Dark Wings Descending by Lesley Davis Page B

autopsy. “When he came in, his head was pretty much blown away, so he wasn’t going to win any prizes for being handsome.”
    “Did he look odd?”
    “His face was distorted, but no one’s face stays normal after a bullet through the forehead. Once I’d peeled his face off and found what was left of his skull, there wasn’t a whole lot I could piece back together.” He looked over his X-rays again. “Can’t remember seeing anything that resembled horns, though.”
    “I was just checking.” Rafe studied the X-rays herself, desperately searching for proof of what she’d seen.
    “He wasn’t red either,” Dr. Alan added.
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “He didn’t in any way resemble Hellboy.”
    Narrowing her eyes at his sly drawl, Rafe had to smile. “This conversation stays strictly between you and me, right, Doc?”
    “Of course. I’d hate for you to be back at work only two days and being chased by demons. Still, it would go a long way to explaining so many of the bodies I’ve had come past my tables.” He stepped back from his desk. “Must have been really dark in that alley, Rafe. Your eyes were playing tricks, no doubt.”
    “No doubt,” Rafe said, knowing he was giving her an out. “What can you tell me about our latest victim, then?”
    “She didn’t have horns either.”
    Rafe bit back a grin. “Let it go, Doc, or I’m telling your wife about your late-night poker games you host here when you’re supposedly doing overtime.”
    He wagged his finger at her. “You play dirty, Detective.”
    “No, I play to win, which is why I clean you out every time. Now back to the victim, if you please.”
    “This latest woman was killed in exactly the same way as the previous two.” He took off his latex gloves and slipped on a new pair. He handed Rafe a set as he guided her over to the fridges. “You have a serial killer on your hands, and a nasty one, judging by this killer’s modus operandi.”
    Rafe followed him, standing aside as he pulled a tray out with a cloth-covered body on top. Rafe had seen Andrea Mason at her crime scene, but even now, seeing her face in rigor twisted in a mask of terror, it gave Rafe chills. She tried to hide her reaction from Dr. Alan. She didn’t need to give him any more concerns.
    “This is a bad one,” he said as he finished rolling down the sheet. “I’m going to have to request that the family have a closed casket. They don’t need to see their daughter looking like this at the funeral. It was hard enough when her father came to identify her.”
    “The stuff of nightmares,” Rafe said, moving her gaze off the dead woman’s face and down to the gaping neck wound.
    “One clean cut, left to right, deep enough to cut open the jugular vein and have her bleed to death.”
    “A swift kill, executed with military precision perhaps?” Rafe examined the wound. “There are no hesitation marks at all.”
    “A hunter or butcher would be able to do the same.”
    Rafe thought back to the profile Blythe had given her. This was the second time the skills of a butcher had been brought up. “So this is someone who knows how to incapacitate their prey swiftly and surely.” She studied lower down the torso. It had been left unmarked. The woman’s naked breasts looked pale and white in the stark light of the morgue. “No signs of sexual trauma?”
    Dr. Alan shook his head. “Not a thing, no fluids of any kind left on or near the body. No vaginal tearing or bruising. There’s no sign of any sexual penetration taking place at all, before or after her death.”
    “So he’s on his third victim and it’s still not sexual. So what is it that feeds his need to kill?”
    Dr. Alan turned the body over carefully and Rafe got to see the full extent of the butchery wrought on the woman’s flesh. She couldn’t hide her wince this time.
    “Fuck me. Without all the blood, it looks even more brutal.” She checked out the grotesque wounds. “And still there’s nothing