by Leslie Wolfe
“Doc, do you have a time of death yet?” Elliot asked.
“I’d say, forty-eight to seventy-two hours, not more.”
“Sunday evening, then?”
“Just Sunday; not sure if evening or morning. He’s been out in the rain the entire time, and the water was cold. It slowed the decay process and kept the carrion feasters at bay some.” He turned the folder he was holding the other way around for Elliot’s benefit. “See the discoloration here, and here?” he asked, pointing to a section of the man’s abdomen, captured in the photos attached to his report. “He was dumped there immediately after death and hasn’t been moved. But your primary crime scene—”
“Is anyone’s guess where that might be,” Elliot muttered, shifting the mints around in his mouth to resist a wave of smells that invaded his nostrils when the doctor drew near. Formaldehyde seemed to ooze from the man’s pores together with the smell of stale flesh. He almost dry-heaved but concealed the spasms of his stomach as a cough he covered in the crook of his elbow. Taking a few steps back, he found the tin of mints in his pocket, and threw a few more in his mouth.
Dr. Whitmore watched him with a slight frown. “Why didn’t you say so?” He reached on a shelf and offered him a small jar of Vicks VapoRub for children. “Put some under your nose.”
Elliot felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment. The man must’ve thought him a sissy, a greenhorn fixin’ to lose his lunch at his first rodeo. But he didn’t argue, nor did he pretend he was double-backboned when it came to the doc’s fiefdom. Whatever it was about dead people, he had an issue with it and had known it all his life. Probably was gonna die with it too, unable to change or grow accustomed to it like Kay had. She was a natural; whatever she set her mind to do, she did.
“Thanks,” he muttered, applying a generous amount under his nostrils and finally breathing normally.
“You’ll thank me some more in just a minute,” the ME said, a hint of a smile fluttering on his lips. “I found some evidence on the body.”
“After all that rain?” Elliot whistled his admiration. “You could find a whisper in a whirlwind, Doc,” he added, smiling widely and touching the brim of his hat with two fingers in a gesture of respect.
Doc Whitmore laughed, a soft, quiet laugh that brought myriad lines around the corners of his tired eyes. “I don’t think that’s true, but I found a long hair fiber, and we got lucky. It had the follicle still attached, and that means DNA.”
Elliot frowned. “A woman’s hair? You said long, right?”
“Yes, very, sixty-eight centimeters to be exact. Not sure yet if it’s a woman’s, but that’s a strong possibility.”
Elliot frowned. What did sixty-eight centimeters mean when it came to describing a suspect?
“Mid-back length,” Dr. Whitmore added, as if reading his mind, “brown and straight. I found some carpet fibers too, in the creases of his jacket and pants. It could be from a car, but I can’t confirm yet. Gray blue in color and polyester, that’s all I can tell you right now.”
Elliot nodded once, impressed. He stood and thanked him, getting ready to leave, but the doc picked up a small evidence pouch from the tray and showed it to him. It held a business card from a local psychiatrist with an appointment time and date, bent and softened and blurred by water but still in one piece, albeit barely legible.
“The chest pocket on his jacket was double-pouched. Found this inside. John Doe had a shrink.”
Slack-jawed, Elliot wondered how he could’ve missed it when he’d searched the body. In his defense, the rain had been coming down hard, the fabric of the vic’s jacket was soaked and sticky. It was nothing short of a miracle the card was still legible.
Elliot felt invigorated, chomping at the bit to go out there and find who his John Doe really was. He took a photo of the card with his phone, then of the vic’s face. “This might be faster than your DNA, Doc,” he said, hoping the medical examiner wouldn’t find his comment insulting.
But Dr. Whitmore was already putting on fresh gloves, getting ready to continue his exam.
16
Call
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” The operator’s voice was a woman’s, sounding calm and experienced.
The staticky recording played on Kay’s laptop. She sat at her desk, leaning into it, volume at maximum, nervously running her sweaty palms against her thighs, hanging on every word. The bullpen had fallen eerily silent, the two deputies and Logan huddled behind her, listening. Even the drunk and disorderly in lockup stood still, clutching the bars of his cage and finally shutting up.
“Hello?” Kay recognized Heather’s voice on the call. She was whispering and whimpering at the same time, her voice strangled by fear and loaded with tears. “Are you the police? Can you come?” she asked, against a backdrop of distant, muffled dialog and someone’s rushed footsteps fading away.
“What’s going on?” the operator asked. Kay had learned from the email forwarded by her boss that the operator, by the name of Carrie Keifer, was a veteran of the emergency communications center, with fifteen years on the job.
“He’s come to take my sister,” Heather whispered between sniffles. “Please,” she begged, “he’s gonna take Julie.”
“Who is going to take her?”
“I—I don’t know,” the girl said, sadness strangling her as if she’d felt guilty for not knowing. “Julie told me to call you.”
“What’s your name?”
“Heather.” She gasped and whimpered right after a loud bang was heard in the distant background.
“How old are you?” Carrie asked, the inflections in her voice a hint kinder.
“I’m eight,” Heather replied. “Will you come?”
There was a brief pause on the call, while Carrie might’ve put her on mute and called someone else or checked her systems.
Emergency communications operators had an array of systems at their fingertips. They could efficiently dispatch first responders, locate an address on a map, triangulate the position of a mobile phone, and interact with local law enforcement, all while the caller was on the line. The procedure was simple. Pinpoint the location, verify it, validate there is an actual emergency, then send responders. Somewhere in this simple procedure, things had taken a wrong turn that had cost Cheryl her life. Maybe Julie’s too. They better have a darn good explanation for that.
“Yes, someone will come soon. Who’s in the house with you?” Carrie had asked, her voice a little muffled. Her headset mic might’ve shifted, or something else was happening. In the background, Kay could hear the operator typing fast, while at the same time the dialog continued in Cheryl’s house, voices raised, Cheryl’s pitch one of fear and alarm. She couldn’t make out what she said, though; the call recording was of poor quality, loaded with static, which made no sense in the digital era. It might’ve come from the call recording system itself, and it might need the help of a technician to eliminate the sound frequencies that kept her from discerning what was said by Cheryl and the unsub.
“Heather,” Carrie said, “who’s there with you?”
“My mommy and my sisters,” Heather replied. Kay could hear her shallow, rapid breathing against the mouthpiece. She must’ve been terrified, scared out of her mind. “A bad man came.”
“Who is that man? Do you know him?”
“Umm,” she hesitated, then said something unintelligible. “Please come quick.” Then, in a muted voice, “Erin, no. Don’t go downstairs.” The thump of something hitting the floor, then Erin crying for a brief moment, until the cries became muffled. “Be quiet,” Heather whispered. But the phone seemed now remote, probably abandoned on the floor while she’d taken care of her sister. “You can’t let him hear you.”
Those words tugged at Kay’s heartstrings.
“Monster,” Erin’s crying voice was heard, barely intelligible.
“Shhh,” Heather’s voice, wobbly and broken, still sounded distant.
“Hello? Are you still with me
?” Carrie intervened. “If you can hear me, say something.”
“Yes,” Heather whispered after some distinctive noises told Kay she’d picked up her phone again. In the background, she could hear the clattering of falling objects crashing on the floor and a long screech as if a piece of furniture was being dragged over the tiles; maybe a chair, or perhaps the table was being pushed. Gasps, grunts, and shouted words she couldn’t comprehend, the sounds of the fierce struggle between Cheryl and her attacker.
Cheryl was about to be murdered.
“What’s your address? Where do you live?” Carrie asked. “What color is your house?”
“I live in Angel—”
At that moment, Julie screamed, her shriek blood-curdling. A heavy thump followed, probably the sound of Cheryl’s body hitting the ground.
“Hello?” Carrie asked. “Are you still with me? I need your address.” Her calm was wearing off, undertones of alarm coloring her voice.
For what seemed like forever, the muffled struggle sounds continued in the distance, the occasional yelps and wails from Julie making it clearly across the crashes and grunts and the clunking of objects landing on the floor. Heather’s breathing had accelerated, and her whimpers were louder, fearful, panicked. Julie must’ve fought her attacker fiercely; she’d been able to resist a good thirty-two seconds. She screamed once more, but her scream ended abruptly in a gasp as if she’d been hit in the stomach. She called for her mother in a weak, shaky voice. Then she called again, louder, but half a heartbeat later, a blow silenced her, followed by the unmistakable thud of an inert body hitting the ground.
Kay’s blood froze in her veins. Was Julie still alive? Had she survived that blow? She had to assume yes, being she’d been taken from the scene. But she could be hurt or incapacitated in the hands of a stone-cold killer.
“Hello?” Carrie had called, but Heather didn’t respond. Only her fast breathing and muffled sobs were heard, while in the background, the killer had opened the side door, its hinges making a recognizable, loud squeak that Kay had noticed during her visits to the crime scene. Then Kay heard the even more distant hum of an engine coming to life. Car doors opening and being slammed shut, before the engine sound faded away.
“Hello?” Carrie kept insisting, but Heather had fallen silent, only her shattered gasps for air telling Kay she still held the phone in her hand.
Footsteps, hesitant and shuffled, and quiet whimpers were all that was heard for a long moment, sprinkled here and there with the familiar squeaking of old hardwood being stepped on. Then Heather’s voice, calling, “Mommy?”
Then the call ended, leaving the bullpen eerily silent for a beat.
“Well, that’s a Ford F-150 diesel, if I’ve ever heard one,” the wino said.
One of the deputies walked over to the lockup and pounded his fist against the bars. “When we want your opinion, we’ll ask for it. Now shut the hell up.”
“When’s he due for arraignment?” Sheriff Logan asked Deputy Hobbs, tilting his head toward the prisoner.
“Not till three,” Hobbs replied with a frustrated scoff. “Something to do with backlogs and a judge being out with a bad case of the flu. But I believe he’s right. I drive a diesel Ford truck, and it sounds just like that.”
Kay played the end of the call again.
“Yup, that’s it,” Hobbs said. “Ford truck, diesel.”
“And new too, if you schmucks are willin’ to listen. That baby that’s purrin’ on your recorded call is a V6 turbo diesel B20 with autostart-stop technology,” he recited, pride filling his voice.
Kay stood and walked closer to the lockup, instantly regretting it when the smell of metabolized alcohol and stale urine hit her nostrils. The man grinned, showing some stained teeth, then wiped his palms against his shirt as if she was going to shake his hand through the bars.
“Now, how could you possibly know that?” Kay asked.
“’Cause that’s exactly what I drive, and it set me back north of sixty grand,” he replied. “That click you heard, right before the engine turns? That’s the engine block heater kicking in. It comes with autostart, and that’s only available in a 3.0 V6 diesel.” He grunted, then cleared his throat, thankfully refraining from spitting on the floor. “Well, it comes in the 2.7 liter too, but it don’t sound like that.”
Kay stared at him from underneath a frown, wondering how much stock she could put in his statement.
“Wanna hear it for yourself, pretty lady? Go check out the truck you impounded last night after you pulled me over. I only had a couple of beers, and you locked me up like an animal when that murderer’s out there. You should be ashamed of yourselves,” he muttered, “and you call yourselves cops.” This time, a ball of spit landed on the concrete floor with a splat, right by Kay’s shoe.
She ignored it. “You’re saying you have a truck just like the one you think you heard on that call?”
“More like had… now you have it.” He sniffled and quickly ran the sleeve of his dirty jacket against his nose. “Hey, if I’m proven right, do I get a reward or something?”
She’d already left, returning to the desk, a gnawing question still bothering her.
“Why didn’t they respond? I want to speak to that operator.”
“They sent the call disposition report,” Logan said. “They thought it was a hoax, someone eager to get a million hits on social media or something by putting their kid up to it. The phone was a burner, triangulation failed because only a single tower picked it up, and they thought that was done on purpose.”
“How could they possibly believe it was a hoax? Based on what?”
“Because Heather said the perp was going to take her sister. What kind of perp advertises?”
She shook her head in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding me! Have you listened to the call? Does it sound staged to you? And I heard real concern in the operator’s voice.”
The sheriff grimaced in a failed attempt to smile, but she could see she’d overstepped. He straightened his back and thrust his chin forward while his eyes turned steely. When he spoke, his voice was low-pitched and loaded. “Detective, in how many cases have you heard of perps walking into a home and saying, ‘I’ll take one hostage,’ and then naming the one they are planning to take? It never happens like that. The comms center isn’t the enemy here.” He breathed, a long and frustrated sigh. “Toward the end of the call, they decided to respond just to be on the safe side, but they couldn’t get an address. Without triangulation, they had a twenty-mile radius area to cover, with over forty locations whose names start with Angel.” He lowered his gaze for a moment, then looked straight at her. “They even notified us that we might have a nine-one-one call faker in our area. They worked it by the book, Kay.”
She pushed herself away from the desk and stood, pacing angrily. She would’ve loved to teach that Carrie a thing or two about fear and pain, about being all alone in the dark, hiding under a bed, while the people you’re counting on for help just shrug you off like a bad joke. But she wasn’t going to waste another moment on that, not while Julie was still out there.
She had better things to do. One or both of Julie’s sisters had seen the unsub.
17
Scribbles
Julie felt weak and sore, the effort of getting up from the concrete floor taking every bit of energy she had left. She’d lost track of time, her days and nights spent in the equalizing pale light of a yellow lightbulb hanging up high from the ceiling. Not a single ray of sun made it through the cracks of the boarded window; maybe it wasn’t light outside, not anywhere in the world. Not anymore.
She threw a side glance at the bed, made with clean sheets and a comforter that looked so tempting after she’d slept on the floor, but she couldn’t bring herself to go near the bed, as if touching it would’ve unleashed some sort of evil that loomed near it. As if resting in it would’ve made her descend into a new level of darkness, one she could never hope to emerge from.
She
told herself it was better to sleep on the cold floor with her back against the door. As such, no one could surprise her, no one could sneak up on her and—
And what?
What was she terrified of? She hadn’t seen her captor since she’d fought him at her house. She’d woken up alone in that cellar, groggy, her mouth parchment dry, jolts of migraine bouncing around in her head. She’d been drugged. Her mother had taught her about date rape drugs, about how it felt, so she could easily recognize the signs and save herself. Now she knew, for the little good that did her.
The thought of her mom, of the evening she’d given her a pill and asked her to mindfully note how it felt and never forget it, brought tears to her swollen eyes. Julie had been reckless and selfish beyond belief. Just because she didn’t want to believe something was true didn’t make it less of a threat, less likely to happen to her. And now, the image of her mother’s body, lifeless in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, was forever burned into her memory, for as long or as short as her life was going to be.
It wasn’t like she’d made a mistake, no. She’d willfully disobeyed her, disregarded her plea to get ready, so they could leave that evening. After she’d seen what had happened and knowing what she’d done, and after she’d witnessed the lengths her mother had gone to keep her safe, she preferred to ignore the danger, the consequences, just because none of it seemed real. What kind of person does that? What kind of stupid could she be?