Torn - Cynthia Eden Page 0,40
But for an instant, anger—no, disgust?—entered her voice.
“How did she die?” Dace wanted to know. “Was it because of the knife wounds?”
Eleanor shook her head. “None of those wounds were designed to kill.”
“Just to inflict maximum pain,” Victoria said. “And I think the killer wanted us to know that—why else would he deliver the complete skeleton to us? He wanted us to see exactly what he’d done to her. All of the knife marks. All of the broken bones. Everything. He wanted us to know just what she endured . . . before he bashed in her head.”
Dace swore.
“Sorry,” Victoria said. Now her voice was going brittle. “That wasn’t the clinical term. My apologies. The victim suffered a severe contusion to her head. A fatal blow. I doubt she died instantly from it, though. There would have been substantial brain swelling, as evidenced by the faint fractures in the skull itself. A fairly slow death, and one that could have been quite painful.” Her lips thinned. “But maybe not. Maybe after that blow, she stopped feeling anything at all. I can’t say for sure on that. Only Kennedy would know how those last few moments actually felt.”
Victoria was too pale now. Too fragile. Wade wanted to pull her close. To shield her from what was hurting her. The case. The case is doing this. “Kennedy would have known,” he said, his words a rumbling growl. “And so would the SOB who killed her.”
Victoria’s lashes fluttered. “Yes, yes, he would know.” Then she squared her shoulders. “I think my timeline is accurate. You’ll find the breakdown of decay listed in the file, but based on my findings . . . I would say that Kennedy died approximately twenty-four months ago.”
Right, she’d said that Kennedy had been in the ground for two years and . . . fucking sonofabitch. “He tortured her for three years before killing her?” Wade demanded. “Three years?”
“I believe so.” Her voice was barely a whisper now. “He kept her alive and he kept hurting her, until two years ago.”
“Christ.” Dace closed his eyes. “We gave up on her. We just gave up on her. And she was out there. All that time.” He spun on his heel and walked away. He’d tucked the file under his arm as he took angry fast steps, and then he slammed his fist into the nearest wall.
Wade knew just how the guy felt. When he and Gabe had finally found Amy, when they realized that she’d been alive. If we’d only fucking got to her sooner . . . The guilt had nearly consumed him.
He saw Victoria blink quickly and look away from the detective. “There is more.”
“I don’t think I want to hear any more right now.” Dace slapped his hand against the wall and leaned forward. “Alive. For three years. And we were barely searching for her. No one was looking while that sick prick took his time with her and he just—”
“He has another victim.” Victoria’s words were low but they seemed to echo like a scream in that hallway.
From the corner of his eye Wade saw Dace’s head whip up. “Say again?”
But it was Eleanor who spoke. “I told you, her hunches are dead on.”
Wrong choice of words there, Doc.
“The hair shouldn’t have been there. Not after the body had been in the ground and exposed so much that—” Victoria sucked in a sharp breath. “The condition was too good. And the color was wrong. Kennedy’s hair wasn’t blond like that, it was much darker. Blond hair that shade—” Her gaze darted to Wade’s.
Fuck me. “Melissa Hastings.”
She nodded. “Eleanor pulled a lot of strings and got a rush comparison for us. It’s still tentative, because there are more tests that have to be done and those tests take one hell of a lot of time. But the markers are there so far. They’re matching. I think . . . I think that hair belongs to Melissa. I think the man who took her also took Kennedy, and . . . he wanted us to know. That’s why he left the hair there. He wanted us to know exactly what he’d done.”
He took another woman.
“If he kept Kennedy alive,” Wade said, his muscles tightening, “then he’ll keep Melissa alive, too.” They just had to find her in time.
“Let’s see if my captain stops us from putting out that full-scale search now,” Dace said, then he ran down the hallway.
Victoria didn’t move.
Neither did Wade, not yet.
“I’ll, um, fax our