“The killer wore gloves,” Sampson said, still without looking up at me. “Don’t seem to be fingerprints anywhere. That’s what the techie says. First look-through. They both were shot, Alex. Single shot to the forehead.”

I was still looking around the room, collecting information, letting the details of the murder scene flow over me. I noticed an array of hair products: Soft Sheen, Care Free Curl, styling gel, several wigs. On top of one of the wigs was a green army garrison cap with stripes, commonly called a cunt cap among military personnel because it’s said to be effective for picking up women, especially in the South. There was also a pager.

The girls were young and pretty. They had skinny little legs, small, bony feet, silver toe rings that looked like they’d come from the same shop. Their discarded clothes amounted to insignificant little bundles on the bloodied hardwood floor.

In one corner of the small room, there were vestiges of brief childhoods: a Lotto game, a stuffed blue bear that was threadbare and looked about as old as the girls themselves, a Barbie doll, a Ouija board.

“Take a good look, Alex. It gets weirder and weirder. Our Weasel is starting to freak out.”

I sighed and bent down to see what Sampson had discovered. The smaller, and perhaps the younger, of the two girls was lying on top. The girl underneath was on her back. Her glazed brown eyes stared straight up at a broken light fixture in the ceiling, as if she had seen something terrible up there.

The girl on top had been positioned with her face — actually, her mouth — tilted down into the other girl’s crotch.

“Killer played real cute games with them after they were dead,” Sampson said. “Move the one on top a little. Lift her head, Alex. You see it?”

I saw it. A completely new m.o. for the Jane Does, at least the ones I knew about. The phrase “stuck on each other” ran through my mind. I wondered if that was the killer’s “message.” The girl on top was connected to the one underneath — by her tongue.

Sampson sighed and said, “I think her tongue is stapled inside the other girl. I’m pretty sure that’s it, Alex. The Weasel stapled them together.”

I looked at the two girls and shook my head. “I don’t think so. A staple, even a surgical one, would come apart on the tongue’s surface… . Krazy Glue adhesive would work, though.”

Chapter 30

THE KILLER was working faster, so I had to do the same. The two dead girls didn’t remain Jane Does for very long. I had their names before the ten-o’clock news that night. I ignored the explicit orders of the chief of detectives and continued to work on the investigation.