“Don’t suppose you’ve found a weapon yet,” he said to Bill, who was writing something on a small pad.
Bill shook his head, and finished scribbling before he looked up. “Nope. Nothing.”
“That’s odd.”
“Only if the killer is your guy.”
Ryker gave a reluctant nod. “Anything missing from the kitchen?”
Bill shook his head, then pointed at a worn brown couch with his pen. “It looks like Ms. Terry was watching TV. May have fallen asleep on the couch. The killer probably saw her through the open window there.”
Ryker glanced at the window, then at the door facing, where wood was splintered. “And nobody heard him kick the door in?”
“Apparently not. Although, look at that lock. My nine-year-old nephew could break in here.”
Ryker glanced around. The crime scene photographer was standing in the doorway to the patio and a second crime scene investigator was lifting fingerprints from the front door. “Bill,” he said, leaning close to Bill’s ear, “what if he used the knife he stole from Nicole?”
“Hello, boys,” an obnoxiously cheery voice said.
Ryker whirled. It was Lon Hébert, a reporter for the local newspaper, the St. Tammany Parish Record. He cursed under his breath.
Bill wasn’t so circumspect. “What the hell are you doing here, Hébert? This is a crime scene. Take your ugly, scrawny ass out of here. Tom—” he called to one of the uniformed deputies.
“Aw, Bill. Give me a break. I need a big story. It’s been so quiet around here that I was about to run a piece on alligators being run over on the freeway.” Hébert laughed. “Delancey, talk to me.”
“How do you even know about this?” Bill demanded.
Hébert grinned. “It’s called a police scanner, Bill.”
“Get out of here,” Ryker said, his voice deadly quiet. “And make sure you clear anything—and I mean anything—with the sheriff’s office before you print it.”
Lon held up his hands. “Fine. Fine. I’ll call the deputy chief and see if I can get a statement.” He turned and left.
Ryker watched him leave. “You think he heard what I said?”
Bill shook his head. “No idea. I didn’t see him come in.”
“Well, what do you think? I think I need to look at matching Nicole’s missing knife with Jean Terry’s wound.”
Bill shrugged. “You could. But isn’t that quite a leap, even for you? Just because we haven’t found the weapon yet? You really are trying to connect this to your mysterious serial killer, aren’t you?”
“Come on, Bill. Think about it. Yesterday was October 21. He broke in and killed her. No sexual assault.” He looked around the room and spotted a purse, upturned on the kitchen counter. “He dumped her purse. Is anything missing?”
“Nope. Not even her cash.”
“That’s typical. Not even a pretense of a robbery.” Ryker’s pulse raced with excitement. It was tragic that another young woman was dead, but maybe now he could take this fourth murder to his chief and finally get him to link the cases and treat them as the work of one man—a serial killer.
THREE HOURS AFTER HE’D arrived at the scene of the crime, Ryker was in the St. Tammany Parish Crime Lab pacing back and forth.
“Wearing a hole in my floor is not going to make me go any faster.” Dr. Dave Miller was in scrubs, standing over the autopsy table, examining Jean Terry’s fatal wound.
Ryker hated the autopsy room. The previous M.E., Dr. Crouch, who was eighty if he was a day, had treated the victims like sides of beef. The fact that Ryker had known a woman who had ended up on Crouch’s table hadn’t helped.
Dave was the total opposite. Every move he made was kind and respectful. It made a big difference to Ryker, who had never learned to view a dead body as a separate thing from the person she had been.
“What can you tell me about her knife wound?”
Dave was peering through a large lighted magnifying glass. “Not much. I need to cast it, to get a truer representation of the shape and path of the blade. See this V?”
Ryker reluctantly moved closer to the table and looked through the magnifier. “That upside-down V? Yeah. I couldn’t see it earlier, because of all the blood. What would make that kind of wound?”
“Oh, it’s a knife all right. Single-edged. That’s a common pattern. It’s called forking. The blade entered her back here,” Dave said, pointing at the right side of the wound. “And exited here.” He shifted his finger to the left side.
“What do you mean?”
“She was most likely on her feet. Her attacker was behind her, chasing her.” Dave pushed the magnifier away and raised his arm, demonstrating. “He stabbed her with a downward motion. The blade entered between her shoulder blades, angling toward the right. He held on to the knife as she jerked and probably stumbled or fell. In any case, the blade exited at about a thirty-degree angle from where it entered.”
“That’s forking? I remember the term from Forensics, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wound like that.”
“How many stabbing deaths have you investigated?”
“Only one—two years ago. The weapon was a fireplace poker.”
“Messy.”
“No kidding. Especially after Crouch got done with
it.”
Dave didn’t comment. Another point in his favor. Ryker wanted to bite his tongue. It was never good practice to talk about a colleague, present or former.
“This upside-down V is typical of a stabbing,” Dave continued. “It’s unusual for a victim to remain still while being stabbed.”
“What are those marks on the edges of the cuts?”
“The knife’s guard. The attacker struck with force. He buried the blade up to the guard. It bruised the skin.”
“The guard? Is that like the hilt?”
“Yep. Hilts refer to swords, but it’s the same thing. It’s always good to have those marks on a wound like this. If I had a weapon to compare it to, that contusion could give us a match.” Dave pulled the magnifier down again and peered through it. “Now I need to concentrate.”
“Sure. I’ve got to write up my report. Let me know as soon as you know anything.”
“Definitely.”
As Ryker pushed open the door, Dave called out to him.
“Oh, Ryker, your victim had breast cancer.”
“Yeah?”
Dave nodded. “Double radical mastectomy, and evidence of radiation.”
“Is that relevant?”
“Hard to say. I’m curious to see if they got it all, and how much of the lymph nodes they got. I’ll order her medical records, and take a biopsy, just in case.”
“Thanks, Dave.”
Ryker headed to the precinct and wrote up everything he’d seen and done at the crime scene. Then, in a different document, he wrote his impressions of the murder, and how it fit his theory of a serial killer, from the date to his concern that the weapon used could be Nicole’s missing knife. He included Dave’s information about Jean Terry’s cancer, although he had no reason to think it had any