DJ was a woman.
That solved one mystery for Brill but he may have been the only one who didn’t know the answer.
She was ten meters off the trail behind a half buried boulder about waist high.
The back of her skull was missing, a bloody rock next to it.
The puffy jacket that hid her form was gone, and Brill could see she was well shaped from climbing.
Her attacker thought so too.
Pants ripped and bunched around her ankles, scrapes and bruising to the back of her legs.
“Another one,” Jo sniffed.
Brill knew how she felt. A rage gurgled in his stomach as a memory tried to bubble up from the back of his mind.
He watched another woman die just like this, bent over a table, tied down and killed.
It drove him, drove the beast he carried inside, the red rage monster that was as remorseless and relentless as a shark.
He bottled up the memories, tucked them down in the boiling roiling turmoil of emotions and fueled the fire.
“Whoa,” said Jo as she took a step back.
Her hand drifted to the pistol on her belt, but she didn’t unstrap it.
He took a deep breath.
“It’s. Frustrating,” he searched for a word, anything to buy a moment.
He knew he was a predator, and some people were attuned to see it. Made sense that Jo would.
She was a cop with a good eye, good head.
A little fast to go for the draw, his tight grimace turned into a grin, but then so was he.
She watched him, hand still on the butt of her weapon.
“You looked like you wanted to kill someone.”
Her breath was short. Pupils dilated, cheeks flushed.
He could imagine her heartrate was up, the fight or flight inside her dumping adrenaline in her system.
It’s what happened when people got scared and Jo fit the picture.
He sagged his shoulders to appear smaller, cocked his hip to one side and twisted his foot out in a gesture he had seen his grandfather do many times.
It made him seem less imposing, more relaxed.
Not really the place to be relaxed, he thought. But Jo needed to focus on the crime scene and not what this stranger might do to her.
She paused for a moment, kept him in sight as she debated.
His pose or maybe the ruse of it made her take her hand away from her belt.
“I’m going to check it out,” she said.
She tried the radio clipped to her lapel, but the signal didn’t carry.
They wouldn’t be able to call the ME until they got closer to the trailhead.
The big man was going to have to trudge back out here.
Bring his EMT’s with him.
“Three bodies,” said Brill. “If you had media out here, it would be a real crap storm.”
She snorted.
“You can say shit around me. No need to be polite.”
Brill sniffed back.
“Maybe I don’t cuss.”
“You don’t talk as much as half the guys I know,” she said.
“Don’t have much to say.”
That earned a look that said she didn’t believe him.
She checked DJ’s wrists. Bound with climbing rope.
“Probably the same kind used to tie up Bud.”
“We would need a match to tie the forensics together, but it would link it to one person.”
She glanced up at him.
“Local or dirtbag.”
“Or wild man in the woods,” he reminded her.
“Ugh. Don’t remind me.”
She examined the body.
“Evidence of trauma,” she pointed to DJ’s crotch. “And acid again. Who carries acid around?”
Brill shrugged.
Preplanned and premeditated meant someone determined. Three bodies also meant serial.
He almost said it out loud, but the word serial killer going out on a police radio would draw reporters like flies to a picnic.
The news cycle would demand it, and the odds of him getting caught on camera increased.
Even if it was a slight increase, they weren’t in his favor.
Someone might see it. Someone might run facial recognition on it. And if that happened, a phone in a room in a DC office would ring.
He knew that much.
Shelby Johnson, his former employer from a couple of lives ago would dispatch a wet work team.
No, he wouldn’t say serial killer and put the idea in the universe.
Too bad it had other plans.
“Serial,” said Jo. “Three victims. Two with the same MO. Rape and acid to cover it up.”
She stepped away from the crime scene.
“Wish I had tape,” she said in a wistful voice. “I might had just
stepped on evidence.”
“I’ll watch it while you call the ME,” he said.
She stared at him again, gauging the offer.
“Ten minutes,” she told him. “I’ll make the call and come back. No one touches the body.”
“I’m the only one here,” he indicated the wide open expanse of sky.
In the distance, they could see climbers on the rock faces, impossible to make out details this far away.
The trail dipped ahead, and disappeared around a corner back the way they came. He was isolated, and as far as he could tell, alone.
She chewed one corner of a pretty pert lip and shot him a look with her ice blue eyes.
“Be careful.”
Brill glanced around again.
“Just me and her.”
Jo looked like she was going to say something more, but gave a small shake of her head, then turned and marched down the trail at a fast clip.
He was impressed.
She might turn that ten minutes into eight.
Brill kept his eyes averted from the body.
He had seen plenty of dead people before, but one splayed so much like a memory was not one he wanted to add.
Bad enough DJ wore perfume.
He could smell the hint of it on the wind that blew across the corpse. Too soon for the rot to set in, she still smelled of something.
Lavender.
He sniffed.
Yes, lavender and something else. A familiar scent.
He inhaled again, closed his eyes and cleared out his lungs. Then sniffed slow and long.
She smelled like Jester.
Like the smiling clown that met him at the gate.
It was an earthy musky smell, of unwashed hair and dirt, sweat and bathing in natural creeks.
A unique signature.
Now he just had to figure out if the climber was the one who killed her, or if they were just close.
He sniffed once more to confirm. Her perfume. The other smell.
Yes, he was going to speak with Jester. They were going to have a nice long conversation.