I try to look at this through the eyes of a killer, but the perspective makes me feel dirty and guilty and decayed. “Why did he kill these two girls differently than the others?” I say, thinking aloud.

The doc arches a brow as if to say, Don’t ask me.

Glock comes up beside me. “Maybe this guy’s a sexual sadist. Came here for the girls, killed the rest of the family because they were potential witnesses or they were in the way.”

I look at Doc Coblentz. “Were the girls raped?”

The doc nods. “There’s some chafing visible, but the lighting is too bad for me to draw any kind of definitive conclusion. I really don’t want to rule on that until I get them to the morgue.”

I study the two dead girls. “There’s a definite sexual element to this,” I say. “But I think there’s something else. Something obscure we’re missing.”

“Like what?” Glock asks.

“I’m not sure. There’s something about way the bodies are displayed. The fact that they’re nude. The torture aspect.” I’m thinking aloud now. Brainstorming. Throwing out theories and ideas. “It’s visual. Almost a theatrical element to it.”

Glock is good at this and we play off of each other. “Was this premeditated?” he asks.

“If he stalked them, he would have known the rest of the family would be here,” I say. “He would have known he’d have to kill them, too.”

“Maybe his compulsion is so strong, collateral damage didn’t matter.”

Doc Coblentz cuts in. “This killer spent a good deal of time torturing these two young women.” He tugs a fresh glove from his crime scene kit and works his fingers into it. “Look at this.”

Glock and I follow him back to Mary Plank’s body. Using a fresh swab, the doctor indicates a series of bright red abrasion-like marks on her buttocks, thighs and breasts. “Those are burns.”

“From a cigarette?” My mind is already jumping ahead to the possibility of DNA on a butt.

“Propane torch.”

“Sick motherfucker,” Glock mutters.

Nodding grimly, the doc directs my attention to several stripe-like bruises about the buttocks and back. “I believe these bruises were caused by that small bat.”

“He burned them. He beat them. Raped them.” I feel that quivery sensation again, as if my stomach is slowly climbing into my throat. “And then he killed them.”

For a moment the only sound comes from the chug, chug, chug of the generator.

Turning away from the girls, I address Glock. “Bag all of those tools and courier them to BCI. I want it there by the time the lab opens for business.”

Glock is already reaching for the crime scene kit where the bags and labels are stored. “I’m on it.”