She had one of the most incredible bodies he had ever seen but, up top, had a very ordinary face. Because of that the guys, apparently, didn’t find her intimidating.
She had a sleazy, in-your-face routine.
Not afraid of body contact.
Draven laid a five on the stage and waited for his turn. She responded by straddling his shoulders with her legs and rubbing her crotch in his face.
Not close to his face.
Actually touching.
He tipped her another five, then bought her a drink when she came off stage. When she hit him up for a private dance he said, “Sure.”
She took him to the back of the club, sat him in a dark booth facing the wall, and let him feel her up.
“Do you ever give any really private dances, off-site?” he asked.
She ran a finger down his scar.
“Maybe.”
Draven pulled two hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet and handed them to her. “There’s eight more where that came from,” he said. “Are you interested?”
“Very.”
She gave him her cell phone number and he told her he’d call her within the next couple of days.
“You won’t be sorry,” she said. “I don’t watch the clock or anything.”
The coroner-a small serious man named Robert Nelson who had a perpetual hint of whiskey on his breath-called Teffinger shortly after two in the afternoon. He confirmed a lot of the puzzle pieces that Teffinger already suspected.
The head of body number three did in fact belong to Rachel Ringer, according to her dental records.
The other Jane Doe, body number four-who Teffinger suspected to be a 19-year-old by the name of Catherine Carmichael based on the date of her disappearance-was in fact who he suspected. Again, according to dental records. Her eyes had been gouged out postmortem, after her throat got slashed.
Body number two-Tonya Obenchain-who showed no exterior signs of trauma, died by suffocation.
Then the coroner dropped a bomb.
“Going back to Rachel Ringer,” Nelson said, “whoever took her head off used some kind of a saw with a jagged blade.”
Teffinger spun an empty coffee cup around on his desk.
He already knew that.
“A hacksaw?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” the coroner said. “The jags appear to be too big. I’m thinking something more in the nature of a wood saw.”
“Ouch,” Teffinger said.
“That word, unfortunately, is probably pretty appropriate,” Nelson said.
The man’s voice trembled.
Teffinger had never heard him like this before and stopped spinning the cup. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean is,” Nelson said, “the guy cut her head off while she was still alive.”
Teffinger stood up.
“Tell me you’re screwing with me,” he said.
No response.
“Are you serious?”
Nelson confirmed that he was.
Very serious.
“Well, what kind of sick ass does that?”
“I don’t know,” Nelson said. “But there’s more. From what I can tell, the cutting started, stopped, and then started again. A number of times.”
Teffinger paced.
Sweat dampened his forehead.
“He took his time,” the coroner said. “He started on one side of the neck and worked his way in. Then he shifted over to the other side and did the same thing. It seems that each cut only went in a quarter of an inch or so at a time.”
Teffinger kicked his trash can and sent it rolling across the room.
“Goddamn it!”
“I’m thinking he purposely avoided the front throat area so she wouldn’t drown in her own blood,” Nelson said. “He also avoided the back spinal area. Maybe because he wanted to watch her kick and didn’t want to paralyze her.”
Teffinger pictured it.
Then noticed that his hands were trembling.
“How long did it take?” he asked. “All told?”
“A while,” Nelson said. “Even after he hit the aorta and she started bleeding to death.”
“Is that how she died then? Bleeding to death?”
“No. She died when he cut through her spinal cord,” Nelson said. “If she’d bled to death, she wouldn’t have had as much blood left as we found.”
It was at that moment that Sydney stepped into the room and motioned at him.
“CNN’s here,” she said. “They’re getting set up.”
Teffinger told Nelson he’d call him back later and hung up. He hadn’t taken two steps toward the door when his phone rang. He almost didn’t answer it but did.
It turned out to be a nurse from the hospital, Denver Health.
“Marilyn Black is ready to be released,” she said. “Short-term, she’s okay. But if she doesn’t get into a rehab program ASAP, we’re going to be seeing lots more of her-us or the coroner. She got really lucky this time.”
Teffinger already knew that.
“I’ll be down in about a hour to pick her up. Is that okay?”
It was.
The CNN interview turned out to be a lot more brutal than Teffinger initially envisioned. The questioning focused on why the other three bodies hadn’t been discovered when the first one was. They also wanted to know if there were any suspects yet-which of course there weren’t. Finally, they wanted to know if Teffinger had located the person in the photograph that was being broadcast on the local TV stations and in the newspapers. What was her connection to everything?
He was actually glad they asked about that.