LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER FOUR

      “THE KILLER TOOK his time with our victim.” Dr. Julia Bradford, the Orleans Parish coroner, moved briskly around the lab. She spoke with sympathy flowing in her voice. “There were over a dozen knife wounds to her body.”

      “A dozen?” Macey repeated. He saw her eyes briefly close. “That poor woman.”

      Macey always responded to the victims because she knew them so well.

      She knew what it was like to feel their pain.

      “Many of those wounds were shallow.” The coroner’s hand moved toward the victim’s face. “Like these here on the cheek...”

      “As if the killer was just getting started,” Tucker muttered, disgust rising in him. It wasn’t a disgust he’d allow to show. All of his emotions were locked down right then, and he’d keep them locked tight.

      The way he always did. Seeing Dawn had rattled him, and he was having to fight harder to keep his control in place.

      “But here...” Dr. Bradford’s glove-covered hand moved to the victim’s neck and the mark there. “As you can see, the wounds became deeper.”

      “Dawn has a scar like that one,” Anthony said, leaning closer to the body.

      Tucker’s gaze swept over him.

      “The wound is deeper here, too.” Dr. Bradford’s hand went to the woman’s right shoulder.

      “Dawn has—” Anthony began.

      “I know where her scars are,” Tucker growled. But Dawn didn’t have over a dozen scars, thank Christ. Tucker had stopped Jason before the bastard could finish his ritual on her.

      Anthony’s brows rose. “Sorry.” He cleared his throat even as a light flush stained his cheeks. “I was just pointing out that the wounds seem to be following the Iceman’s pattern.”

      Because the Iceman had used a particular pattern with his victims. A very thorough pattern designed for maximum pain and disfigurement. But not for death.

      “I compared the wounds on our Jane Doe with the wound patterns from the Iceman’s attacks,” Julia said. “They’re the same.”

      Tucker and Macey shared a long glance. Not good. But they’d already suspected this. When they’d first gotten the crime scene photos, the similarity had been obvious. However, a similarity was one thing...an exact copy was another entirely.

      “The wounds didn’t kill her...” She took a deep breath. “They weren’t severe enough for that. Just like with the Iceman, no major arteries were damaged. The wounds were given to inflict pain, to maim, but not to kill.” Dr. Bradford swallowed as jazz music played lightly in the background. “Our victim died in the freezer.”

      “Shit,” Anthony muttered. He backed away from the exam table. “Talk about torture. She was in there, knowing she was dying, knowing there was no way out. Freezing to freaking death.”

      The Iceman’s MO.

      “I’m running her DNA, hoping for a hit on her identity.” Julia’s lips turned down. “Her fingerprints weren’t in the system, though.”

      “We should release her photo to the media,” Anthony said, nodding. “She could have family out there, people who can identify her. People who are looking for her.”

      “Those same people haven’t filed a missing person’s report for her,” Macey stated quietly. “Don’t you think that is odd?”

      Anthony didn’t speak.

      So Tucker did. “Maybe she didn’t have family,” he said. “Or maybe they just weren’t close any longer. Families grow apart. Everyone knows that.”

      Julia covered the victim. She took off her gloves and tossed them into the trash. She turned to face them, her dark cream skin smooth and unlined. She was a young doctor, he knew that, but he’d done some checking on her. Julia Bradford had graduated at the top of her class at Tulane. She was smart, thorough and well respected by the prosecutors in the area. She might be new on the scene, but she knew how to do her job. They weren’t going to have to face amateur hour on this one.

      “How long was she in there?” Tucker asked her.

      Julia hesitated.

      “If we know how long she was frozen,” he said, “we can figure out more information about the man who took her.”

      “Freezing the victim helped to obscure her time of death.” She shook her head. “I’m working on that, but...I don’t have a definitive time for you. Considering the way she was stored, I doubt I’ll ever have that for you.”

      Exactly what Dawn had said...and, unfortunately, what he’d suspected given his own knowledge of forensics. “Did you find any evidence on her?” Tucker asked. “Skin cells beneath her fingernails? Fibers or—”

      “Her wrists were tied together when we pulled her out of the freezer. From what I can tell, she never had the opportunity to fight back.” Sorrow flashed on Julia’s face. “The killer was very organized, I can tell you that. No trace evidence was left behind.”

      So basically, they had jackshit. “I want to see the crime scene.”

      Anthony nodded. “Sure thing, but...the freezer was transferred to Evidence. We ran a check on the serial number and got a hit because, years ago, the freezer was registered under warranty. We found that owner, but it turned out that she’d put the freezer out as garbage two years ago. She thought it was hauled to the dump. Hell, maybe it was...or maybe someone just took it when they saw it outside. Either way...we turned up empty when it came to tracking it.”

      Son of a bitch. “I’ll be wanting to talk to that woman.”

      Anthony shrugged. “Yeah, okay, but I already interviewed her. She didn’t know anything about the case and when I told her about just what had been found inside of the freezer...I thought she was going to have a heart attack.”

      His attention shifted back to the woman in that freezer. “She has a name. She has a family.”

      “She had a life,” Macey murmured.

      Had. Until some sick bastard stole that life.

      “Someone is looking for her,” Tucker said. Somewhere out there, someone was looking.

      But Anthony shook his head. “Maybe they’re not.” He paced near the exam table as the coroner watched him. “Jules, you know as well as I do that the lost flock to our city. The Big Easy is a great place if you’re looking to escape a troubled past. If you just walk down Canal, you’ll see our homeless. Those are people that slip under the radar every day. People who could vanish and...” His lips tightened. “And no one would be looking for them.”

      Tucker cocked his head as he studied

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