Nate asked softly, his gaze riveted on the remains of the man.
“At least an hour. Maybe a little longer. Let me show you one difference I found from the last two victims.” He and Risa moved silently to the end of the table. “I cut the remnants of the clothing off. Some, of course, melted into the flesh. But look here.” She pointed to where the man’s feet should be. What was there was unrecognizable to Nate. Two shriveled blackened stumps.
“What am I looking at?”
“Had a helluva time cutting the shoes away. Couldn’t separate the leather from the skin,” Liz explained. “Like the first two, this one had his arms duct taped behind him. The others were burned more or less uniformly. This time I suspect he started the fire at the victim’s feet.” She gestured toward the other end of the table. “His head wasn’t burned as severely as were the others either. You’ll notice there’s more tufts of hair remaining.”
“Varying his MO.”
“But not his signature,” murmured Risa. She didn’t appear to share his squeamishness. She was staring at the body consideringly. Nate gave a mental shrug. There was a reason people said women were the stronger sex. “Maybe he’s trying to make it last longer.”
“Prolong the torture?” Because he didn’t know what else to do with them, he jammed his hands in his suit pockets. “That’d be in keeping with a sadist.”
She sent him an approving glance. “Someone has more psych background than he’s let on.”
Her words warmed something inside him, which was stupid. He’d given up being stupid about women when he was seventeen and caught his girlfriend of ten months in the backseat with Joey Gelner. That Joey was his best friend had been the secondary insult.
It’d been Nate’s car.
He’d developed, more than one woman had told him, a singularly unromantic view of relationships in the time since.
“I pay attention.” He shifted his gaze to Liz. “Enough to wonder if there was a difference found in the lungs. Did he succeed in keeping the victim alive longer?”
The ME patted her heart and addressed Risa. “He makes me so proud.” To Nate she said, “I can tell how much smoke the victim inhaled and I can estimate from that how long he lived. But if your offender managed to reduce the amount of smoke, or slow the burning process, I’m not going to necessarily be able to tell that. Just the cumulative amount. I did find something else that might interest you, though.”
Rounding the table, she walked swiftly to the opposite end. “Help me turn him over.” Gingerly he reached out to do as directed. But only because Risa was helping and he didn’t want the women to start in on him again. “See this?”
He got closer to peer at whatever Liz was pointing to on the skull. “What?”
“Nothing. No evidence of blunt force trauma. But I did find traces of (C2H5)2O in the lungs. Ether,” she explained before they could ask.
“Makes sense,” Risa mused. “He changes the approach to fit the situation. He took Parker when he was out for a jog. And we still don’t know exactly how and where he got Tull. But since blunt-force trauma was found on both those victims, we can guess that he used some sort of surprise or blitz attack for them. For Christiansen, we think the offender got inside his car.”
“And so far it’s looking like the driver managed to avoid every traffic camera in the area after that,” he put in.
“So the UNSUB was directing Christiansen on what route to take,” surmised Risa. “Held a gun to his head maybe. Or made him believe he’d left a buddy back at the detective’s house, that his wife was in danger.”
“He wouldn’t have used the ether until they were at their destination. But why bother by then?”
Liz interrupted their ponderings. “This Starsky and Hutch thing you’ve got going on? Very educational. But I’ve got another—ha, ha—lucky stiff waiting to go under the knife, so maybe you kids could take it outside. Go on.” She shooed them when Nate opened his mouth. “I gave you the highlights. The rest will be in my written report, which you’ll get when it’s ready. Now get out.”
“As always, I appreciate the hospitality,” Nate said with mock politeness. But he knew Liz well enough to start moving to the door before she threatened him with the bone saw.
Risa continued speaking as she followed him out. “The methods of attacks could point to the offender