LITMIR.BIZ

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deeper into her jacket. In northern Illinois, winters were hard, springs slow to come and summers too short. But the falls were glorious. She figured the residents deserved it for sticking out the rest of the year’s weather.

      She crossed to the crime-scene tape and ducked under it, then headed directly for the first officer. She signed the scene log, ignoring the curious glances of her fellow officers. She didn’t blame them for their interest; she had only returned from forced leave eight weeks ago and had been assigned nothing but no-brainer assault-and-battery cases.

      Until this morning, uncertain of her own emotional strength, she had been fine with that. Grateful Sal Minelli, the deputy chief of detectives, had allowed her back. She’d melted down on the job, big-time. She’d jeopardized cases, endangered her fellow officers and the department’s reputation.

      Sal had championed her, as had Brian. She would be forever in their debt. What would she have done otherwise? She was a cop. It was all she had ever been.

      No, she thought. Once upon a time, she had been a wife. And a mom.

      She shook the thought off. The memories that came with it. The ache.

      Kitt stepped into the house. It was warm inside. The child’s parents huddled on the couch. Kitt didn’t make eye contact. She swept her gaze over the interior. Pin neat, cheap furnishings. Sculptured carpeting that had obviously seen its day; walls painted a handsome sage color.

      She followed the sound of voices to the girl’s bedroom. Too many people in this small room. Detective Riggio should be doing a better job controlling traffic.

      She wasn’t surprised to see Brian, though he was no longer part of the detective unit. As if getting wind of her presence, Mary Catherine Riggio turned and stared at her. In the eighteen months she had been away, a handful of officers had made rank of detective; of them one, Mary Catherine Riggio, had joined the VCB. From what she’d heard, the woman was smart, ambitious and uncompromising. All to a fault.

      Kitt met her eyes, nodded slightly in acknowledgment, then continued toward the bed.

      One look at the victim told her it was true: he was back.

      Kitt swallowed hard against the guilt that rushed up, threatening to drown her. Guilt at not having nailed the son of a bitch five years ago, about allowing him to kill again.

      She wanted to look away but couldn’t. Despair overwhelmed her. Her daughter’s image filled her head, memories of her last days.

      A cry crept up from the depths of her being. She held it in. Her daughter’s death and the Sleeping Angel murders had become weirdly, irrevocably intertwined in her mind.

      She knew why. She and her shrink had discussed this one ad nauseam: the first Sleeping Angel murder had occurred as Sadie was slipping away. Her fight to keep her daughter alive had mirrored her fight to stop the SAK, to keep the other girls alive.

      God help her, she’d lost both battles.

      Kitt suddenly realized that this victim’s hands were positioned differently than the others had been. In the original killings, each victim’s hands had been folded primly on her chest. This one’s were posed strangely, the fingers curled, one seeming to point to her own chest, the other out, as if at another.

      It might mean nothing. A variation in the killer’s ritual. After all, five years had passed since the last known victim.

      She didn’t think so. The SAK she had hunted had been precise, his scenes had never varied and he had never left the police anything to work with.

      Excited, she turned and called Brian over. Riggio and White came with him.

      The other woman didn’t give her a chance to speak. “Hello, Detective Lundgren.”

      “Detective Riggio.”

      “I appreciate you coming out to offer your perspective.”

      “Thank you, Detective,” Kitt said, though Mary Catherine Riggio looked anything but appreciative. Kitt shifted her attention to her former partner. “The hands are different.”

      Brian nodded, expression admiring. “I’d forgotten.” He looked at M.C. “In all the previous murders, the hands were positioned the same way. Folded on the chest, near the heart.”

      Roselli looked over his shoulder at them. “Actually, the hands present a very interesting scenario.”

      M.C. frowned. “Why?”

      “Clearly, the positioning is unnatural. In which case, the killer posed them postmortem.”

      “No surprise there. What’s so—”

      “Interesting? How long he waited to do it after the death.”

      “I don’t understand,” Kitt said. “He had to act fast, before rigor mortis set in.”

      The pathologist shook his head. “Wrong, Detective. He had to wait until after rigor mortis set in.”

      For several seconds, no one spoke. M.C. broke the silence first. “What kind of window are we talking about?”

      “A small one. Depending on temperature, rigor mortis sets in two to six hours after death. Since the furnace is running and the house is relatively warm, my guess is it took three to four hours.”

      Kitt couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Are you saying he sat here and waited for her to get stiff?”

      “That’s exactly what I’m saying. And for his patience to pay off, the body had to be discovered before rigor mortis broke at ten to twelve hours after death.”

      Brian whistled. He looked at Kitt. “The hand position is extremely important to him.”

      “He’s making a bold statement. An arrogant one.”

      “Most killers get in and out, as quickly as possible.”

      “Most smart ones,” Kitt corrected. “And the original SAK was damn intelligent.”

      “So, what does the positioning mean?”

      “Me and you,” White offered.

      Kitt nodded. “Us and them. In and out.”

      “Or nothing,” M.C. said, sounding irritated.

      “Doubtful. Considering the risk he took to pose them.” Brian glanced at Kitt. “Anything else jump out at you as different?”

      She shook her head. “Not that I’ve noticed—yet.” She shifted her gaze to Detective Riggio. “Is anything missing from the scene?”

      “Excuse me?”

      “The original SAK didn’t take a trophy from his victim. Which, of course, doesn’t fit the typical profile of a serial killer.”

      M.C. and White exchanged glances. “We’ll need the girl’s parents to carefully inventory her things,” she said.

      White nodded and made a note in his spiral.

      “You mind if I study the scene a bit more?” In an effort to earn the other woman’s good will, Kitt directed the question Riggio’s way, though asking Brian would have yielded an easy yes and, as the superior officer of the group, his decision would have been unarguable.

      But Detective Riggio was lead on the case and, Kitt could tell, hungry to prove herself. She was one of those “ballbuster” women cops, a type Kitt had seen too often. Police work was still a boys’ club—women had to fight to be taken seriously. Until they were, they were relegated to second-class citizens. So, many contorted themselves into humorless hard-asses with a severe case of testosterone envy. In other words, a woman acting like a man. Hell, she’d done a turn as one herself.

      She knew better now. She had learned what made a female cop an asset was the very fact she wasn’t a man. Her instincts, the way she responded and interacted—all were shaped by her gender.

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