12.

“The Minnesota killing,” Kirsten said, “Stanley Immel. That was a stabbing, right?”

“Don’t have all the written reports yet,” Danny Wardell answered, “but ‘carving’ sounds more like it. Victim stripped naked and tied to a kitchen chair, then sliced repeatedly with a large knife. Skin hanging off in strips. Bled to death.” He paused. “Oh, the guy had a small dog, some kind of mutt. Dog got it, too, but not the same treatment. Just laid out on the kitchen table and smothered under a sofa cushion. The thing is, although it beats the shit outta me how they can tell, they say the dog was done before the man.”

“God,” Kirsten said, “he made the victim watch his dog die first.” She put down the corn muffin she’d been buttering and took a deep breath. “But anyway, Kanowski’s murder was brutal, too. So that’s a similarity.”

“Murder’s always brutal, but these two were very different. Kanowski died of a bullet through the brain. Entering at the back of the neck, angling up and exiting out the top of his forehead.” He demonstrated with his hands. “Except by that time he had no forehead, because it was blown away. No slug found. Weapon probably an automatic, maybe nine millimeter, possibly silenced. I say that because he was probably shot not far from where he parked his car at the rest stop, and even if there were no other cars there at that time of night, it would have been risky to fire a gun. The trail isn’t entirely clear, but it seems the body was dragged about thirty yards to an area not visible from the parking area, then laid out on its back and cut up with some kind of knife.”

“The mutilation was post mortem?” she asked.

“Doc says no question.”

“Was there any … you know … pattern to the cutting?”

“Pattern?” Wardell shook his head. “Whoever it was opened the victim’s jacket and shirt to expose his skin, pulled his pants and underwear down to his knees, and went to work. Throat, chest, stomach, lower abdomen, down to and including his genitals. No pattern. Not the sort of careful strips it sounds like there were in Minnesota. Just a mess of blood and organ tissue all over.”

“With the victim already dead,” she said, “so he couldn’t suffer any more, anyway. And maybe the killer’s in a hurry because it’s a public place and just slashes away, maybe to make a statement, and then takes off.”

“Maybe, but they’re not the same.”

“Even so,” Kirsten said, “there’s the stripping of both victims, and an expression of a certain … hostility, toward both.”

Wardell shrugged. “I’d say so.”

“If the killer was waiting at the rest stop he must have known Kanowski would stop. Maybe they were meeting there.”

“Maybe,” Wardell said. “Or maybe the killer followed him there from somewhere. Or maybe they were two ships bumping in the night.”

“He lived near Rockford, right? With … what, an aunt?” The sergeant lifted his cup and nodded, and Kirsten went on. “He was on the southbound side of the interstate, just inside Illinois and coming out of Wisconsin. So, possibly on his way home. Any idea where he’d been?”

“You know I can’t share the fucking fruits of my investigation.” Wardell sipped at his coffee. “But it’s no secret Kanowski worked maintenance at a factory in Rockford, or that he clocked out at midnight the night he was killed.”

“So he wasn’t coming home from a fishing trip.”

“The body was found about five, and time of death was two to four hours prior.” Wardell stared at her. “If you go north on I-90, there’s a crummy late-night bar called Bunko’s and two twenty-four-hour adult book stores along the road. About twenty miles. On the Wisconsin side.”

“And if I had a picture and I went to these establishments and showed it around?”

“You might get nowhere,” Wardell said. “Or you might get lucky and find out he was at all three places that night. But no sign of anyone paying any attention to him. Like … stalking him or something.” Wardell crumpled a napkin into a ball and stuffed it in his empty cup. “I’m about out of sharing mode.”

“Okay.” She paused. “But … Emmett Regan? Not yours, but you heard about it?”

Wardell’s eyes widened a bit, as though surprised she already knew of the murder of the third man from the Sun-Times list. “Heard about it, yeah. Body found in his apartment early today. That’s all I know so far.”

“Anything else I should know? I mean, before you’re fully out of ‘sharing mode’?”

“Just this,” he said. “Another similarity between Minnesota and here—and Chicago, too, so far—is there’s not one fucking sliver of evidence tending to lead anywhere. This bad guy is—or all of them are—either very lucky or very smart.”

“It’s one guy,” she said.

Wardell checked his watch. “My wife’s gonna be pissed as hell, and I believe I’ve repaid whatever I owed Larry Candle … and then some.” He put his palms flat down on the table, hefted himself to his feet, and looked down at her. “You come highly recommended,” he said, “and not just by Larry Candle.”

He took a piece of paper from his shirt pocket, unfolded it, and put it on the table. It was a photocopy of a picture of a man, head and shoulders. It had that wild, disheveled look of a police mug shot, and had obviously been copied from a newspaper. “That’s your victim,” Wardell said. “If you show this, don’t use my name. But I expect to hear about anything you turn up. Facts, impressions, anything at all.”

“Count on it,” she said.

He nodded, turned away, then turned back. “One more thing. If you’re thinking of tracing Kanowski’s steps over again? It’s too late tonight, so don’t even think about it. Especially Bunko’s—people get hurt there. I myself wouldn’t go near the place past midnight, not without backup.” He smiled. “And I’m … you know … less interesting-looking than you are.”