Page 15 of End of Days

“What about the letter. We can’t leave the letter. It’ll look like he was just a drunk. They won’t even find the explosive damage in that mess.”

“Nothing we can do about that now. Keep going. Get out of the blast radius. This mission is done.”

Chapter 10

Lia Vairo showed her badge at the door to the trailer and said, “Is it messy?”

The carabinieri at the entrance said, “Not like the other one. It’s pretty clean. Although the place is a mess. Pretty sure COVID would get its ass kicked in here fighting the other diseases. Might want to wear some gloves.”

She smiled and raised her hands, encased in thin latex. “Always.”

She entered to find a photographer she knew snapping pictures of the scene, along with an investigator already there and a coroner’s assistant she didn’t know examining the body. She said, “Hey, Jonathan. What do we have?”

Jonathan was nothing more than a recorder of events. He had no official stance as an investigator, but because of his job, Lia had found that he noticed things. Saw connections through his lens.

“My opinion? It’s the same guy.”

The investigator scoffed, aggravated at her appearance. He was much more experienced than Lia at murder scenes, and he clearly didn’t like her presence. Especially since she was in charge of the investigation. She was an impediment to his work. Nothing more than a social experiment to prove that Italy was diverse.

She ignored him, looking at the dead body on the mattress, lying flat with her panties still on but her half shirt raised to expose a single breast.

She said, “Why do you say that? The first had her throat cut,spraying blood all over the place. The second died from blunt force trauma. And this one?”

The coroner looked up and said, “Strangulation. Whoever it was choked her to death with his hands.”

He went back to work and Lia said, “So, why Jonathan? What do you see?”

The investigator said, “Why are you asking him? All he does is take pictures.”

Jonathan snapped a photo, then let it fall to his waist on its sling. He glanced at the investigator, not wanting to pretend what he was not, then said, “I don’t know. They just look the same, despite the manner of death. No penetration, no sex assault. Just a dead body. Who kills a prostitutewithoutraping her? If that’s what they want to do, they go through with it. This one still has her underwear on. We have three dead prostitutes, and none of them have been penetrated.”

Lia looked at the coroner’s assistant and he said, “I can’t confirm until I get her back to the lab, but from what I can see, he’s right. No penetration. Just a dead body, like the guy came in to kill her.”

What the hell.

Lia said, “So we have a man or woman killing prostitutes for a purpose. He finds them and then kills them outright. Sex isn’t the issue. The occupation is. He or she doesn’t like the chosen profession, and is now sending a signal?”

The investigator scoffed, saying, “That’s obvious.”

The coroner’s assistant said, “I don’t think so. The first death was incredibly violent. It was done in a rage. He didn’t go in there to kill her, heendedup killing her. This one is the same. Whoever is doing the killing starts out wanting the woman, and then erupts. This woman was strangled to death with bare hands. The other one was beaten to death with a lamp. Nobody plans to do that. That’s a reaction.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea. But I don’t think this guy is out killing prostitutes because he hates prostitutes. He hates something within himself. And then he kills to relieve the pain.”

He raised the woman’s head, the eyes half lidded, rigor mortis not set. He pointed at her neck, where the purple bruises were evident. He said, “Nobody plans to kill someone and then does it with their bare hands. If he hated prostitutes, why not show up with a knife?”

The investigator said, “He did on the first one.”

“No, he didn’t. He used her own Exacto knife to kill her. He didn’t show up to kill. He just snapped. The second one was done with a lamp.”

Lia heard the words and thought,So I have my own Zodiac Killer. Great.She said, “Is there anything we can use here? Right now? Or is it like the other ones, devoid of evidence?”

The coroner smiled and said, “Yes. He kissed her after she was dead. Right on the cheek.”

Now interested, she said, “How do you know?”

“I have saliva on the cheek. I can’t see how it would have gotten there before she died. It’s pronounced, and against her nose. It’s an awkward location. Nobody would have done that if the person was alive. I could be wrong, but I think he kissed her after he killed her.”

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