Night Kills by John Lutz Page B

wrong with the world?
    â€œWas that your mother?” Quinn asked, seeing clear pavement ahead and goosing the car to higher speed.
    â€œHow’d you guess?” Pearl asked.
    â€œShoulda told her I said hi.”
    â€œI should have, since she thinks you’re God.”
    â€œShoulda told her hi from me, too,” Fedderman said from the backseat.
    â€œShe thinks you’re a prick,” Pearl said.
    Â 
    The passageway where the dusty green Dumpster squatted like a military tank without a gun was blocked off at both ends with yellow crime scene tape. CSU techs were swarming busily about the scene with their luminol, magnifiers, tweezers, and plastic evidence bags. Tagging and bagging. The photographer was finished and tinkering with her equipment. Nobody seemed to want to look directly at the pale, waxy flesh object beside the Dumpster.
    Quinn glanced around and didn’t see Nift. Maybe the Napoleonic little pest had come and gone.
    Then a woman wearing jeans, a black T-shirt, and one of those vests with a thousand pockets approached. She was in her forties and had short brown hair in a practical cut, a trim body, and a sweet, lined face that was slightly red around the nose and eyes, as if she had rosacea. She was carrying a black medical bag.
    â€œDetective Quinn?”
    He admitted it.
    She smiled. Nice teeth—probably used whitener. “I’m Dr. Chavesky from the medical examiner’s office.”
    â€œI expected Nift.”
    â€œHe had to go out of town on business.” Again the smile. Blinding but natural. “Disappointed?”
    â€œNot so far.” He nodded toward the torso. “Finished with it?”
    â€œHer? Yeah. I’m up on the case. As far as a preliminary gets us, she’s the same as the others. Shot through the heart, obvious postmortem trauma to the vaginal area. The point of whatever was shoved into her snagged on her labia minor. The way she was taken apart—crude but effective dismemberment.”
    â€œBullet still in her?” Pearl asked. She and Fedderman had been standing off to the side, listening. Dr. Chavesky turned her attention to them, knowing they were with Quinn, a set. “Yes. No exit wound. It’s a small caliber and it feels like it went through the sternum. We’ll have to see if it didn’t break up too much to run a comparative ballistics test.”
    â€œKill her right away?” Fedderman asked.
    â€œProbably not. But within a few minutes. Of course, it’s also possible the killer shot her more than once. Obviously, the entire body isn’t here.”
    Quinn looked over at the torso, the headless end. He quickly looked away. “How long’s she been dead?”
    â€œMy estimate’s ten to fifteen hours. I’d say she was in her early thirties when the clock stopped for her.”
    â€œAny other trauma to her body?”
    She gave him a look. “Besides the vaginal penetration and dismemberment, no. Just the bullet. It appears to have entered from a point directly in front of her while she was standing.” Chavesky glanced at her watch. “EMS should be here any minute to remove the body, unless you want them to leave it for a while. I gotta go.”
    â€œWe won’t be long looking it over,” Quinn said.
    Dr. Chavesky nodded. “I’ll get a comprehensive postmortem report to you as soon as possible.”
    She and Quinn exchanged cards. He glanced down at hers and saw that her full name was Dr. Linda Chavesky. He slipped the card into his shirt pocket, behind his folded reading glasses, and watched the doctor duck gracefully beneath the crime scene tape and climb into a gray city car. Though she was slender, she had to be strong, judging by the effortless way she handled the large black medical bag.
    Quinn and his two detectives walked over to the nude torso.
    Nift would have remarked on the victim’s breasts, which were not large, but well formed