Chapter Twenty Seven
“We’ve got a body and it looks fresh.”
“Just another night in the big city. Is it our guy?”
“Yeah, she’s wrapped up tight.”
“Damn it!” Agent Turner slammed the dashboard with his fist as he moved through traffic and made a U-turn. Then he gunned it.
“This guy’s escalating.” Rene shook her head as she looked out the window at the lampposts speeding by in a blur.
“That’s a fact. What the hell? We don’t even get into one case and he’s off killing someone else. It’s like he wants to keep us so busy that we can’t keep up. The press is turning this into a circus. I’ve got brass breathing down my neck.”
“Not to mention the whole city is walking in fear. People don’t even go to their cars after work in broad daylight without a security guard.”
Blue lights flashing in the distance signified they were close to the scene. “One good thing: I don’t see the vultures here yet,” Turner noted. He pulled in, kicking up dust on the shoulder of the road. “Don’t contaminate my fucking scene,” he snapped at a uniformed member of Louisville PD as he exited his car, slamming the door too hard.
The uniform threw his hands up in the air in mock submission. “I haven’t touched anything, Your Highness.”
“That’s Agent Turner to you.”
Rene leaned in, speaking low enough to not be overheard, “Be nice. You may need the guy someday.”
“True,” he said and nodded his head in reluctant agreement.
Not one to have to be right, he stuck his hand out in the uniform’s direction, “Sorry. I’m frustrated with these killings. The guy’s killing them faster than we can get autopsies done.”
“Yeah, he’s clearly escalating,” the uniform agreed.
Turner and Rene walked over to the body, kneeling down to get a closer look. It had been wrapped from head to toe in true Mummy Man fashion. Agent Turner pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket and slid them on. He took a pen from his pocket, pulling the gauze down just enough to get a glimpse of the victim’s neck. “We’ve got some bruising here. Huh. That’s not the MO of Mummy Man.”
“Sometimes when they escalate they get more violent. It’s still suffocation so it is true to form.”
“True.” He pointed at a hand. “Chipped fingernail polish, cheap clothing”—he lifted her upper lip—"decayed teeth, and she’s dressed like a streetwalker.”
The uniform walked over, being careful not to disturb anything. “Shit. I’ve seen her on the stroll. Goes by Evie, if memory serves me correct. She always wore a gold necklace with her name on it.” There was a tinge of sadness in his voice as if she were an old friend.
Sometimes uniforms bonded with the street regulars. Seeing the same people night after night was part of the work routine for the PD. No one would be seeing Evie anymore and it would change the dynamics of the neighborhood. Without meaning to, she’d left her mark on the world and on the officer too. She would be missed by all the regulars. The streets were a web of eccentric people bonded together in their own relationships and friendships.
“So…he must have been looking for an easy target this time.”
“Which means he needed to blow off some steam,” Rene noted. “Somebody pissed our boy off. Maybe that’s why there’s bruising around the neck. He choked her because he was pissed at somebody.”
“Maybe another victim didn’t work out and our boy took it out on poor Evie here.”
“Could be. The problem is most people aren’t going to contact the police to tell them when something like that happens, unless it’s a soccer mom in the ‘burbs. Nobody on the streets is going to advertise that they had a run-in with a serial killer. There’s a definite stigma associated with being the target of a madman. I mean, what if they know you survived and come back to finish the job? Nobody wants the stink on ‘em.”
“No, but they might talk to their friends, so if we hit the streets and get the gossip we may be able to find out more about our resident bad boy. Bag her hands. The ME just pulled up and I’d like to see that body transported before reporters descend on us.”
He watched as Rene bagged the hands. Even though they were already covered by plastic wrap and gauze, they wouldn’t risk losing evidence that could help them catch the asshole that was keeping them from a good night’s sleep and a hot meal. Of course, their plight was far less tragic than poor Evie’s.
The sooner they got this sicko off the streets the better. Each body, as it told its own story, picked up something and left something behind. Even something as simple as dirt or leaves could reveal the location of a killing. This wasn’t the scene of the crime, but finding out where that was could mean also finding the killer. Both agents suspected the body had been dumped after the killing had taken place elsewhere.
Serial killers were a different breed, but they were no different than anyone else in one important way: they were creatures of habit. They had comfort zones, places where they felt at ease indulging their darkest needs. Many of them enjoyed going back to the scene of the crime. In Turner’s view, odds were good that this guy was that type of killer because he’d likely kept the victim’s necklace as a trophy. Personal items picked up the spirit of those who had gone on, at least that’s what a lot of killers believed. They loved nothing more than to use a trophy as a means to go back and revisit the killing in their mind. A necklace that spelled out the victim’s name? That detail could very well be what doomed Evie to an evening with Mummy Man.
That thought process was all part of Agent Turner’s innate gift of getting into a killer’s head. He had a sixth sense about individual motivations. He studied until he learned their habits. Then it became a chess game of staying one move ahead of them, when he could meet them on their own terms and take them down. A killer always felt safer when things were done on their terms; or at least that’s what the agent had the gift of making them believe.
“I’ll get whoever did this to you,” Turner murmured under his breath to the lifeless body. “Your life may not have meant anything to him but it does to me.”
Rene looked at her partner as he spoke and respected him more than ever. He was a hardened investigator from years of working horrific crime scenes, yes, but he had taken what would have made another man callous and uncaring and used it to make a difference.
He had stared into the abyss for many years and though it had darkened his soul, it had formed his character. He knew how serial killers thought because he’d witnessed it firsthand. He would use that knowledge and take great pleasure in catching the fiend the press had dubbed The Mummy Man.