Free Hour Game by David Baldacci

to victim was far greater. However, I think the barrel of the shotgun was near thewindshield when it was discharged, or a total distance of about three feet to Pembroke. The entrance wound on her back has a characteristic scalloped margin, and there are additional satellite lesions as individual pellets separated from the main mass. Because the pellets had to break through the glass, it appears as though the shot was fired from a greater distance than was actually the case.”
    “Why do you think her back was to the windshield?”
    “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 thecrime 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
    O UTSIDE THE POLICE STATION, THE PALE BLUE VW B EETLE 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