“So keep searching for where their circles intersect,” said Zander.

Euzent nodded. “Think of it as a Venn diagram. Your killer will be in the very center.”

14

Mason watched as Ava shook her umbrella outside before entering the medical examiner’s office the next morning. He’d been spying on her from the waiting room since he saw her vehicle pull into the lot. She leaped over a wide puddle, missed, and soaked the hem of her slacks. He couldn’t hear her swear, but he read it clearly on her lips. And then she turned her face up to the rain and laughed.

He smiled. She’d be embarrassed if she knew he was watching her. He watched her all the time, whether she was cooking, playing with Bingo, or frowning at her laptop. Her exhilaration made him happy. He’d been living a dull, dry life, and she was a burst of color in his black-and-white world. When he was around her, the air felt cleaner, more energized, and he sucked it in like a drowning man.

How long could his luck last?

She pushed through the doors, wiping her feet on the mats, and her face lit up when she spotted him.

He grinned and prayed his luck would last a lifetime.

She did a quick glance around the empty room and gave him a peck on the lips, grinning at the stolen kiss.

“Let’s go. Dr. Rutledge is ready for us. Ray and Zander already went in,” Mason said, taking her elbow and guiding her toward the inner doors. “How was your interview with the manager at Universe of Tires?”

This morning her alarm’s music had surprised both of them. Mason had assumed they’d be awakened by a phone call summoning them to another death. They’d looked at each other and grabbed their phones to check for missed calls, believing they’d slept through a discovery. Even now Mason was on edge, waiting for the call to convene on a bridge.

“The interview was fine,” Ava said. “Even though Aaron King was an assistant manager, he struggled to be on time. Which jibes with what his ex-wife said about him being unreliable. For the most part he got along with everyone and his boss claimed his work was impeccable. He was one of those guys that was fascinated with vehicles and loved getting his hands dirty with them.”

“For the most part?” Mason asked as they moved down the hallway toward the autopsy suites.

Ava shrugged. “His boss said a couple of employees struggled with his ego, and he’d talked with him a few times about toning it down. But the guy knows tires and wasn’t afraid to assert his knowledge.”

“Sounds more like some personalities clashed. Was he a bully?” Special Agent Euzent’s comments about bullying were fresh in Mason’s mind.

Ava crinkled her forehead. “I don’t know. I didn’t get that impression from his boss or from his ex-wife. But I guess he could have been when he was younger. Is that what you’re getting at?”

“Yes. If someone feels they’ve been wronged by Aaron King and Carson Scott, I want to know how it happened.”

“I asked the boss if Aaron had an escalated incident with a customer. He said if it’d happened, he didn’t know about it. He’d quizzed his staff over the last few days, trying to find out if something had occurred with a customer, but no one had any stories.”

“Dr. Rutledge completed the autopsy on our third victim last night while we were at the briefing,” Mason told her. “He has some details he wanted to show us in person.”

“Great,” said Ava, interest lighting up her face.

Mason preferred a written report, but Ava liked the hands-on demonstrations from the ME. He guided her to the office where he’d left the other men minutes before. Dr. Rutledge had pulled up a series of photos on two large computer monitors. Mason silently exhaled in relief, and wondered if Ava was disappointed.

She nodded at the other men and stepped closer, studying the photos before Seth Rutledge began talking.

“I was pretty close on estimating his weight,” began Dr. Rutledge. “He was three hundred sixty-three pounds.”

“How the heck did our unsub hang him?” muttered Ray, shaking his head.

“I have a theory on that,” answered the ME. “If you look here,” he clicked his mouse and pulled up a block of six photos that showed the victim’s armpits, “you can see some deep abrasions that were made postmortem. They’re two inches wide and dig into the flesh under his arms. And they line up with that white band across his back.”

Ava frowned. “So the stripe across his back was from something tied around his chest? And it was tied while he was on his back long enough to have that daisy pattern? Do you think this was from a strap for a pulley?”

Dr. Rutledge nodded.

Mason pictured a wide band looped under the victim’s armpits that was attached to something to lift it. “But if he tries to lift him, won’t his arms simply go upward and he’d slip out of the band?”

“My first thought, too.” Dr. Rutledge changed the photos to views of the victim’s forearms. “There are lighter abrasions across his forearms, just above the bandaging for the slits in the wrists, and it left a thick tape residue. I excised some samples for evidence, but my theory is that he ran duct tape around the victim’s belly and arms, pinning down his arms while he was lifted. This was in addition to the light scatter of tape residue I found on all three victims, where I believe he taped their arms down to hold them still as they bled out.”

Mason lifted a brow. “To me, duct tape says ‘quick fix.’ Our perfect-planning suspect may have been surprised that his original plan didn’t work quite right, so he improvised.”