West rolled up seconds before Hammer did, and the two women made their way to the
overgrown area where a black Lincoln Continental was haphazardly parked far off Cedar
and First Streets, near a Dumpster.
The welding company was a looming Gothic silhouette with dark windows.
Police lights strobed, and in the far distance a siren wailed as
misfortune struck in another part of the city. A Norfolk Southern train loudly lumbered past on nearby tracks, the engineer staring out at disaster.
Typically, the car was rented, and the driver’s door was open, the interior bell dinging,
and headlights burning. Police were searching the area, flashguns going off and video
cameras rolling. Brazil spotted West and Hammer coming through, reporters moiling
around them and get ting nothing but invisible walls. Brazil stared at West until she saw
him, but she gave him no acknowledgment. She did not seem inclined to include him. It
was as if they had never met, and her indifference ran through him like a bayonet.
Hammer did not seem aware of him, either. Brazil stared after them, convinced of a
betrayal. The two women were busy and overwrought.
“We’re sure,” Hammer was saying to West.
“Yes. It’s like the others,” West grimly said as their strides carried them beyond tape, and deeper inside the scene.
“No question in my mind. MO identical.”
Hammer took a deep breath, her face pained and outraged as she look at the car, then at
the activity in a thicket, where Dr. Odom was on his knees, working. From where
Hammer stood, she could see the medical examiner’s bloody gloves glistening in lights
set up around the perimeter. She looked up as the Channel 3 news helicopter thudded
overhead, hovering, its camera securing footage for the eleven o’clock news. Broken
glass clinked under feet as the two women moved closer, and Dr. Odom palpated the
victim’s destroyed head. The man had on a dark blue Ralph Lauren suit, a white shirt
missing its cufflinks, and a Countess Mara tie. He had graying curly hair and a tan face
that might have been attractive, but now it was hard to tell. Hammer saw no jewelry but
guessed that whatever this man had owned wasn’t cheap. She knew money when she saw
it.
“Do we have an ID?” Hammer asked Dr. Odom.
“Blair Mauney the third, forty-five years old, from Asheville,” he replied, photographing the hateful blaze- orange hourglass spray-painted over the victim’s genitals. Dr. Odom
looked up at Hammer for a moment.
“How many more?” he asked in a hard tone, as if blaming her.
“What about cartridge cases?” West asked.
Detective Brewster was squatting, interested in trash scattered through briars.
“Three so far,” he answered his boss.
“Looks like the same thing.”
“Christ,” said Dr. Odom.
By now, Dr. Odom was seriously projecting. He continually imagined himself in strange
cities, at meetings, driving around, maybe lost. He thought of suddenly being yanked out
of his car and led to a place like this by a monster who would blow his head off for a
watch, a wallet, a ring. Dr. Odom could read the fear the victims had felt as they begged
not to die, that huge . 45 pointed and ready to fire. Dr. Odom was certain that the soiled
undershorts consistent in each case were not postmortem. No goddamn way. The slain
businessmen didn’t lose control of bowels and bladder as life fled and bled from them.
The guys were terrified, trembling violently, pupils dilated, digestion shutting down as
blood rushed to extremities for a fight or flight that would never happen. Dr. Odom’s
pulse pounded in his neck as he unfolded another body bag.
West carefully scanned the interior of the Lincoln as the interior alert dinged that the
driver’s door was ajar and the lights were on.
She noted the Morton’s doggie bag, and the contents of the briefcase and an overnight
bag that had been dumped out and rummaged through in back. US Bank business cards
were scattered over the carpet and she
leaned close and read the name Blair Mauney III, the same name on the driver’s license Detective Brewster had shown her.
West pulled plastic gloves out of her back pocket.