Free Dark Harbor by David Hosp Page B

do you mean by ‘sort of’? How long were they dead?”
    “They weren’t. At least not all of them. And the ones that were dead were only killed a moment or two before their hearts were removed.”
    “How can that be?”
    “According to the results of the most recent tests, in each of the earlier victims, there was a mixture of muscle relaxants and local anesthetics. These were mixed pretty skillfully, so that Little Jack could actually operate on the victims while they were still alive. As a result, death didn’t occur until the aorta was severed.”
    “Why would he do that?”
    “You don’t want to know,” Farmalant said. When she scowled at him, he shrugged. “It looks like he was getting better and better at mixing the drugs. In the last three or four victims, prior to the Caldwell girl, the mixture was so professional that the victims could actually have been conscious while he was cutting them.”
    Flaherty felt sick. “You can’t be serious. They were conscious?”
    “Yeah, it’s pretty twisted, isn’t it? It looks like at least some of these women got to watch while this sicko reached into their chests and literally cut out their hearts.”
    Flaherty was glad Natalie Caldwell hadn’t endured the horror of being sliced open while she was still conscious. At the same time, it was a significant departure from Little Jack’s MO, and inconsistencies in method made the investigation harder. It also meant they had to consider again the possibility that this was a copycat killing.
    “Anything else?” Flaherty asked.
    Farmalant nodded. “I’m afraid so. We found semen inside the body.”
    “You mean she was raped?”
    “Well, there’s no way to be sure. She could have had consensual sex before she was killed—either with the killer or with someone else. We found some light bruising around her wrists that could be consistent with her having been bound, but the test wasn’t conclusive. The circumstances of her death obviously suggest rape as a possibility, but there’s no way to tell for sure.”
    “None of the others were sexually assaulted, were they?”
    “Not a single one,” Farmalant confirmed. “It’s starting to look more and more like this is a different guy, isn’t it?”
    “Well, we still don’t know. It may just be he was in a hurry, or something threw him off this time.” Flaherty was rationalizing, and she knew it. The possibility that the killer had raped Natalie created particular problems. Murder motivated by or combined with a sexual impulse was a very different crime, psychologically speaking, from a ritualized serial killing. The absence of a sexual component in the first six killings, combined with the highly sophisticated manner in which the victims were dispatched, suggested a very distinct personality type: intellectual, patient, and controlled. The introduction of a sexual element was at odds with this particular profile. It suggested a lack of control and an absence of patience, and, like it or not, it seemed to support Farmalant’s suspicion that they were dealing with a different killer.
    On the other hand, Flaherty thought, there was no way to tell whether the penetration had occurred before Natalie Caldwell encountered her killer or after. If she had sex with some other person before Little Jack got to her, it would explain the state in which her body was found without being inconsistent with the method of Little Jack’s prior murders. Still, Flaherty knew, it would only explain the crime’s sexual element; it wouldn’t explain the victim’s being strangled to death before her heart was removed, or the difference in the skill with which the heart had been taken.
    “Anything else?” Flaherty asked.
    “That’s not enough?”
    “It’s plenty, but I need to know if there’s more.”
    “Nothing else startling. But these issues—” Farmalant cut himself short when he saw the look on Flaherty’s face. “I just thought you should know.”
    “I appreciate