She scanned the story while she stood in line for coffee. So far, if the police knew anything other than the top-line details, they had managed to keep it from the press. The story did immediately dispel any notion that Winona Hart might have been found.
A woman’s body was found on the beach yesterday afternoon on Anastasia Island, apparently having washed in from the sea. Preliminary reports suggest that the unknown brunette was approximately five feet tall. Age and other identifying features are still to be determined. The coroner estimates that she has been dead at least six months. The police are asking for help from anyone who might know about a missing person who fits the description and timeline.
She felt ill, reading the article. It was quite possible that three women had been abducted and killed in less than a year. There were other possible explanations, of course. The cases might not be related at all. But Caleb seemed to think they were, and she was fairly certain—and not just because she was falling for the man—that he had an instinct about such things.
She heard a strange noise, a soft sob, and looked up. A woman was standing outside the window, wearing antebellum clothing, a corseted day dress with a wide skirt over a hoop petticoat, along with a bonnet. And she was staring directly at Sarah.
She couldn’t have been the source of the sob, Sarah thought, because she wouldn’t have been able to hear the sound through the glass.
“Miss?” The man in line behind her pointed to the counter, where a barista was available.
“Sorry, thank you,” she said, stepping forward. When she looked back out the window a minute later, after giving her order, the woman was gone.
Sarah looked around the café, searching for her.
Several of the tables were in use. Three couples, an elderly man, a woman with a name tag designating the tour company she worked for. She was reading the comics page and smiling.
None of them looked likely to have been crying.
She must have heard something else and mistaken it for a sob.
And a woman in nineteenth-century costume? They were so common here that the locals never even noticed them most of the time.
Dismissing what she had seen, she took her coffee and croissant, and headed for a table.
“Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” Floby announced, drawing the sheet back from the corpse.
Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, Caleb thought. All things organic were meant to return to the earth. Including human bodies. Embalming was man’s last desperate measure to stave off the inevitability of mortality. It was true that an embalmed body certainly appeared more lifelike than one left to decompose naturally, though Caleb had never seen a dead person who truly looked as he had in life, and in many cases the dead might have been better off left alone.
But what was truly horrific was what the combined forces of man and nature could do to human flesh.
This young woman seemed to have been consumed in more ways than fate should have allowed. First the land creatures—worms, flies and maggots—had gone to work on her, and then she had been left to the ravages of the water and the creatures that called it home.
Her face—with much of the jaw nothing but protruding bone—seemed to have frozen into a death mask, a caricature of an artist’s rendering.
“How did she die, Floby? Have you figured that out yet?” Caleb asked. “She didn’t fall off a boat, did she?”
Floby produced a magnifying glass from the table of tools at the side of the gurney. “My best guess is that she had her throat slit. If you look closely, you can see a cut, right there, at the jugular—or it might have been a series of puncture wounds. There’s so much damage, I couldn’t swear an oath in court and say exactly what weapon killed her.” Floby paused and took a deep breath. “Basically, she was drained of blood.”
“What?” Caleb asked, frowning.
“There was no blood left in her. That’s why the body is preserved as much as it is. Usually, the drier a body, the more slowly decomposition occurs.”
Caleb was silent. Drained of blood? That was definitely an unexpected twist. Were these women being abducted and murdered ritualistically?
“You said there might have been puncture wounds. You don’t think someone is running around pretending to be a vampire, do you?”
“I’m the M.E.—you’re the investigator,” Floby said, shrugging. “But…honestly? I don’t know. I was thinking maybe you should be looking for some modern-day Countess Bathory, wanting blood in large quantities to preserve youth or beauty. All I know is that the body is in perfect condition from the murderer’s point of view. Any trace evidence—hairs, fibers—is long gone, and I can’t get anything by scraping under the nails. Even if she scratched the killer and captured his DNA, there’s nothing there anymore for me to find. Hell, so far, this is the perfect murder.”
“Thanks, Floby. I appreciate you bringing me in on this.”
Floby nodded. “Jamison doesn’t want this information out yet.”
“Then I won’t say a word. But this has been a big help. You’ve confirmed that I’ve been heading in the right direction.”