Page 24 of Just Now

He grabbed a black hooded jacket and shrugged it over his head, pulling the hood up to conceal his face. He checked himself in the mirror, adjusting the hood so that it didn’t look too suspicious.

Then, with ease, because he was a strong man, he lifted the woman’s body up and carried her outside, placing her carefully in the trunk of his car.

He had done this twice before, but this time it felt different. He couldn’t explain why, but he felt like he was crossing a line. As if this was something he needed to keep doing, again and again.

Maybe that was just because the therapy was working, and it was changing him. Just more slowly than he’d expected.

He would find another victim, another challenge. And this time, he promised himself, he wouldn’t lose control.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The knot in Cami’s stomach twisted tighter as she and Connor arrived at the scene where the body had been dumped.

It was at the back of a nightclub in a seedy area, a couple of miles outside downtown. She guessed that the place must have been deserted until recently, as the only cars there now were two police cars and the coroner’s van.

A couple of onlookers were gathered, staring curiously as the police strung up a wide cordon of crime scene tape.

He must have known about this place. Maybe he’d researched it with this in mind. That was what she thought, as Connor climbed out of the car. She hurried behind him as he strode over to the scene.

“FBI Special Agent Connor here. Thanks for calling me in,” he said to the officer who was standing guard inside the tape. “Do we have ID for this victim? Does she have a phone on her?” Connor’s voice was sharp.

“Agent Connor, the coroner’s just arrived. He can tell you. We realized right away this was a serial crime and we stayed back from the scene,” the officer said. “The body was hidden from view. A cleaner who started work at eleven a.m. saw it when he went to the dumpster.”

Connor nodded grimly in response. Then he headed toward the scene, detouring to put on foot covers and a head cover. Two forensic officers in white outfits were busy lifting the body out of the dumpster. Cami looked quickly away, but not before she’d seen the jutting leg poking out of the black tarp it had been wrapped in. And the sight she’d expected—an old, scuffed men’s shoe on the foot.

The same MO. The same need to dress these women in old, tattered men’s clothing.

Oddly, the line that was now playing in Cami’s mind was from way back and wasn’t anything to do with any crime, and it wasn’t anything to do with tech either.

It was her father’s voice, harsh and domineering, resounding in her memory.

The situation? Cami had been caught skipping school, and to escape detection, she’d dressed as a boy. It had worked for all of two hours until someone had spotted her and snitched to her mother, and her father had come along, roaring up the street in his police truck, grabbing her from inside the ice cream parlor where she and a friend had been enjoying an illicit soft serve cone.

“Get back home!” he’d raged. “You want to dress like a boy and skip class? How about you wear that getup to school for the rest of the week!”

No wonder she didn’t have fond memories of her dad, Cami thought. Even now, when she hadn’t seen him for a couple of years, the bullying still made her angry. His need to control, his unwillingness to ever listen, had scarred her.

Connor’s voice cut through her thoughts, dragging her back to the harsh reality of the crime scene.

He was staring down at the woman’s body, a good few paces closer than she dared to go.

“There was a big struggle here, I think?” he said to the coroner, and Cami’s skin prickled with goose bumps at the image this conjured up.

“Yes, it looks as if she has a lot of defensive wounds. I’m hoping we can get some of the killer’s DNA from under the nails,” he replied. “There are multiple bruises and abrasions,” he confirmed, his voice flat and professional.

“Cause of death?” Connor asked.

“Strangulation. Same as the others, I understand?”

Connor nodded, and Cami could see the gears turning in his head.

Cami swallowed hard. She was trying her best to control her imagination, but the image of what had played out was impossible to suppress.

She waited while the forensic officers searched the body, watching as the phone that had been in the purse, dumped in the trash along with its owner, got removed and placed in an evidence bag.

Then Connor turned to her.

“Let’s go back to the police station. The phone has to be taken into evidence, fingerprinted, and the processes followed before we can access it. So if we go there with them, we can get to it as soon as possible.”

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