Flu

Chapter 117

"Writing again?" Kate asks as a yawning Rick climbs into bed with her.

"Doing research. I know we're not supposed to be in on the case, at least not much. But it's not like it was your run-of-the-mill shooting or stabbing. I wondered if there were other murders with near beheadings like that."

"And did you find any?"

"Maybe, but so long ago, if this one was related, it has to be a copycat. There was a series of murders in the 1920s called the China Doll Killings. In each of them, the head of a young, pretty woman was left hanging pretty much by a thread. Each of the victims had very white skin, like porcelain, and a kind of curly bob that was popular then. They looked a little like dolls with bisque faces. Even in the roaring twenties, many of those were antiques."

"Did anyone ever solve the China Doll killings?" Kate wonders.

"No. There was one detective who was doggedly on the case for years. Finally, he told his captain he was on the edge of bringing someone in. An automobile accident terminated his life five minutes after he left his precinct. He was trapped inside his unit. Other cops nearby tried to get him out, but the gas tank blew up. That was the end of him and the case. He left notes, but nothing that led to the killer. The solution, real or imagined, was in his head. A true-crime writer wrote a book about it. There's no Kindle, but I ordered the dead tree version for overnight delivery. It should be here by tomorrow afternoon. If the killer is using the China Doll killings as a playbook, we'll have our own copy."

"The killer is strong," Lanie declares when Rick and Kate pay a morning visit. "I didn't find any ligature marks or signs of a weapon. The murderer snapped that poor woman's neck barehanded. Oh, we have an I.D. on the victim. Her name is Melissa Sawyer. She had a job in insurance that required her to be bonded, so her prints were on file."

"I suppose," Rick muses, "that it would be too much to hope you and crazy glue fumes could raise some prints that might also be on file."

"Sorry, Castle, it would," Lanie confirms. "Ryan already asked. The killer wore gloves. From the traces left on Melissa's neck, they were blue nitrile."

"Available almost anywhere," Kate notes. "Not much help."

"Maybe not. Lanie, could you get an idea of how big the killer's hands were?" Castle inquires. "They must have quite some heft to apply that kind of pressure."

"Good call, writer boy," the M.E. acknowledges. "I estimated they were almost 14 inches long. Unless you're playing for the NBA, that's unusual."

"Which would have made it hard to get gloves that fit," Rick realizes. "They would have been special order."

Kate takes his arm. "Good catch, Babe. We can pass that on to Ryan. He and Esposito can check out glove suppliers."

"Uh-huh," Rick agrees, "but I wonder if there's more to it than that. Big hands, a broken neck, fragile dolls, there has to be a story tying it all together somehow."

"Well, you can think about it on the way back to the precinct," Kate advises. "The boutique only had a camera pointed at the cash drawer, but I promised we'd help scrub the video from the security and ATM footage of the sidewalk in both directions."

"All right," Rick allows, "we can look for someone with big hands."

Kate flips her laptop shut in disgust. I didn't see any guys with big hands. I didn't see many guys, except for the ones using the ATM. Maybe our killer used a back door and wasn't caught on video."

Rick gazes at her over the top of his screen. "I think I have someone, but it isn't a guy." He turns his computer around. "Have a look."

Kate studies the image of a woman, or at least what appears to be a woman. The focus could be a lot better, but from the look of her, she could have been the girl who played football better than the boys and was a head taller than her prom date –assuming she had a prom date. "You're right, Babe. She's a possibility. There's a timestamp of when she was in the area around the murder scene. If she was in the bank or one of the neighborhood stores, someone would remember her. When Ryan and Esposito canvass, they should get a line on her. But we can show the picture to Alexis and Paige and see if either one of them remembers seeing her at the murder scene."

Rick's expression tightens. "I hope neither of them did. If that woman can snap a neck like that, I don't want either of the girls having to be the one that points a finger. What if she gets out on bail and goes after them?"

Kate reaches across the table. "Babe, you're getting ahead of yourself. They may not have seen her at all. Assuming she's our suspect, something for which we have no proof at the moment, they might have been too busy shopping to notice her. Or she might have been gone by the time they got to the boutique. But we do have to ask. That's the job."

Rick's chair screeches against the floor as he pushes back from the table where he and Kate were working. "Right now, it's a job I don't like very much. It's almost the end of your shift. We should head home. If we're going to hit Alexis with this, it should at least be accompanied by pasta carbonara."

"All right," Kate agrees. "But we should talk to Ryan and Esposito first and print out the best view of that woman. Then we can get going."

Alexis tilts her head as she eyes the photo. "I remember seeing her, but I doubt Paige would. She was going through a rack of tops when this woman walked past with some clothes over her arm. Her hand would have been covered. She went straight to the back where the changing room is. I only glanced at her for a second before Paige wanted to show me a cute T-shirt."

"Do you think she saw you or Paige?" Rick presses.

"I don't know," Alexis admits. "I was paying more attention to the clothes. We never made eye contact."

"Thank God for small favors!" Rick exclaims.

"You know, we still don't have any evidence that this woman had anything to do with the murder," Kate reminds him. "Since she was in the area, her presence in that store could have been a coincidence."

Rick sighs. "I don't believe in coincidences in murder investigations, and usually neither do you. I hope the boys track this woman down sooner rather than later. I wonder if she used a credit card."

"Probably not," Alexis interjects. "The store was offering a five percent discount for cash. Paige and I made sure we had some before we went shopping. But if this woman bought anything, the cashier would probably remember. She'd be a better witness than Paige or I would be."

"Did you see this woman come out of the changing room with anything?" Kate asks.

The teen shakes her head. "I don't think so. Maybe there was a back exit. But you'd think it would be locked or something to keep people from stealing the clothes. Oh, wait. The clothes had RFID tags. Taking them out of the store without deactivating the electronics would probably set off an alarm. Without going to the register, a person could only leave empty-handed."

"Or red-handed," Rick mutters.