Chapter 5

Hell hath no fury

 

It was almost the twentieth.

We were no closer to being able to provide the police with any new information. The thought of another woman facing a gruesome death at the hands of a sick and twisted killer had my gut in knots.

Joel had been able to track down twenty doctors in the tristate area that had prescribed ketamine to treat patients with mental illness. Only five of them had been prescribing the drug for over five years. Ketamine was used to treat depression and bipolar disorder, but it was not a drug widely used. The side effects were horrible. Joel and Mandy had gone to interview the doctors and see if the doctors had any insight or useful information.

Kristy’s search of the seventh and twentieth of the month had turned up nothing by way of news, which was helpful and told us that whatever had happened on those dates was personal to the offender.

Mike was at his desk angrily pounding on his laptop. The man was getting ready to snap. His ex had introduced the new boyfriend to his kids last night. The worst of it was she’d called Mike beforehand and told him that the deterioration of the marriage had been his fault. If he’d paid more attention to her, she wouldn’t have had to look for it elsewhere. To add insult to injury, she admitted that she was rubbing Mike’s face in her new relationship to show Mike what he’d thrown away.

Christ. The man looked devastated. I thought back to the conversation we’d had in the car. Women truly were fascinating. Soft, sexy, intelligent beings that could turn into vengeful blood-thirsty beasts at the drop of a dime.

My attention was drawn back to the images in front of me, the last two victims from the twentieth.

Vic one – single stab wound to the lower stomach. Stabbed in the face multiple times with the same weapon used on the abdomen.

Vic two – same stab to the stomach, only a secondary weapon had been used – an ice pick.

I looked back to the very first victim from nearly five years ago. She’d been killed the same way as vic one of the twentieth kills. Same weapon – knife to the gut and the face. Vic two and the second vic from the killings on the seventh didn’t match. The second vic had a single stab, but her face had been burned with acid.

“Hey, Mike?” I called to get Mike’s attention.

“What?” he barked.

Goddamn, the man was in a bad mood. Not that I blamed him, but we had five days until we’d find a new body. I needed his head in the case, not on the woman who was hell-bent on sticking it to his friend. Donna was taking her revenge for lack of attention to a whole new level. It was a tad bit overkill.

Revenge.

Overkill.

“We profiled that the offender was unassuming, non-threatening, and friendly enough that the women would leave the bar with him.”

“Yeah. No one in the bar remembers the victim leaving. She wasn’t taken by force; she left with him willingly,” he reminded me.

“I think our offender is a woman.”

“No way,” Ben said, joining our conversation. “Women do not dole out that level of violence. They kill in the heat of passion, spur of the moment. It is rare for a woman to kill men that are not close to them.”

“Men that are close to them. What about a woman killing women?”

“Even lower probability,” Ben answered.

“Hell has no fury like a woman scorned,” Mike said.

“Right. She feels inadequate, targeting women she thinks are beautiful. A bar is a hot spot for single women looking for a man. I bet the women she’s targeted had men falling over themselves to talk to them that night, while she sat and watched, stewing about all her flaws and failures to get and keep a man. That’s why there’s no sexual assault. We profiled the offender is sexually incompetent, and in her mind, she is. The only commonality between all thirteen victims is they are pretty. Our offender defaces her victims, taking away what makes them desirable – their beauty. The single stab to the abdomen is symbolic – the womb. She cuts through the very thing she hates the most, their womanhood.”

“Holy fuck,” Ben said, pulling out his tablet. “I think I agree with you, Boy Wonder.”

“Hey, Nick.” Kristy greeted. “I ran the search for you. I only found two women fitting your parameters. One case was solved, before you ask, iron-clad DNA evidence and the boyfriend confessed. That leaves Meadow Holiday. Here’s her file.”

Kristy dropped the folder and walked away before I could thank her.

“What’s that?” Mike asked.

“I had Kristy run victims with a single stab wound and facial disfiguration,” I answered.

“We already did that.” He rolled his eyes.

“Victims that lived.”

I opened the file and sucked in a breath. I knew her. Well, I didn’t know her personally, but she was a regular at my favorite coffee shop, Sam’s. Her hair was longer now than it was in her driver’s license picture, but it was her. Long, sexy red hair, creamy pale complexion, and the most beautiful piercing green eyes.

I thought about the last time I saw her. Mike and I went in to grab a cup of coffee after an early morning basketball game, and she was sitting in her usual spot in the corner. Unapproachable, closed off to the world. Meadow Holiday did not invite conversation.

“Shit.”

“What?” Ben asked, and both men looked at me.

“This.” I held the photo up for them to see.

“Holy shit, is that the girl from Sam’s you drool over?” Mike asked.

“I do not drool over her,” I corrected.

“Then what do you call it?” he laughed.

“Admire from afar. She’s standoffish and refuses to make eye contact. Sits in the same corner with her back to the wall. The first time I saw her, she didn’t have the scar. It must’ve been a month, maybe two later, she appeared again, and the scar was there. That was about five years ago. I hadn’t started the academy yet. I think I was waiting to class up.”

I scanned the report, no ketamine. Damn.

“Hey, Ben. What is maprotiline?” I asked.

“A tetracyclic antidepressant. Why?”

“No ketamine in her tox report, but maprotiline was present. Goddamn.” I shook my head at the image of Meadow.

“What?” Mike asked. I held up the new image for him to see.

Meadow’s face had a single slash mark, from her ear down across her cheek, ending at the corner of her jaw. Her pretty face was marred with black stitches. The image ignited a blaze in my chest I’d never experienced before. I’d seen hundreds of pictures of victims, and sadly the image I was holding up was mild in comparison. Seeing her like this was different. Something clicked, and a side of myself I’d never known came to life. I wanted to find the person who’d dared to hurt her, not to put behind bars, but to beat the shit out of them, make them feel the same pain she had.

“Earth to Nick…” Mike laughed.

“What?”

“Damn. Boy Wonder is day dreaming about the pretty vic,” Mike smiled.

“Don’t call her that. Her name is Meadow.”

Meadow.

Beautiful. Unique. Just like the woman herself. The name fit.

“Are we going to talk to her?” Mike asked.

“Yeah. I think we should visit her at her work. We’d scare the shit out of her if we showed up at her house,” I suggested.

“I agree.”

“I’m going to cross reference doctors prescribing both ketamine and maprotiline. I’ll update Joel and Mandy. When you get back, we’ll call in Kilby and fill him in.” Ben said, not looking up from his tablet.

“Great. Let’s go.” I grabbed my cell and keys off my desk and headed for the door.