Cereal Killer

only halfway across the station house parking lot on the way to their cars when his cell phone buzzed.
    “Coulter,” he barked into it.
    Savannah could tell by the scowl on his face as he listened that their plans for an early lunch at their favorite barbecue joint were about to be postponed. Nothing put Dirk into a foul mood and made him growl faster than to have something getting between him and his feeding dish.
    “Where?” he said. He listened, then added, “Yeah,” and hung up.
    She had always marveled at his economy with words—especially when on the phone to a boss. And even though, after years of hard work, Dirk had risen to the rank of Detective Sergeant First Class, he wasn’t and never would be one of the “suits,” as he called them.
    “We got another body,” he told Savannah. “Up on Citrus Road.”
    “In the orange groves?” she asked.
    “Not this time. It’s layin’ on the side of the road.”
    The county’s citrus orchards had long been a favorite site for body dumpings, rapes, and other nefarious activities. So much for strolling among the lemons and communing with nature, Savannah had decided long ago after moving to Southern California.
    Although she had spent her childhood wandering among the peach and pecan orchards of Georgia, she had abandoned the Nature Girl routine and switched her relaxing, get-in-touch-with-the-inner-spirit walks to the local three-story mall. It was safer and you could stop for a peach milkshake or a butter pecan cone at the Baskin-Robbins.
    “Wanna go with me?” Dirk asked as they continued across the parking lot to their cars.
    “Nope. Thanks anyway,” she said. “I should get home to Marietta, listen to her rattle on about her Internet sweetie, and try not to gag or laugh at her. She takes offense easily.”
    “Some of those Internet romances actually work out,” he said. “I saw a couple on Oprah who met that way and—”
    “You watch Oprah?
    He grinned sheepishly. “Dr. Phil was on.”
    “Oh, that explains it.” She considered what he’d said for a moment, entertaining the thought that this longdistance cyber-relationship might work out for her sister. She thought it over carefully. Five seconds later, she said, “Naw. It won’t work. Marietta’s got her good points, but she’s a little whacky when it comes to the men in her life.”
    “Not the brightest egg in the Easter basket, huh?” Savannah grinned. “Let’s just say that her cornbread ain’t quite baked in the middle.”
    “You sure you don’t want to come with me?” he asked with his hand on the Buick’s door handle.
    “I really shouldn’t.”
    “The body is a young, good-looking fat chick. And before you yell at me, those were the captain’s words, not mine.”
    “A good-looking fat chick... dead on the side of the road?”
    He nodded. “That’s what the man said. A ‘young’ one.”
    A cold, creepy, dirty feeling rolled over Savannah, making her wish she could step into a nice warm shower with a bar of strong antiseptic soap and just wash it away.
    She walked around to the passenger side of the Buick and jerked the door open. “Let’s go,” she said.
     
    Even before Savannah and Dirk arrived at the scene on Citrus Road, Savannah had a feeling that she might know the name of this unfortunate as well. Months ago, she had read an article in the local paper about Cait Connor’s close friend, Kameeka Wills, another plus model who had followed Cait’s example and moved from Los Angeles to San Carmelita. Kameeka hadn’t been in the business as long as Cait, but she was a rising star in the fashion world. The African-American beauty with her high, sculpted cheekbones and exquisite copper skin had her own line of plus-sized lingerie fashions at one of the high-end department stores, and her face had graced the cover of Real Woman twice in the past year.
    The news article had said that she’d bought a house in the foothills above the town. And while the paper hadn’t given her address for security reasons, they had named the specific area, and it was less than half a mile from where Dirk had been told they would find the body.
    All in all, Savannah wasn’t holding out a lot of hope for Kameeka Wills, but she decided to keep her suspicions to herself and not share them with Dirk until they saw the body in question.
    Citrus Road ran along the top edge of the town and for years had been the divider between land that had been developed and the virgin