Play dead

FORTY-SIX

The white tent sat near the edge of the roof, shielding the murder victim from the sun, and the prying eyes of the media hovering overhead like red-tail hawks. There were no fewer than thirty people on the roof: detectives, supervisors, crime-scene technicians, investigators from the medical examiner's office. Photographs were taken, measurements recorded, surfaces dusted.

When Jessica and Byrne arrived, the other personnel deferred to them. This could only mean one thing. The homicide that had occurred here was clearly connected to their investigations.

When Jessica opened the flap on the plastic tent, she knew it to be true. She felt the gorge rise in her throat. In front of her was a girl, no more than seventeen, with long dark hair, deep hazel eyes. She wore a thin black sweater and blue jeans, a pair of sandals on her small feet. None of this made her much different from any of the other young murder victims Jessica had seen in her career. What set this girl apart, what tied her irrevocably to the case she and her partner were working on, was the manner in which she was killed.

Protruding from the girl's chest and abdomen were seven steel swords.

Jessica stared at the girl's pallid face. It was clear that in life she had been exotically pretty, but here, on a blistering rooftop in North Philadelphia, drained of all her blood, she looked almost mummified.

The good news, for the investigators, was that according to the ME's office this victim had been dead little more than twenty-four hours. It was the closest they had come to the Collector. This was no cold case. This time they could amass evidence unadulterated by time. The very scent and presence of the murderer lingered.

Jessica snapped on a pair of gloves, stepped closer to the body. She gently examined the girl's hands. Her nails had recently been manicured and painted. The color was a deep red. Jessica looked at her own nails through the latex, and wondered if she and the victim had been sitting in a manicurist's chair at the same time.

Even though she was seated, Jessica determined that the girl was about five-three, less than a hundred pounds. She sniffed the girl's hair. It smelled of mint. It had been recently shampooed.

Nicci Malone stepped onto the roof, saw Jessica.

"We've got an ID," Nicci said.

She handed Jessica an FBI printout. The girl's name was Katja Dovic. She was seventeen. She had last been seen at her house in New Canaan, Connecticut, on June twenty-sixth.

Dr. Tom Weyrich approached.

"I take it this is not the primary scene," Jessica said.

Weyrich shook his head. "No. Wherever she was killed she bled out, and was cleaned up. The hearts stops, that's it. The dead don't bleed." He paused for a moment. Jessica knew him to be a man not given to hyperbole or arch comment. "And, as bad as that is, it gets worse." He pointed to one of the slices in the girl's sweater. "It looks like she was run through with these swords at the primary scene, they were removed, and reinserted here. This guy re-created the murder on this rooftop."

Jessica tried to wrap her mind around the image of someone stabbing this girl with seven swords, removing them, transporting the body, and doing it all over again.

While Nicci went off to advise the other investigators on the ID, Byrne sidled silently next to Jessica. They stood this way while the mechanics of a murder investigation swirled around them.

"Why is he doing this, Kevin?"

"There's a reason," Byrne said. "There's a pattern. It looks random, but it isn't. We'll find it, and we'll fucking put him down."

"Now there's three girls. Three methods. Three different dump sites."

"All in the Badlands, though. All runaways." Jessica shook her head. "How do we warn these kids when they don't want to be found?" There was no answer.