Hour Game

"They were having sex," Sylvia said. "There was spermicidal residue from Canney's condom in her vagina. She was probably astride Canney and facing him when it happened, with her back to the windshield. That's a very natural position for intercourse in the close confines of a car. Her body acted as a shield; otherwise, Canney would have been killed from the first blast as well."

"You're sure he wasn't?"

"There were two rounds total fired. The number of pellets we found showed that. There were nine in each body. Symmetry in death," she added dryly.

"I suppose no ejected shotgun shells were found."

Sylvia shook her head. "Either the killer picked up the spent casings or the weapon was a nonpump where the fired casings have to be manually extracted."

"I guess since it was a smoothbore barrel, there's no possibility of a ballistics matching if we find a suspected weapon."

"Sometimes irregularities at the end of a shotgun's muzzle will impart scratch marks on the plastic wad. That was actually the case here. I'm not a ballistics expert, but the police may have enough to do comparisons if they ever find the shotgun. And we have the slug from Rhonda Tyler's body as well for ballistic analysis."

"There was talk that the shotgun blast that killed Steve Canney might have stopped his watch, giving the time of death."

"No. The watch was placed on him postmortem. It was stopped because the stem was pulled out. I noted that at the crime scene. I found embedded glass in his left wrist, right where the watch would have been."

"Any idea why the watch was put on him after death?"

"As a calling card perhaps? I noted that it was set to three. Pembroke's was set to around two. That also might confirm their order of death."

"And Jane Doe slash Rhonda Tyler had on a watch that didn't belong to her either and that was set to one o'clock. And it was a Zodiac."

Sylvia looked at her. "And now we have a Zodiac-style letter."

"And three people dead."

"So I guess the next one will be four o'clock, representing the fourth victim?"

"If there is a next one," said Michelle.

"There's little doubt of that. The first victim was an exotic dancer. However, the next two victims were local kids making out in a car. Once they start their murders, serial killers usually stick to one segment of the population. This guy's already showing us he's not playing by the same old rules." She paused and added quietly, "So the real question becomes, who'll be next?"

CHAPTER 13

OUTSIDE THE POLICE STATION, the pale blue VW Beetle drove slowly past and stopped at the intersection. The driver glanced at the one-story brick building that housed the police department. They would have gotten the letter by now. They might have also deciphered the contents. It wasn't like he'd made it very hard. The hard would come later, as in trying to stop him..Try impossible, Mr. Policemen.

Next they'd call in the state police's criminal investigative unit. They'd want to keep things quiet, no sense panicking people. No doubt an application for profiling assistance would be submitted to the FBI's vaunted VICAP. Important people would be contacted to see that the matter was expedited, and a profile on the killer, on him, would be quickly forthcoming.

Of course it would be totally wrong.

He'd driven past the morgue earlier, where the M.E. was probably pulling her red hair out over three bodies that represented very different things yet had common themes. The clues would be minimal. He knew what to look for and thus to remove, but no one was infallible and forensic science could dredge up much from microscopic wreckage. She'd find some things, draw some correct conclusions, but on the key points she'd come up empty. The no-see-ums wouldn't trip him up.

He drove through the intersection as several police officers ran out of the building and climbed into their patrol cars and sped off. They were probably running down irrelevant leads, wasting energy and time, which didn't surprise him considering the weak attributes of their leader, Todd Williams. However, Sylvia Diaz was first-rate in her field. And at some point, as the killings mounted, the FBI would be called in to take over the investigation. He was actually relishing the challenge.

He drove to another intersection, pulled up to the mailbox and dropped the letter in before speeding off again. When they got his next communication explaining the circumstances of Steve Canney's and Janice Pembroke's deaths, the police would know they were in for the fight of their lives.

King picked up Michelle from the morgue and filled her in on the details about the Zodiac letter. She, in turn, brought him up to speed on the autopsy results for Pembroke and Canney. Unfortunately, reciting the details didn't make the puzzle any less inexplicable.