Find Her Alive (Detective Josie Quinn #8) - Lisa Regan Page 0,67
prints from the cabin, Trinity’s car, and her phone case?” Josie asked. “Have they been run through AFIS?”
“Yeah, but no hits. There are some unknowns from both the car and the cabin, but we can’t be certain that any of them belong to the killer. No prints on the packaging from the comb except mine and Trinity’s. They’re still analyzing the rest of the packaging and the comb but that’s going to take longer to process. Also, Drake’s got agents checking out the leads you suggested—ornithologists, veterinarians, game commission officers—Mettner gave them a list.”
“Did you sleep?” Josie asked.
“A few hours.”
She stood up and peeked into the hallway. The smell of food cooking wafted upstairs. “I think Shannon is going to try to feed me again before I come back.”
“Let her. We’ll be here.”
Josie hung up, used the bathroom, and headed downstairs. In the kitchen, she found Christian at the stove instead of Shannon. “Your mother’s in the attic, putting things away,” he told her. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear her.”
“I was pretty tired,” Josie said.
A moment later, Christian slid a dish with pasta and roasted vegetables in front of her. “Eat,” he said. “I’ve got to make some calls since I won’t be going to work for the time being. You okay here?”
Josie nodded. As soon as he was gone, she went to her bag and took out the copy of the Bone Artist file she had brought with her. The first thing she did was tuck the copies of the photos into the back of the file. If Shannon or Christian walked back in, she didn’t want them seeing those. As she ate, she thumbed through the autopsy reports, DNA profiles, victim profiles, trying to see what Trinity had seen that had unlocked the case for her. She had to have put something critical together if she was able to make contact with the killer, especially after law enforcement had been looking for him for over a decade.
But nothing stood out to her.
She went back to the psychological profile, reading it more carefully. Someone—she assumed Drake—had written in the margins and at the end: craves attention and validation for his intelligence; wants to feel important; employ Supercop strategy? Josie made a note to ask Drake about that later. She read through the profile twice, trying again to view things through Trinity’s eyes. Nothing stood out. She finished her meal and washed the plate in the sink. Returning to her seat, she kept still and strained to hear Shannon and Christian in the house. Christian’s voice carried easily from his first-floor study—he was still on the phone. A few thumps from upstairs assured her that Shannon was cleaning the hallway. Confident that they’d both be engaged for a few more minutes, Josie took a deep breath and pulled out the photos she’d hidden earlier. She steeled herself, realizing too late that it wasn’t the best idea to eat just before viewing them. She took another deep breath. Forcing her eyes to focus on the remains marked as Robert Ingram’s, she tried to think clinically about this instead of emotionally. She needed to remove the element of horror and try to think like the killer. He wasn’t horrified by what he did. Most serial killers enjoyed their work. This killer in particular not only enjoyed his work but was trying to make a statement. But what kind? He deemed himself an artist. These garish displays were art to him. Symbolic of something. Josie reached down into her bag and took out her notebook and pen.
She began to draw the shape of the display, starting with a circle, like a clock. Inside that circle she drew another circle to represent the torso. Where six would be, she drew a line representing the arm bones, then more shapes at the end of them to match the skull and pelvic bone. She went to draw a line from two o’clock where the leg bones had been arranged and stopped suddenly.
“What the hell?”
She turned a page in her notebook and started again with the circle, drawing a line downward from six o’clock and then another line crossing it.
She riffled through the photos until she found Terri Abbott’s remains. In that display the pelvis and skull had been placed in a reverse position at the end of the leg bones which were at two o’clock. Josie turned another page in her notebook and drew a new circle, this time with a line outward from the two