Night Kills. John Lutz

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СКАЧАТЬ had to go out of town on business.” Again the smile. Blinding but natural. “Disappointed?”

      “Not so far.” He nodded toward the torso. “Finished with it?”

      “Her? Yeah. I’m up on the case. As far as a preliminary gets us, she’s the same as the others. Shot through the heart, obvious postmortem trauma to the vaginal area. The point of whatever was shoved into her snagged on her labia minor. The way she was taken apart—crude but effective dismemberment.”

      “Bullet still in her?” Pearl asked. She and Fedderman had been standing off to the side, listening. Dr. Chavesky turned her attention to them, knowing they were with Quinn, a set. “Yes. No exit wound. It’s a small caliber and it feels like it went through the sternum. We’ll have to see if it didn’t break up too much to run a comparative ballistics test.”

      “Kill her right away?” Fedderman asked.

      “Probably not. But within a few minutes. Of course, it’s also possible the killer shot her more than once. Obviously, the entire body isn’t here.”

      Quinn looked over at the torso, the headless end. He quickly looked away. “How long’s she been dead?”

      “My estimate’s ten to fifteen hours. I’d say she was in her early thirties when the clock stopped for her.”

      “Any other trauma to her body?”

      She gave him a look. “Besides the vaginal penetration and dismemberment, no. Just the bullet. It appears to have entered from a point directly in front of her while she was standing.” Chavesky glanced at her watch. “EMS should be here any minute to remove the body, unless you want them to leave it for a while. I gotta go.”

      “We won’t be long looking it over,” Quinn said.

      Dr. Chavesky nodded. “I’ll get a comprehensive postmortem report to you as soon as possible.”

      She and Quinn exchanged cards. He glanced down at hers and saw that her full name was Dr. Linda Chavesky. He slipped the card into his shirt pocket, behind his folded reading glasses, and watched the doctor duck gracefully beneath the crime scene tape and climb into a gray city car. Though she was slender, she had to be strong, judging by the effortless way she handled the large black medical bag.

      Quinn and his two detectives walked over to the nude torso.

      Nift would have remarked on the victim’s breasts, which were not large, but well formed even in death. A young woman, all right. So much life stolen from her. Quinn quickly examined where her arms had been severed, where her head had been severed. He was able to do so without suffering any reaction. That would come later, when he was alone and not on the job. She had black pubic hair, and it didn’t take a doctor to know that violence had been done to the vaginal area.

      “It would have been easy to put her behind the Dumpster,” Pearl said. “Even inside it.” The sweet, rotting smell coming from the Dumpster—she hoped that’s where it came from—was making her nauseated.

      “Our guy wanted her found as soon as possible,” Fedderman said.

      “Question’s why,” Pearl said.

      “We’ll think on it,” Fedderman told her, giving her a look that let her know she’d stated the obvious.

      “Sure. We’re detectives.”

      “Act like it,” Quinn said. He didn’t want them getting into a spat, especially in front of the CSU people. They were pretending not to be listening, but he knew they were.

      “No tattoos on any of the victims,” Fedderman said. “Could just be coincidence.”

      “No nipple, nose, or belly button rings, either,” Pearl said.

      Quinn looked at her with something like approval.

      “What the hell does that mean?” Fedderman asked.

      “Maybe nothing.”

      “Means they probably didn’t run with a kinky crowd,” Quinn said. “Not part of the S&M scene, that kinda thing.”

      Fedderman pointed at the lifeless, violated torso. “You don’t call that sadism?”

      Quinn let out a long breath. “You’ve got a point.”

      “An interesting one to ponder,” Pearl said.

      “Whether they’re S&M snuff victims?” Fedderman asked.

      “No. Whether you’ve got a point.”

      She’d said it thoughtfully, obviously not trying to rag Fedderman.

      Neither man questioned her about it. When Pearl let her mind go off on its own, which she often did, they knew not to disturb her.

      Let her ponder. It would keep her mind off her phone call from her mother, or whatever had upset her. Keep her from snapping at people.

      Later that day, Linda Chavesky phoned Quinn on his cell. She told him the victim’s heart had been struck by a fragment of a twenty-two-caliber bullet that had nicked the sternum going in and broken into three pieces.

      “It wouldn’t have killed her right away,” she said, “but it probably would have put her down, into shock.”

      “A second shot, then,” Quinn said, “to a part of the body not found. Her head, probably.”

      “Most likely. Or the severing of a large artery in her neck or thigh by a knife. We don’t know if she bled to death or the blood simply drained out of her when she was dismembered. That could happen if she was dismembered soon after death, and the blood hadn’t had time to coagulate.”

      Quinn didn’t say anything, thinking this was sounding more and more like a professional hit man—the shooting part. One to the heart, another shot or two to the head, to make sure.

      “Another thing. She suffered vaginal penetration, then beyond, by a cylindrical, sharply pointed wooden object, consistent with a sawed-off and sharpened broomstick. This was after she was killed.”

      “How do you know it was wooden?” Quinn asked, figuring he was going to hear again about the furniture polish lubricant.

      “I put in some extra time on this one. Found a splinter.”

      “Excellent. That’s something for sure that we were only guessing at before.”

      “That a compliment?”

      “You bet.”

      “Whatever penetrated her left a slightly oily residue.”

      “Furniture polish,” Quinn said. “It was in the other victims. But it didn’t necessarily mean wood for sure, until you found the splinter.” He could imagine the killer lovingly sharpening and polishing the deadly piece of broomstick—if that’s what it was. Helen Iman would suggest it was a phallic symbol. She might be right.

      “I’d СКАЧАТЬ