Page 19 of Girl, Unmasked
‘Yup.There’s no dignity here,’ said Ripley.
The symbolism wasn’t exactly subtle.The unsub had tried to unmake this woman.‘And he’s put in a lot of effort.Something like this takes hours.’
‘But why?What’s the point of this?’
A damned fine question, and one Ella knew would haunt her long after they'd loaded this woman into a body bag.But right now, in this moment, all she could do was send up a prayer for the stranger lying out in front of her.This stranger was about to become her best friend from beyond the grave, because whoever did this had just skyrocketed to the top of Ella's hit list, and she'd walk through hell to find them.
‘He's delusional,’ Ella said.‘Mission-oriented.He doesn't see her as human.She's a symbol.A canvas he can use to paint his fantasies on.’
'We've got an eleven-hour window of death, so we'll need to trace her last whereabouts and see if we can find anything unusual.'
Ella nodded, tapping her lips as the timeline took shape.She looked over near the TV and saw an overloaded bookshelf, some framed photos of a beaming Sophie with arms slung around friends’ shoulders.A life forever stuck on pause.She tore her gaze away from the grisly centerpiece and forced her mind back into the groove of clinical detachment that was the only way to survive this job with her marbles halfway intact.
She took in the scene with a hunter’s eye, and one inconsistency stood out above the rest.
'Ripley, what's wrong with this picture?'She gestured to the floor, walls, and furniture.
‘You kidding me?I can see tons wrong with this picture.’
‘There are only a few drops of blood.’
Ripley squinted as she did the mental math.‘Good spot.Meaning…’
‘Meaning all of this mutilation was done post-mortem.’For this level of mutilation, Ella would have expected enough blood to float a ship, but the wide fan and air-spray arterial gush was conspicuously absent.
‘Small mercies,’ Ripley said and turned away from the body.Ella couldn’t blame her.There were some things the human mind just refused to process, no matter how many winters you'd ridden the Homicide merry-go-round.
‘So thankfully, the flaying or the enucleation wasn’t the cause of death.That also means he’s not a sadist.’
A sadist needed to see, hear and feel their victims suffer.If this mutilation was done postmortem, the killer wasn’t getting off on the victim’s her pain.The goal here was death, not suffering.
Ella continued, ‘He's mission-oriented, likely acting out a delusional fantasy.We're looking for a history of mental illness, prior violence, antisocial behavior.Someone who believes in extremes – black and white, good and evil.No middle ground.Bad news is we're hunting a delusional psychopath who can't separate fantasy from reality.Good news is that he’s too far gone to fit in with civilized society.’
‘Why?’Ripley asked, even though Ella suspected she knew the answer.Two years in and she still tested her occasionally.
‘These cuts.’Ella gestured to the victim’s sliced-up back.‘Far from surgical.It means we’re not dealing with a high-functioning psychopath like a surgeon or doctor.We indulged the idea, but we can rule it out.’
‘And the vic?Why her?Why here?’
‘Our guy could have just abducted a random victim off the street, but he went to all this trouble, risked exposing himself in front of all these neighbors.’
‘So, Sophie was targeted.’
‘One hundred percent.’Ella pivoted and took in the rest of the apartment with Ripley in tow.In the kitchen, her eyes snagged on a mountain of white paper.The text on the top piece read ‘Memoirs of a Teen Idol.’
‘Huh,’ Ripley grunted.‘What’s that?A book?’
Ella flipped through the pages and found three would-be books, one autobiography and two fantasy novels.‘In their primitive forms.Manuscripts.’
‘What kind of person has manuscripts lying around?’
‘Someone who works for a publishing company.’
Ella caught sight of the woman-turned-angel through a crack in the door and suddenly felt paper thin.This wasn't her first rodeo or even her tenth.She'd spent more hours than she could count trying to untangle the logic of a psychopath’s mind, but something about this scene had hooked its claws in deep and was yanking for all it was worth.Maybe it was the sheer senselessness of it all.The waste and the fury and the rivers of bloodshed in service to a lunatic's vision.
A clatter of footsteps and low-pitched chatter drifted in from the living room.Backup had arrived in the form of a CSI techs.
‘You agents finished up?We ideally want to examine the body before nature takes its course.’
