“I’ll give the ME a call and see what she’s got that we can use. As I said, the body is in pretty bad shape.”

Beck held the door and allowed Mia to enter the building first. Garland was flagging him down with a fistfull of phone messages and Beck grabbed them as he walked by, mouthing a thanks to the dispatcher who was busy taking another call.

“There’s a phone in the conference room you can use,” Beck told Mia. “My office is the next door over. Come on in when you’re finished.”

“I brought my own.” She took her phone from her bag and held it up as she went into the conference room. He had calls to make as did she.

Five minutes later Mia tapped lightly on Beck’s open office door then entered without waiting for his invitation.

“Someone in my office is running through the latest NCIC missing-person entries,” she told him.

“Great. We’ll see if any of them match up with the ME’s best guess.” Beck leaned against the corner of his desk. “She’s thinking the vic is in her mid-twenties, blond hair. Hazel eyes. Five feet six inches tall, weight at the time of her death was probably around one twenty-five. Extensive cosmetic dental work-a lot of porcelain crowns. Expensive stuff. The flesh was in poor condition so she’s not sure of any distinguishing marks like birthmarks. There is an old healed fracture of the right forearm, most likely a childhood injury. And that’s all we’ve got to try to match her up with.”

“If she’s in the system, we’ll have her. If not-”

“If not, we go on the six o’clock news and let the world know what we’ve got. Someone has to be looking for this woman.”

“In the meantime-”

“In the meantime, we wait,” he snapped.

She stared at him for a long time, then said calmly, “I’ll be waiting in the conference room. I’d appreciate it if you’d get me a copy of the files on the two vics-the first one that was found, and the one who’s still missing. In particular, I’ll need to see all the interviews. Family, friends, coworkers.”

He looked at her quizzically.

“Know the victim, know the killer.” She turned and went into the conference room, closing the door quietly behind her.

8

Mia rested an elbow on the edge of the table and tried to brush off the twinge of annoyance that flared inside her when Beck had cut her off. Clearly he was used to being in charge. She could deal with that. All her life she’d been surrounded by men who were used to giving orders. What bothered her about Beck was his seeming dismissal of her.

She wasn’t used to being dismissed.

Pushing aside her personal feelings, Mia searched her phone’s listing of numbers, found the one she wanted, and hit the call button.

Maybe I should remind him that he was the one who called me into this case, she thought as the number rang. Okay, maybe not me specifically, but he did call the Bureau looking for help.

“Hey, Will, hi, it’s Mia again. Let me give you a different fax number for that information I just requested.” Voice mail had picked up and she read off the number of the fax machine in the conference room. “I hope you got this message before you left for the weekend.”

She decided to make good use of the few minutes she had to herself. She’d wanted to make a few notes regarding the case, so she took a small notebook and a pen from her bag and began to write a list. At the top went the interviews she’d already requested from Beck, followed by photos of the crime scenes, including the car where the last victim had been left. She’d want to walk Beck’s neighborhood at night and she’d want to see the victims, if possible. And she wanted to listen to the tape. Most of all, she wanted to hear the voice of the man who’d devised such a unique method of disposing of his victims.

She paused with the pen in her hand. It was more than merely a means of disposal, she knew. Wrapping his victims in clear plastic was about control and it was about his need to be up close and personal with their death. He wanted to see, to smell, to experience every emotion, every labored breath, every bit of the struggle of his victim as he wound the plastic closer and closer to her face. The sheer terror as the film covered first her mouth, then her nose, the horror in her eyes, all most likely aroused him unbearably, probably to the point of climax.

She wondered if the plastic wrap had been tested for semen.

But of course, the killer had hosed down the victim that had been left in Beck’s car. Still, there could be some traces inside the folds of plastic. And what about the one left on the porch of her family’s home? She made a note to check that everything that came in contact with both victims had been tested for traces of semen and sweat, including the Prestons’ porch steps and decking.

That, too, was telling as far as this killer was concerned. It hadn’t been enough to make Colleen Preston suffer. He had to make certain that the people who loved her the most saw firsthand just what she’d gone through.

“Could it be personal?” she murmured aloud.

“What?” Beck stood in the doorway. Mia hadn’t heard the door open.

“I was just wondering if the fact that the killer left the first victim-”

“Colleen Preston,” he reminded her.

“Yes, thank you. Colleen Preston. We should use her name. I was wondering if maybe the killer left her for her family to find because there’s some personal connection. Some reason he’d like to rub their face in it.”

“In the fact that she’d been killed?”

“In the manner in which she’d been killed,” Mia corrected him. “He wanted them to know he’d had total control over her body and her life and her death. He wanted them to know exactly what he’d done to her. He wanted them to see just how much she’d suffered. How vainly she’d gasped for air. How terrified she’d been. And that he’d orchestrated it all.”

She stood and began to pace.

“Why else make the tapes? Why let them hear her last words, if not to taunt them?”

“Because he’s a sick son of a bitch.”

“Oh, that he is. But this goes deeper than just being sick. This has a personal edge to it.”

“You could be right about that. Right now, we need to take a drive.”

“Where to?” She slid her bag off the back of her chair and grabbed her notebook and phone from the table, then followed Beck into the hall.

“Sinclair’s Cove. It’s a bed-and-breakfast about a mile outside of town. I just got a call from the owner. He heard about the woman that was found in my car, and thinks he might know who she is.”

“Who does he think she is?”

“One of the grad students who worked for him. She went home for a family wedding in Colorado over the weekend of the first and never came back. Last week he called her parents’ house to find out if she’d quit, but they were under the impression that she was here. The Monday after the wedding, she left home to drive back to the inn. They spoke with her once while she was on the road, but they haven’t heard from her since.”

“And they didn’t miss her until her employer called?”

“She’s twenty-five years old, she’s been living away from home for some time now. I guess she didn’t check in all that often.”

As they walked past Garland, Beck held up his phone, apparently to show the dispatcher that he had it with him.

“Shit. My car…” Beck said when they reached the parking lot and he realized his Jeep was being processed as a crime scene and he’d loaned his cruiser to Hal.

“I’ll drive.” Mia pointed to the black Lexus SUV parked under one of the few trees with a canopy large enough to provide shade.

“Nice wheels,” he said as they walked toward it.

“Thanks.” She unlocked it with the remote, then opened the driver’s side door and slid behind the wheel.

When Beck got in, she said, “So, I guess this story is the big news around town.”