Drop Dead Gorgeous by Heather Graham Page B

or what a man comes from that’s important, but what he is himself. I’m sorry that we didn’t fight harder for him. I’m sorry he wound up the one accused, and that we were all so willing to crucify him. I’d like to tell him so, if I ever get the chance.”
    Lori was stunned. So stunned that she just stood there as her mother shrugged and turned away. Gloria started down the stairs.
    “Mom!”
    Her mother waited.
    Lori hurried to her, and hugged her fiercely. Gloria hugged her back.
    Soon after, her folks left.
    And despite the fact that Sean was in town and a friend had just been brutally murdered, it didn’t seem so terrible to have come home.
     
     
    “ A young woman, an adult, early twenties, I’d say,” Sean thoughtfully said aloud to Gillespie, who was watching him as he carefully looked over the display of human bones, which didn’t quite complete the human body. She’d been approximately five feet six in life, and at some point suffered a fracture to her right tibia. “It’s difficult to diagnose cause of death, especially with the skull missing, but I can tell you that the head was severed from the body—before or after death, I don’t know.” He stepped back and looked at Gillespie without asking the obvious—where had the bones been found and under what circumstances?
    Gillespie wasn’t giving such answers yet anyway—she was frowning. “How can you tell the head was severed? Maybe the vertebrae just fell away.”
    He shook his head. Stepping forward with his surgically gloved hands, he showed her a vertebra—and the marks that still, indisputably, showed signs of a sharp instrument.
    Gillespie nodded. “How long dead?”
    “When and where was she found?”
    “Muck, Everglades, near Shark Valley.”
    “Sometimes such entombment helps preserve a body, but she must have decomposed before becoming buried in the mud. That makes it tough.” He shook his head. “I’d say she’s been dead three to ten years. I don’t think I could give you a closer estimate.”
    Gillespie nodded, sighing. “She becomes another Jane Doe.”
    “Another?” he said, frowning.
    Gillespie nodded. “ You know the statistics, so you can’t be too surprised. Hell, work at the Orange County morgue for a few weeks, and you become immune to the corpses that pile up around you in the damned hallways … half of them victims of crimes we’ll never solve. This is the third pile of bones we’ve uncovered in the past few years.”
    He watched her, well aware that although Gillespie was talking statistics, she thought that she was onto something.
    “You’ve got a theory?” he asked, peeling off his gloves and standing back.
    She nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got a theory. I’ve studied some in the behavioral sciences, criminal psychology—profiling. Most guys who get into the heavy-duty sick sex crimes don’t just go out and kill and mutilate. Maybe they start by pulling the tales off lizards. Throwing rocks at dogs. Sometimes they become rapists, going a little further with every crime. Then, the ultimate thrill. Murder. A simple kill at first. Then torture before the kill. Maybe necrophilia. And killers can be smart, good-looking, and damned clever. I think we’ve had someone—God knows, maybe more than one—killing women down here for some time now. I mean, like years. Heaven knows, we’ve got our share of unsolved homicides! Getting a little bolder as time goes by, bolder, and bolder still.” She shrugged and looked at him. “That’s why serial offenders tend to be a certain age, isn’t it? Too young, and they haven’t gotten into doling out the heinous deaths that really cause media attention. Too old, and they’ve tripped themselves up somehow. You’re the writer. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?”
    “I deal in fiction,” he hedged.
    “Fiction—based on fact. You know your facts. I’ve read your books.”
    He shook his head. “Well, I can’t have killed all these women over the