Читать книгу The Secret Price of History - Gayle Ridinger - Страница 14

A Las Vegas policeman was questioning the ER doctor who'd been on duty at Valley Hospital that night. The doctor kept staring at the floor and the policeman was growing increasingly impatient. Forty-eight hours had passed and other than this ER doc he still had no clue as to the victim's identity. No hotel or private individual had phoned in that time to report a room splattered with blood. No missing person report had been filed.

The policeman had checked the FBI archives. There had been a few similar cases in the last few years, all occurring during more or less the same time of year, in Atlantic City, Niagara Falls, and a small town just outside New Orleans. Interpol in Europe had reported an episode in Montecarlo.

'The serial killer of the casinos,' the policeman had thought to himself.

Then he'd seen the listing of two identical murders in South Carolina, where casinos didn't exist. All the bodies had still had shoes on their feet—tremendously high-heeled platform shoes, which may have meant these murdered women had been prostitutes. Certainly they'd all been tortured.

The distinguishing detail about this case was that according to the nursing staff, the victim before her death had muttered something to this Emergency Room doc.

"Maybe she said 'stop him.' Or maybe I just imagined it as she was taking her last breath."

The policeman was disappointed.

"Come on, Doctor. Let's give this girl a name at least."

"What do you expect me to do?" the intern retorted. "The girl doesn't have any more fingers and so no fingerprints. The girl doesn't have any face left, so there's no making up a sketch for the newspapers. She doesn't have teeth so there's no checking dental records. There's only the DNA to go on. So go ahead and check that against all of the population of Nevada and see if you come up with a close relative! You guys will never find the assassin, get it? Never."