She glared at Carina. “Work, always work. It’s Saturday.” She shook her head. “I raised a house of workaholics. Even Lucy is upstairs doing homework!”

“I don’t believe it,” Carina laughed. “Homework on a Saturday morning?”

“She’s on that computer Papa bought her last year. She never gets off.”

Carina glanced at Nick, his expression turning as serious as hers. She’d never really talked to Lucy about the dangers of being online. Even though Lucy was a smart kid, online predators were viciously smart. Street smart. She needed to talk to Lucy about being safe, but she’d have to do it later.

Her mom smiled widely at Nick. “You’ve been very helpful, Nicholas.” She surveyed the dishwasher, closed it. “My sons tend to be rough with my dishes. You have good hands.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Rosa.”

“Mama, we really have to go,” Carina said. She glanced at Nick. “Autopsy,” she mouthed.

“I’m ready,” Nick said. “Thank you for a delicious breakfast, Mrs. Kincaid. Unlike some people,” he glanced at Carina with a half-smile, “I appreciate a good morning meal.”

“Kiss-ass,” she said.

“Carina Maria!”

She cringed, gave her mom a hug. “See you later, Mama.”

“Don’t know where you learned that language,” her mother said as they walked out.

In the car, Nick said, “Your mom is a great lady.”

“You are such a kiss-ass, Nick Thomas.”

She thought he’d smile, joke back with her, but instead he grew serious.

“Is something wrong?”

“I like your mom. And your dad. They’re really genuine people.”

If there was one thing that endeared someone to Carina, it was appreciating her parents, quirks and all. Her heart warmed and she pictured Nick in her mom’s kitchen. He fit in well.

She was in serious trouble. “I like them, too,” she said, trying to keep the conversation light. “What about your parents?”

Nick didn’t say anything for several minutes. Carina itched to ask a follow-up question, anything to get the conversation moving. She hated the silence.

Finally, he said, “We had what I thought was a normal family. My dad was in the military, like yours, but not career. He had two years in Vietnam, when Steve was a baby. I was born nine months after his discharge.”

Carina was about to make a joke, but a quick glance at Nick’s face as she turned the corner to the main road told her this wasn’t funny, not to him.

“Dad joined the reserves because he missed the military, was gone one weekend a month minimum, volunteered for everything. I don’t think my parents loved each other, not like yours. But they had, I don’t know, something. It was Steve and me, though, all the time. I followed him around everywhere. I wanted to be more like him, I guess. Confident and outgoing.”

“I like you just fine the way you turned out,” she said.

“I don’t have many complaints. I had a good life for the most part. Normal. But after my father died, my mother didn’t really have the heart to keep going. She died a couple years later.”

I’m sorry seemed so inadequate. “I’m lucky, I know,” Carina said instead. “We had some rough spots over the years-I was an army brat until I was sixteen. We moved all over the country. I hated it. When my dad retired here, it wasn’t soon enough for me. But even with all the moves, the new schools, making new friends, my family was always there.”

“Yes, you’re very lucky,” Nick agreed.

TWENTY-SIX

WHEN CARINA AND NICK ARRIVED at the coroner’s laboratory, Jim was already there. “You didn’t tell me you were coming in today.”

“I have no life outside work anymore,” he said pointedly.

“You didn’t ever have a life outside work,” Carina retorted.

“Ouch.”

“Children,” Chen said as he walked into the room.

Carina sobered up as Chen’s assistant wheeled the gurney into the autopsy room with the prepped body of Jodi Carmichael. They were in the main room, which Carina appreciated. The smaller room had a lower ceiling and was a third the size, putting Carina closer to the proceedings. Here, she could stand back and look at other things-cabinets, tools, lights-if she couldn’t stomach the autopsy. And three in one week? It had to be a record for her.

Dillon walked in and Chen said warmly, “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“If you don’t mind I’d like to observe.”

“By all means, Dr. Kincaid. Glad to have you.”

“I need to leave early, but I wanted to get a sense of the killer’s mind-set. The body looks abused.”

“Yes. However, most of it occurred postmortem. She had been dead several hours.”

Dillon frowned. “She was sexually assaulted, correct?”

He nodded. “After Dr. Gage told me she had been drugged, I took the liberty of running a tox screen last night. A near-lethal dose of Rohypnol was in her system.”

Rohypnol, the so-called date-rape drug, was too often deadly. Some jerks gave it to their girlfriends thinking they’d become more compliant in bed. Others drugged their dates in order to get past first base. But sexual predators used it to knock out their victims. The women didn’t pass out immediately. Some became more susceptible to suggestions, others fell asleep, others acted like themselves but didn’t remember anything while on the drug.

And many died.

“Did the drugs kill her?” Carina asked.

“I don’t know yet, Detective,” Chen said. “From the levels in her system, I don’t think so, but I’ll know more when I inspect her organs. It may have been a contributing cause.”

He continued. “I have the victim’s medical records, which indicate that she had a history of asthma and was allergic to latex.” Chen continued his visual inspection of the body, documenting each external wound. While he did that, Nick said to Dillon, “No plastic wrap. Why?”

“She died on him. He didn’t have time.”

“There was no postmortem sexual assault,” Jim interjected. “He didn’t need the plastic to keep evidence off her body.”

“He gets his thrill from killing her during the rape,” Dillon said. “After she’s dead he doesn’t want to have anything to do with her. Gets rid of the body as quickly as possible.”

“Like a snuff film,” Nick said, and everyone grew silent.

“Yes,” Dillon said finally. “The suspect Scout’s profile says he’s studying computer science and photography.”

“I’ll pull Vice into the equation to watch and see if any films or photographs of the murders start showing up.”

“He’s not going to want to share,” Nick said.

“Why?” Dillon asked, curious.

“It’s just my gut feeling. I don’t have anything to base it on. I just think these are his women, he wants to keep them for himself. He might have pictures, or maybe even filmed the murder, but it will be for his eyes only. For his pleasure, no one else’s.”

Chen cleared his throat to indicate that he was getting started, then he cut open her chest.

Carina never felt the need to “be strong” and watch something that thoroughly disturbed her, so she turned her head and took a deep breath. The smell she could handle. She’d smelled far worse-her second homicide was a week-dead decomposing prostitute in a Dumpster in the heart of the Gaslight area. In general she could handle dead bodies in various states of murder.

But watching an autopsy seemed too clinical. Scientists dispassionately documenting injuries, weighing organs, as if the human body was a thing. It made her feel vulnerable, mortal. She didn’t want to think about what would happen to her own body after she died.

Jim walked over to the table. “Just what I suspected.”

“What?” Carina couldn’t help but ask, turning her attention back to the autopsy.

“Asphyxiation,” Jim said, “from anaphylactic shock.”

“Why didn’t Angie die the same way?”

“She wasn’t allergic to latex,” Jim explained. “In this victim, her airways became clogged with hives. With no medication to reduce the swelling, she suffocated.”