Page 26 of Killer Clone

Mac nodded, but she seemed a little uncertain. “I tried locating the device, but the last ping came from the dorm building sometime Friday morning. You didn’t find the phone or laptop in his room?”

“We looked everywhere,” Ander confirmed.

Slade nodded. “Okay, Mac, do what you can to monitor that username. Maybe we’ll catch him selling Marrion’s equipment. And be sure to keep checking Marrion’s phone activity or lack thereof. Now, Stella, what about his family? Did they mention any places he frequented? Any friends, like perhaps this mysterious person online?”

Stella cast her gaze downward. “His family seemed to think he wasn’t a gamer and didn’t spend a lot of time online, which doesn’t track with the rest of their info that he kept to himself. Struggled to make friends.”

“Really? That takes effort, especially at that age. Not like he was a middle-aged guy with a family and didn’t have a chance to get out much.”

Slade had three teenage daughters and never joined the team at any of their occasional post-work social events. Hagen figured he should invite him next time. Slade spread his fingers over the top of the table. “So we still need to find where the victim was killed. Ideas?”

The room fell silent. The heating vent hummed. A gust blew past the building, just audible through the double-glazed window panes.

Stella remembered the wind in the trees in Claymore Township. That sound had been so much gentler, a whisper that eased her into sleep every night. Or it did until she’d come to associate it with the creak of a rope and blood on the snow.

Blood.

She lifted her head.

“What about the blood? Bleeding someone out makes a huge mess. We’ve seen it. How would someone hide that in the city?”

“I don’t think it’s that hard.” Anja’s forehead accordioned into a series of furrows, as though the effort of such a thought had shrunk her brain. “Funeral homes just pour blood into the sewage system. The killer could’ve just washed it down a drain. Forensics would find traces, but once the blood has mixed with the city’s wastewater, there’s no reason anyone would know.”

Stella dropped back into her seat and whispered under her breath, “Morticians…”

Blood flowing through city drains. A river of gore under the sidewalks. It was a horrible thought. Hagen blinked to get the image out of his head.

Stella sat upright in her seat. She pointed at the screen behind Slade. “Can you bring up the picture of the victim again?”

Slade took a remote control from his pocket and pushed a button. The screen took them back to the dirty downtown alley. Patrick Marrion sat by the wall, head lolling, elbow propped on a rail.

Stella pointed at the cut on the victim’s neck. “When my brother died, we spoke to a couple of funeral homes. One of the morticians explained how they’d preserve bodies and why we wouldn’t see their work. He told us how they’d cut the carotid artery and internal jugular vein, pump out the blood, and replace it with something like formaldehyde. Once that’s done, they sutured everything off and use…what did he call it…a trocar to remove fluid from organs.”

Why in the hell would a mortician tell a family member something so horrible?

Instead of asking, Hagen focused on the case. “That would line up with why Dr. Brennan said we should be interested inmorticians. A mortician could be very precise. They wouldn’t need to slash a throat?—”

“Because they’d know exactly where to do the most damage,” Stella finished.

Slade straightened his shoulders. He looked like someone had just taken an overloaded backpack from his back after a hike up a steep hill.

“Right, I want you matching the names of registered morticians with criminal records, connections to Central Tennessee State, or connections with dirty downtown alleys. Anything that gives us a link to the victim. Could be our guy. Go statewide if you have to. Our victim was seeing someone from out of town, remember?”

“And we could be looking for a killer and their accomplice. Both don’t need to be out-of-towners.” Hagen looked at Stella, and she seemed to be on the same page.

It was hard work stringing up a body.

“We very well could be.” Slade gathered his papers and frowned when they didn’t move. “What are you all waiting for? Go.”

As he was collecting his things, Hagen considered how the body had looked so different compared to the victims in Pennsylvania. The small cut on the neck was nothing like the wild slashes that killed Laurence Gill, Mark Tully, and Sheriff King.

The strange writing was absent, too, unless the abrasions on Patrick Marrion’s scarred back were caused by more than a scrape against a brick wall. Right now, the only possible link between this murder and the victims in Claymore Township was that, in every case, the corpses had been completely exsanguinated. It was a weak link.

Stella’s report of her visit to the Marrion family only reinforced their impression of the victim as a lonely young manwho spent most of his time in books and online. He had few friends but no enemies either.

Stella slid into her coat, and they left.

On the way out, they passed Mac’s office, and the door was open. Anja sat next to the cyber expert, who was showing their newest team member how her one-woman department worked. Stella wished them a good evening as they passed. Mac waved from the top of her monitor and Anja called after them. “Bye, Stella. Bye, Hagen.”

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