The familiar entry table and scraped hardwood floors came into view. I could see all the way through to the living area and the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the trees and the Potomac.
“Well,” I said, taking a step back, my boots sloshing on the carpet. “I think that settles it. Bad juju. Maybe we should just burn it down and start over.”
“I’m thinking the insurance adjusters might have something to say about that,” Jack said. “Look, there’s the crime scene techs.”
I watched the van pull into the drive with all the other myriad of cop cars. We went back downstairs and let them in and then waited while they put down numbered markers and took photographs of anything relevant. And then they dusted for prints, hoping to find anything that didn’t belong to the victim.
“I called Lily and Sheldon in,” I said. “They can get her transported and set up for the autopsy. I should be able to finish it by tonight. Everything is jumbled in my mind. How is this case like our Jack the Ripper murder? Obviously, the guy who killed Juliet wrote the copycat letter and wanted us to find the victim here. But this murder is nothing like the Jack the Ripper murder.”
“No,” Jack said. “We’ve got two female victims. Both Caucasian. Juliet was in her late thirties. This woman seems to be quite a bit older. Juliet lived in Newcastle and this victim in Bloody Mary. But they have a killer in common. Why?”
I didn’t have an answer.
“You’re up, Doc,” the lead crime scene tech said, nodding as he passed by.
I looked at her hands first. Feeling the loosened joints and skin and looking at her fingernails. And then I pressed along her ribs and the thickest part of her waist.
“She’s completely out of rigor,” I said. “And you can see the cuticles have started pulling back from the nails. The skin is shrinking.” I dug in my bag for the digital thermometer. “She’s room temperature. What’s the thermostat set on?”
Jack walked into the hallway to check and said, “Seventy degrees.”
I did the math in my head and then calculated the completed stages of rigor. “At least twenty-four hours. Could be as much as forty-eight, but I don’t think so. We don’t have any insect activity yet. Twenty-four to thirty-six is the best guestimate. What were we doing twenty-four to thirty-six hours ago?”
Jack looked at his watch. “It’s just after two o’clock. We were leaving Taco Joe’s,” he said. “You’d already finished Juliet’s autopsy.”
“So thirty-six hours ago it was two in the morning,” I said. “Juliet was freshly dead.”
“He killed Juliet and then came here sometime in the next few hours and killed Jody Burkett,” Jack said, nodding.
“Which means he probably already had Jody held captive.”
“Timeline,” Jack said. “He was insistent about the timeline when he talked to Betsy. He’s moving fast and he needed me to catch up.”
That gave me an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t like it when murderers decided to include us in on their game.
“Did you find an ID for her?” I asked. “Let’s make sure this is Jody Burkett.”
“I can identify her,” Jack said. “This is the woman I talked to.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m not seeing any other marks or wounds on her. I’ll test for sexual assault once I get back to the lab. The probability is high. Maybe we can get some DNA.”
I took a sharp pair of shears from my bag and carefully cut the zip tie around her throat and removed the plastic bag. Jack had an evidence bag already open and waiting for me, and I dropped it inside.
The front door opened again and Sheldon and Lily came inside with a gurney.
“I’m telling you she liked you,” Lily said. “That’s why she gave you her phone number.”
“I don’t know,” Sheldon said. “She told me she had questions about my Lord of the Rings memorabilia. It’s an extensive collection. I’ve had lots of people interested in seeing it. I’ve got to be careful though because one time a guy tried to steal my mithril shirt replica.”
“Believe me,” Lily said. “She doesn’t want to see your collection. She’s interested in you. Call her and ask her out.”
“Maybe I could text,” he said. “Where would we go?”
“I’m glad you found a date, Sheldon,” I said. “But I’d like to wrap this up. This is our fourth body in less than forty-eight hours.”
“Five if you count Louise Chalmers,” Sheldon said. “The hospital finally got her delivered. Only one spot left in the cooler.”
“Right,” I said. “I’m just finishing up here.”
I ran a finger over each of the strangulation marks. “I’m counting at least three different ligature marks,” I said. “That kind of torture takes time. He strangles her to the point of passing out and then waits for her to revive so he can do it again. She’d be wishing for death.”
“No one knows she’s here,” Jack said. “Lives alone. Keeps to herself. He comes and goes as he pleases. Tortures her for a bit and then goes and kills Juliet. Comes back and tortures her some more.”
“You think there’s a possibility one of our cameras might have picked him up coming or going?”
“Worth a shot,” he said. “I can have Doug start looking through the camera feed.”
“Like you said, he’s on a timeline,” I said. “It’s time to move on to his next victim, so he puts the plastic bag over her head and finishes her off.”
I cut the zip ties at her wrists and bagged both of her hands, just in case she happened to get a swipe in before he incapacitated her. I called Lily and Sheldon over with the gurney and then cut the straps around her ankles.
“This is weird,” Sheldon said. “What are the odds there’d be so many copycat murders?”
Jack put a restraining hand on Sheldon’s shoulder and asked, “What do you mean?”
“Oh,” he said, blinking owlishly. “I’m kind of a serial killer aficionado. I know all kinds of things about them. We should watch a marathon sometime. They’ve always got these great documentaries. I thought you would know all about them.”
“I live this life on a daily basis,” Jack said. “The last thing I want to do is go home and watch serial killer documentaries.”
“Oh,” Sheldon said. “I guess that makes sense.”
“Focus, Sheldon,” I said. “Tell us about the copycat murders.”
“Well, first you’ve got Jack the Ripper. That one’s pretty obvious. And then you’ve got the random shooting at the theater. The guy was even driving a yellow car.” Sheldon looked at us expectantly.
“Spell it out for us, Sheldon,” I said.
“Son of Sam,” he said. “No rhyme or reason to his kills. Just picked them out and opened fire. He drove a yellow car.”
Jack met my gaze and I knew what he was thinking. We’d not even considered the shooting to be related. Why would we have? But had we missed something important because we hadn’t seen the connection?