The Deepest Cut by Dianne Emley

eluding a horde of PPD officers until one finally managed to tackle him. They would have considered him just another nut, perhaps more colorful than most, except for that spiral-bound drawing pad in his backpack that hinted at something sinister.
    Among Disney-like drawings of cute animals and flowers were four charcoals of women either being attacked or threatened with violence. Not just any women. The details were sparse but evocative.
    One depicted Vining’s stabbing. She was drawn from the shoulders up, a knife deeply embedded into her neck. A shiny, black trail of blood flowed from her wound. Her lips were parted in what could be horror or ecstasy. Her attacker was standing close to her. As close as he’d stood in real life. The drawing showed only the back of his head, but in her wide eyes, his shadowy image was reflected.
    One depicted the upper body of a woman in uniform wearing a round-brimmed Ranger Stetson. On her long-sleeved shirt, a badge and insignia were sketchily outlined. In her left hand, she held two leather straps that disappeared off the edge of the paper. She looked afraid. In the distance, off her right shoulder, was a distinctive, domed mountain. Kissick had said the mountain looked like Morro Rock in the Central California coast city of Morro Bay, a favorite getaway spot for him and his two sons.
    One depicted a woman lying on the floor of what appeared to be a storage closet. Her white blouse was covered with dark stains. She looked dead. Around her neck, on top of her blouse, was a pearl necklace with a pendant.
    Through Vining’s surreptitious investigation, she’d learned that this drawing portrayed another victim of T B. Mann— Tucson Police detective Johnna Alwin. Only the killer, the cops, and Alwin’s husband knew she’d been given a pearl-and-pendant necklace and was wearing it the day of her murder.
    Vining had secretly traveled to Tucson and met with the lead investigator, Lieutenant Owen Donahue. She’d planned on stealing Alwin’s pearl necklace and had succeeded.
    Then there was the fourth drawing. It was by far the most gruesome. The setting was a ramshackle barnlike structure. A nude woman was tied by her ankles and hanging from the rafters. A great pool of blood had spilled from a gash across her neck onto the dirt floor. A cloud of fluffy, darkhair obscured most of her face and kept the necklace around her neck from slipping off. The necklace was drawn with loving details. Dozens of tiny circles depicted pearls. From the middle dangled a pendant.
    Some at the PPD had made good arguments that Nitro was a crime groupie. The assault upon Vining had been well publicized. The other women in the drawings could be creations from Nitro’s twisted imagination or he could have gleaned inspiration from media reports of real crimes.
    While the necklace the silent streaker Nitro was wearing when the PPD had apprehended him had been a source of amusement for the officers involved, Vining knew better. He was not T B. Mann. She detected something eerily reminiscent of T B. Mann in Nitro, but he was not him. He was his messenger. To Vining, T B. Mann’s message was this: My evil acts have a long and complex history, and I’m not finished. Watch what happens next.
    Nitro’s necklace— a sorry, beat-up thing— was also in her collection. She’d confiscated it with aplomb. Unfortunately, her other scheme for Nitro had gone to hell. She’d planned to wait for him after his release from the seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold at L.A. County General Hospital, where the PPD had sent him. But Nitro had eluded her. He was gone.
    After quickly leafing through the drawings that she knew only too well, she looked from Kissick to Early. “We have new leads?”
    Kissick began, “I followed up on my hunch about that one drawing, that the mountain in the background is Morro Rock. The woman in it is wearing a Ranger Stetson and there are a couple of state parks in that area. I sent an inquiry to the