Page 57 of The Killer She Knew

Jenny slipped her phone into her windbreaker and collected her gear. “I’m going back to the office now. I took the liberty of documenting the other two bodies. It’ll probably be a few more hours before I can get the other techs to make the trip out here to get all three of your vics, depending on conditions. The flooding was pretty bad up until a little while ago, but I’d say no more than three hours, four at the most. I’ll let Durham PD know you may need a couple officers to help you with crowd control.”

Probably a good idea. There was no telling how long Ford’s time out would last for the students who’d been ready to escape. Leigh reached out to hold the door open for the medicolegalinvestigator, but her body thought better of it. “Thanks, Jenny. And thanks for the supplies.”

“Don’t let anyone else die. I don’t have that much room in the van, Agent Brody.” Jenny allowed the door to close behind her with a grin stretched across her face.

If she didn’t feel as though she’d been bulldozed by a snowplow, Leigh might’ve laughed. The medicolegal investigator had the ability to turn any situation into a stand-up comedy routine. Even death. She didn’t realize how much she’d needed that until now. Turning back to Ford, she scanned him from head to toe in case she’d missed any other injuries. Still as handsome as ever. Damn it. “Why do you look like that?”

“Excuse me?” he asked.

She motioned at his chest. And… him in general. “Why do you look like you have your life together when I look like I just left an MMA fighting ring?”

His laugh drove into her, warming the aches and pains throbbing with every pulse. “You’re the one diving headfirst into the action. I don’t want to mess up this face.”

“It’s a pretty face. I’ll give you that.” Leigh tried to rub the soreness from her jaw, but experience told her it would take a few days for the swelling to abate. At least she hadn’t been shot. Or stabbed. Or drowned. Those would be the three items she listed in her gratitude journal tonight. “Jenny took care of assessing Morrow’s body. That leaves us with forensics. Have you heard any updates from the techs?”

“Since you were nearly trampled by a mob of undergrads? No. I haven’t had the chance.” He followed on her heels. Close enough to catch her if she collapsed. “You think they’ll be able to salvage anything?”

“Only one way to find out.” Brushing her hip, Leigh skimmed her fingers over her empty holster. “I take it I have you tothank for confiscating my service weapon from one of those undergrads?”

The riot could’ve gone very bad very fast if Ford hadn’t been there. Hell, how many times had he saved her life now? Twice? More? The details were a little fuzzy now. She was going to owe him more than coffee when this was over.

“Can’t say I can take the credit for that one,” he said.

Wait. What? She pulled up short and cocked her head back to look at him. A flare of unease took over then. “You don’t have my gun?”

The marshal shook his head. “No. Just mine. I searched every student before isolating them into the classrooms. Nobody had a weapon.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. “We have a killer on the loose and a… whatever the hell Dean is following our every move, and my weapon is gone?”

Leigh forced herself to breathe through the initial panic. All right. How much ammunition had she left in the magazine? Ten bullets? Less? Damn it. She couldn’t remember. The fact there were bullets in it at all was the problem. Not to mention she could be suspended for allowing civilians to get a hold of it in the first place.

She headed for the classroom at the far end of the corridor where the forensic techs had set up. “Do you suppose anything else might go wrong in this investigation? It might be nice to have a heads-up from now on.”

“Not sure I can help you there.” He tagged behind. “Though I can predict fugitives’ futures once I have them in custody, but they all end up in the same place so it’s not that difficult.”

Leigh had lost the inclination to laugh and swung into the classroom the forensic techs had taken over at the back of the building. Both techs looked up from the two elongated tables they’d lined with evidence bags. She recognized the syringe thekiller had presumably used to kill Alice Dietz in one, the bottle of dish soap in another. The bleach bottle too. Then there were the six driver’s licenses spread out, each sealed in its own bag. “Have you been able to match any more licenses to the victims in this case?”

“Agent Brody, yes. We’ve made some progress. We managed to process the licenses with the alkali solution from the biomedical lab to stop the acid from eating the plastic, but there’s still a lot of damage. The acid ate through some sections, but we saved bits of information.” The closest tech to her rounded the table and grabbed a few of the smaller evidence bags. He handed them off individually, split between her and Ford. “The photos have been compromised. There’s nothing we can do to restore those, but we were able to match the names and a couple birth dates and addresses on the licenses to ones listed in the case files provided by Marshal Ford by filling the groves left behind by the machine press when the licenses were created. Kind of like running a pencil over a pad of paper to figure out the last message written.”

“Pierce Morrow’s license was also in the collection.” Leigh could barely make anything out on the licenses themselves, but she trusted the techs had done their jobs. She turned to Ford. “So we’re waiting on one more license. We must have missed a victim. Someone the unsub targeted and whose identity he stole before killing Alice Dietz.”

Ford handed her the two licenses. “There haven’t been any other identities the killer took on as far as I know.”

“Or the body hasn’t been recovered,” she said.

“I’m in the final stages of restoring the last license now. Give me… one minute. And, we have a result!” The second tech’s victory smile faltered. His gaze cut to Ford then Leigh. “I don’t… I don’t understand.”

Leigh cut toward the table. “Who is it?”

Bits of ink clung to the indented letters on the plastic.

Spelling out a single name.

One she knew.

Two gunshots exploded through the room.

Leigh grabbed for her service weapon on instinct and turned to face the threat. Empty handed.

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