Katherine closed the passenger door with a loud sigh and buckled her seat belt with a deep frown. "What do we have?" she asked as they headed north.

Nick focused on the dark road. "Liz says a woman's body was found at one of the lakes. Lying half in the water."

"What's the victim's age?"

"Probably around forty."

"And is she missing any body parts?"

Nick opened his mouth and immediately closed it again. "None ... Extremities. But the perp must have done some things to her. And --" He hit the gas as soon as the light turned yellow.

Katherine's eyebrows drew together, and she looked at his profile in the darkness. "And?"

"And another damn rose that lay with her. Well, lay might be the wrong word."

"Namely?"

"The perp put the rose in her vagina."

xxx

After a good twenty minutes, they were at the scene. The streets were pleasantly empty at this hour.

Spotlights were set up at the shore site as Nick and Katherine approached. Officers cordoned off the site, which looked more like a crime scene. Elizabeth and Jane stood on the shore while forensics took photos. Maggie was also there, staking out the shallow water in rubber boots and about to open the mouth of the body. One of the spotlights was pointed directly at the body's face, leaving the rest in darkness.

As far as Elizabeth could tell in the dim light, the woman's body was already swollen. It was almost greenish because it was much warmer than October than usual for autumn. The skin was greenish and soggy, and the belly bloated with putrefactive gases. The worst part, though, was the awful, putrid smell that floaters gave off.

Elizabeth had noticed the smell as early as ten yards from the shore. The body had been in the water for a few days, and the warm days before had caused it to decompose at record speed. Now it had gotten colder, and the fish had done their part to make the dead woman's visage even further from what it had once been.

Jane raised a steaming paper cup in her hand and held her nose over the coffee, but the aroma could not dispel the stench of corpses.

Nick immediately noticed the body's feet, which were in high heels. High heels that the perpetrator had taped to her feet so they wouldn't fall off- remnants of suspenders were visible on the woman's legs.

"A few days, that one will have been in the water," said Maggie, "small animal feeding defects, but not too many." She pointed to a few patches of skin where fish and crabs had eaten out tiny pieces. "In the spring, there would be more. There are more juvenile fish and insects around then."

Spring, Elizabeth thought. Spring and summer were the times when floaters showed up. First, the body sank, then putrefactive gases formed in its belly, and then it resurfaced like a morbid tether balloon. "Thank you, Dr. Ross," she muttered with lowered brows.

Maggie wore gloves, ignored the exclamation, and pulled the body's jaws apart. "My money's on Eastern Europe," she said, snapping the jaws shut again. "A lot of people, after all, go to Eastern Europe to get their teeth fixed because it's cheaper. It's different here. Lots of amalgams, lots of bridges. You wouldn't do it that way today. But that doesn't mean she doesn't come from the USA. We'll do detailed imaging at BPD immediately and see if we can get the dental status from somewhere."

"What about the nose?" asked Elizabeth next. The spotlight focused once again on the face. Fish had nibbled on the nose, but it was still wholly there. "Then it's not Lisa," she said resignedly.

The redhead shook her head. "No, it's not Lisa. She's too old for that, too."

Elizabeth avoided going deep and frowned a little. "And the rest? From the body, I mean. Can you guys shed some more light?"

Maggie screwed up her face. "If you want to see?" The spotlight changed focus one more time, illuminating the entire corpse.

It was a woman. Naked. The greenish skin of the torso was decomposed and eaten by fish, and parts of the ribs pierced the pale, dissolved skin. Remnants of a lace bra covered parts of her chest. Her feet were tied to the shore with ropes so that her legs were permanently spread. As if, even in death, she awaited her next suitor. Her abdomen was cut open from the breast to the pubic bone. Parts of her internal organs were missing or hanging out of her body. However, the perpetrator had pulled the small and large intestines out of the abdominal cavity and placed them around the body's neck like a rope. Like a sex doll, staged, presented, and punished simultaneously. The whole thing gave a grotesque and horrible sight.

"Strangled with her organs?" muttered Katherine.

Maggie looked at her sister-in-law with raised brows and shook her head. "No, the organ thing was more likely post-mortem," she replied. "The wound edges aren't bled under. The organs are barely decomposed and pitted. He probably cut the body open later and pulled out the intestines. It's as if the perpetrator didn't do this staging until later." Maggie trudged out in her rubber boots with the help of her wife and held onto Elizabeth's arm. "She's got a big impact wound in the back of her skull. Like from a ... sledgehammer. That will have been the fatal blow."

"What about the rose?" asked Nick. Elizabeth had, after all, mentioned on the phone a rose that had been inserted into the victim's vagina.

"Here," Maggie said. She shone her light on the spot. "It's an artificial rose. Maybe so it won't rot in the water."

"So it will still be visible," Katherine murmured another time. "All the more reason then that the rose has symbolic meaning."

"I didn't want to believe it," Jane said with furrowed brows. "But we had three roses now? In the box with the feet, Lisa's, and here?"

Katherine pressed her lips together and nodded. "That's right."

Maggie pulled out her flashlight. "But look here."

Something flashed between the guts that wrapped around the neck like a noose in a gallows. A chain. Silver. With green faux stones.

Jane looked at her daughter long and hard. "What do you mean?"

Elizabeth slowly licked her lips. "Another artifact."

"A cross," Katherine murmured. "The rose and the innocence. And Mary."

"Take her to the morgue first," the chief growled. "Take dental status. Check where the rose came from and that necklace."

The ME Office's men came downstairs with a stretcher and, groaning, made the body lot while Maggie stood beside Elizabeth like Charon, the ferryman, crossing the Styx to his infernal night in the underworld.

"Bloody hell," Jane said as the body was hoisted past her. "Is this the same killer now as Lisa's over the rose? Or another psycho mimicking the original killer? It wouldn't be the first time. And what kind of woman do you think she is? Could be a prostitute, right?"

"Indeed. The suspenders, the bra, the shoe." Katherine stepped a little closer. "Which is also a posing. The perpetrator deliberately dressed her up like that. And he intentionally taped the high heels as if he wanted to point out the woman's profession. Yes." She nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "Murders in the prostitute milieu are not uncommon. And strangulation is also common there. Whores are often strangled with their bras, too."

Jane looked at her younger daughter long and hard. "Here it was, the innards and post-mortem."

"That's true. But both the rose and the strangulation can have meaning. So can the staging as a whore."

"And which one?"

"I'd have to wait for the autopsy on that one." Katherine nodded toward Maggie. "We're about to get started, aren't we?"

The redhead nodded sarcastically. The drivers pulled the stretcher upstairs, where the ME office's hearse was already waiting. "I was already saying goodbye to a restful evening when Liz got the message. What about the media?" she asked as they trudged back up the embankment.

Nick pursed his lips and shook his head. "Nothing for now," he said. "There's no one here."

Elizabeth's eyebrows drew together. "Why should they? It's not that cozy here, and they probably didn't listen to the police radio this time."

Jane gritted her teeth. "Well, how do people know anything? They were wondering the same thing at WikiLeaks. But there's already an investigative angle because of the missing person report. If they can put one and one together, they'll make their own story out of it." She took a deep breath. "Who knows what will come next?"

Elizabeth rolled her eyes.

"Best to save imaginary scenarios like that," Jane said. The sound of an engine could be heard behind her. The hearse labeled Medical Examiner's Office was backing up.

The doors opened, and the stretcher disappeared inside.

"Here we go," Jane said with a sigh. "Next stop, BPD!"