Double-Edged Detective

What if this killing wasn’t connected?

Ryker studied the knife wound just inside her left shoulder blade. He lifted his arm and mimicked the motion that would have been necessary to make that wound. The killer had wielded the knife above his head. He wasn’t proficient with a knife as a weapon. A pro would more likely have kept his arm low, and stabbed her in the lower back—the kidneys.

Nope. He was certain his guy had used a weapon of convenience—again. If it was his guy.

Ryker sent a quick glance around the small patio. The weapon. Where was it? Every other time, the killer had left the weapon at the scene. Except for last year, when he’d escaped with Nicole’s knife.

Ryker studied the body again. It was conceivable that the weapon could be under her, but not likely. Not given the bleeding pattern. If she had fallen while running away from the killer who had just stabbed her, the knife couldn’t have ended up beneath her.

He touched the cut nightgown with a gloved finger. He couldn’t tell much about the knife wound because of the blood. But the cut in the gown was only about an inch long. It wasn’t a very big knife. The blade that made that cut in the nightgown had to be less than an inch wide.

An ominous thought occurred to him. The knife that had been stolen from Nicole wasn’t a big knife. He’d looked at her knife case the night of her near attack, but all he could remember was that the empty slot where the missing knife should have been stored wasn’t very long. He remembered looking at her knife case and feeling thankful that the man hadn’t taken one of the ominously long, thick-bladed ones.

Dr. David Miller, the new medical examiner who’d taken over when Hiram Crouch had retired the previous December, stepped through the door. “Ryker. Got another one?”

Ryker rose from his crouch. “Looks like it. How’s business?”

“It’s been slow. I reckon it’s picking up now.”

“I’ll leave her with you. I want to look around inside and check with Bill about what the neighbors said.”

Dave crouched down beside the victim. “Hey, sweetie,” he said. “Let’s see what you can tell me.”

“I need everything you can give me about the knife he used. We haven’t found it yet. I’ve got a feeling he took it with him.”

Dave nodded without looking up.

Ryker headed for the patio door, then turned back. “Dave? How old do you think she is?”

The medical examiner turned her head so he could see her face and neck. “Late thirties or early forties.”

Ryker nodded. “That’s what I thought.” He stepped through the door into the kitchen, carefully avoiding the blood spatter on the tile and the crime scene photographer who was taking photos of every inch of wall and floor.

“Don’t suppose you’ve found a weapon yet,” he said to Bill, who was writing something on a small pad.

Bill shook his head, and finished scribbling before he looked up. “Nope. Nothing.”

“That’s odd.”

“Only if the killer is your guy.”

Ryker gave a reluctant nod. “Anything missing from the kitchen?”

Bill shook his head, then pointed at a worn brown couch with his pen. “It looks like Ms. Terry was watching TV. May have fallen asleep on the couch. The killer probably saw her through the open window there.”

Ryker glanced at the window, then at the door facing, where wood was splintered. “And nobody heard him kick the door in?”

“Apparently not. Although, look at that lock. My nine-year-old nephew could break in here.”

Ryker glanced around. The crime scene photographer was standing in the doorway to the patio and a second crime scene investigator was lifting fingerprints from the front door. “Bill,” he said, leaning close to Bill’s ear, “what if he used the knife he stole from Nicole?”

“Hello, boys,” an obnoxiously cheery voice said.

Ryker whirled. It was Lon Hébert, a reporter for the local newspaper, the St. Tammany Parish Record. He cursed under his breath.

Bill wasn’t so circumspect. “What the hell are you doing here, Hébert? This is a crime scene. Take your ugly, scrawny ass out of here. Tom—” he called to one of the uniformed deputies.

“Aw, Bill. Give me a break. I need a big story. It’s been so quiet around here that I was about to run a piece on alligators being run over on the freeway.” Hébert laughed. “Delancey, talk to me.”

“How do you even know about this?” Bill demanded.

Hébert grinned. “It’s called a police scanner, Bill.”

“Get out of here,” Ryker said, his voice deadly quiet. “And make sure you clear anything—and I mean anything—with the sheriff’s office before you print it.”

Lon held up his hands. “Fine. Fine. I’ll call the deputy chief and see if I can get a statement.” He turned and left.

Ryker watched him leave. “You think he heard what I said?”

Bill shook his head. “No idea. I didn’t see him come in.”

“Well, what do you think? I think I need to look at matching Nicole’s missing knife with Jean Terry’s wound.”

Bill shrugged. “You could. But isn’t that quite a leap, even for you? Just because we haven’t found the weapon yet? You really are trying to connect this to your mysterious serial killer, aren’t you?”

“Come on, Bill. Think about it. Yesterday was October 21. He broke in and killed her. No sexual assault.” He looked around the room and spotted a purse, upturned on the kitchen counter. “He dumped her purse. Is anything missing?”

“Nope. Not even her cash.”

“That’s typical. Not even a pretense of a robbery.” Ryker’s pulse raced with excitement. It was tragic that another young woman was dead, but maybe now he could take this fourth murder to his chief and finally get him to link the cases and treat them as the work of one man—a serial killer.

THREE HOURS AFTER HE’D arrived at the scene of the crime, Ryker was in the St. Tammany Parish Crime Lab pacing back and forth.

“Wearing a hole in my floor is not going to make me go any faster.” Dr. Dave Miller was in scrubs, standing over the autopsy table, examining Jean Terry’s fatal wound.

Ryker hated the autopsy room. The previous M.E., Dr. Crouch, who was eighty if he was a day, had treated the victims like sides of beef. The fact that Ryker had known a woman who had ended up on Crouch’s table hadn’t helped.

Dave was the total opposite. Every move he made was kind and respectful. It made a big difference to Ryker, who had never learned to view a dead body as a separate thing from the person she had been.

“What can you tell me about her knife wound?”

Dave was peering through a large lighted magnifying glass. “Not much. I need to cast it, to get a truer representation of the shape and path of the blade. See this V?”

Ryker reluctantly moved closer to the table and looked through the magnifier. “That upside-down V? Yeah. I couldn’t see it earlier, because of all the blood. What would make that kind of wound?”

“Oh, it’s a knife all right. Single-edged. That’s a common pattern. It’s called forking. The blade entered her back here,” Dave said, pointing at the right side of the wound. “And exited here.” He shifted his finger to the left side.

“What do you mean?”