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“The laceration was quite interesting because it bows at its deepest point, and I found excessive traces of carbon inside the cut.”
A bowed edge. Carbon. “Hunting knife,” Ella said. Hunting knives were usually made of carbon steel and came in non-standard shapes for maximum efficiency when butchering prey.
“Odd choice of weapon,” said Ripley.
Ella asked, “Were the cuts amateur or precise?”
“Precise. Surgical accuracy. This was a single, targeted thrust. Clean edges. I believe your perpetrator knew exactly where to strike for maximum damage with minimal effort.”
Ella turned to Ripley, both agents sharing an identical look of concern. A knowledge of butchery and human anatomy suggested more than just precision-killing. It also meant their unsub was smart, capable, and worldly. Combined, all of these elements made for an efficient predator.
“Thanks, doctor. Could we look at the first victim?”
Doctor Harwood covered Katherine’s body up to the neck then moved to the next body in line. “Vanessa May, thirty-four years old. I’d like to say there were similarities between the two, but I struggled to make any real connections.”
Ella asked, “No cuts? No wounds?”
The coroner shined a flashlight in a line along Vanessa’s neck. “Trauma to the throat, neck, and larynx. Bruising to the neck, face, and shoulder. All caused by skin-to-skin contact. No foreign objects.”
“Chaotic,” Ripley said. “He attacked in a frenzy.”
“Cause of death was strangulation?” asked Ella.
“Yes. Asphyxia. Rapid neuronal death. The attacker blocked off her carotid arteries. Again, this would take around four to five minutes of constant pressure on the throat.”
Ella did her best to remain stoic in professional company but struggled to hide her disgust. She swallowed a ball of saliva and asked, “Did you find anything else of note? Ligature marks, bruising on the rest of the body?”
“Nothing,” said Doctor Harwood. “All of the trauma was from the shoulder up. But I did find something that your forensic guys might have missed.”
“Oh?” Ella prayed it was something substantial, something they could latch onto and open new avenues of investigation. Right now, she felt like she was staring at two brick walls.
Doctor Harwood walked over to her desk and picked up a small plastic bag. Inside were two gleaming rose petals, their velvety texture still intact, their deep red hue glimmering in the light.
“Flowers?” Ripley asked. “They were on the body?”
“On the inside of her shirt. They may have nothing to do with her attack, but I thought they could be worth inspecting in case of fingerprints or DNA traces.”
Ella took them, inspected them from every angle. Two red rose petals, unblemished, smooth as silk. “We can take these back to the precinct for sweeping. Thank you.” Ella said.
Doctor Harwood gave a thumbs up then sat down at her computer and began typing. “I’ll just do the paperwork.”
Ella returned to the bodies, looked both of them over and tried to imagine a type of perpetrator that could pull off both of these attacks. Vanessa May’s death was visceral, intimate, and required excessive brute strength. Katherine Parkinson’s death was the polar opposite. A swift attack with a sharp instrument, a single targeted blow. The only thing the victims had in common was that they were both female. They looked different, the age gap between them was too great to file them under the banner of a single victimology type. Serial murderers didn’t operate this way. These findings went against years of research into the methods and madness of these people.
Something wasn’t right here.
“Doctor Harwood,” asked Ella, “what are the chances these two attacks were committed by the same hand?”
The coroner rose to her feet, passed Ella a form to sign. “In my professional opinion? Very little chance. If the police hadn’t told me they were related, I’d have assumed they were the work of two separate offenders. There’s almost no overlap whatsoever. I’ve never worked a serial case before, but I studied the autopsies of serial victims a lot during my training. These victims are the opposite of what I’d expect if they were connected.”
The agents took a moment of contemplation before Ripley’s pinging phone broke the silence. “Katherine’s sister is ready to talk to us,” she said.
Ella clutched the bag of rose petals, sensing an alien energy emanating from within. She didn’t believe in any of that spiritual stuff, but holding something that once belonged to a victim awarded a sense of intimacy that pictures or words didn’t provide. Ella always joked that her investigations were silent conversations with the deceased, and objects like these acted as a gateway between life and death.
Or something to that effect. She felt stupid thinking it, and would feel even stupider saying it, but there was something to the physical connection that she couldn’t deny.
Ella gave her thanks to the coroner, headed for the door with Ripley in tow. She dropped her mask in the trash and moved into the corridor, flushing the stain of death out of her senses.
Ripley said, “This is a difficult one to call.”
