[Kate Lange 01.0] Damaged by Pamela Callow

Author:Pamela Callow [Callow, Pamela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, General
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2010-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 29

Friday, May 11, 7:00 a.m.

The discovery of a third victim threw public relations at the police department into full damage-control mode. The media wanted to know what the police were doing to find this sicko and why hadn’t they already caught him?

It was a nightmare for Deputy Chief Forrester. Which meant it was a nightmare for the criminal investigations unit. Reporters were violating the crime scene tape and trying to steal photos of the bloody trail leading into the Arm.

When Ethan saw photos of the latest anonymous young female victim he felt sick. Angry.

Wednesday had been a sunny day.

They thought they’d have more time. Brown had been assiduously following the weather forecasts while the team scrambled to follow the meager leads from the first two homicides.

It was now 7:00 a.m. More than twenty-four hours had passed since an early morning jogger had made the grisly discovery at the boat ramp on Jubilee Road.

He picked up the crime scene photos from the boardroom table. The dismemberment of the latest victim’s limbs was the same. But the rest was different. She had long, fine, pale brown—almost blond—hair. It was in a ponytail. Wisps hung around her face. She was heavier, much heavier than Lisa or Krissie, with large breasts, and a stomach that had several rolls of puppy fat. She had one of those dangly belly button rings that seemed to be a trend with teenage girls. Her face had been heavily made up. Now the mascara was smudged around her eyes, and several smears of black ran down her cheeks. Her pale silvery lip gloss was a bizarre contrast to her waxy skin and petechiae-marked flesh.

There was one more difference between the killer’s most recent victim and the last: her face showed more terror.

The killer was amping up his game.

Ferguson walked into the war room and stood at the front of the boardroom table. The team quickly took their seats. “Okay, we’ve got to put a stop to this guy,” she said, her voice brusque. “Brown, what have you come up with to profile this guy?”

Constable Liv “Copper” Brown was the resident profiler on the team. Before she’d joined the force, she’d done a master’s in behavioral sciences. At six-foot-one in her sock feet, with a lean physique and a coppery head of hair, Brown was used to commanding attention. She looked around the table. “All signs point to the usual basic profile for a serial killer—white male between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four.”

Ethan thought of Judge Carson. “How can you be sure he is a man?”

“All the victims are young females. The first two even shared certain physical characteristics—slight build, longish hair. His fantasy is built around that.”

Unless the killer was one very sharp judge who knew that she could mask the killing of her daughter by choosing other victims like her. And that, by doing so, everyone would assume it was a guy who did it.

“Have you been able to pinpoint any habits we could use to find him?” Redding asked.

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