Fractured (13 page)

Well, shit
.

He grabbed his parka, because it was definitely parka weather, and took the travel mug with him.

“Who found the body?” He asked as he slid into the car and groped for the seat belt one-handed, balancing his beverage. “What have we got?”

“Some nut who got up early to do some cross-country skiing found the victim.” She wore a stocking cap that managed to be feminine and still practical, with little snowflakes along the border. “From what I understand he saw splotches of blood in the snow and left the trail to give it a look. Called it in just about an hour ago. The news picked it up as a breaking story after he called nine-one-one.”

“Skiing? On a day like today? You've got to be shittin' me.” Jason took another gulp of hot coffee. “It's barely light out now. How early does this guy get up?”

“Santiago, you need to visit northern Wisconsin sometime. Those people view cross-country skiing like a religion. Temperature or time is not a consideration.”

“Bunch of freaks,” he muttered. “Just thinking about it practically throws me into a cold-induced coma.”

“Cold-induced? Never heard of that, but I agree it isn't my first choice of exercise, or at least not predawn.” Ellie flipped the signal to exit the parking lot, though no one else was stupid enough to be up yet, at least not where he lived. “Anyway, from what Metzger told me, it sounds pretty similar to our two other bodies. The face is supposedly unrecognizable.”

“The cross wounds in the chest?”

Streetlight illumination slid across her face. “His coat was frozen to his chest with blood like the one on the porch so until the medical examiner can get him on the table, we won't know.”

“Male, then?”

“Yes. Follows the pattern.”

It sure did. He rubbed his forehead. “Okay … we know what? A male victim with a slashed face dumped miles from here? Not much.”

Ellie frowned at the road, taking an exit toward the freeway. “The killing was maybe done days ago and no one saw anything as far as I know. Metzger basically just told me that we needed to get there ASAP. The body was dumped in the woods, and it looks like it was dragged off the road on a sled or something like that. It was pretty windy the other night and the tracks are drifted over in places. Right now the state police are handling the scene.”

It took them nearly an hour and a GPS device to get there but finally they pulled up to a line of patrol vehicles with swirling lights on a county highway. Jason wasn't really familiar with the area, but they were just there anyway to see if this victim might be part of their investigation. Jurisdiction issues would probably be a problem, but at the moment, linking the cases was top priority.

He stepped out into about a foot of an angular snowbank, sank in up to his calf, caught the cold blast of frigid air to the face, and flipped up his collar. Trees stood with snow-coated branches in a thick stand up to the edge of the winding road. A uniformed officer immediately walked over with a questioning look on his face.

“Milwaukee PD,” Jason said shortly, his breath making puffs in the arctic cold. The sun was just starting to come up, the light struggling through the trees. “We aren't any happier to be here than you are.”

“Right. I've been standing out here for quite a while. I can't feel my fingers.” The trooper pointed toward the woods. “In this weather I can truly refer to the victim as a stiff. It isn't, by the way, a sight for the faint of heart, so I've warned you.”

“If he's one of ours, I believe you.” Jason's eyes were watering already from the cold. “And we've seen it.”

“The skier lost his lunch, so to speak. Can't blame the guy.”

Shoulders hunched, Ellie just walked past him, headed that direction. Jason followed, but he had to admit his level of enthusiasm was pretty low. For obvious reasons, this part of any investigation was his least favorite.

The body
was
pretty bad. He wasn't squeamish but this thing about utterly destroying the face might just give him nightmares.

There was ice crusted over the missing features and lacerated flesh, giving the wounds an opaque look, but they were still visible and disturbing. The victim was on his side, his hair matted with dark, congealed blood, and in contrast to their last grisly find, wore an expensive leather jacket.

“Let me guess, empty pockets?” Jason knelt down and reached with a gloved hand for the man's coat.

“No ID.” An older man who had been introduced as the coroner said the words briskly, hands deep in the pockets of his long dark coat. “He didn't die here either. It happened somewhere else. I'd say between the time of death and when he was dropped off, not too long. He must have been wrapped up in something, bled all over that, and that's why we have blood here at the scene, but there's no splatter pattern I can see. It could be under the drifted snow though. It will help considerably when your medical examiner tried to give you an approximate time of death. I think that's going to be a challenge.”

“So he could have been killed in Milwaukee?”

The coroner looked at Ellie with troubled eyes. “I suppose it is possible. Depending on what part of the city you are headed to, it can take less than an hour from around here.”

Here was Jefferson County, sandwiched between Milwaukee and Madison. Did it mean something to the killer, Jason wondered as he squatted by the body, his eyes watering a little from the cold. Or was it just convenient? It could be their first real clue, or it could mean not a damn thing.

Ellie said in a businesslike tone, “I hate to tell you, but this looks familiar. Let's treat this as our case. Would everyone mind stepping back?”

*   *   *

Ellie had commandeered
the investigation, but it was a justifiable conclusion. One look at the dead man told her this was the same killer.

The skier had hung around, which was nice of him since he'd given a statement already, but he didn't have much to add except for the name of the man who owned the farm and woods and had told him he could ski through the pasture if he wanted as long as he didn't spook the cattle, but in this weather, they preferred the barn, so it wasn't an issue. Ellie talked to him briefly, came to the conclusion he was just an unlucky passerby, and told him to go home and get warm.

The morning didn't get better.

She stood there, the wind whipping at her coat, chilled through, and it wasn't just the temperature. She'd knelt in the snow by the body and her jeans were wet, probably with both blood and melting snow. A crime scene team had finally arrived and at least she and Santiago weren't the ones digging through the drifts.

There was an inner feeling the murders were becoming more personal. Something big was going on … this was not a usual case. “Two significant things,” she pointed out to Santiago as the body was zipped into a bag. “It bothers me once again that there isn't much attempt to hide the bodies. I don't think these are well-planned crimes. It isn't that the killer isn't smart, just disorganized. Lucky so far, but that rarely lasts long.”

He swiped snow off his knees. “Unlucky describes those who have met up with him. I'm kind of hoping not to until the day we arrest his ass. What's the second thing?”

Her gloves were not doing the trick, probably due to the wind chill. Ellie wriggled her fingers to keep the circulation going. “More and more I am convinced the mutilation is personal, not just to keep us from identification. It's too savage to be deliberate.”

“He loses control. I agree. Starts slashing and can't stop.” Neither one of them wanted to talk about what had been done to the victim's eyes. Santiago squinted at the sky. “I haven't watched the weather in three days. We got some sort of system coming in?”

“A clipper from Canada,” she confirmed. “You spend too much time on ESPN.”

“You are entitled to your opinion. I think we're done here.”

Neither of them mentioned the night before.

“Find out which deputy is going to escort the body, okay? I'll start the car.”

She was cold to the bone as she slid in and turned the key, her hands shaking. They were in for some pretty typical January weather, but with lower than usual temperatures there was enough snow on the ground to blow around some. Not a huge event, but it didn't help when investigating a case in a rural area.

This was more her comfort zone. She was used to the woods, the terrain wasn't rough, but at least private enough that someone covered in blood—and they had to be, just like the other cases—felt they could come to this spot and dump off a body. She'd also been calculating since the minute they arrived how many cars came along this road.

Not many in the morning and even fewer if it had happened at night. Maybe five cars had passed by.

They
did
now know something about the killer.

When her partner opened the door and dropped into his seat, she said without preamble, “He's from right around here. I'd say he lives in the city now, but knows this area.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Our perp.”

He buckled his seat belt. “Did he send you his former address or anything? If so, I missed that exchange of information.”

She looked out the window. There was a line of trees and barren fields beyond, the snow in ashen waves of white and dirt, and in the distance a dairy farm. The frozen stream and bits of fallen branches on the road were indicative of a fairway the county didn't pay a lot of attention to, and she didn't believe for a minute this was just a lucky find.

“I'm not usually a big believer in coincidence.” She adjusted the thermostat to high, since she was still pretty cold. The windshield was speckled with frosty stars and the tires made a keening noise as they pulled away.

“I can't say I am either.” Slowly he added, “Local boy that knew the spot? It's possible he just lucked into it, but I'm not thinking it was how it went down. That body could have started rotting away this spring before it was discovered.”

“There's a pleasant thought.”

He shot her a sardonic sidelong look. “If you expected this job to be pleasant, maybe you should work at a cosmetics counter in a department store instead, spritzing middle-aged women with perfume.”

“Middle-aged men could probably use it more.” There was a narrow bridge clearly iced over and she fishtailed a little on the black ice on the opposite side, glad she'd slowed down.

“Well, we agree on one thing then. Still, it must be good to know you have a career waiting for you if this one fails. All right, how about decomposing? Putrefying? Better words? Still means the same thing.”

God, he could be annoying. What had been surprising was that the evening before he'd been on his best behavior. That had been a very strange dinner, all in all. In the natural course of doing their job they'd eaten together often enough, usually grabbing something on the go, but he'd gone to some trouble. He'd even tuned the obnoxiously big television in his living room to a soft classical station, and when she'd broken down—she still couldn't decide if she was relieved or mortified—he'd been very nice about it.

*   *   *

She was trying
to figure out if it might have been a …
date
.

This morning, he was back to his usual irritating self anyway.

“So you think he knows the area?” she asked, pulling onto the snow-covered road.

“He might. I'm bugged by a few things.”

“Like?”

Ellie really was interested in the answer. If there was one thing she could say about her somewhat brash partner, he rarely failed to surprise her. The way he operated was on a different level.

He never wore a hat, which was stupid in Wisconsin in the winter, so his hair was already starting to curl wildly because it was damp as the car warmed and the snow melted. His nose was pink from the cold and his gaze focused on the road ahead as he thought over the answer. “I think we are missing something small. Like double-stupid small. A nuance that would steer us the right way. I was going to speculate that the crimes were sexually motivated, but nothing in the autopsies of the first two victims indicated that and I doubt this one will either.”

History showed that homosexual serial killers were just as deadly as the ones that preyed on women. She'd thought of it too. “I'm starting to think we'll never know who victim two is, but when someone reports this new guy missing, we could have a link.”

“We sure need one.”

“Double-stupid small?” She couldn't help but smother a laugh. “Where did you hear that one?”

“Hey, it's a saying from where I come from.” Santiago grimaced. “Okay, I made it up, but it applies here. Think about it. We're really missing something.”

The bleak landscape, stripped by winter, rolled by. She couldn't help but agree. “I think we are too.”

 

Chapter 13

The symphony had been a mixed bag. Georgia had season tickets because it was one of the few things she did for herself. Once upon a time she'd considered a future as a concert violinist, but in truth, she had proven only adequate rather than brilliant, and the world of music required the latter. Yes, she could have taught with the passion of one who understood measure and bass and treble clef, meter and so forth, but genius performance required more.

It was undefinable.

It was something she'd been told, very gently to his credit, by a professor her first semester when she'd entered college as a music major. Very good could gain a position with a major orchestra with some luck, but she needed to evaluate what she wanted from a career in the arts.

All along she'd known it. The passion was there, but the natural talent was not. It didn't matter that she immersed herself in the craft, knew the notes, practiced religiously … brilliance was absent.