Along with Lockwood, the two of them had been on the special FBI-Monterey PD task force four years ago that had cornered Elijah Carter on the rock-strewn shores of the Pacific Ocean. They’d been down this damn road before.
Something small and vulnerable flickered across his partner’s face. She was probably thinking of her own daughters, one just a couple of years younger than Janie Sanchez.
“Copycat.” She lifted her head to look him square in the eye. “Unofficially speaking.” She pointed with a latex-gloved hand to the victim’s torn-up stomach. “Carter used to carve a very precise grid into his victims. Three lines down, four across.”
She would know.
“This victim has four lines down, four across. And that’s not the only thing that’s off.” Borkowski bent down to trace a finger gently along the vicious bruising across the young woman’s neck.
“That looks as if someone strangled her with a strap of some sort,” Daniel said, crouching down on the other side of the body. “Carter liked to use his hands.”
“Exactly.”
“Signatures can change over time, Borkowski. Sure we have some variation, but the overall theme is still there.”
Signatures were behaviors that went beyond what was necessary to commit a crime, and fulfilled a killer’s twisted psychological needs. Repeatedly strangling his victims and reviving them was one of Carter’s signature behaviors. Cutting that grid into her abdomen was a signature behavior. He’d changed things up a bit, but it still might be Elijah Carter. Or, as Borkowski obviously hoped, it might not.
“The M.E. will have to tell us for sure, but I think she may have been sexually assaulted, too,” Liz said. “Carter never did that. That would change his MO. Which just doesn’t happen.”
Daniel made a point to keep his focus steady on the contusions on Janie Sanchez’s neck. It seemed like another violation to look at the rest of her body while having this discussion.
“Dammit, Cardenas, it has to be a copycat.”
He jerked his head up in surprise—his tough-as-nails partner never let her emotions show. Not like that—imposing her own interpretation on a crime scene because she couldn’t bear to think of the alternative.
She didn’t meet his eye, instead rising from the ground. Squaring her shoulders, she came back to herself and started barking orders. She swept from the room, and everyone else hustled to comply with her commands, obviously relieved to have something to occupy their too-busy minds.
As Daniel rose, Lockwood approached him.
“Up until 1905, it was legal in China to execute someone for a capital offense by lingchi , or the ‘death of a thousand cuts,’” Lockwood murmured as he, too, stared down at the body.
Daniel knew what he was talking about. The ancient form of capital punishment was reportedly as gruesome as the name suggested, with the executioner inflicting multiple nonlethal cuts all over the victim’s body, prolonging death until said victim finally expired from his cumulative wounds.
“Janie Sanchez died of a thousand cuts,” Lockwood continued. “Borkowski might want to insist it’s a copycat, but I don’t know…I’ve never seen another man who did that to his victims.”
Chapter One
Hustling out the door on her way to work, Adriana Torres caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye that stopped her in her tracks. Her keys fell out of her suddenly slack grip, jangling loudly as they hit the ground.
A nasty-looking hunting knife protruded from her home’s siding. Pinned to the wood by the sharply gleaming steel was a folded slip of paper. She didn’t need to read its contents to know that the message would be very concise and very disturbing.
“Nice.”
Some people’s neighbors said good morning to each other as they started their day. Hers jabbed knives into her house. And por el amor de Dios, what had her house ever done to them?
Rolling her eyes heavenward and muttering a brief prayer for patience in Spanish, Addy grabbed hold of the handle, giving it a good tug. When it didn’t come out on the first try, she dropped her tote back on her front stoop with a thud and tried again with both hands until the knife chunked free.
She didn’t bother to glance around her quiet street, figuring it was hardly worth it to muster up the energy to be annoyed anymore. As one of the neighborhood dogs started up a faraway, staccato bark, she examined the latest addition to her growing collection of cutlery. It felt heavier and looked a little more expensive than usual.
Whatever. Maybe the idiot who’d put it there thought that spending more money would be scarier. As if.
Purposefully adopting a bored expression, just in case the nasty little twerp was watching, she picked up her keys and dropped them back into her purse. She’d always hated the thought of living in a wealthy gated community, but at times like this the idea had its attractions.
Pushing the door back open with one hip, she kicked at the slip of paper that had fallen to the ground after she’d freed the knife holding it. It fluttered inside the house, and she picked up her tote and followed suit. Without bothering to pick the paper up, she headed for the phone in her kitchen. She dialed the familiar number without glancing at the list of her favorite contacts stuck to the fridge.
“Borkowski,” came a woman’s curt response.
“Hey, Liz, it’s me.” Addy leaned against the counter, a frisson of annoyance tracking up her spine as she contemplated being late to work because of a stupid prank…again. But while she and Liz both knew that none of the teenage troublemakers who lived on her block was going to slink forward and confess, she’d promised her friend she would call each and every time someone stabbed her house. “Got another note.”
“Same deal as last time?”
Addy tossed the knife on the counter. “If by that you mean, one large, ugly knife that left yet another large, ugly hole in my siding, yes. Every time Halloween comes around, it’s the prank du jour.”
Liz swore softly—which was very uncharacteristic of her—and for the first time, Addy realized that the usual sounds she heard in the background when she called Liz at the station—papers shuffling, phones ringing—weren’t present. Instead, it sounded like Liz was outside.
“Is this a bad time?” Addy asked. “You out and about doing your cop thing?”
“No, no,” said Liz, sounding somewhat preoccupied despite her denial. “I’m at a scene, but this is important.”
“After seven of these notes since…” She let her voice trail off, not wanting to think about the event that had divided her life into before and since. “I don’t think it’s all that important, Liz. The sky hasn’t fallen yet.”
The first threat had also come in October, exactly a year after the love of Addy’s life, Monterey Police Detective James Brentwood, had been killed in the line of duty while hunting a prolific serial killer—a serial killer who was now dead, thank you very much. But a bestselling book about the case had made her little corner of the city rather notorious, since the killer known
