Shawn Steiger’s last day on earth had not been a very good one. His stomach contents had included chicken contaminated with salmonella. He’d knocked his leg on something, probably a coffee table, which had left a nasty black bruise on his shin. His toe was broken around the same time and was roughly the same shade of black as the bruise. If he hadn’t been murdered, he would have had several weeks of misery ahead of him.
Xavier had found a large quantity of alcohol in his system. Not falling down drunk, but he wouldn’t have been thinking clearly. I remembered what that idiot Simon had said; he’d gotten a booty call. I was fairly certain this meant he’d gotten called by someone who wanted to have sex, but I hadn’t Googled it yet for final confirmation.
The same could have happened to Shawn. Having such a crappy day, if someone had offered him sex, he probably would have been overjoyed. However, he wouldn’t have known about the salmonella poisoning yet. A broken toe and banged up shin was still grounds for a bad day. Most likely, he willingly left the party with his killer or he left to meet her.
I was under no illusions about the sexual activities of teenagers. It always surprised me how many people really believed that teen sex had only started in the last few decades. Teens have been jumping in and out of bed with each other since the beginning of time. The biggest change was our perception of it. Aside from the upper class, teens were usually married by age sixteen. The upper class kept their girls from marriage a little longer, but they were engaged by seventeen or in some cases, a year or two earlier. It was just the marriage that was delayed. Hell, in some cultures, as soon as a girl started menstruation, they were of marriageable age.
Our modern day morality had swept this under the rug, proclaiming teens should be abstinent until marriage and using history as its example, while quietly ignoring the fact that the majority of teens were indeed married. I was sure that Cassie was sexually active. I hoped that she used condoms and did not send out booty calls.
Then again, the day had been full of people not having good days. One of our three female victims had also been having a very bad day before being murdered. According to the parents of Esperanza Cortez Pena, she’d gone to a store to buy a computer and other items, as their house had been burgled the day of her death. At some point, heading to the store, her car had broken down. It was at this time that she had met her killer. It had also been Esperanza’s seventeenth birthday.
Tina Little was our thirteen year old. She was active in soccer and her church. She was always doing something to help with local charities. Her grades were average. Her parents were average. Her life was average. Stranger danger aside, Tina was not high risk for anything except a medal for community service.
Liberty Kent, the third victim, had been eighteen. She had just graduated high school the year before and was working two jobs. Her goal was to save enough money to get an apartment the following year and start attending a community college. Like Tina and Esperanza, she was not high risk.
Greg Johnson had been six feet six inches tall the day he went missing from San Marcos. He was a basketball player and by all accounts, a steroid user. He was our biggest outlier. His size and physical abilities might explain why his killer had sliced through his Achilles’ tendon.
Angela Schmidt had been twenty and a college student at the University of Texas. Her roommate claimed she suffered a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder. She wrote all her papers out longhand then typed them, twice. The other big issue, according to her roommate, was being the first person to class. She always left early, but if she were the first one there, she would stand outside in the hall until someone else had taken a seat. She also couldn’t be later than tenth to sit down or she would skip class. On her last day, she had gone missing after her last class of the day. She’d made plans to meet her roommate and two other girls at a restaurant near campus, but she had never shown up.
Nathan Jones had definitely been high risk. Hopefully, life for his little sister would be better now that I had kicked their father’s ass. It would be tragic for their mother to lose both children.
Gail Vincent had also been from Austin, but she had been a junior high student. At the tender age of fourteen, she was in foster care. Her parents had abused and neglected her. They’d even pimped her out to pedophiles. Since she entered the system a year earlier, she’d run away twice. Her maternal grandparents lived in New York. She’d never met them, but her only prized possession had been a postcard from them dated before she was born. It had been her goal to find them. Calling her high risk was like saying that anteaters had claws.
Shawn Steiger had not been high risk. Exactly the opposite, in fact. He had been a good student, a member of the student council, and a senior who had been accepted to Yale. He’d lived in the exact same house all of his life. His parents were devastated by his death.
Our final victim was Bonnie Turner. She was sixteen, no record, good grades, but not really a joiner, she didn’t belong to any clubs or play any sports. She was shy, quiet, and taking meds for anxiety. Her father had died in a freak accident when she was nine and she’d had some problems with agoraphobia ever since. He had been beheaded while trimming a tree. The rung of the ladder he was standing on broke and he’d fallen on the running chainsaw, cutting his own head off. Bonnie and her older brother, Cameron, had been holding the ladder.
The missing persons’ summary sheet for each of the victims did reveal a tiny spark of information. None of them was short. Not just not short for their age, but average by adult standards. Even the two young victims were at least five feet, four inches tall.
The frown appeared on my face without my approval. I could feel the corners of my mouth turning down, wrinkles were forming on my forehead, and my eyes were narrowing. I sighed, trying to get rid of the frown, but that just made me frown more.
“Our killer is diminutive,” I announced. Everyone turned to look at me. The conference room had been quiet right up until I opened my mouth. “Look at the descriptions of our victims. They were tall and even if they weren’t playing sports, they weren’t thin or incredibly overweight, but they were within the average weight for their height. How does a girl with OCD disappear? Or a girl who battles agoraphobia? They must have felt completely secure with their killer. The only thing that explains it is age and stature. None of them perceived her as a threat. So, either our killer knows the Vulcan Death Grip or she poses as someone very non-threatening. Most people equate physical stature with physical capabilities. Bonnie Turner wouldn’t have trusted a woman who was taller than she was, she was being treated for anxiety. Anxiety disorder means everything is a potential hazard. Her killer was not only non-threatening, but somehow reassuring.” That little voice in my head whispered to me. I ignored it.
“Like little person diminutive?” Gabriel asked.
“No, that’s too short. I’m thinking someone who is below average height and possibly, weight,” I said. “Think about it. Why cut the Achilles’ heel? Why was the hyoid bone struck by the blade, but the ribs haven’t been? She’s short. Shawn was probably bending into her when she stabbed him in the throat. Greg Johnson had a nick on his rib from the blade, but he was six feet six inches tall. That’s tall, even by modern standards.”
“Ok, a short serial killing med student or anatomist. That shouldn’t be hard to find,” Lead Detective Mark Skartal said. I didn’t know where Hight had gone, but I missed him at the moment. Skartal was shaping up to be a jerk.
“Your sarcasm is noted,” I snipped at him. I considered Tasering him, but in a police station in Texas, this seemed like a really bad idea. I didn’t think they would be as nice as the sheriff’s department in Anchorage, Alaska. “Also, that hematite necklace was not identified as belonging to any of our victims. I do not believe it was just lying around in the shed while the bodies of three young women decomposed into puddles. Somehow, it got tangled up and dropped by the killer. Hematite is not expensive, but I believe the gold wire is. It is high quality jewelry wrapping wire. I’m sure the lab report will tell us that it is eighteen karat. I’m thinking a local artisan made it, unless it was purchased off a small artisanal website or Etsy, which would be awful, because it’s unlikely to be traceable.”
“How many people work with hematite and gold?” Skartal asked.
“Hundreds, maybe thousands of small artisanal jewelers,” Lucas answered for me. “It’s big business to have one of a kind pieces of jewelry these days.”
“Even my sixteen year old niece is working with the stuff. She has an Etsy store and makes several thousand a year off it, all on jewelry,” I said, ignoring that stupid voice again.