“Prepare to be astounded by his brilliance,” Jill said in a low voice before Crawford reached us, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing.
Cory Crawford was a stoutly built man, not quite gone to fat though obviously battling a growing midsection. He had gray hair that he stubbornly dyed a dull brown, a neatly trimmed mustache that was dyed to match, and brown eyes that were so close to the color of his hair that many suspected he had specifically matched the two. In stark contrast to the all-consuming brown of his coloring, Crawford preferred to wear highly colorful ties, especially favoring the mildly psychedelic Jerry Garcia brand. A faint scent of wintergreen and tobacco clung to him, and I was exceedingly grateful that we were on a crime scene so I wouldn’t have to be subjected to the sight of him spitting tobacco juice onto the ground or into an empty bottle.
Detective Crawford gave a bare nod to Jill and a slight glower to me. “I hear you’re the resident expert on the Symbol Man cases.”
I dragged my eyes up from the wild red and blue pattern of his tie. “Expert? I’ve read the file on the old cases. That’s about it.”
Crawford’s expression soured still further. “And that apparently makes you more of an expert than anyone else here. Or so our captain has stated.”
It obviously pained him to admit that he wasn’t the sole fount of all knowledge. But the detective who’d been the lead on the cases before was retired and long gone, living in North Carolina. And the two other detectives who’d worked with him had both gone to work for other agencies. I knew I was pretty much the only one in the department who was up to speed on the cases, but I sure as hell hadn’t expected the captain to champion me to such a degree. “Er … I guess I am.” I ran my fingers through my hair, somewhat discomfited. No pressure. Yeesh. “So who recognized the symbol?”
“No one has recognized it,” Crawford corrected me gruffly. “This is not yet deemed a Symbol Man case. But Captain Turnham told me to let you take a look at it.”
Holy crap, but that had to have hacked him off. “All right. Let me take a look at it, then,” I said, feigning casualness. I wasn’t about to let him know just how badly I wanted to do this.
Crawford’s lips tightened, then he shot a look to Jill. “Are you finished processing enough for her to go look at the body?”
Jill nodded, maintaining an outward appearance of serene calm. “Yes, of course.”
Crawford spun and marched off toward the body. Jill and I exchanged a glance that we both knew meant What a dick, and then we followed him, trying not to laugh.
All thoughts of laughter died away as I got my first close look at the damage that had been done to the young woman. I sucked my breath in as my stomach clenched. “Holy shit.”
A muscle in Crawford’s jaw twitched. “I’ve never seen anything like this, Kara. It turns my stomach, and you know that I can handle a lot.”
There was nothing covering the body. What I had thought to be netting was actually the woman’s flesh. Precise parallel cuts had been made along the woman’s arms, legs, torso—a slice every half inch from the neck down, so perfectly placed that I could have used the cuts as a ruler. The only deviation in the meticulous spacing of the slices was the symbol that was centered between her breasts, carved into the flesh.
I breathed shallowly as I took in the hundreds and hundreds of thin cuts. None of them was deeper than a quarter inch, but I knew that I was looking at days of torture. It was almost a relief to drag my gaze up to examine the ligature marks at her throat—deep grooves in the flesh of her neck, with her face mottled and red above it. At least the ligature had meant an end to her agony, even if it had also meant an end to her life.
She was probably praying for an end by then.
I struggled to remain impassive and clinical as I looked over the precisely mutilated body, but it took every ounce of my self-control. I swallowed, throat achingly dry, and crouched to get a better look. This was not a brutal hacking. This was almost elegant and artistic, even as it was thoroughly horrific. All these cuts… This was all done while she was alive. And this matched the other victims. Even decomposed, there had been evidence of significant torture on those bodies.
I took a shuddering breath and steadied myself to look more deeply. More important than the strangulation and the mutilation were the features I could see that others couldn’t. I let my vision shift into othersight, breath catching in a mixture of relief and revulsion as the flickers of arcane light appeared. They were faded, but I could definitely see traces of arcane energies scattered on the body.