clean white sheet amid the large cylinder of blood.
Alex got out a pencil. With his left hand, he started pointing and explaining. “Remember, the postmortem mutilation is mostly to the torso and the upper thighs. If you look at the bloodstain, you can see feathering at the top, and imprints here, which I believe are from the victim’s shoulder blades pressing into the sheet and limiting the absorption of blood. Orienting ourselves, then, here is the head, the shoulders, the torso, the legs. Given that . . .”
“The voids are on either side of the victim’s thighs.”
“From the lower part of the killer’s legs, I presume. Essentially, he was straddling her body, the front part of his shins pressing against the mattress on either side of her thighs, which shielded that part of the sheet from blood.”
“He incapacitates his victim,” D.D. murmured, trying to form a sequence of events in her mind. “Then, most likely, he sets the scene. The champagne, handcuffs, single rose. He’d want to get everything out before things get too . . . messy.”
Alex turned, sweeping his high-intensity beam across the nightstand where the champagne bottle and other props awaited. The light didn’t expose a single drop of blood.
“Fair assumption,” he said.
“Next . . . he would have to strip the victim. Expose her skin.”
Light beam to the left-hand side of the bed, where D.D. now saw a puddle of dark clothes.
“Black sweats, oversize Red Sox T-shirt, underwear,” Alex reported.
“Sounds like suitable PJs for a single woman. He cast them aside.”
Another nod.
“Then”—she turned toward the bed—“he climbs aboard, positions himself astride the victim’s naked body, and begins to . . . skin her. Why?”
Alex shrugged. “Part of the ritual? Maybe the killer is really some kind of necrophiliac, and it’s these moments with the body that are most fulfilling for him. The strips of skin are thin, and based on the ME’s study of the first victim, they’re precise, methodical. In his estimation, the killer spent at least an hour on the filleting process, if not two or three.”
“Semen?” D.D. asked. “Signs of sexual assault?”
“First victim, no. Second victim, results still pending.”
“I don’t get it. He gains access, incapacitates his victims. Drugs them?”
“Tox screen also pending.”
“Then . . . starts in with the knife. For at least an hour?”
“With some skill,” Alex provided. “ME suggests either a hunter or maybe even a butcher. But based on the smooth, even strokes, our killer has some experience.”
“Kind of blade?”
“Most likely something small and razor-sharp, perhaps even designed especially for the job. Here’s the other point of consideration. Often in these kinds of crimes, the killer will eventually set down his weapon. You know, resting for a moment, readjusting his grip, or even laying down the knife while getting on and off the bed. A reflexive movement, not even thought about, but an act that leaves a bloody imprint of the blade behind as further evidence. In a case where a killer spends this much time with a body at a scene this bloody, it’s the kind of evidence you’d almost expect. Except . . .”
“He didn’t do it.”
“Or he was aware enough, controlled enough, to rest it in the middle of another bloodstain, the kind of place where he thought it wouldn’t leave a pattern.”
D.D. glanced at her husband. “You just said he thought it wouldn’t leave a pattern . . . ?”
Alex smiled faintly. He had returned to the bloody sheet hanging on the wall and was hitting it up close and personal with the beam from his flashlight. “In this kind of attack, where the victim is bleeding out from multiple wounds over an extended period of time—”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“You get blood-on-blood patterns. Blood, as it starts to dry, thickens, the edges turning yellow from hemoglobin that’s separating from the platelets. The old blood starts to form a surface for the new blood to drip upon.”
She could almost picture this. “Meaning if the killer set down a knife covered in fresh blood upon an area of drying blood, it could leave an imprint on the surface of the old blood.”
“Precisely.”
“And in this case . . .”
Alex, his face a mere two inches from the stiff, red-encrusted surface: “I think . . . I can see an outline. Faint, but there. I would guess a filleting knife, but to be fair, it’s hard to know sometimes if you’re seeing what you want to see or what’s really there. We can fine-tune this, however, enhance