Page 4 of Love Me Darkly
Mateo supposed he might have gasped or sobbed … something. But he couldn’t be certain when the only sense he seemed capable of was sight—standing there and staring, wide-eyed, at the corpse splayed out on the bed.
Stripped of all her clothes, she lay with her limbs spread to each corner of the mattress, rough ropes binding her wrists and ankles. Like the previous victims, a knife had been scraped over her scalp, taking bits of skin and leaving behind wounds that trickled blood to the pillows. More of her blood soaked the sheets, spilling from the pentagram carved into her lower abdomen and the deep wounds along her limbs, the two on her inner thighs the deepest.
Death by exsanguination. Mateo could smell her blood, its metallic tang mixing with something else in the air that made his stomach roil and his throat clench. The stench of death. It didn’t matter how many battlefields he had fought on overseas, or how many crime scenes he had investigated. Nothing could singe a man’s nostril hairs like the smell of death.
The pools of her blood hypnotized him, and he found himself unable to look away. It trickled down her arms and legs in rivers of crimson. Her hands were a mess, reddened and displaying several gashes. One of her fingernails had torn clear off its bed. If someone could examine the UNSUB, they’d likely find scratch marks marring his neck and face.
Mateo’s limbs gave out, and he fell across her torso, arms curling around her to pull her against his body. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he shouldn’t be touching her. He’d likely obliterated any forensic evidence, but he was beyond thinking about protocol. All he knew was that she’d died painfully, afraid, and fighting. And he hadn’t been here.
“Mari …”
His voice broke off on a sob, and suddenly, he could feel. The agony tore through him, visceral and deep, as he cradled her head in one hand and her back in the other and began to weep.
Coming awake with a jolt, Mateo clenched the object held against his chest. He registered splintering glass and winced, setting it aside. He lifted his throbbing hand and cringed at the sight of blood running down the side of it. He’d cracked the frame in his sleep and cut himself.
He had slept for only half an hour, leaving him with plenty of time to finish getting ready for his flight. In the bathroom, he grabbed the nearest towel and used it to apply pressure to the shallow cut, which stopped the bleeding quickly. Thankfully, it wasn’t deep enough to need stitches. It would be no more than an annoyance he would forget once he set his mind on something else.
Unfortunately, the thing foremost in his mind was the one thing he didn’t want to dwell on. Dreams of finding Mari murdered in their house—in the bed where he’d made love to her and slept beside her night after night—always hit him hardest.
His fault, all of it.
His arrogance had cost him dearly. He had thought himself untouchable, bolstered by his perfect record. No UNSUB had ever felt like a real threat to him or anyone he loved. They were simply bad guys who needed to be hunted down and removed from society. He’d had so much faith in his own skill that he had failed to see his own weak points, how he could be targeted and destroyed by an UNSUB with an obsessive personality and a grudge.
Mateo still couldn’t puzzle out why the UNSUB would target Mariana instead of coming after him directly. If the killer thought Mateo was getting too close, getting rid of him would be an expedient solution to the problem. But then, Mateo had spent months developing the profile and understood the UNSUB’s sadistic nature. He wanted Mateo to know that death wasn’t the worst form of retaliation in his arsenal. He didn’t want Mateo dead, he wanted him scared, cowering, and off-balance. He wanted a game of cat and mouse.
Glancing at himself in the mirror, Mateo scowled. He was sporting days’ worth of stubble, and his sweat-glistened skin gleamed pale in the bathroom light. His black hair lay plastered against his forehead and neck, and his pupils had dilated until he could barely make out the brown irises.
He looked like hell.
Pulling his shirt off over his head, he switched on the shower. While waiting for the water to heat, he made quick work of running his clippers over his jaw—he didn’t mind the stubble, so he simply trimmed it down, making him look more rugged and less bedraggled. While shaving, he tried to avoid the stare of his wife, whose image had been tattooed onto his left pec almost eight months ago. He’d sat for the portrait in one sitting, numb to the pain as the artist traced out her features with impressive skill. He had gotten the tattoo to remember her as she once was, but looking at it proved a poor substitute for having her with him in person. The artist was one of the best in LA—he’d gone home to have the artwork done, not trusting anyone in D.C. to do it right. But no one could capture the sweetness of her true smile or that sparkle in her eye. They were gone, wiped off the face of the earth along with her soul. Looking at the portrait was both soothing and tortuous.
The piping hot water of the shower stung his skin as he stepped under the shower, but he welcomed the sensation, closing his eyes and allowing it to loosen his tense muscles. He thought back to the case and this latest victim in Arkansas while he washed. There had to be something at this crime scene—something for them to go on to finally nail this bastard.
He quickly dressed and combed his hair, then did a quick sweep of the room to ensure he wasn’t forgetting anything. Faltering, he doubled back and scooped up his photos of Mariana and Angelica. Removing them both from the frames, he tucked them into the front pocket of the bag before making a quick exit.
Despite having seen this exact crime scene in several other states around the country, Mateo never stopped growing sick to his stomach. The victim lay in a heavily wooded area, stripped naked and sliced open. The blood had long since dried on the ground around her—so much of it that it had gone from crimson to black. Someone had preserved her dignity by draping her from the shoulders down, but he could see the pentagram carved into the lower part of her belly through the white fabric.
Smith knelt beside the corpse and lifted the edge of the sheet to keep from exposing her. Cringing, he quickly lowered the drape, then dragged it up to cover her face.
“We can send for an autopsy, but it looks like the same cause of death—exsanguination.”
Mateo nodded, staring down at the corpse, taking in every detail. On first glance, nothing seemed to be any different from the others. Even as his heart sank, he realized he shouldn’t have been surprised. This UNSUB was good at covering his tracks.
“Anything left behind that we can get DNA off of?” he asked the local detective who had arrived at the scene to offer them assistance.
“Nothing that could be found externally,” the detective replied. “We’ll be certain to have the M.E. inspect beneath her fingernails for skin cells and check inside for traces of semen.”
You won’t find any.
“Detective, I want this woman identified. Name, age, place of employment, address. Tell the M.E. I want to know everything they find in the autopsy, down to the contents of her stomach. If there’s a pattern in victimology we’re missing, then we need to be as thorough as possible.”
“Of course, sir. We’re working on that now. The victim didn’t have any I.D. on her, but we’ll run her prints. If she’s in the system, we’ll have a place to start.”
It boded well for him that this detective was being so cooperative. Police officers or detectives with inflated egos could make Mateo’s job difficult, especially when they began to feel he encroached on their territory. Usually, he was good at charming his way through, ensuring they knew he was on their side and wanted to work together. Right then, he didn’t have that in him. Truly, he hadn’t had it for some time now.
“Garcia, I’ve got something here!”
Mateo whirled to find Williams crouched by on the edge of a pool of blood beneath the body. As he approached, an officer appeared at her side to offer a latex glove and a pair of tweezers. Williams used the tweezers to lift something small and square from beneath the sticky blood. He couldn’t imagine how she had spotted it, but something that felt like hope seized his chest as she turned it over and displayed it to him.
