We move closer to the nearest victim, Mary Plank. She’s about fifteen years old with the slender body of a girl on the brink of womanhood. Not yet an adult, not a child, but that special place in between. She probably still played like a kid. But her adult dreams were just forming in her head. She was pretty, with a kind face. It’s unbearably difficult to look at her and think of how she must have been. Sweet. Innocent. Undamaged by life. I can’t imagine the horrors these girls must have endured. I cannot fathom such brutality.

Gently, he places his hand against the girl’s lower abdomen, between the pubis bone and the navel. With a long, cotton-tipped swab, he indicates the jagged mouth of a hideous wound. Something pink and watery peeking out. Using a wad of gauze, he wipes away some of the blood, and I discern the dark smudge of bruising around the wound.

“The clean lines here indicate the wound was probably made by a knife or some other very sharp instrument,” the doc says.

“She was stabbed in the same area multiple times?” I ask.

“Not stabbed. I believe he opened her abdominal cavity.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I can’t imagine.” He shakes his head. “Who knows what goes on inside the mind of a man capable of this kind of brutality.”

“Can you tell me what killed her?”

“I can’t be sure until I perform the autopsy, but judging from the amount of blood from this wound, it appears as if this is the fatal wound. She probably bled to death.”

“She was alive when he did this?”

“Her heart was still beating. She may have been unconscious due to shock and blood loss. She could have been drugged, so I’ll run a tox.” He motions to her face. “She isn’t gagged; believe me, she would have screamed.”

I imagine I can hear those screams now. “Why?” is all I can manage.

“I don’t know. Perhaps he was trying to retrieve a bullet,” the doctor suggests.

“Maybe.” But the theory doesn’t ring true. It takes a special kind of cold-blooded to cut open a human body. “Seems like it would have been easier to dispose of the body.”

He heaves the sigh of a heavily burdened man. “I don’t know if it’s significant, but this wound is very close to her uterus.”

A shudder runs the length of my body. Unwanted images scroll through my brain. “I wonder if that’s somehow symbolic.”

“Could be.”

“Or maybe he’s a sadist and hates women.”

The doc shrugs. “That’s your area of expertise, not mine.”

I motion toward the second victim. “What about the other girl?”

The doc moves to the second victim. Annie Plank. She was sixteen years old. Slightly heavier. Not as pretty as her sister. It breaks my heart to see these two young lives cut short.