Undercover Hunter(73)

                Everything inside her froze. She stared blindly, absorbing what he was saying. “Oh. My. God.”

                “A paralytic maybe, so he can finish wrapping them and watch them suffocate. I’d like to think he knocked them out, but...” He shook his head. “Not likely. He had to get something out of this. Your spider analogy really got me to thinking. Spiders paralyze their prey before they wrap them. And there’s not one tox screen in the bunch. The cause of death seemed obvious, so why look any further? Hell, nobody would have thought to look for a minute needle puncture, especially with bodies that old, however well preserved. Decomposition would probably have made it all but impossible, and I doubt anyone even considered it. They thought they had all the pieces.”

                A nauseating feeling washed over her in waves, and she put her head in her hands. She’d forgotten the towel wrapped around her head, but as it started to tumble, Cade moved swiftly to catch it. She was vaguely aware that he tossed it over the back of a chair.

                “DeeJay?”

                “Give me a minute,” she said, her voice muffled. “I’m not feeling well.”

                “I don’t blame you.”

                What he said made perfect sense, but the imagery horrified her. A few minutes passed before her stomach stopped rolling over. Finally, she reluctantly reached for the toast as a way to settle the rest of her nausea. Maybe some jam would help it go down. She scooped some onto it.

                “Adolescence,” she said. “That’s probably a key point.”

                “It seems obvious now.”

                “I was thinking small, easy to take and handle, but what you just said...”

                “Boys that age would be easy to get that way. They’re a bundle of walking, raging hormones. Adventurous, too. Think of all the autoerotic strangulations.”

                “I’d rather not.”

                He paused. “You’ve dealt with it?”

                “Unfortunately. One case. It didn’t require a whole lot of investigation. The file was closed almost immediately, but I’m sure the hell continued for his parents.”

                “Yeah, it would. DeeJay, eat. You haven’t slept, now you’re not eating. I need a partner.”

                She bit into the toast. Not even the jam could keep it from tasting like dry cardboard. The hell of it was, she could see the ugly logic in what he was suggesting. All of it. However twisted it might be, there was always some kind of purpose behind what a serial killer did. Some kind of play or scenario in their own heads that they acted out at the expense of others. Whether they felt empowered by their actions or got some kind of sexual thrill, there was always a reason for their rituals.

                “Now we have to figure out how to use this,” she said. “How to get proactive and draw him out, because there sure isn’t enough here to point us to him.”

                “Well, that’s always the problem, isn’t it? Understanding what he’s doing isn’t necessarily a way to get to him. Assuming I’m even right.”

                She looked at him from gritty eyes, the lack of sleep beginning to catch up with her. “I think you’re right. Unfortunately we can’t bank on it.”

                “No. But we certainly need to think it through to see if we can wring any ideas out of it.”