certain?”
He cleared his throat. Of course he was certain-he’d been an investigator longer than Lucy had been alive. “Possible attempted rape, no obvious sign of penetration, but the ME will confirm that when we get her on the table.”
“Did he use a ligature?”
“Hands.”
“Unusual.” Manual strangulation was an intensely personal method of murder. Almost without exception, the killer wanted to watch the victim die. Lucy asked, “Could he have accidentally strangled her while attempting to rape her?”
“Accidentally?” Miles snorted. “I doubt it, but again, I’ll leave it to the ME. I don’t think he took his hands off her neck once he started.”
“You can tell that after a visual examination?”
“From the back of her neck. You’ll see what I saw.”
“And smell.” The stench of decomposition filled the hot, unmoving air.
He put his hand on her arm. “Heat, humidity is bad enough. But animals got to her too.”
Death is never pretty, Lucy thought, but when she saw what had been done to Wendy James, she realized this was particularly ugly.
It wasn’t the murder itself-strangulation wasn’t messy or bloody-but what had happened to her body after death was gruesome.
The moisture in the air caused the gases in her body to build and swell. Her extremities were bloated and discolored, suggesting she’d been dead for two or three days. But taking in account the summer heat, the high humidity, and the tree-sheltered area, Lucy suspected time of death was closer to twenty-four hours ago.
“Rigor has already broken, but the heat speeds that up along with decomp,” Miles said. “She’s been here less than thirty hours, more than twenty. We get her on the table, the ME can be more precise.”
“Between three A.M. and one P.M. yesterday. I doubt she went running before five in the morning. Maybe she lives in a secure building, and we’ll catch her on video.” It would be too much to ask that the killer was on tape, too, but all security videos from her residence and the surrounding areas would be scrutinized.
The victim was lying on her side, moved from where she’d died-evidenced by impressions in the mulch and five feet of wide drag marks. Noah and Slater were standing beside the body, talking quietly.
She said to Miles, “The animals moved her?”
“Wild dogs. Their barking is what alerted the joggers who found the body. They scared away the dogs with noise and pepper spray.”
Wendy James had been murdered and discarded without care. Lucy replaced her discomfort with anger, and her stomach settled.
“The blood-”
“Postmortem. There’s bruising on her hips and thighs, but on the
“That doesn’t sound like rape.”
“It looks more like he straddled her fully clothed while he strangled her.” Miles shook his head. “Sometimes, this job isn’t worth it.”
Lucy squeezed his hand. “We’ll catch him.”
Miles’s phone rang and he walked off to answer. Lucy slipped on latex gloves and stepped over to the body. The wild dogs had done extensive damage to the victim’s left arm and leg, but her right side was virtually unmarked. She squatted down to look at the bruising on the outside of the hips and thighs, which was consistent with the deputy coroner’s theory. She gently moved the blond hair away from the back of the neck. Two distinct oval bruises were visible on either side of the spine-thumb imprints. While the front of the neck was also purple, the thumbs were most distinct, indicating that once the killer took hold of the victim, he squeezed until she died.
From behind. Not looking at her face.
“What?” Slater asked. Lucy hadn’t realized he’d been scrutinizing her so closely.
Lucy rose and took off the gloves. “I don’t know, just thinking.”
Noah raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.
Slater said, “West said possible attempted rape. The killer could have been unable to perform, or heard someone coming and bolted. Except-” He gestured toward the victim’s buttocks. “He took the time to write that.”
Lucy tilted her head. She hadn’t seen the marks at first, but once Slater pointed it out, it was obvious. The bloating of the body caused the ink to spread and fade, but she could make out the words.
“He had no intention of raping her.” Lucy didn’t intend to speak out loud.
“Didn’t want to or failed?” Slater asked.
“Didn’t want to,” she said. “Miles pointed out the bruising on the outside of her thighs, not the inside. But more important, the way she was facedown while he killed her. In manual strangulation cases the killer wants to watch his victims die. It’s crucial. Part of the fantasy, his control over life and death. In the majority of cases where there is a serial murderer, the killer will release pressure, let the victim breathe for a few seconds, then start asphyxiating her again. The control makes them feel like a god.”
“This,” she continued, pointing specifically at the thumb marks on the back of the neck, “shows he planned to kill her, had no need to watch her die. He didn’t torture her, he simply squeezed until she was dead. Of course,” she added quickly, “the autopsy will provide a more definitive answer.”
Slater nodded. “I thought it was unusual that she was killed facedown, but that could also indicate remorse or depersonalization. He may not have been able to go through with it if he saw her eyes.”
“Have you ever seen a murder like this?” Noah asked both of them.
Both Slater and Lucy shook their heads. “The message indicates he knew who she was,” Slater said. “But whether from the recent press attention, or personally, I don’t know.”
“A stalker? Or maybe a boyfriend-past or present?” Noah asked. “Angry that she had an affair.”
Lucy didn’t think this was the work of a boyfriend. The evidence indicated control, not rage.
Before she could speak, Slater said what she was thinking. “If it was a jilted lover, there’d be more anger evidenced on her body. Possible neighbor or acquaintance? Someone who knew her routine. Followed her.”
“We’re lucky someone found her body,” Lucy said. “Chandra Levy died not far from here and it was a year before anyone discovered her remains.” Though Lucy had been a teenager at the time, she’d never forgotten the tragic case of the young intern who, like Wendy James, had an affair with a congressman and ended up dead. But unlike Levy’s murder, which was not connected to her personal life and the affair not discovered until after her death, Wendy James’s affair had been front and center for the last three weeks, making the sex scandal a possible motive.
“Shit,” Slater exclaimed, reading a message on his phone. “Damn press. Someone just tweeted the identity of our victim.” His phone rang. Slater ignored it. “Noah, head over to her apartment, I already have a warrant in process. By the time you get there, you’ll have it. Take whomever you need to canvass the building, talk to neighbors, find out the last person to see her, if there’s anything of interest in her place. Do it fast. Josh Stein is already on his way.”
