Despite the hairline skull fracture, I was back at work. This meant a morgue in Shelbina with a nude and mostly dissected corpse that used to be a living teen girl. It also meant Xavier’s company and his catching me up on everything he’d learned from the autopsy. It wasn’t much. Same caliber bullet, different wound pattern only because the shot was cleaner. Her face had mostly disappeared in front of the crowd.
This image was burned into my brain. Blood, guts and gore didn’t bother me as a general rule, but there was something about this one that did. Perhaps it had been the days spent with my teenage niece that was influencing me in some way, but I had made Xavier put a cloth over the ruined face.
Our presence in the morgue seemed a formality. Xavier had done the autopsy on Sunday. He was now double checking his findings by reading them off to me. Unfortunately, if he was trying to glean new evidence that magical revealed the killer, he was out of luck. The gunshot wound to the head was self-evident and the obvious cause of death. The long range of the weapon didn’t offer much up in the way of clues, except to say that our killer could fire a rifle and hit a target from a distance.
The queen had revealed all she was going to reveal. I decided to point this out to Xavier by getting up and walking out of the room in the middle of his sentence.
Morgues are generally dreary. They are cold. The ceramic tiles and stainless steel accessories didn’t add any warmth. Only big cities get their own buildings for such things. In smaller towns the morgue tended to be attached to the funeral homes. This one was attached to the funeral home. Opening the doors and exiting immediately brought the scent of flowers and hushed tones.
The funeral home in question was nice enough. Muted color schemes prevailed covering the walls, floors, and ceiling. Large pieces of wooden furniture dominated the halls. Nothing appeared to be white or grey, something I appreciated.
Heavy wooden doors lead to the outside. I knew I smelled of death, but the funeral home was empty except for the morticians and funeral director. They were all used to the smell by now. I skirted past a man in a suit that I guessed to be the director as I exited into shimmering summer heat.
The humidity was back with a vengeance. Sweat instantly broke out on my skin, making me shiver slightly. I closed my eyes against the glaring sun and took a deep breath. The heat didn’t really bother me and I preferred it to cold, windy winters.
My sunglasses were on top of my head. I pulled them down before opening my eyes. The sun reflected off the asphalt parking lot, not as light, but as radiating heat waves. It made the air dance and sway. With the humidity, it had to be over 100 degrees. Standing on the asphalt probably added another ten degrees.
Shelbina was a small town. The population sign declared that 1700 people lived there. It did have a collection of restaurants and fast food places, as well as a couple of hotels and motels. As a person that lived out of hotel and motel rooms, these were my hallmarks for civilization. Special events probably doubled or tripled the population.
My wish from May had been fulfilled, we had a serial killer that was just shooting people and not doing weird things with them. Shooters weren’t exactly easier to catch, but they were more likely to taunt the police. This wasn’t the case with our shooter, yet, but there was still a glimmer of hope. However, as a general rule, shooters left less gruesome bodies in their wake. One could argue that having a victim lose a face was pretty gruesome, but it beat the hell of bodies that were skinned or tortured or mutilated.
My phone squawked at me, indicating I had new email. My fingers touched the screen, bringing up the new message from Nyleena. It was titled WTF!!!!! and contained only a single link. Harsh language for an email, but after I had been directed to the news article, I understood. The Redwood National Forest had been temporarily closed to the public due to an outbreak of Bubonic Plague. It was now affecting wildlife beyond squirrels.
This left my mind in a predicament. It really wanted to concentrate on the Plague outbreak in California, but it really needed to concentrate on the two killers currently double-teaming carnivals in Missouri. It wasn’t that my killers weren’t interesting, it was that Plague outbreaks didn’t happen in cooler climates very often and when they did, there were a lot of factors involved. Add to it that I had received a dead prairie dog a week or so earlier and I was thinking it wasn’t a coincidence. However, spreading Plague is difficult. Nor is it an effective murder weapon.
Xavier tore me away from my thoughts of Plague outbreak. His body radiated heat next to me. His mouth was shut, quite a feat for Xavier who seemed to talk, a lot. He stared in the same direction I stared.
“Fair queens represent beauty and popularity,” I said after several minutes of soaking in the heat. “Fairs themselves are about happiness and a break from the daily grind. I guess you could make a case for a fairy tale theme between the two, but you’d have to really argue for it.”
“Two killers is the theory we are running with,” Xavier said.
“I know,” I said.
“So her face really bothered you,” Xavier said.
“That wasn’t why I left. Like most snipers, we aren’t going to find much on the body. Did we recover the bullet?”
“Yeah, it was useless,” Xavier said. “It went through her and embedded itself into a wooden post. It was too damaged to do anything more than determine the caliber.”
“Plague, snipers and bombers,” I said. “Just another day in Oz.”
“Despite the fact that they touch, Missouri isn’t Kansas.”
“That’s true, but Oz, even with the Wicked Witch, was a nicer place than this, so I figured it worked. You should release the body and let the family bury her.”
“I would have done that Monday, if I had that authority. However, Homeland Security is still involved and Adams says we can’t.”
“Force him into a replay autopsy,” I suggested.
“I invited him to the first, he declined. What happens when a serial killer and a mass murderer cross paths? Do they team up?”
“I don’t think so,” I answered. “Like I told Gabriel, I wouldn’t want to share the spotlight, regardless of which one I was.”
“Lucas thought Marion County might have been a fluke,” Xavier told me.
“That’s possible. If I was a bomber, I wouldn’t have targeted this fair. Too small, too many others going on with much more death available.”
“Thoughts on this weekend?”
“How many large fairs are going on next weekend?” I asked.
“Not many, the Boone County Fair is good sized. Quincy is hosting some sort of fair event along with Des Moines.”
“He hasn’t traveled as far as Columbia or Des Moines. The fairs have been located in Northeastern Missouri, Southern Illinois and Southern Iowa.”
“Quincy it is then,” Xavier turned to walk away. “You know this means we’ll be on stakeout again, think you can behave?”
“I didn’t start it last time. Gabriel and I both warned them.”
“If it makes you feel any better, she had a long rap sheet, including assault of a police officer before she met you.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
Xavier began walking away. My black T-shirt was absorbing sweat at an alarming rate. My scalp was sweating, soaking into my brown hair, making it look darker. I had hoped the fresh air would help me think. It hadn’t. Instead, it made me feel even more confused. Lots of people hated beautiful, popular people, especially girls, they could be terribly vicious. However, blowing up fairs, destroying happiness, that was a totally different thing. Bombs tended to be a guy thing. Especially with the level of destruction seen at these fairs.
This thought caused the cogs in my brain to click. If light bulbs went off over people’s heads in real life and not just cartoons, mine would have rivaled the sun. I turned to chase after Xavier.
“What?” He asked, as I crashed into the funeral parlor.
“We are such idiots,” I told him.
“I would disagree.”
“Really? Something huge has been staring us in the face all this time and I haven’t heard anyone vocalize it.”
“What?” Xavier asked.
“Oh, yeah,” I remembered I hadn’t actually told him my thought yet. “So, the bombs have been doing amazing destruction. They are being set in locations that most people would consider a lynchpin site.” I paused to breath.
“Well?” Xavier motioned me forward.
“It wasn’t a dramatic pause, it was too catch my breath,” I snarked. “Anyway, how does he know where that will be? He can’t, unless he scopes out the fair ahead of time.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t walk into a fair and figure out where to set a bomb for maximum damage. Could you?”
“No, but I’m not an engineer.”
“Neither am I, even if I was though, there are factors to be considered. Not just the biggest, most dangerous ride, but all the ride placements, the location of the grandstand, the volume of people attending the fair...”
“I get it,” Xavier said. “We are idiots.”
“Yep,” I smiled.