Signature Kill by David Levien

included in a highly detailed manner. Behr stared and studied the more recent batch for hours. He pulled up a chair and continued. He didn’t see anything that helped. He knew he might not for a long time, if ever. But at least he knew there was a chance.

23
    Serial killer
.
    Behr woke with the words in his head, the ones he had been unable to utter to himself the day before.
    A serial killer of women
.
    He’d done his early-morning running and rehab—exercises with a thick band of rubber that caused the tissue and joint of his damaged shoulder to burn like napalm—and now stood in front of the grisly photo tableau that, along with the case files he’d been reading, told him that it was so. Whether or not Kendra Gibbons had met a similar fate, he had no idea. And he felt plenty foolish about it, because though he’d worked murders, he was no dedicated homicide cop. Then there was the fact that no one else, neither police nor journalists, had made the claim. He was alone on this. But it was in his head now and he couldn’t ignore it. That’s when the phone rang. It was the county forensics lab.
    “I’m calling about the DNA sample that was submitted on the Northwestway Park body,” a technician said.
    “Yes,” Behr said, feeling a jolt of anticipation about the result.
    “It came back nonpositive.”
    “Not a match,” Behr said. Disappointment at the lack of an answer mixed with relief that Kendra wasn’t officially dead.
    “No match,” the technician repeated.
    “Thanks,” Behr said and hung up. He gathered up the case files into a tall stack and began looking for a cardboard box.
    “Welcome to the land of the dead,” Jean Gannon said, pulling off a pair of blue elbow-length rubber gloves with a snap. The basement mortuary area of Scanlon Brothers Funeral Home was bright white tile, stainless-steel sinks, yellow tubing, and shining oversized refrigerators. The space was cool and immaculate, with the sharp tang of preservative chemicals in the air.
    “How’s it going, Jean?” Behr said.
    “You know what they say …”
    “Business just keeps rolling in?” he said.
    She nodded and draped a sheet over the body of an elderly woman that she’d been working on and turned back toward him. Jean looked five years younger than she had the last time Behr had seen her and he told her so.
    “Thanks. For me?” she said, lifting a supermarket poinsettia plant off the top of the cardboard box in Behr’s arms.
    “Office warming,” he said.
    “Everything changes, huh—none of the usual treats?” she asked, thinking of the customary liquor and chocolates.
    “Someone down at coroner’s is the beneficiary of those. Real surprise to find you gone.”
    “It was time,” she said. “Even though I hadn’t been there forever, it was starting to feel like it. I was surprised that’s what happened on account of getting into it so late in life, but it did.” Jean had only gone to med school and begun her career after a life as a mother and a wife and a marriage that had crashed and burned.
    “So the new job agrees with you.”
    “It’s still wall-to-wall stiffs. But the good part, besides playing with makeup half the day, is that most of ’em get to me when they should. You know? Occasionally there’s a young mom or dad, or you know, a kid.” She winced. “But it’s mostly old folks whose time has come. Not at all like working at the other place. Down there it just smelled like …”
    “Hamburger?”
    She nodded. “I just couldn’t seem to wash it off of me.”
    Behr had a momentary pang of guilt over what he was there for as he put the box down on her desk.
    “Well, I’m sorry for what I brought then,” he said. “I tried to lay off you when I heard you’d quit, but I couldn’t.”
    “It’s not the same when it’s on paper.” She shrugged, pointing to a chair. “Sit. Wait.”
    An hour and fifteen minutes and two cups of coffee passed with some nods and murmurs of recognition from her