Blood Ties by Kay Hooper

“There’ve been more bodies, more victims? Found like these two people were?”
    “Found in similar ways, at dump sites in three states. Victims who were tortured before death.”
    The sheriff was scowling. He leaned back a bit, swore beneath his breath when his chair groaned loudly, and said, “I admit I don’t know much about torture, but we’ve all heard more than we’d like to about it in recent years. I gather this isn’t the sort of torture done to get information?”
    Miranda shook her head. “As far as we’ve been able to determine, the victims possessed no valuable information on any subject of interest, no connections or ties to organized crime or the military or any paramilitary or terrorist organization. They were average, ordinary, everyday citizens, innocent of anything except whatever it was about them that drew the attention of a killer. A killer who apparently likes to watch his victims suffer.”
    “Jesus Christ.” Duncan looked more than a little queasy. “You hear about that kind of thing, see it in the news, but you never expect it to turn up in your own backyard.”
    “We don’t know that it has, especially given this new wrinkle of a pro with sniper training. There’s been no sign of those particular skills up to now. But it’s a possibility, especially if these two victims have no connection to each other and no discernible enemies.”
    “So what you’re telling me is that either your serial killer has wandered into—or through—my little town or else I have a homegrown killer on the wrong side of sanity with a pretty vicious grudge against this man and woman.” Duncan frowned suddenly. “A man and woman who, so far, haven’t turned up on any missing persons reports in the area; I have one of my deputies sifting, for at least the third time, through reports going back a month.”
    “The male victim was probably alive and well yesterday,” Miranda reminded him, “so may not have been missed yet, especially if he lived alone or took regular business trips. The woman, on the other hand…”
    “Dead at least a few days,” DeMarco contributed. “Maybe as long as a week. Even if she lived alone and had no family, she most likely had a job and should have been missed by now.”
    Hollis leaned forward, winced as her chair protested loudly, and said, “Maybe we haven’t cast out a large enough net. These were clearly dump sites, and we have no way of knowing where the vies were actually killed; there’s nothing to say they’re even local.”
    “True,” Miranda agreed. “It was certainly true of at least three of the previous victims, assuming the same killer. Until we get positive I.D.s, we have no way of knowing where they belonged. We should check missing persons reports in a radius of at least a hundred miles.”
    “For starters,” Quentin murmured.
    “I have my people on that already,” the sheriff said. “We’ll expand the search, though.”
    Several chairs squawked as their occupants moved restlessly, and Miranda rose with a rueful smile. “In the meantime, I think we’ve done all we can for today. The B&B is just up the street, isn’t it?”
    “Yeah, three blocks up the hill, an easy walk. And you’ve got two good restaurants between here and there, both serving decent food and both keeping reasonable hours.”
    “We may decide to take your suggestion and set up a kind of command center at the B&B, assuming it’s okay with the management, and the technical specs allow us to use our laptops and other electronics. I’ll call you in the morning and let you know.”
    As the others rose to the accompaniment of creaks and groans, Duncan sighed and said, “I think that’s your best bet. We have some fairly undependable high-speed Internet access here, but Jewel’s place was renovated a couple years back and she installed all the latest tech stuff, including wireless.”
    “Sounds good. You know where we are if anything new turns up overnight; otherwise,