“Make sure you keep the press away until the lab people are finished,” Mike said, ignoring the rain. “They almost mucked up the last murder scene, and I don’t want it happening again.”
The man nodded and turned back to help the others with the crowd, leaving Mike to enter the motel unit alone. Once inside, though, he was no longer alone. The forensics team was already there in the usual mob, working over every inch of the room.
“The body’s over here, Mike,” Art Renquist called. The room’s bed stood to the left and Art was just beyond it, looking down at what lay on the floor. Art looked as rumpled and tired as Mike felt, and the extra ten years of age Art carried made his appearance that much worse for wear. Mike circled the unmade bed, and joined Art’s inspection.
“The doc thinks he’ll find the same twelve stab wounds,” Art told him, gesturing to the bloody corpse. “And if that letter opener isn’t one of the set, then I’m Santa Claus. Once we get the note loose, we’ll be able to compare the handwriting.”
Mike nodded as he stared at the corpse, sickened more by the implications than by the terrible sight. This was the fifth victim murdered in the same way, which once again confirmed that there was a psychopath on the loose. Whoever the perpetrator was, he left precisely twelve stab wounds in the body, then attached a note to it by putting a letter opener through the note and into one of the wounds.
“‘From your secret admirer,’” Mike muttered, wondering for the thousandth time what that meant. It had been printed in awkward block letters on all of the notes, set off by the presence of the letter opener. The opener was silver-bladed and gold-handled, a meaningless design in black on the gold handle, a shocking-pink ribbon tied just below the handle. The letter openers looked as though they should be given to friends as inexpensive gifts, not left in a handful of dead bodies.
“The victim’s name was Roger Saxon, but he registered day before yesterday as Roger Brown,” Art said, consulting a small notebook. “According to the ID in his wallet, he was a private detective from New York. But there’s nothing to say he was here on business. Since it’s Sunday we can’t check with his office, so that’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
“How about his cash?” Mike asked, turning away from the body. “Is it still in his wallet, or missing?”
“Gone, just like with the other victims,” Art answered with a humorless smile. “Aren’t you glad they dumped this on you when the fourth body turned up? That’ll teach you to be the best cop in the state.”
“Cut the bullshit,” Mike answered with a grimace. “I was lucky a few months ago, and that’s the way my report read. I think the chief is hoping I’ll get lucky a second time, because if we don’t get this psychopath soon, he could be out of a job.”
“And we’ll be on the unemployment line right along with him,” Art grumbled. “Why would somebody who kills like this take whatever cash his victim has? He’s not trying to make it look like a robbery, or he’d take watches and jewelry and credit cards too. What could he possibly be doing?”
“He’s trying to tell us who he is,” Mike said, having spent a lot of time considering the point. “It’s probably the best clue we have, but we haven’t been able to read it. Once we do—”
“Excuse me, Lieutenant, but there’s a lady outside who says she has to talk to you,” a uniformed officer interrupted suddenly. “She said to tell you she knows the victim.”
“If she isn’t a reporter, you can bring her in,” Mike said as he looked around. “I’ll talk to her over there near the television set, where the lab crew has already finished.”
The officer nodded and went back out into the rain, and Art put a hand on Mike’s sleeve.
“I wish you the best of luck, buddy,” he said with a grin that was too worried to look amused. “If this is the break we’ve been waiting for, take pity on all of us and don’t blow it.”
“Art, he said she knew the victim, not the murderer,” Mike pointed out with a shake of his head. “Try to take it easy, will you? We’ll catch him, and before we all get tossed out.”
“Try to make that ‘before the next body,’” Art suggested, looking at him with haunted eyes. “Five of these is five too many, and don’t forget that one was a woman. I don’t think I could take another one like that.”
Mike watched Art walk away, finally understanding what was really bothering him. It had taken Art two bad marriages and a lot of years before he found a woman to be in love with. Since they were dealing with a crazy, the next victim could be anyone at all and women weren’t safe. Art was picturing himself arriving at a crime scene to find the woman he loved as the victim.
There’s something to be said for being alone, Mike thought as he moved to the area near the TV. Usually the loneliness was a black gap in his life dating back even before the divorce, but every now and then it was shaded with relief.
“Excuse me, but are you Lieutenant Gerard?” a low, pleasant voice asked, pulling him out of his thoughts. “The officer said I was to talk to a Lieutenant Gerard.”
“That’s me,” Mike acknowledged, turning to look down at the woman who had just come in carrying an umbrella. She was somewhere in her mid-to late-twenties, with dark blond hair and gray eyes. Jeans and a T-shirt covered a good figure, and she would have been prettier if her face hadn’t looked so drawn. “You told the officer that you knew the victim?”
“More than that,” she said, guilt clear in the gray gaze coming up at him. “I hired him, so his being dead is my fault. There’s no law to hold me responsible, but there should be. There should be.”
She brought one hand up to cover her mouth, the gesture holding off the hysteria that obviously wanted to claim her. Mike moved forward quickly to put a comforting arm around her, impressed in spite of himself. Instead of hesitating, she’d immediately come forward with what she knew. Most people would have tried to hide their connection, hoping at the same time to bury their feelings of guilt.
“Why don’t you and I go and get ourselves some coffee at the diner next door?” Mike suggested after a moment, then began to urge the young woman back toward the door. “Once we’re comfortable, you can tell me all about it.”
There was no resistance as he guided the woman out and away from the crowd of onlookers. Happily the media hadn’t gotten here yet, so he and the woman were able to walk quietly to the diner only a few feet beyond the motel.
“Okay, let’s start from the beginning,” Mike said once they were seated in a booth. “What’s your name, and why did you hire a private detective?”
“My name is Tanda Grail,” the woman answered, running a hand through her hair. “If the name sounds familiar to you, it should. My brother Don was the first victim of that maniac.”
Mike hid his surprise, but not his interest. Don Grail had been found dead a week earlier in his rental car, starting the chain of bodies that hadn’t yet stopped. Mike had only been working the case since the fourth victim, which was why he hadn’t recognized the first victim’s sister.
“And you hired a private detective because the police weren’t getting anywhere with finding your brother’s murderer,” Mike suggested. As a guess it was the next thing to a certainty, and Tanda looked at him with defiant gray eyes.
“It’s been a whole week and the bodies just keep piling up,” she challenged, bleakness behind the defiant tone.
“After the third body was found I knew you would never catch the killer, so I went shopping for someone who might. Saxon’s agency was recommended to me by a friend, so I called them. After explaining that they couldn’t do anything to interfere with the police investigation, they sent Saxon to look around. After being here only a day and a half he called me last night to say he discovered something totally unexpected, and would give me a full report this morning. When I got here and