FORTY - SIX

When Jose pulled up to the Monroe Motel & Suites, it was pretty clear that the only thing new around the place was the crime scene tape that had just been wrapped around the far end. Everything else was wilted and sagging, including the cars that were parked by the office.

Heading past the lineup of beaters, he went all the way down to the last room on the row and pulled his unmarked in diagonally to the other CPD units.

As he put the sedan in park, he looked across the seat. "You good to go?"

Veck was already reaching for the door handle. "You'd better believe it."

When the two of them got out, the other officers came over, and Veck got surrounded by a whole lot of backslapping. In the department, people thought the guy was a hero for The Paparazzi Incident - and that approval roll wasn't slowed in the slightest by the fact that the guy always brushed off any attaboys.

Staying tight and cool, he just jacked up his slacks and took out a cigarette. After lighting it and inhaling, he talked through the exhale. "How we doing here."

Jose left the kid to get up to speed and ducked under the tape. The broken door to the crime scene had been shut loosely, and he nudged it open with his shoulder.

"Shit," he said under his breath.

The air was choked with the smell of fresh blood ... and formaldehyde.

At that moment, the photographer's flash went off and the body of the victim was spotlighted on the bed - as were the specimen jars on the bedside table. And the knives.

He closed his eyes briefly.

"Detective?"

Jose glanced over his shoulder at Veck. "Yeah?"

"We have the registration on the truck. Illinois. Owned by a David Kroner. It has not been reported stolen, and guess what - Kroner is a white male, thirty-three years old ... unmarried ... on disabili - fucking hell." Veck's convo stopped altogether as he came to stand by the bed. "Jesus."

The flashbulb went off again, and there was an electronic wheeze as the camera recovered from the effort.

Jose looked at the coroner. "How long's she been dead?"

"Not long. She's still warm. I'll give you a better idea when I'm done here."

"Thanks." Jose walked over to the crappy bureau and used a pen to push around a thin gold ring, a pair of sparkly earrings, and a bracelet that was pink and black.

The tattoo that had been cut out of the victim's skin and relocated to the specimen jar next to her was pink and black, too. Probably favorite colors of hers.

Or had been.

He continued to wander around, looking for things that were out of place, checking the wastepaper baskets, peeking into the bathroom.

Someone had clearly disturbed the killer's fun. Somebody had heard or seen something and busted the door open, causing a fast departure out this back window above the toilet.

The 911 call that had come in had been made by a male who refused to identify himself. He'd said only that there was a dead body in the room at the end and that was it. Wasn't their killer. Bastards like him didn't stop unless they had to, and they didn't willingly leave behind the kinds of trophies that were on the nightstand and the bureau.

"Where did you go after this?" Jose said to himself. "Where did you run to ..."

There were K-9 units searching the woods out back, but Jose had a hunch that was going to come to nothing. A mere tenth of a mile from the motel was a river shallow enough to wade through - he and Veck had gone over the little bridge that spanned the damn thing on the way here.

"He's changing his MO," Veck said. When Jose turned, the guy planted his hands on his hips and shook his head. "This is the first time he's done it in this public a place. His work is really messy - and potentially noisy. We'd have found more scenes like this after he was done."

"Agreed."

"David Kroner is the answer."

Jose shrugged. "Maybe. Or he could be another body we're about to find."

"No one's reported him missing."

"Like you said, unmarried, right? Maybe he lives alone. Who'd know he was gone?"

Except even as Jose poked holes in the theory, he did the math and came up with a similar conclusion. It was rare that a person could disappear without somebody missing them - family, friends, coworkers, apartment manager.... It wasn't impossible, but very unlikely.

The question was, where was the killer going to go next? If the bastard followed conventional wisdom, he was probably entering a gorging stage with his pathology. In the past, victims had shown up months apart, but now they'd found two in a week?

So if he worked off that assumption, he knew the careful actions that had masked the killer previously were going out the window, whatever patterns he'd fallen into dissipating in the face of a frenetic drive. The good news was that sloppy was going to make him easier to catch. The bad news was that this might well get worse before it got better.

Veck came up to him. "I'm going to get into that truck. You want to be there?"

"Yeah."

Outside, the air didn't smell like copper and chemicals, and Jose took some deep breaths as Veck snapped on gloves and went to work. Naturally the vehicle was locked, but that didn't stop the guy. He got a slider and popped open the driver's-side door like he was an old hand with the B&E.

"Whoa," he muttered as he reared back.

It didn't take long for the stench to hit Jose, and he coughed into his hand. More formaldehyde, but also the sweet stench of dead things.

"It's not in the cab." Veck swung his flashlight around the seats. "In the back."

There was a padlock on the square double doors of the cap, but Veck just went to the trunk of the unmarked and returned with a battery-powered Sawzall.

There was a high-pitched whine ... a ping! ... and then Veck was in.

"Oh ... fuck ..."

Jose shook his head as he came around to see what his partner had cursed at.

Veck's flashlight beam was illuminating an entire collection of little jars with things floating in or sunken down at the bottom of clear liquid. The containers were held safe in a custom-made rack system mounted on the left side. The right side was reserved for tools: knives and ropes, duct tape, hammers, chisels, razor blades, scalpels, retractors.

Hello, David Kroner: highly improbable that the killer had installed this setup in someone else's truck - and what do you bet that the trophies in all those jars filled the holes in the dermis of the victims.

Their best hope was that the K-9 units tracked him in the woods.

Otherwise, they were going to lose another woman. Jose was willing to bet his house on it.

"I'll sync with the FBI," he said. "They need to come down here and see this."

Veck scanned the interior. "I'll give the CSI boys a hand. I'd like to get this vehicle moved back to HQ ASAP so everything can be logged properly."

Jose nodded, cocked his cell phone, and hit speed dial. As the ringing started, he knew that after he got off with the feds' regional field office he was going to have to call his wife. No chance he was coming home in time for breakfast.

None at all.

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