They parked in sight of the receiving zone and got out of the car. Vince sucked in the night air, filling and emptying his lungs several times. It was the last fresh breath they would have until the autopsy was over.

“Okay, fellas,” he said to Dixon and Mendez. “Before we go in, I have to tell you about my capacity here. ISU can’t take your case yet. Right now, it would be a stretch to say it meets the criteria enough to warrant assigning an agent while they’re swamped with bigger cases.”

Dixon gave him the eagle-eye. “Then what are you doing here?”

“I think it’s only a matter of time before you have another body. This latest murder demonstrates your UNSUB has a pretty advanced and sophisticated fantasy he’s acting on. That didn’t develop overnight. He’s killed before. He’ll kill again. I’d like to help you nail this creep before you’ve got a big body count, not after.”

“If Investigative Support wouldn’t take the case, and you’re one of the founding fathers of Investigative Support,” Dixon said, “then you’re here…?”

“Under the radar,” he admitted. “I’ll help as much as I can help.”

“Out of the kindness of your heart?” Dixon asked.

“Not exactly,” Vince said. “I’m exploring the possibilities of continuing education of law enforcement personnel in the field as an extension of what we do at the National Academy.”

Sounded good-as long as Dixon didn’t have a line to his higher-ups in the Bureau to check it out.

“Correct me if I’m mistaken,” Vince said, “but I don’t think either one of you has direct experience with this kind of killer. I have more than most people could ever stomach in three lifetimes. I have access to every resource and contact ISU has. I’m just not here in an official capacity.

“So, if you’re worried about me attracting attention,” he said specifically to Dixon, “trying to take over your case, you can relax.”

“Good to know,” Dixon said, holding back questions and skepti cism. Vince could feel it. He could see it in Dixon’s body language. But the sheriff would put it aside for now. He had an autopsy to go to. He turned and headed for the building.

Vince and Mendez fell in half a dozen paces behind.

“So, what’s the long story?” Mendez asked. “You look a little rough, Vince.”

Vince laughed. He had seen himself in the men’s room mirror. “I look like shit, kid. I’ve got an ulcer.” Which was true. He had an ulcer from eating painkillers instead of food.

“Airplane food,” he said, rolling his eyes. “It’s nothing to worry about. God knows how I managed not to have one until now.”

Mendez looked suspicious. “You’re okay?”

“Perfect.”

“You grew a mustache,” Mendez said meaningfully.

“Just trying to blend in with you local boys,” Vince said. “Let’s go look at your stiff.”

The first impression of the LA County morgue was the smell. The ventilation system wasn’t great, but the amount of dead bodies processed through was. No one in the receiving area seemed bothered by it.

Dixon was shooting the breeze with a group of coroner’s assistants sitting at a long white table as they waited for their next delivery. When it arrived, the body would be measured, fingerprinted, photographed, wrapped in plastic, and put in cold storage, where it would wait its turn for an autopsy if an autopsy was deemed necessary. In the meantime, they took a little break to chat, drink coffee, and listen to the bug zapper sizzle.

“Busy day?” Dixon asked, helping himself to the carton of malted milk balls on the table.

“The usual,” said a burly assistant, a bald man the size of a bear, with blue tattoos up and down arms as thick as small tree trunks. He had the demeanor of a man who had been around the morgue for a long time. The kind of guy who could roll in a maggot-riddled corpse, then sit down and eat an egg-salad sandwich.

The lone female assistant, a cute brunette twentysomething, said, “Fourteen field calls, three homicides, four suicides, and six accidental deaths.”

“And a partridge in a pear tree?” Vince asked.

The girl laughed.

“Get this,” the burly guy said. “Two of the accidental deaths were guys that fell out of trees while trying to rescue cats. Dumb shits. Who ever saw a cat skeleton up in a tree? The damn things will get down when they want.”

“They were probably trying to impress their girlfriends,” Vince said.

The girl rolled her eyes. “Any woman who wants a guy that stupid should be taken out of the gene pool.”

Vince flashed a grin at her. “Now where’s your sense of romance?”

She laughed again. “I don’t bring it here.”

“Anyone seen Mikado?” Dixon asked.

“Third suite,” the big guy said. “He’s waiting for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Good to see you, Cal.”

“You too, Buck.”

Vince winked at the girl, pleased that she winked back. Maybe he didn’t look so bad after all.

He fell in step beside Dixon.

“You pulled some big strings to get your vic bumped to the head of the line in this place.”

The LA County morgue was legendary. Open 24/7/365, something like twenty thousand autopsies were conducted there every year. There were around two hundred fifty corpses stacked on stainless steel shelves in the crypt on any given day.

“I spent a lot of years spinning those strings,” Dixon said. “If there was ever a time to pull them, it’s now.”

They went into one of the three autopsy suites and slipped into yellow gowns and booties, and white surgical masks so as not to contaminate or be contaminated. The pathologist and his staff were in blue gowns. Some wore goggles or face shields. One wore a small gas mask. Introductions were made by Dixon.

“Mik, this is my detective Tony Mendez and Special Agent Vince Leone, FBI. Tony, Vince: Assistant Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner Dr. Mik Mikado. “

Mikado was the one in the gas mask. He raised his eyebrows. “Wow. You’re bringing in the BIG guns, Cal.” He nodded to Vince. “Pleased to meet you. I’m a big fan.”

Vince rolled his eyes. “No autographs, please. I’m just here helping out. There’s the star of this show,” he said, nodding toward the dead woman laid out naked on the stainless steel table. “Let’s see what she has to say.”

They settled into the serious business. On the far side of the suite, another autopsy was well under way, the coroner and assistants moving quietly around one another, like dancers performing the same choreography for the hundredth time. A bone saw whined. Steel instruments clanked against steel trays. One of the gowned people approached the table with a huge red-handled tree pruner for cutting ribs.

Mikado began the visual examination.

Lisa Warwick had been a pretty girl in life: dark hair, heart-shaped face, curvy body. The final chapter in her life, however, had not been pretty at all. She had been tortured over who knew how long a period of time. She had been missing as many as ten days. Vince had never known of a serial killer who showed his victims a good time before he killed them. And this one was no exception.

The woman’s torso was a macabre artist’s palette of purple, blue, green, and yellow-severe bruising, particularly to the breasts and lower abdomen. The beating had been inflicted over the course of days according to the variations in color.

Her tormentor had used a fine-bladed knife to inflict deep cutting wounds all over her body, from the soles of her feet to her fingers to her breasts. The first finger of the left hand was missing. Her nipples had been excised.

Her killer had probably kept the parts to help him relive the event. He may have even incorporated them into his daily life somehow. The infamous murderer Ed Gein, “The Butcher of Plainfield,” who had operated in rural Wisconsin in the 1950s, had used the skin of his victims to make lampshades, among other things. Or this killer might have ingested the body parts in a ritual intended to make his victim become a part of himself.