Natalie looked across the street. Someone nearby must’ve seen something.
8
The hospitality industry was huge in Burning Lake, with plenty of historic inns and bed-and-breakfasts to choose from. The quirky art galleries, occult bookshops, and artisan bakeries gave the town its eccentric charm. Nestled among the upscale bistros and fortune-tellers was Heal Thyself, a New Age boutique owned by Rainie Sandhill.
Natalie walked in the door and was greeted with soothing music and the scent of patchouli. A hand-painted sign on the wall said, “Don’t Divine and Drive.” The shelves were stocked with everything from crystal balls to bundled herbs for smudging. You could spend hours thumbing through the self-help books and touchy-feely magazines.
Rainie snuck up behind her. “I saw the commotion outside. What’s going on?”
Natalie jumped. “Oh, you startled me, Rainie.”
“Sorry, I have a tendency to do that. My shoes.” She pointed at her hemp-weave sandals. Her T-shirt said, “Make Pot Legal!” In her mid-thirties, with fashionably short ash-blond hair and clear hazel eyes, Rainie wielded considerable clout in this town. She was the associate director of the Chamber of Commerce, and whenever you walked into her store, you’d get an earful about zoning laws and business regulations. “What’s going on out there, Natalie? We’re all freaking out.”
“We’re not sure. That’s why I’m here. Is there a place where we can talk?”
“Sure. Follow me.” Rainie turned toward the employee behind the counter and said, “Ashley, do you mind taking over? I’ll be in my office.”
“No problem,” barely-out-of-college Ashley responded.
Rainie escorted Natalie down a narrow aisle full of astrology guides, magic wands, ceramic pixies, and how-to books on witchcraft. The roomy office at the back of the shop got a lot of sun. Rainie closed the door behind them and told Natalie to take a seat. “So what happened? Who died?”
“We don’t know yet. That’s why we’re asking all the merchants in the area for their surveillance tapes, if you have any.”
“But someone did die?” she repeated.
“I can’t validate any rumors.” News traveled fast in small towns, but Natalie didn’t want to cause a panic. “Can you keep it confidential?”
“Absolutely.”
“We’ve had a fatality. A young woman.”
“Oh my God.” Rainie rubbed her lovely, unlined face. She had a ballet dancer’s body under the turquoise yoga pants and tie-dyed tee, and she was what Natalie’s mother used to call a careless beauty—the kind who smeared her lipstick on her teeth and pulled her hair into a messy ponytail to distract from her loveliness. “Well, of course, you can have our tapes. I’d be happy to hand them over, but my cameras only point into the shop. They focus on the cash register and the aisles. So I don’t know how much help they’re going to be.”
“No views of the main entrance?” Natalie asked, disappointed.
Rainie shook her head. “Plus, I use an old analog system, and we recycle our tapes, so they can get pretty grainy. It’s mostly for catching shoplifters, or God forbid if someone tries to rob us. Nobody’s done that yet, but if they ever did, we’d have it on tape. I tell my girls, just hand over the money and let justice take its course.”
Natalie nodded resignedly and checked her watch. “Okay, we’ll need all your tapes from this past week.”
Rainie furrowed her delicate brow. “I only have the last twenty-four hours. Like I said, it’s an old system. I’ve been meaning to upgrade, but you know how it goes … time slips by so fast. Budget priorities. Listen,” she said, leaning forward confidentially, “Angela’s back at school, still struggling with what happened, but she’s okay. She and Ellie have kept in touch. I’m so glad to hear Ellie’s doing well. How is she?”
“Fine,” Natalie said, shifting uncomfortably in her seat, because she didn’t really know how Ellie was doing. Ellie was slipping away from her. “She likes Manhattan.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Rainie said with a lighthearted laugh. “Well, I guess that old cliché is true. Time heals all wounds.”
Natalie nodded politely, but the thought of her niece hurt like a toothache. At first they’d been so close, texting and calling and emailing each other all the time, telling each other stories about the funny, smart things Grace used to do. Shared memories that made them laugh or cry.
But there were so many painful memories here in Burning Lake—Ellie’s mother was dead, terrible secrets had been revealed, and her best friends had tried to harm her. No wonder Ellie was drifting away. And as she adjusted to her new life in Manhattan with her father, Natalie was unable to bridge the gap created by such an enormous loss. The path back to Ellie felt swampy at best, full of quicksand and slithery stages of grief.
“Angie told me she has a boyfriend now. How great is that?”
Natalie smiled blankly. Ellie hadn’t mentioned any boyfriends the last time they talked. But it was a good thing that the girls were getting along. Angela Sandhill had been hauled before the police and interrogated, but she wasn’t charged with anything. She became an important witness in Berkley’s and India’s trials, which had created a rift between the Sandhills, the Cochrans, and the Auberdines. Nowadays, those three families avoided one another, but Rainie never held a grudge. She wasn’t a spiteful person.
“I told Angela the other day, whatever you do with your life, please do not open a boutique,” Rainie said, casually brushing a few strands of blond hair out of her eyes. “With a brick-and-mortar business, you have to run things super-efficiently or else you’ll fail. It’s not like selling merchandise online. With square footage, you’ve got to hustle and move your wares. Move, move, move. Sell, sell, sell. That’s what it’s all about, I told her. Not about witches or fairy dust or magic.”
Natalie nodded, still thinking about Ellie and letting the conversation stray and unravel, unable to rein it in.
“I work all the time, every day,” Rainie went on. “Even Sundays are for inventory. I almost never clock out, and it’s not just me. We’re all struggling—all of us small businesses here in town. That’s why I’m so anxious about getting the streets cleaned up as soon as possible, you know? We need to open our doors again. I’m not getting rich off this shit. Don’t get me wrong, I love my store. But come on … don’t tell me we have to wait another three or four days before we can be open for business.”
“We’re doing our best,” Natalie said, losing patience along with her focus.
“Oh, I’m sure you are,” Rainie said, backpedaling. “I don’t fault any of you. Least of all you, Natalie. I see you out there working your butt off. I don’t blame the police. It’s just my rotten luck that a dead body shows up across the street, and the cleanup in front of my establishment grinds to a halt.”
“Everyone’s being inconvenienced. It can’t be helped.”
Rainie placed her hand over her heart. “Oh, I sound like such a jerk. Don’t mind me, Natalie. I’m a stress mess. You know what happened to Ned Bertrand, right? After last Halloween? He had a stroke. And I know why. I know what it feels like to wake up in the middle of the night, thinking you’re going to fail. Or you’re going to have to fire half your employees or else lose your business. It happened to Kathy Peterson, too, you know? Bell Book and Cupcakes? Everyone loved those cupcakes. How the hell could she have gone out of business?”
Natalie’s phone buzzed, interrupting them. “Sorry, I have to take this. Hello?”
It was Luke. “Autopsy’s in twenty minutes,” he said.
“Be right there.” She hung up. “Try not to stress about it, Rainie.”
She gave an apologetic smile. “I’ll try not to. Thanks, Natalie.”
“I’ll take those tapes now,” she said, getting up.
9
Sixty-five-year-old Coroner Barry Fishbeck had a large head with fleshy cheeks and a prominent laugh line on one side of his mouth that gave him a permanently skeptical look. This afternoon in the
morgue he wore a long-sleeved gown, a blue surgical cap, a splash shield, shoe covers, and a pair of latex gloves. The lighting inside the autopsy suite was harsh and bright. Merciless, really.
“Ready to proceed, folks?”
Natalie and Luke nodded from the other side of the autopsy table.
Barry adjusted his splash shield and studied the corpse. “We have an unknown Jane Doe,” he said into his digital recorder. “Female Caucasian, five foot three and a quarter, weighing approximately a hundred and five pounds. I’m guessing she’s twenty to twenty-five years old. Hair is a reddish brown. Eye color is blue. There’s a fresh-looking tattoo on her upper left arm near the shoulder. It is inflamed and slightly raised. There’s also a prominent red mark on the underside of her chin … which Detective Lockhart has identified as…” He looked up. “What did you call it, Natalie?”
“A violin hickey,” she responded. “My friend Bella used to have one. Also known as fiddler’s neck. It’s a callus that forms where the violin rests against the chin.”
“So we’re looking at a professional violinist then?” Barry inquired.
“I think so. Calluses on the fingertips of the left hand are from depressing the strings of the violin, which would make her right-handed.”
“Very good,” Barry said, studying Jane Doe’s fingertips.
“She might be a performing artist who was hired to play at one of our venues during Halloween,” Luke said. “I’ve asked Mike Anderson to compile a list of seasonal hires for us—any musicians who play the violin … a fiddle player in a band … a member of a string quartet or chamber ensemble. Hopefully we’ll have a name soon.”
“Fingers crossed.” Barry leaned over Jane Doe and pried open her rigored jaw. It unlocked with a crackling sound that made Natalie wince. “In the meantime, let’s see what else we can learn about her.”
Natalie’s hands gripped the edge of the counter as she steadied herself. The sterile countertop held a tray of surgical tools—forceps, scissors, scalpels, bone saw, a dish for weighing organs, a pair of rib cutters, an electric saw. Not very pleasant, these instruments of death.
“She’s had some dental work done,” Barry observed. “A root canal and six veneers—excellent work. Her overall health appears to be good. There’s an appendix scar. Nothing on the radiographs. No broken bones, fractures, or other injuries. No needle or track marks. She isn’t malnourished. No other scars or birthmarks. As to method of death, I’m not finding any overt signs of a struggle, although there are a few contusions on her limbs and abrasions on both knees. You could get those from falling down or from being pushed down. We did a nail scrape earlier, and there’s something under the nails, but it could just be grease from the dumpster. Either she was thrown in, or she climbed in, or she tried to crawl out, I don’t know … we should know more once we get the lab reports back.”
Jane Doe’s ash-gray hands were sealed inside two plastic bags, and they looked almost sculptural, like art pieces on display.
“What kind of Wiccan symbol is that on her arm?” Luke inquired.
“The tattoo?” Barry said.
“It looks like a witch’s sigil,” Natalie said, swiping through images on her phone. “It’s a personalized occult symbol you can create yourself in order to change certain aspects of your life,” she explained. She showed Luke and Barry the Google results on her screen. “It’s like making a wish while blowing the candles out on your birthday cake.”
“Only it’s more permanent,” Luke added.
“Right.”
“Did you take the print cards yet?” Luke asked Barry, who nodded.
“I gave them to Officer Keegan twenty minutes ago.”
“Which means Lenny should have them,” Luke told Natalie.
“Hopefully we’ll get a match,” she said.
Detective Lenny Labruzzo was in charge of processing all trace evidence at the crime scene, but the victim’s fingerprints took priority. Natalie knew he’d call them the instant he got a hit off the DMV database. In the meantime, Detective Augie Vickers was in charge of searching through the dumpster at the police impound lot, and they’d Express-Mailed the used condom to the state lab for DNA testing, since that was the one thing the unit wasn’t equipped to handle. Natalie secretly wanted to be involved in every aspect of the investigation, but like her father used to say, “Ride the horse with loose reins, as long as it knows where it’s going.” These experienced detectives all knew where they were going.
Natalie narrowed her focus on random details—Jane Doe’s unvarnished nails, her pierced ears, the sparkly silver glitter in her hair. The glitter looked deliberate—part of a costume she’d worn last night. The costume was still missing. Natalie couldn’t help but think—we care so much about how we look, making thoughtful decisions, but then death takes all control away from us.
“No external signs of penetration, anal or vaginal,” Barry said into his recorder. “No apparent trauma, abrasions, or contusions to the area. No semen stains showing up in the black light.” He peeled off his gloves. “There’s no overt evidence of rape, but I won’t know definitively until we’ve done a complete rape kit and get the swabs back from the lab. I’d say that overall, these minor lacerations and contusions could’ve happened at any point last night, due to rambunctious partying, but it could also be due to physical assault. I haven’t found any evidence to declare this a homicide yet. No broken hyoid bone or other evidence of strangulation. No blunt trauma to the head, no penetrating wounds, no deep bruising to the neck or abdomen. There was a bit of vomitus in her mouth. It’s possible she died from a drug overdose or alcohol poisoning, but we’ll have to see what the tox screen says.” He pulled off his headgear. “During the next phase of the autopsy, I’ll be collecting fluids for the toxicology report—blood, urine, vitreous. I’ll be drawing blood from various parts of the body, including the eyeball, the femoral vein in the leg, and heart blood. I’ll be collecting tissue samples from the liver, brain, lungs, and kidney, plus any stomach contents. We should know more once we get the toxicology results back.”
“How long will that take?” Luke asked impatiently.
“Two or three weeks is standard, but since time is of the essence, I’m putting a priority rush on it. There’s usually a backlog, but the mayor called this morning to inform me of the significance of the case … we can’t have healthy young women dying on our watch during our biggest tourist season, now can we? That would be a disaster for the whole town.”
“How extensive a tox screen are you talking about?” Natalie asked.
“Given the nature of the festivities … we’ll be testing for opiates, amphetamines, sedatives, marijuana, alcohol, barbiturates, party drugs—in short, everything under the sun,” Barry assured her. “Legal or illegal substances. We’ll also be looking for any drug interactions that could’ve depressed her heart rate and breathing. It’s the same kind of extensive drug-testing an emergency room might perform for a patient showing signs of an overdose. We’ll be asking for a thorough clinical toxicology.” Barry picked up a scalpel and made a deep Y incision across Jane Doe’s chest. Then he picked up a pair of rib cutters and said, “This next phase is going to take a while.”
Luke and Natalie exchanged a look. Neither one wanted to stick around for the procedure. Barry would spend the next couple of hours performing the rape kit and an internal exam, cutting through the viscera with a pair of scissors and weighing each organ before placing everything into a plastic bag for its return to the body. When that was done, he would sew everything back inside, then store Jane Doe in a refrigerated room until the investigation was over and the funeral home could collect the body for burial.
“Keep us posted,” Luke told Barry, then motioned Natalie outside.
They found the exit door and stood on the cement steps, where they had a good view of the eastern end of downtown. Crews were still picking up garbage. The city was paying for the entire cleanup effort out of its annual budget. No one complaine
d about the extra expense, since all those tourist dollars were a welcome boost to the town coffers. But today, the stores were shuttered and traffic was thin. Burning Lake was in recovery mode, with plenty of merchants sleeping in. Despite Rainie’s concerns, most people preferred a few days off after four frantic weeks of rampant consumerism.
“We need to identify her as quickly as possible,” Luke said. “Find out if any local venues are missing a violinist. Also, we should talk to all the local tattoo parlors…”
“You remember Bella Striver, don’t you?” Natalie asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Luke said with a nod. “I was a teenager when Joey invited me over for spaghetti dinner and Bella was playing the violin in the backyard. You and your sisters were sitting together on the hammock, swinging your legs in perfect symmetry to the music. She was like … what? Six years old?”
Natalie smiled. Bella was a pixieish beauty with sparkly eyes and a bouncy smile who used to spend three or four hours a day practicing her violin. The Striver family legend was that when Bella was a toddler, she picked up her father’s violin and knew exactly what to do without being told. A natural. A child prodigy. Her father—a former wunderkind himself—was a strict disciplinarian who used to prompt Bella to show off her skills. “Play the Vivaldi for them, and then Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Flight of the Bumblebee.’” He was obsessively attentive and extremely harsh in his criticisms. Over the years, he lost sight of who Bella really was—a normal girl—and, in Natalie’s opinion, that was what eventually drove her away from him.
“My violin is practically my lover,” Bella once complained when they were hanging out as teenagers. “It’s so stupid! Dad has big plans for me, but I just want to be a girl and do girlie things, like makeup and dating. Instead, I have no social life, because he wants me to be the next Hilary Hahn or Sarah Chang.” Bella was hurt, more hurt than anyone Natalie knew, and that pain was in her music.
The Wicked Hour Page 5