Livia listened to Nate, who was on such a roll that she forgot about the tattoos and the piercings and the too-big earrings. He was a man with a fetish for victims of kidnapping and an obsession with their captors, a man who unknowingly possessed a criminologist’s mind that was able to paint a picture of the type of person capable of stealing and stashing and raping and killing and disposing of women.
“He’s filled with remorse. It’s written all over these pictures,” Nate continued. “He’s on the edge. And with Megan? We see it again. Guilt. Sorrow. Regret. Why didn’t he just kill her? She was doped up, right? Doctors found her high on Special K. He had her high as a kite, not able to defend herself. Why not strangle her like he did Paula? Because he hesitated.” Nate pulled over his newly signed copy of Missing. “Read this and you’ll see. He doped Megan, and moved her to the bunker. Maybe that’s where he killed the other two. Maybe there’re more girls out there that he brought to this bunker and then killed and buried. Maybe we find them later—weeks, months, whatever. But why didn’t he kill Megan? Because he lingered. He took the steps—doped her, bound her, transported her to the woods, and then . . . he wavered. When it came time to kill her, he stopped and thought about it. And in that hesitation, she ran. Feisty girl ran like hell until that guy found her wandering on Highway Fifty-Seven.”
Nate took a deep breath, as if the night had exhausted him. “So we got a guy who is lacking affection in the real world. A guy who wants love from the girls he takes because he can’t find it elsewhere. A guy who is heartless enough to repeatedly rape the girls he takes, but remorseful when he kills them.” He looked up at Livia, took another deep breath. “That help you at all?”
Now Livia ran a hand through her hair. “I’m not sure. But I know a hell of a lot more than I did a couple of hours ago. Your theories will help when I talk with detectives or federal agents.”
Livia gathered the photos and reports and stashed them back into her folder.
“Thanks for looking at this stuff and taking so much time on it,” she said.
“Yeah. No problem. Thanks for getting me a copy of Megan’s book.”
Livia nodded and headed for the door.
“Oh, one other thing,” Nate said before she left. “Something no one mentioned in any of those reports, but I find odd. Whoever took those girls has access to body bags. Sort of weird that he took the time to stuff them both into vinyl after he killed them.”
CHAPTER 41
Livia was at the desk in her bedroom, moving between the computer and her notes. She was starting a rotation through pediatric pathology the following week and was painfully behind on her readings. The fellows had been given thick binders and textbooks during their orientation week in July that outlined the subspecialties they would be exposed to during their twelve-month forensic fellowship. The first three months, from July through September, constituted their breaking-in period, where they concentrated only on general forensics. But starting in November they would begin integrating their skills in forensics with other subspecialties, which for Livia included pediatric path, neuro-path and derm-path. Preoccupied over the last several weeks with her extracurricular investigation, she hadn’t yet touched her reading material. Tonight, however, she used the textbooks as a distraction to get her mind off her most recent, and slightly disturbing, meeting with Nate Theros. By midnight, she was deep into the intricacies of pediatric bone development when there came a knock at her door. She bolted upright in her chair, the bedroom lit only by the desk lamp and the rest of the house cast in shadows. She closed her textbook. Still in jeans and T-shirt, Livia waited until the knocking came again. She clicked on lights as she made her way to the front door, looked through the peephole, and saw Kent Chapple standing on her front patio.
She disengaged the dead bolt and pulled the door open.
“Remember that favor you owe me?” Kent asked through the screen door.
Livia did—from when Kent had let her leave early on the Friday of her ride-along week.
“Yes,” she said with a wry smile.
“I need a couch for the night.”
“It’s that bad, huh?”
“Worse,” Kent said. “No way in hell I’m making it until the kids are in college.”
Livia took an exaggerated whiff of air through the screen door. “Investigator Chapple, is that whiskey I smell?”
Kent raised a hand, his index finger in the air. “Guilty.”
Livia pushed open the screen door. “Come on in.”
Kent slid past her and into her living room, where he collapsed onto her couch.
“Want to tell me about it?”
Kent shrugged. “I’ve tried to explain it to myself a thousand different ways. Make it sound like something other than what it is. Something that might be salvageable. I mean, when you’re with someone since high school, it’s hard to admit when it’s over. It’s hard to say that the first person you ever fell in love with is also the first you ever fell out of love with.”
Livia walked into the kitchen. “Coffee, water, or soda?”
“I’ll take a whiskey if you’ve got it.”
Livia opened the refrigerator. “No whiskey, but I think I’ve got an old . . .” She crouched down to look on the bottom shelf. “Yeah. An old wine cooler.”
She reached to retrieve it and when she stood up Kent was right behind her. “Oh God! You scared me.”
“Sorry.” Kent smiled as he stared at her.
Livia looked at the label. “Strawberry mango. Not exactly whiskey, but it’s all the alcohol I have in the house.”
Kent took it from her, eyes locked on hers. “Thanks.”
Livia turned and closed the refrigerator, grabbing a mug from the cabinet. She filled it with hot water and dropped a tea bag into it.
Kent twisted off the top of the wine cooler and took a sip. “Tell me about this case you’re so preoccupied with,” he said.
Livia raised her eyebrows. “Am I preoccupied?”
Kent shrugged and sat down. “Had Jen Tilly on ride-alongs this week, and that’s what she says. Says you’re looking into some missing girls, or something, that you think might be tied together. That’s why Colt murdered you in the cage just before ride-alongs.”
Livia didn’t remember telling Jen much about what she was working on, only that it had to do with her decomp from summer. But Livia knew well the ramblings and gossip that went on in the morgue van and could imagine Sanj and Kent egging Jen on to extrapolate on details.
“Don’t know, really,” Livia said as she sat down across from Kent at the kitchen table. “I guess you could say I’ve got as much crap going on in my life as you do in yours. Just different types of crap and different problems.”
Kent stuck out his bottom lip and narrowed his eyes. He looked at his strawberry-mango cooler and then offered it to Livia.