“I hope you’re right.” She returned his stare for a long moment, then said, “Well, now that we’ve gotten all the obligatory territorial bullshit out of the way, let’s get back to work.”

“Getting back to our victims, then. Just give me a minute or two to read through the report from the medical examiner…” He scanned the information.

He turned the pages so quickly, she wondered if he actually read any of it.

“The autopsy reports reveal all the classic signs of asphyxiation. Petechia at the eyes, broken hyoid bone in the throat… and of course the telltale bruising around the neck.” He laid the photos of the four victims side by side across the middle of the desk. “Any other injuries?”

“Lisa Montour had a broken index finger on her right hand. Other than vaginal bruising, signs of the rape, no other injuries.” She rested her elbows on her desk. “And no, no semen, he must have used a condom each time. No bite marks, no saliva, no nothing. We’re trying to see if prints can be lifted off the victims’ skin, but we’re still waiting on that.”

“No other trace?”

“Some fibers on the clothing of each matched, some gray carpet fibers, probably from the trunk of the car he transported them in, but it’s so generic it’s of no help. We know it was from a GMC vehicle that was made between 1998 and 2003, but they haven’t gotten it down any more exactly than that.”

“Your lab person is good?”

“She’s very good. We can meet with her on Monday, if you like.”

“Great.” He glanced at the lab report again. “What’s this trace found in the hair of the first three victims?”

“The threads? We’re not sure. That’s something we’ll ask Tasha about on Monday. She was trying to analyze it, but with the finding of another body, she had to put the fibers aside.”

“I’ll be interested in seeing what it is.” He slipped the files she’d made for him into his briefcase. “I’d like to see the crime scenes if I could. I realize it’s the weekend, if you have plans you can just direct me…”

“No. No plans. I don’t mind. Besides, it’s always good to walk a crime scene after the fact. Sometimes you see things you might have missed the first time around.”

It was almost one in the afternoon when Cass pulled off the side of Bay Lane and parked her car. They’d already walked the marsh where Linda Roman’s body was found, stood in the alley where Lisa Montour had been left, and visited the lonely stretch of beach where Toni DeMarco had been discovered.

“This is where the last victim was found,” she told Rick as she got out of the car. “We’ve already photographed everything, so you don’t have to watch where you walk.”

Rick opened the passenger door and stepped out onto the soft sandy shoulder.

“You probably got some good prints along here, as soft as the sand is,” he commented.

“Not as good as you might think. It’s soft now because it rained yesterday morning and it’s been cloudy ever since. The day we found her, it was hard-packed.”

He followed her along the side of the road.

“This road doesn’t appear to be heavily traveled. Is there more traffic along here during the week?”

“Not really. It leads to the remains of an old lighthouse. Hardly anyone comes this way anymore. You might get some people crabbing off the bulkhead, but not at night. The pier was taken down a few years ago-it was so badly deteriorated, it was an accident waiting to happen. There are no houses down here, it’s too swampy to build on. There’s no nice beach, the water comes right up to the marsh along here. So there’s not much reason to be down here, especially at night.” She stopped and pointed to the ground. “This is where we found her. You saw the photos, you know that she was posed right out in the open.”

Rick stared at the place where Yvonne Hunt’s body had been found.

“It would’ve taken a few minutes to have gotten the pose just so, wouldn’t you think?” he asked. “He must have felt pretty confident that no one would be coming along while he was doing it.”

“You’re thinking that he must be local.”

“Would an outsider know that this is a road to nowhere? Would a stranger to the area risk being seen by taking the time he’d need to lay her out the way he did?”

“I wondered, too. As a matter of fact, I mentioned it to the chief. But before you start thinking that this narrows the field, you should know a couple of things. First of all, during the season, our population increases greatly. Remember that we’re a resort town. We get a lot of renters starting Memorial Day weekend. Renters and summer people who move down in June and stay right on through September. And keep in mind, a lot of folks have rented here for years. Add to all that the fact that there’s a big high school reunion next week, and you have a lot of people who are well acquainted with the traffic patterns.”

“What year reunion is it?” he asked.

“All years. They just built a new high school, and they’re taking down the old one. So we have people coming down from the 1930s classes clear on through to last year’s class.”

“Swell,” he muttered. “Not much chance of narrowing it down, is there?”

“We can maybe eliminate certain years. I mean, I doubt anyone past the age of, say, sixty-five or so would have been strong enough to overcome our last victim. She’d been taking karate lessons for about four months, so she had some basic skills in self-defense. Someone too much older would have had a tough time with her. I’d have expected to see more defensive wounds on her. As you know, there were none.”

“Maybe we should bring in one of our profilers, get a little insight into this guy, get some ideas as to why he’s doing what he’s doing.”

Cass shrugged. “Fine with me.”

“I’ll call and see what we can arrange. Maybe we can get someone here early in the week. Hopefully by then we’ll know what that trace fiber is, the threads that were found in the vics’ hair.”

“You think that might be important to the profiler?”

“I think whatever it is, it’s part of what he needs to do to make this thing work for him.”

“His signature.”

“Yes. I think whatever it is, it has to do with his signature.”

“Did you want to look around a little more?” She gestured vaguely.

“What’s back this way?” Rick tilted his head to the right.

“It’s a bird sanctuary.”

Rick parted the rushes that grew almost to the roadway and walked farther into the marsh. Cass leaned back against the car, waiting for him to return. Two days ago she’d walked the entire length of the fence that enclosed the bird sanctuary. She knew he’d find nothing of interest there.

“Any other way in?” he asked as he walked toward her.

“There’s a dirt road about a half mile up toward the highway. It winds through the marsh, sort of a loop, then out again on the opposite side.”

“What’s the main attraction?”

“In the sanctuary?” She thought it over, then replied, “I guess the blinds are pretty popular during the migration times-we’re just coming to the end of one of those. Heavy bird migrations mid- to late-April through mid-June, then again in the early fall. There’s a big bird count on New Year’s Day every year. And there’s a cabin where you can buy bird books, bird calls, that sort of thing. You can ride through in your car, follow the loop around, or you can stop at the observation posts. There are several of those. Places where you can get out of your car and walk a sort of wooden boardwalk farther into the marsh.”

“Sounds as if you’re well acquainted.”

“My mother was part of the group that petitioned the state to set up the sanctuary. It was her favorite place. She spent a lot of her spare time here, training guides, walking the wetlands to look for injured birds, tracking rare birds and photographing them. She even worked in the gift shop when they got shorthanded, though she much preferred being outside.”