“Possibly.” She recorded the exact measurements in her notebook and stuffed it back into her coat pocket. “It’s something we can compare if we find handprints at other locations, or we bring a suspect into custody.”
“That’s not much.”
Annie refused to be so pessimistic. “It’s more than we had a few minutes ago.”
“So why bring Rachel Dunbar back here to kill her? He could have done it in the privacy of whatever hellhole he takes his victims to.” The beam of Nick’s flashlight followed her as Annie pulled a swab and Luminol from her kit to verify that the spatter and smears on the wall were blood. “Leaving the body here feels like he’s showing off what he can do. Rubbing it in our faces that KCPD hasn’t been able to break the case yet.”
Shuddering at the disturbingly blunt commentary, Annie suggested an explanation of her own. “From the account of Bailey Austin, the first victim the task force worked with, she was raped at a building that was either being built or remodeled—where there were signs of construction. She remembered a clear plastic drop cloth that covered everything. He’s keeping that location clean—traceless.”
So why be less cautious about the evidence here?
“If it’s a construction zone, he’d have work crews coming and going who might find the body—or at least recognize that something violent happened there.” Nick snapped his nimble fingers as an idea hit him. “Plus, the walls and layout could be changing daily. My dad’s a contractor. I’ve seen empty lots become complete houses in a week. It’d be damn near impossible for a witness to give an accurate description—the whole layout might change before we could follow up on it.”
“It has to be someplace that’s familiar to him. Or maybe the location is someplace he created specifically for these assaults.” Two drops of Luminol turned the cotton swab a telltale purple. Definitely blood.
“You think the rape is part of some kind of ritual?” Nick’s gaze narrowed. “That there’s a special significance to where the Rose Red Rapist takes his victims?” He turned the beam of light into the depths of the alley, swinging the flashlight from one strip of yellow crime scene tape to the strip blocking the front sidewalk. “So what’s all this then, Sherlock? A bloody coincidence? Our guy hasn’t made mistakes or left this much evidence behind before.”
Sherlock? Annie glanced up. Nick’s dark hair and the charcoal-gray heather scarf he wore were getting dusted with the snow coming in at the edge of the tarp. She prided herself on noticing the details of her surroundings, but those keen senses were supposed to be focusing on a murder scene, not the detective demanding answers from her. The frigid temps must really be addling her brain. She forced herself to look away and point out the bags labeled and stowed in her kit. “I don’t know. This is different from the other crimes scenes I’ve investigated. I’ve never had this much trace before. It’s almost as if...”
“As if what?”
Annie shook her head. “I don’t like to speculate.”
“Humor me.”
“It’s as if we’ve got two crime scenes in one location. The abduction, which could account for the handprints on the wall here, and the murder...” She turned her own light toward the darkness at the back of the alley, where a second tarp did what it could to protect the evidence there. “Which happened back there.”
“And all the blood is the vic’s?”
“I don’t know yet. There’s an awful lot. I’d have to—”
“—analyze it.” Nick muttered the end of the sentence as though he was impatient to move on to a new topic. He brushed the snowflakes off the top of his hair, leaving shiny dark spikes in their wake. To her surprise, he seemed to give her idea some merit. “Dr. Kilpatrick believes there’s more than one unsub we should be looking for.”
Annie recalled the conclusion reached by the forensic psychologist assigned to the task force when she’d been investigating the Rose Red Rapist’s last attack before tonight’s grim events. “She thinks there are two different profiles to these attacks, indicating more than one man is involved in the crimes—the rapist and someone who cleans up after him. This could be trace from the initial abduction. And if Rachel Dunbar struggled—meaning he didn’t knock her out with one blow the way he usually subdues his victims—then it could have been a messy confrontation, giving the cleaner more impetus to silence the one woman who could possibly identify the rapist.”
“The Cleaner?” Nick’s blue eyes glowed with something that looked like derision. “You’ve given our accomplice a nickname? Better not let the press get wind of that.” He thumbed over his shoulder toward the dark storefront across the street. “They’ve already given our perp a cutesy name because the first rape happened outside the Fairy Tale Bridal Shop.”
Annie pulled up to every centimeter of her five feet two inches of height. She hadn’t been trying to glorify the perp’s cleverness or give the press any more fodder for sensational headlines. She had simply been stating facts. “Like I said. It’s just speculation. I’m trying to figure out what the evidence says.”
“And it’s telling you we have two crime scenes at one location.” Maybe that skeptical gleam was Nick’s deep-thought expression because it sounded like he was actually agreeing with her theory. “One from the Rose Red Rapist and one from an accomplice in some freaky sort of tag team. Could be a crazy fan who wants a taste of that violence, too.”
Annie stooped down to replace the Luminol bottle in her kit and take out unopened swabs in sterile cases to obtain fresh samples of the blood smears for typing and DNA analysis. “It sounds kind of sick, but it looks to me like we’ve got a rape addict and some sort of enabler.”
“Now there’s a dysfunctional relationship.” Nick swore. “I liked it better when we were after just one nutcase.”
“It’s only a theory,” Annie hastened to clarify, dabbing at the bricks. “I can’t prove the identity of the second attacker or what his motives might be yet. I can’t even confirm that there was a second man in this alley tonight.”
“But your gut tells you Dr. Kilpatrick is right—that there are two attackers?”
Annie snapped the vials shut and pulled the marker from her pocket to label them. She slipped them all into her pocket, exhaling a sigh that clouded the air between them. “The evidence seems to indicate that.”
Nick nodded, apparently satisfied with her assessment of the crime scene. “Finish up here. I’m going to call Spencer and see if he convinced an M.E. to come in early and look at the body yet. I’ll ask for a quick measurement of the victim’s hand size so we can speed the identification of those prints.” He pulled his cell phone off his belt, giving her a glimpse of the weapon holstered beneath his jacket. “When the uniformed officers get back, I’ve got some more doors to knock on. Will you be okay if I leave you here for a few minutes to make a couple of calls?”
Being left to fend for herself felt all too familiar. She’d had a lot of practice over the years putting on an equally familiar brave smile. “I’m okay on my own.”
But he was already backing toward the sidewalk at the front end of the alley. “I won’t go too far. Holler if you need me.”
“Don’t scare anybody while you’re out there.” The teasing remark felt much more normal than the memory of friendly conversation and his warm touch still moving through her veins.
“Don’t freeze your nuggets.” He gave it right back with a wink and a grin, flipping open his cell phone as he disappeared around the corner. “Yo. Hey, can you connect me to...”
More certain of her actions as a criminologist than of her reactions to Detective Fensom, Annie stepped back to snap another picture of the blood spatter and snowy handprints on the brick wall.
The