was able to match it to a girl who’s been missing for two weeks: Vicki Pettersson.”
Varik flipped open the file the doctor handed over. Scanning the reports, he frowned. “How did a girl from Vegas end up in the trunk of a car in Jefferson, Mississippi?”
Doc Hancock slipped a new report on top of the file. “Jumped a bus and went as far as her money would take her, which was apparently here.”
“That still doesn’t explain how she got in the trunk.”
“Well, now, that’s your job, but I can tell you she had help.” Doc Hancock grunted as he slipped off the stool on which he’d been perched. His knees popped and crackled as he made his way across the room to an X-ray display panel.
Varik followed and squinted against the sudden bright illumination before focusing on the large black-and-gray photo negatives. “Are those all broken?”
“Poor girl’s rib cage was crushed like an egg, and look here.” Doc Hancock pointed to an X ray of a skull. “Multiple fractures of the jaw as well as at the back of the skull. Not to mention one leg and both arms were also broken.”
“So she was tortured?”
“Yes and no.” Doc Hancock switched off the display panel. “All the breaks and fractures occurred postmortem, after she was already dead.”
“Where does the torture fit in?”
He handed Varik a stack of color photos. “I found evidence of starvation and dehydration. She also had multiple lacerations around her neck, but they’re so shallow I can’t even begin to speculate the reason.”
“Only her neck?”
Doc Hancock nodded. “And I didn’t see any signs of sexual assault.”
Varik frowned as he studied the photos. Several showed long regular patches of exposed tissue. “What about these areas?”
“Those are the weird bits. They’re concentrated on her back, stomach, and legs. I saw no evidence of healing so it had to have been done after she was killed. Very precise cuts and tissue removal. Someone skinned this poor girl. My question is, Why?”
“That’s what the Dollmaker does. He uses skin from his victims to make dolls in their likenesses.”
“I’ve heard of a lot of strange things in my time, but that’s just fucked-up, as my granddaughter would say.”
Varik sighed and handed the photos back to him. “What was the official cause of death?”
“Exsanguination. Her throat was slit from ear to ear.”
An upbeat techno rhythm filled the room and Varik pulled his cell phone from its holster at his hip. He checked the caller display before answering. “Any word, Damian?”
“Not yet. Teams are still sweeping the area and fanning out into other sections of town.”
“We have to find her, Damian. Bring in more Enforcers from Jackson or Hattiesburg if you have to.”
“We’re doing everything we possibly can.”
“Doc Hancock and I are finishing up.” He glanced at the medical examiner and received a confirming nod. “I’m going to join the sweeper teams when I leave here. The bond isn’t working but maybe if I get close to her location then I can—”
“Negative,” Damian interrupted. “I need you back here as soon as you wrap up with the ME.”
Anger flared within him, hot and blinding. “What the fucking hell for? I’m not going to sit on my ass while that psycho has Alex!”
“Did I say anything about you sitting on your ass? There’s someone here you need to interview.”
“Get someone else to do it.”
“Her name is Piper Garver. She’s Mindy Johnson’s cousin, and someone tried to kidnap her a few blocks from JPD, killed a truck driver in the process. She’s got one hell of a story, but the important part is the guy who tried to abduct her knows a vampire who likes redheads.”
Adrenaline surged through his system and melted away the pain in his legs as he sprinted from the room.
Tasha closed the door of her sedan and paused to take in the grandeur that had once been Cottonwood Plantation.
A sweeping oak-lined drive nearly half a mile long led to the multistory home that had seen better days. What had once been a simple farmhouse had been expanded over the years. Each generation of the Corman family had added their own touch to the house until it became a mishmash of various architectural styles.
The house sat on a couple of hundred acres of mixed pasture and groves. Once the plantation had grown cotton but it had switched to pecans sometime in the 1950s. Cottonwood had been well-known in southwestern Mississippi for producing some of the finest pecans in the region until Benjamin Corman died.