Garden of Evil by Edna Buchanan

message, I guess, such as in kiss-your-ass-goodbye. I don’t know. But it was too good to stay a secret. Somebody leaked it, it’s been all over local TV down there. With that and the sex, they’re calling her the Kiss-Me Killer. Ain’t that something?”
    The Kiss-Me Killer. I stared at the map above my desk and at the red pin nestled at the rest stop just off Interstate 75. The highway rolls on south through Ocala and divides near Wildwood. The main branch, I-75, runs west to Tampa, down the Gulf coast, and across Alligator Alley. The other jogs southwest of Winter Garden, cuts through Sebring, and snakes around the great Lake Okeechobee south near Belle Glade. The two roads reunite en route to Miami.

Five
    S HELL HUNTERS FOUND R OLAND M ILLER’S MISSING Ford Taurus the following day, at the end of a no-name road that runs off Canoe Creek, outside of St. Cloud in Osceola County, about a hundred and fifty miles south of Alachua. The powdery-sand road, where local kids like to mud-slide when it’s wet, according to the wire stories, skirts the outer edge of a giant stand of bald cypress. As it winds deep into the swamp, the road is lined with an assortment of discarded appliances, furniture, and the rusting hulks of abandoned cars and trucks. Locals use the area for target practice, taking potshots at squirrels, snakes, and swamp rats. Three teens collecting used cartridge shells to repack and use themselves had seen the vehicle. Thinking it was occupied by lovers, they gave it a wide berth. Hours later, when the car was still there, they grew curious.
    The doors were unlocked. They might have considered a joy ride but were distracted by swarms of flies buzzing in a nearby clearing. Miller had kept a yellow blanket in his trunk for weekend beach outings. Spread out beneath the live oaks as though for a picnic or romantic woodland rendezvous, the blanket was now saturated with the bloodof a stranger, who sprawled atop it staring cross-eyed at the sky.
    Two hollow-point Black Talon nine-millimeter slugs had shattered his lower forehead and the bone structure around his eyes. With no anchor for the muscles that hold them in place, both eyes turned inward.
    The dead man, about forty-five years old, had been well dressed before removing his trousers and undershorts, folded neatly nearby. His genitalia had been mutilated by a close-range gunshot blast.
    According to Charlie Webster, crime scene technicians from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement found the Taurus wiped clean of prints. How could she spend more than a day and a night in a car without leaving telltale evidence? Hair, fiber, the scent of her perfume? I had a hundred questions.
    Attempts were under way to construct a composite of the Kiss-Me Killer, based on the uncertain recollections of the coffee-stop waitress, who had been working a full counter at the time, and merchants with whom the killer had used her victims’ credit cards.
    The dead man’s pockets were empty, his vehicle, if any, missing. Technicians attempted to photograph a second set of tire impressions at the scene, but results were not promising due to the dry weather.
    Teams of lawmen from north and central Florida had coalesced into a task force. The FBI was working up a psychological profile, and the reward had grown to $100,000.
    The story, with its reports of Black Talon bullets kissed by the killer and the victims’ “sexual mutilation,” caught fire. The St. Pete Times and the Tampa and Lakeland papers assigned teams of reporters. Fred Francis did a report for NBC Nightly News , and CNN sent in a crew. TV in Miami was already following the case, and the News was allotting it more space on the state page.
    The speedy and all-out response from law enforcementand the media was interesting, I thought. Murdered women are frequently found along remote roadsides or in canals. Roving serial killers often achieve double-digit body counts before law