He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not

three days. She disappeared late Wednesday night, from this same park.”
    “I’m guessing a young woman her age wasn’t playing on the swings. Neighborhood hangout?”
    “So I hear.” An uneasy feeling gnawed at the pit of his stomach as he noted the way the body seemed posed, her legs spread for maximum shock value. Ligature marks darkened her wrists and ankles. Stab wounds riddled her abdomen and extremities. Many of her bruises were deep purple or black, indicating they’d begun to heal before she was killed. Dreading the answer, he asked, “How long has she been dead?”
    Cassie finished securing the paper bag before answering. “She’s not in full rigor yet. Liver temp indicates about six hours, but it’s hard to be specific in this heat. Might be longer.”
    Logan scrubbed his hand across his brow to ease the dull ache that was starting to bloom. While he and his men had been searching door-to-door, the killer was sadistically torturing this young woman. Where the hell had he stashed her? And where was he now? Was he already searching for a new victim? Logan blew out a frustrated breath. “Tell me what you have so far.”
    “Not much beyond the obvious.” She peeled off her gloves and stowed them in her kit, then stood up beside him, her head barely reaching his shoulder. “The amount of blood doesn’t fit the injuries. She was killed somewhere else and washed down before he dumped her.”
    Logan nodded, having reached the same conclusion. “Trace?”
    “A few cotton fibers, nothing remarkable or distinctive. No hairs. No bite marks. He sliced off her fingertips. I figure she scratched him and he wanted to make sure we couldn’t get his DNA from under her nails.”
    The perp was aware of forensic techniques. Then again, who wasn’t these days, with all the crime scene investigation shows on TV? Logan didn’t ask if the victim had been raped. The answer was painfully obvious. “Semen?”
    “I’ll take swabs but I doubt we’ll find anything. As careful as he was not to leave any other evidence, he probably wore a condom. There’s bruising on her neck, petechial hemorrhaging in her eyes.”
    “He strangled her.”
    “Yes, but I suspect that was the killer’s version of ‘love play’. I can’t be sure until I perform the autopsy, but I’m leaning toward exsanguination as cause of death. She has deep puncture wounds in her abdomen. She would have bled out in minutes.”
    “What about her face?” A deep, ragged wound splayed her open from temple to jaw. Logan hoped to God she was already dead when the killer cut her.
    “That’s unusual, isn’t it?” Cassie said. “It would have bled all over the place. Not enough to kill her, but it would have hurt like hell.”
    Logan’s hands curled into tight fists as he struggled to tamp down his anger. Ten years ago he’d allowed his emotions to control him, and he’d made a tragic, rookie mistake that allowed a killer to go free. How many other women had suffered and died at the hands of that killer because of Logan’s screwup? That question haunted him every day. The whole mess was the reason he’d fled Shadow Falls so long ago and had gone to New York City.
    He’d worked in the toughest precincts to be the best detective he could be, so he’d never make that kind of mistake again. No matter how much he wished he could wrap his hands around the throat of the animal who’d tortured Carolyn O’Donnell, he couldn’t let his anger cloud his judgment. Other women’s lives hung in the balance if he made any mistakes with this investigation.
    “Did you hear about the rose?” Cassie asked, breaking into his thoughts.
    “The responding officer said Carolyn was holding a long-stemmed, red rose.”
    “That’s right. The rose bud was nestled between her breasts and the stem was stripped clean of all but one thorn, which he embedded in her right palm, postmortem. Creepy.”
    Definitely creepy, but if Logan’s suspicions were correct, that rose might be part of the killer’s signature, his pattern. Everything about the scene told Logan this was the work of a killer who’d killed before—and would kill again.
    Cassie motioned for her assistants to bring the gurney. “When I finish the autopsy, I’ll overnight the samples to the state lab.”
    “Hold onto the samples. I want to give the Feds first crack at the evidence.”
    Cassie nodded, her relieved expression telling him she was just as anxious as he was to get help with this