Chapter 4
Avery’s pulse pounded through her veins, her senses on alert, her gaze shooting right then left as soon as they entered the building.
A short, round woman sat at a desk, her fingers pausing over the keyboard as she glanced up through thick-lensed glasses. “Ah, Agent Hart, weren’t you just here? Did you forget something?”
“Uh, yes, ma’am.” A quick glance at the nameplate leaning on a stand at the front of the desk, Avery addressed the woman. “Ms. Peterson, is the Medical Examiner busy? I have...another...question for him.”
“I’m sure he has time for you. Just go on back.” She waved a hand toward a door to the side of her desk.
As Avery and Grant walked past her, Ms. Peterson said, “You should wear your hair down, instead of in a ponytail. It’s such a pretty shade of black. Almost blue.”
“Thank you,” Avery said.
She smiled. “Did you get it from your father’s side or your mother’s?”
“I really don’t know,” Avery responded, more interested in getting to the M.E. than answering questions. “I was adopted.”
The woman’s hands hovered over her keyboard.
“Were you? I guess there are a lot of things you wouldn’t know if you don’t know who your biological parents are.
One of my cousins adopted a baby boy. They spent a year going from doctor to doctor until they finally diagnosed him with cystic fibrosis.
It’s one of those hereditary diseases they might’ve identified sooner if they’d had a family history available.
” She shook her head and went back to her keyboard, murmuring something about her cousin’s struggles.
Avery pushed through the door the woman had indicated and started down a short hallway.
Once they were both in the hallway, Grant moved up beside her.
Avery appreciated his presence. She’d lied about being almost back to normal.
When she’d stripped down to shower, she’d inspected her body as best she could.
She had a long bruise over her collarbone and breast where the seatbelt had tightened to save her from flying through the windshield.
Better the bruise than being catapulted through glass.
The bruise on her forehead wasn’t as colorful as it could have been, but it was tender.
After her hair had dried, she was able to part it on the side and did a pretty good job of hiding the knot.
Beyond the bruising, her body was sluggish, as if she’d been on a drunken bender. Though she’d been unconscious for three days, she felt the undeniable need for a good night’s sleep to revive her.
But first, she had to find the woman who’d stolen her identity before she sabotaged the murder investigation.
As they neared the door marked EXAMINATION ROOM, Avery gripped Grant’s arm and whispered, “What if this woman impersonating me is the killer?”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
“Why else would someone pretend to be me, if not to lead them in the wrong direction while she continues to kill?”
“Let’s ask her,” Grant said and reached for the door handle.
At that moment, Avery wished she had her service weapon on her—another item to add to the list of things she no longer possessed, along with her identity.
“Let me go first,” Grant said.
Knowing her reflexes weren’t at one hundred percent, Avery grudgingly held fast while Grant pushed the door open.
As soon as he stepped through, she followed closely, the scent of formaldehyde assailing her senses.
When Grant came to an abrupt halt, she was so fixated on the smell she didn’t stop fast enough and bumped into him.
He put a hand out behind him to steady her.
An older man with a shock of gray hair and wearing a white lab coat bent over a stainless-steel table. He was alone except for the body on the table.
Avery stepped forward.
The man glanced up, his bushy eyebrows rising. “Agent Hart, did you have another question?”
Her gaze dipped fleetingly before she forced a smile and said, “Yes, sir,” as she approached the man.
“What happened to the ball cap?” the M.E. asked. “You’ll need to put it back on or a scrub cap to come closer. It wouldn’t be good for your hair to turn up in the autopsy, considering it’s the same color as the victim’s.”
He waved a hand toward a box on the counter.
Avery crossed to the box, extracted a scrub cap and stretched the elastic over her head, tucking her long hair inside.
Once she was covered, she approached the M.E.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I brought my colleague, Grant Hayes, with me.
He’s a profiler I’ve worked with on other cases.
Could you tell him what you told me? I want him to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. ”
“Sure,” the doctor held up his hands. “I’d shake your hand but...”
“No worries.” Grant approached. “Nice to meet you...”
“Dr. Murray,” the man said, turning to the body on the table. “As I just informed Agent Hart, the victim is approximately thirty years old, five feet seven inches tall with blue eyes.”
Avery could see all that. What she wanted was for the M.E. to cut to the chase. “How did she die?” Avery’s chest constricted. The woman was about her age, her whole life ahead of her.
“Asphyxiation.”
“And you know that because?” Avery pressed.
The M.E. pointed to the woman’s eyes. “As you see, there are petechial hemorrhages, those pinprick red spots, in the eyes and face. She has facial swelling—edema. And if you notice, her skin has a bluish discoloration—cyanosis. The bruising around her mouth and nose indicates she was suffocated using a plastic bag.”
Avery’s stomach roiled. She swallowed hard to keep from vomiting. What a horrible death. The woman had to have been terrified and desperate.
“Anything under her fingernails?” Avery asked.
“Nothing,” the M.E. said. “If she fought her attacker, she didn’t get her fingernails into his skin.
” He pointed at a computer screen with an image of the victim displayed.
“From the photographs of the crime scene, she was found much like the first victim, lying in a bed of red rose petals lining a shallow grave. Like the other woman, the letters WTD had been drawn across her chest with a sharp object; I suspect a surgical knife was used.”
“WTD?” Grant frowned. “What the Fuck?”
Avery shook her head. “The last letter is D.”
Grant tried again. “What the Devil?”
The M.E. shook his head. “No idea. I played with the letters. They could be a message or represent a name.”
“I agree,” Grant said. “I think the killer is leaving a message. Whether he wants us to find the devil or if WTD stands for other words, we need to figure it out.”
Avery rolled the letters around in her head but came up with nothing.
The M.E. turned to face Avery. “I meant to ask you earlier if you’d had any hits on the crime database. Are there any other murders with this kind of presentation?”
Avery wasn’t prepared to answer the man’s question. “Not yet. I’m still looking.” And she’d get on it as soon as she could get her hands on a computer with access to the National Crime Information Center database to search based on the M.E.’s findings so far.
“When were the victims found?” Grant asked.
“The first one was found a week ago by a man walking his dog on a rural route. The dog discovered her in a grove of trees beside the road east of town. She had been laid in a shallow grave lined with red rose petals. The body wasn’t buried, just lying there like the killer wanted her to be found.”
“Who was she?” Avery asked, her heart pinching hard in her chest.
“The first victim has been identified as Jessica Connely, a marketing professional for a major corporation in Dallas. She was reported missing the day before her body was found. The last person to see her was a male colleague she’d had drinks with at a bar their team often frequented after work.”
The M.E. tipped his head toward Avery. “Agent Hart interviewed that man. He left the woman at the bar and went home alone. She’d told him she had called an Uber and didn’t need him to see her home.
” The M.E. shook his head. “Obviously, she did. Agent Hart said the man was shocked when he learned Ms. Connelly had been murdered. He had an airtight alibi. I’m surprised Agent Hart hasn’t filled you in on all the data she’s collected so far. ”
Grant cast a brief smile in Avery’s direction, the gesture at once kind and disturbingly sexy.
“He just got to town,” Avery covered. “I’m taking him around to gather information and form his own hypotheses.”
The M.E. nodded. “Good. We could always use a fresh, unbiased perspective to help us find the killer before he strikes again.”
“What about her?” Avery asked, nodding toward the poor woman on the table.
“Ramona Sorenson, wife of a service member, mother of two small children from San Antonio.”
Avery frowned. “San Antonio is quite a bit further away than Dallas from Shadow Valley.”
The M.E. nodded. “Four days ago, she was on a shopping trip with friends in San Marcus. She went out to her car to drop her shopping bags and never came back. Her bags were found in the car. She didn’t make it back to her friends.
Her body was found two days ago on the side of the road north of Shadow Valley. ”
“You’ve had time to compare the two cases. Do you think the same person killed these two women?” Grant waited for the man to think, choose his words and tell him his best guess.
“Not only did he position them in similar shallow graves lined with red rose petals, but the women had very similar physical features.”
“How so?” Grant asked.
Avery leaned closer to the M.E. with morbid curiosity.
“They were both in their early thirties, slim and athletic. They had bluish-purple eyes and long black hair. They looked so much alike, it was creepy.”
Grant nodded, leaned back on his heels, automatically extended his hand but drew it back with a crooked grin. “Thank you, Dr. Murray.”
The M.E. nodded and stared down at the young woman on the table. “I hope you find the guy. Asphyxiation is a terrible way to die.”