Shadows Fall by J.K. Hogan Read Free Book Online

between three and six a.m.
    “Then we have the mark on her neck, carved with a sharp tool of some kind, possibly a scalpel. While not life-threatening, it also most likely occurred while she was still alive.”
    “So how does our killer subdue his victims and subsequently mutilate them alive, without them fighting back? If he tied them up, surely there would be some ligature marks.”
    “Most likely yes, but there are exceptions to every rule. Maybe he used padded restraints. There’s no way to tell that from autopsy.”
    “What if he used chloroform or something?”
    “Chloroform is rapidly expelled from the body, so it wouldn’t show up on toxicology, but I doubt it would keep the victim down long enough to do all of this damage,” Karen said.
    “When will we have toxicology?”
    Karen narrowed her eyes at him as if he were a petulant child. “You know how it works, Hale. Could be a couple of weeks, and that’s if we know what we’re looking for. If you suspect some kind of foreign substance, we’ll have to go back to the lab and have them run it through the mass spectrometer.”
    Charlie growled. He hated this impotent feeling of not being able to connect the dots, but he knew they connected somehow. “Tell me about number two. Just skip to the important stuff.”
    She covered up Talika Ross and Charlie followed her over to the next body, where she removed the sheet. He sucked in a breath; this was the worst one, for him—a child.
    “This is Jade Huneycutt. Twelve years old, fifty-eight inches long, eighty-five pounds, in good health. Rigor was not present. Livor mortis was posterior and blanching, putting her time of death at Thursday, the seventeenth, between twelve and four a.m.
    “The dermis was removed from the left side of her face, neck and shoulders, much like the first victim, also before she was killed. Again, no trace, no signs of a struggle. Same carvings on her neck, but with a slightly different formation of the slashes and circles.”
    “It’s a calling card.”
    “Possibly, yes. Here’s where her killing deviates from Miss Ross’s.” Karen lifted the girl’s arm, turning it so that Charlie could see the inside of her wrist. “See this tiny puncture wound here? I think it’s from a large gauge needle. She has an identical one on her other wrist. According to the crime scene investigators’ report, only a small amount of blood was found at the scene—probably what came from her wounds.
    “Like Miss Ross, Miss Huneycutt was exsanguinated and died from hypovolemia. However, the majority of her blood volume was absent, so… where’d it go?”
    “Maybe he moved the body.”
    Karen was shaking her head before he finished speaking. “Unlikely. He would have had to drain her blood last for her to have been alive when he removed her skin. Evidence at the scene indicated that the scalping was done there, so it stands to reason that he had to have bled her there.”
    “You think he collected her blood.”
    “I do, yes. It’s just a theory, but it’s what my gut’s telling me. Of course, I didn’t put that in my report because there is no direct evidence to support it.”
    “The modus operandi are close, but not identical. He’s obviously keeping trophies—”
    “ If it’s the same guy,” Karen interrupted.
    “Let’s make the assumption for argument’s sake, shall we?” Charlie growled, and Karen nodded reluctantly.
    “Give me vic number three,” Charlie urged.
    “Last but not least, we have Mara Lewis. Thirty-five years old, one hundred forty-five pounds, sixty-seven inches long. She was in decent health, though she did have a mild case of atherosclerosis, but that doesn’t seem to have played a part in her death.
    “Again, the scalp was removed from the frontal portion of the skull and severed at the coronal suture. It was not found at the scene. Both eyes were removed in a similar manner as Miss Ross’s, with extreme care, and were not found. She also bled out