Survival Clause: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 20), стр. 24
I nodded, chewing.
“A lot of them—the majority—have been prostitutes, but not all.”
“Like your mother.”
She nodded. “She was working the night shift at a motel near the interstate. The police said she was picked up walking home from work one morning.”
“And there’s no reason to doubt that.”
It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway. “None at all. I’ve seen the police report. The hotel staff saw her leave. She didn’t make it home. And because of the number—numeral III—we know it was this same unsub.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask that,” I said, and lowered the cracker I had just lifted, since it suddenly seemed unpalatable.
Grimaldi looked from my face to the cracker and back. “About the numbers?”
“You said he carves them into the victims.”
She nodded.
“Before or after death?”
“After,” Grimaldi said. “He doesn’t seem to be into torture. Whoever he is, he picks them up, rapes them, strangles them, and dumps them, in pretty short order. Like in this case. We didn’t know Ramona Mitchell was missing when we found her. It had only been a few hours between the time we think she left Nashville and the time she was found here.”
“A lot longer than it would take to drive here from Nashville, though.”
Grimaldi nodded. “But not long enough for anyone to notice she was gone. If he were the type to enjoy dragging things out, to play with his victims, he could have held on to her a lot longer. Days. Maybe weeks.”
“Unless he couldn’t,” I said. “Truckers try to make good time, don’t they? They don’t get paid until the load is delivered, or something?”
Grimaldi shrugged, and I added, “Or maybe he was close to home, and he couldn’t bring her there, or there’s nowhere at home he can keep her. Maybe he lives with someone, or has an apartment or something like that. Somewhere where other people would have heard her, or would know she was there.”
“He could have kept her in the truck,” Grimaldi said.
Maybe. “I guess we don’t actually know for sure that he’s a trucker, but if he is… do they own their trucks, or are they just drivers, and the company owns the trucks?”
“It depends,” Grimaldi said. “Some long-distance drivers own their own rigs, some drive for a company.”
“So maybe he doesn’t have his own, and had to deliver the truck when he got to the end of the line. So he couldn’t keep her in it, and he couldn’t take her home…”
“That’s something to consider,” Grimaldi said. “It would probably mean that the end of the line—where he works or lives—is close to here.”
Close being relative, I assumed. “I suppose it might. Although there’s that old adage about fouling ones own yard. He probably wouldn’t have left her on his own doorstep, so to speak. He could have gotten back on the interstate and driven another couple hours after dumping her.”
Grimaldi shrugged.
We sat in silence a minute before I dragged the conversation back to where it had been before we’d gone off on this tangent about locations. “So he numbers them after they’re dead. Not because he likes to inflict pain, but because they’re… numbers?”
“A series,” Grimaldi said. “There could be others, that he hasn’t numbered.”
“Why would he number some and not others?”
“Don’t know,” Grimaldi said. “For some serial killers, not every victim measures up to the ideal, for one reason or another. Or there could be something special about this group.”
“Like what?” I risked another cracker. It turned to sawdust in my mouth, so I gave up and pushed the plate away. Over on the pillow in the corner, Pearl looked hopeful, and I heaped the rest of the tuna onto one of the last crackers and handed it to her. She took it daintily from my hand and then wolfed it down.
“That’s all,” I told her, and curled back up on the loveseat next to Grimaldi. “What do they have in common other than that they all died somewhere close to I-65, presumably by being strangled by the same guy?”
She shook her head. “They’re all around the same age. Late twenties to mid-thirties. They’re almost all white, but not exclusively. There’s been a couple of Latinas, and a couple of black women.”
I nodded.
“The black women were both light skinned, so his type seems to be female, thirty to thirty-five—give or take a year or two in either direction. Dark hair. Medium skin.”
“Like you,” I said. Grimaldi’s Italian, with black hair and olive skin, so her mother had probably looked similar.
She nodded. “Most of them have had dark eyes, but not all. It seems like the overall look is more important than the specifics.”
“And since he’s probably had access to blondes, and has chosen to forego them, he must have a preference for brunettes.”
“So it seems,” Grimaldi agreed. “Unless he’s killed blondes, but they aren’t part of this series.”
Maybe so. Maybe that’s what ‘didn’t measure up’ meant to this guy. Brunettes were preferable, but he’d kill a blonde if he couldn’t find a suitable brunette. He wouldn’t make her part of the same series, though.
“Do you think he has another series? One for blondes?”
“If he has, we haven’t connected them,” Grimaldi said. And continued with her profile of the killer, “The assumption is he’s white, since most of the victims have been white. Age range…” She hesitated. “Forty to seventy, on the outside.”
I counted on my fingers. “That would make him around twenty-five when the first victim was killed. Surely that’s too young?”
“Some serial killers have developed that early,” Grimaldi said. “Some have developed earlier.”
“I’ll take your word for it. If all the victims have been between thirty and thirty-five, isn’t it more likely that he was that age when he started? Putting him in the—” I counted quickly, “fifty to sixty range now?”
“More likely,” Grimaldi agreed.