Free Strip Search by William Bernhardt Page B

I was overruled by O’Bannon, and here you are. I can live with that.”
    “Appreciate it,” I mumbled.
    “And I appreciate the assist you gave us.” He drew in his breath. “But what I said yesterday still goes. If I feel that you’re being unproductive—” He paused ominously. “—or if I get one whiff of a hint that you’ve returned to your old bad habits, I will be in O’Bannon’s office demanding that you be removed so that I can apply the money he’s paying you in a more useful fashion. Understood?”
    “Loud and clear,” I said. “Mostly loud.”
    He blew air through his teeth, sighed, then walked away. My eyes fixed on the back of his head, thinking how neat it would be if people really did have heat vision. While I was trying to calm my jagged nerves, Granger dropped in and practically pushed me off a cliff.
    And into a bottle. Jerk.
    I read the ID file first. It was very preliminary, mostly stuff they’d gotten off the Internet and city records, but there didn’t appear to be any distinguishing characteristics about the victim, much less anything that might inspire someone to have him boiled in oil. He didn’t finish high school; never went to college. He lived in a crummy apartment in a crummy neighborhood and made about ten bucks an hour watching other people sling burgers. He’d been married and divorced once, had four children. There was no evidence of large withdrawals or a connection to drugs or gangs or organized crime or anything else that might cause him to die such a gruesome death. He was, at least on paper, a perfectly average lower-class Gen-Y slacker.
    Why did the killer single him out? Why, given the host of options at his disposal, did he choose to kill him in such a hideous way? Why was it necessary to push his face into the fire? And what was the point of the equation on the grill? I suppose it was possible someone else did that, an employee with a math fetish or something. But that didn’t ring true to me. It was the killer. It was all part of…something. But what?
    I was desperate to call Darcy. He was the math savant, after all. He stood a far greater chance of deciphering that message than anyone on Granger’s detective squad. But I had promised O’Bannon I’d keep him out of it, and I certainly didn’t want to give anyone an easy excuse to grant Granger’s fondest wish and can my ass. I’d have to think of something else.
    The second file was even stranger than the first. The body had been discovered early this morning by a homeless man in an alley between two department stores on the north side, more than twenty miles from the restaurant where the murder took place.
    What the hell sense did that make? Why not just leave the corpse where it was instead of dragging it twenty miles across town? There didn’t appear to be anything special about this alley. It wasn’t even a good hiding place; the body was bound to be found. And it was just off a busy street that had nightclubs and bars and other places with heavy nighttime traffic. Somebody took a hell of a risk depositing the body there.
    Why? Why go to all that trouble and incur so much danger just to leave the body…nowhere special?
    I hadn’t a clue. I stared at the photo of the victim, then closed my eyes and let my mind wander, but nothing came. It just didn’t make any sense.
    But it must’ve made sense to the killer. He must’ve had a reason. And my instincts told me that if I could figure out that reason—then I could figure out the killer. And if I could figure out what made this guy tick, maybe I could catch him.
    But so far, I was at square one. Maybe not even there.
     
     
    LIKE SEVERAL OTHER YOUNG WOMEN in Vegas, Danielle Dunn made porn films; in fact, she’d been doing it for twelve years. But she wasn’t the usual statistic, the pathetic drug-addicted nitwit who gave the camera one humiliating pose after another just to get a little chump change from the man. She was the man.
    It hadn’t