Curtis was right—that was her.
Vail holstered the cell and kicked in the door, then moved swiftly, but carefully, through the house. Rather than checking the upper floor, she figured the basement was the most likely place Jasmine would be keeping Underwood—if she had left him behind.
Had Jasmine seen them, or was it a coincidence she was leaving soon after they arrived?
Vail descended the basement steps, turned on the lights—and her breath caught.
58
Thomas Underwood was lying on the floor, a tourniquet tight around his neck, his veins distended, his color more purple than flesh-toned.
Vail was on him in a split second. She tugged at the sheet-like noose, but it was too tight against his neck. Tzedek.
Vail pulled it from its scabbard, pressed the dull edge against Underwood’s skin, and sliced through the cotton. “C’mon Thomas. Are you with me?”
She felt for a pulse. Alive but unconscious.
He was tied behind his back, but Vail nevertheless succeeded in rolling him into a supine position. She elevated his legs, then bent them repeatedly at the knees, helping to force blood back toward his heart and brain.
“Thomas, wake up!” She searched the basement for something that could help revive him—and found a jug of bleach on the laundry room shelf. It was not smelling salts, but it should work.
Vail soaked the cotton tourniquet, coughing and struggling to see through the heavy tearing from the intense fumes—and waved it underneath his nostrils. He jerked his head away, groaned, then slowly opened his eyes.
“That’s it, come on. You know who I am?”
“Karen …”
“Do you remember what happened?”
“Help me up.”
Vail got behind him and pushed him into a seated position, then freed his hands.
He took a deep breath and wiped his clammy brow with a sleeve. “I was wrong. I got it so wrong I’m embarrassed to admit it. My last case, I thought I was going out with a bang. But apparently I went out with a resounding thud.”
“So Jasmine is the Blood Lines killer?”
“Yes.”
Vail sat down beside him. “We both got it wrong. But how—”
“She’s a cold-blooded, violent psychopath. There’s very little literature on predatory or hunting behavior—as it’s seen with psychopathy—in females. I know of only a few cases, and they’re not well documented. Women prefer poisonings. Far down the list is guns and then knives.” He turned to her. “Sorry. I know you know this. But—but physical attacks like this by a woman are almost unheard of. Especially female on male, if for no other reason they lack the strength to disable.”
“That’s why she used the ether.”
“She probably seduced them to get close, then anesthetized them just long enough to restrain them and ‘play’ with the body, then do the kill. She had as much time as she wanted to have her fun. And between the tree cover and tall fences, no one would see her loading a body into the car at night.”
“She’d still have to be able to lift a body, even if she did it a little at a time. A dead body is … well, dead weight.”
“Ever see one of those hydraulic patient lifts? They use them in nursing homes and dialysis centers. Small yet very efficient, kind of like jacking up a car. Minimal effort, but it can lift a hell of a lot of weight. You put a sling on the patient—or in Jasmine’s case, the victim’s body—and then hook it to the device. A few easy pumps of the lever and you can set the body in the trunk. A child could do it.”
“Curtis saw something like that in the yard, covered with a tarp.”
“Where there’s a will, there’s always a way.”
“So she got the vics here, where she killed them, and then used her car to deposit the bodies at the dump sites wherever we found them. How’d she get them out of the trunk?”
“She’s very strong.” His hands went to his neck and felt the bruise from the tourniquet. “But if she’s not worried about hurting the body, which she wouldn’t be, she’d definitely be able to pull it over the edge and let it fall to the ground.”
Vail heard a noise outside: SWAT had arrived. She called Hurdle—who she suspected was with them, or could reach them—and told him about finding Underwood and Curtis’s pursuit of Jasmine.
“Curtis lost her,” Hurdle said. “We’ve got a BOLO out. He got her plate, so it’s just a matter of time.”
“If you talked with Curtis, you know about Jasmine? About why he was tailing her?”
“I do.”
That was all he said, but she felt there were volumes behind those two simple words.
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I guess we will. I’ll be at your twenty in two minutes.”