Ashes to Ashes by Tami Hoag

and blistered in an irregular pattern where the accelerant had burned away in a flash.
    “Ligature marks at the right and left ankles,” she said, her small, gloved hands moving tenderly, almost lovingly, over the tops of the victim’s feet—as much emotion as she would show during the process.
    Kovac took in the appearance of the wounds the bindings had made around the victim’s ankles, trying hard not to picture this woman tied to a bed in some maniac’s chamber of horrors, struggling so frantically to get free that the ligatures had cut grooves into her flesh.
    “The fibers have already gone to the BCA lab,” Stone said. “They seemed consistent with the others—a white polypropylene twine,” she specified for the benefit of Quinn and Hamill. “Tough as hell. You can buy it in any office supply store. The county buys enough every month to wrap around the moon. It’s impossible to trace.
    “Deep lacerations in a double-X pattern to the bottoms of both feet.” She went on with the exam. She measured and catalogued each cut, then described what appeared to be cigarette burns to the pad of each toe.
    “Torture or disfigurement to conceal her identity?” Hamill wondered aloud.
    “Or both,” Liska said.
    “Looks like all of this was done while she was alive,” Stone said.
    “Sick bastard,” Kovac muttered.
    “If she got free, she couldn’t have run,” Quinn said. “There was a case in Canada a few years ago where the victim’s Achilles tendons were severed for the same reason. Did the other victims have similar wounds?”
    “They had each been tortured in a variety of ways,” Stone answered. “Neither exactly the same. I can get you copies of the reports.”
    “That’s already being taken care of, thank you.”
    There was no hope of removing the victim’s clothing without taking skin with it. Stone and her assistant snipped and peeled, coaxing the melted fibers gently away with forceps, Stone swearing under her breath every few minutes.
    Anticipation tightened in Kovac’s gut as the destroyed blouse and a layer of flesh were worked away from the left side of the chest.
    Stone looked across the body at him. “Here it is.”
    “What?” Quinn asked, moving to the head of the table.
    Kovac stepped in close and surveyed the killer’s handiwork. “The detail we’ve managed to keep away from the stinking reporters. This pattern of stab wounds—see?”
    A tight cluster of eight marks, half an inch to an inch in length, perforated the dead woman’s chest roughly in the vicinity of the heart.
    “The first two had this,” Kovac said, glancing at Quinn. “They were each strangled and the stabbing was done after the fact.”
    “In that exact pattern?”
    “Yep. Like a star. See?” Holding his hand three inches above the corpse, he traced the pattern in the air with his index finger. “The longer marks form one X. The shorter marks form another. Smokey Joe strikes again.”
    “Other similarities too,” Stone said. “See here: amputation of the nipples and areola.”
    “Postmortem?” Quinn asked.
    “No.”
    Stone looked to her assistant. “Lars, let’s turn her over. See what we find on the other side.”
    The body had been positioned on its back before being set ablaze. Consequently, the fire damage was contained to the front side. Stone removed the undamaged pieces of clothing and bagged them for the lab. A piece of red spandex skirt. A scrap of chartreuse blouse. No underwear.
    “Uh-huh,” Stone murmured to herself, then glanced up at Kovac. “A section of flesh missing from the right buttock.”
    “He did this with the others too?” Quinn asked.
    “Yes. With the first victim he took a chunk from the right breast. With the second, it was also the right buttock.”
    “Eliminating a bite mark?” Hamill speculated aloud.
    “Could be,” Quinn said. “Biting certainly isn’t unusual with this kind of killer. Any indication of bruising in the tissue? When these guys sink their