The body of what was once probably a pretty blonde woman lay crumpled on her side in a dirt pit. From the looks of it, someone had tossed some landfill on the body, but not enough to have done a good job hiding her — her pallid, white skin glowed under the sprinkle of earth like a night-light under a thin blanket. Maybe Gabby Vechio’s killer had run out of time when he dumped her and hoped that the cranes and bulldozers would finish the job. Or perhaps, as Detective Schrader had suggested, whoever had strangled her was actually hoping someone would find the body when they showed up on site in the morning for work.
The crime-scene photographers had taken close-ups of all visible injuries while the body lay in its shallow grave: bruises on the wrists; choke marks on the throat; and, what appeared to be flogging lacerations on the buttocks and thighs. But it must not have been until the body was transported to the Nassau County ME that her other injuries were discovered.
In the series of autopsy photos, Gabby’s nude body was positioned face down on a steel gurney with her long blonde hair pushed up atop her head, exposing the back of her neck for the camera. Right below the hairline in the shape of a circle was a raw, dark crimson burn — measuring 1¾ inches in diameter, per the ruler held up alongside it. Enclosed in the circle was a squiggly line that resembled the letter ‘Z’.
Manny whipped out the autopsy photos of Holly Skole from his file. The physical resemblance between the two women was chilling. He wondered why he really hadn’t seen that until now.
Sometimes people just don’t see what they don’t want to see.
He found the close-up photo of Holly’s neck wound and held it up alongside the computer screen. To his eye, it was the same injury — a circle with a distorted zigzag through it, seared into the flesh of both girls’ necks.
Both women had been branded.
In Gabby’s instance, the skin was red and raw, but the flesh intact. It appeared that the branding had been done with a hot metal instrument pressed for a few seconds on the skin, causing a nasty third-degree burn. Had she lived, scar tissue would’ve formed and built up and the wound would’ve been raised into a three-dimensional scar, like a cattle brand. But with Holly, the metal was left long enough on the skin so that it had actually seared through flesh and muscle, almost to the bone, like a hot knife through butter, severely damaging all the surrounding tissue. When her body was placed in the dumpster, dinner was served for the zillion insects, rodents, and raccoons that liked to hang out in dark garbage bins. By the time Holly was removed from the dumpster, blowfly maggots had already made a comfortable home in the gaping wound, along with God knows what other vermin that’d come to chow. It had been difficult at the time to see the injury for what it was.
But Manny saw it now. And there was no denying that the two murders were in fact related. The killer had left his unique signature on both women.
He sat back in his chair and stared off at the squad-room corkboard with its missing persons, wanted suspects, NCIC/FCIC alerts. Every day an analyst came in and tacked new information and new pictures up, right over the old. Being a cop in Miami sometimes felt like you were playing a bad video game — no matter how many zombies you took out, there were always more coming at you. Faster and faster. Meaner and hungrier.
On November 7, 2006, a then twenty-three-year-old Talbot Lunders was in the hospital mourning the loss of his appendix; Manny’d already confirmed that. If these two murders were committed by the same psycho, then who had killed Gabby Vechio? And who had held the shaking video camera while she was being assaulted and murdered? If there was a second killer out there somewhere, partnering up to kill Gabby, and then working with Talbot Lunders to kill Holly, then who the hell was he? And who had he partnered up with to kill Gabby? How many madmen were involved? And were there more victims to find?
Manny rubbed his eyes and reached for a cigarette.
How many fucking zombies were there out there?