by Willow Rose
The waves rolled in in nice straight lines. They weren’t big today, but the wind was off-shore, and they were glassy and smooth as I rode them on my longboard. The wind blew the top of the waves off as they broke, and created rainbows in the rays from the sun. I drew in a deep breath and enjoyed every moment of it. To make it perfect, I spotted two dolphins not too far from me. They were chasing fish and making big splashes in the water. I could have stayed like this all day, just surfing and watching nature, but unfortunately, I had to get out and get to work before nine.
I caught one last wave and rode it to the beach, feeling the wind in my face and the thrill of the ride. I usually rode shorter boards, but on small-wave days like this, I enjoyed longboarding. I practiced my cross-steps and made it almost to the tip of the board before I reached the beach. As I came out of the water, I grabbed my board, then turned around and took one last glance at the beautiful scenery, as if to greet the ocean and say thanks before I ran back up and into the shower.
Surfing always made me feel cheerful, and I was still singing when I arrived at the station. A note on my desk told me the medical examiner’s office was done with the initial autopsy. I peeked into Weasel’s office and let her know where I was going, then grabbed one of the department’s cars and drove to Rockledge on the mainland.
The county had recently gotten a new District Medical Examiner, appointed by the Governor, and I hadn’t had a chance to meet him yet. It was very rare we needed their help. It was mostly when tourists committed suicide by jumping off cruise ships and ended washed up on our beaches. Or after bar fights when someone was stabbed. I had liked the former District Medical Examiner, Dr. Parker, but unfortunately, he had retired three months ago and they had to appoint a new one.
I parked in front of the office and walked up. I had put on a hoodie. The temperature today would stay in the high sixties, and I found it to be quite chilly. The sun would probably warm up during the day and make it nice, but for now, it felt good wearing a sweater. In January, you never knew what you’d get. It could go from the low sixties and windy out of the North to the low to mid-eighties in a day or two.
“Jack Ryder. I’m here to see Dr. Díez,” I said to the secretary behind the counter, while reading the last name from my note.
The secretary smiled. “One moment, please.”
I sat down and found my phone. I started going through my emails and answering as many as possible before a door finally opened and someone stepped out.
“Mr. Ryder?” a voice said.
I stood up. In front of me stood a woman in her mid-forties wearing a white coat. Her thick dark brown hair was gathered in a bun on the back of her head. She was short and slightly overweight. Her brown eyes stared at me.
“Mr. Ryder?” she repeated, and reached out her hand. I grabbed it. “I’m Dr. Díez, District Medical Examiner. Shall we take a look?”
Chapter Seventeen
January 2015
We walked down a flight of stairs and entered the autopsy suite.
“So, I guess a welcome is in order, Dr. Díez,” I said.
She turned her head and smiled “Thank you, Officer. And you can call me Yamilla.”
“Yamilla? That sounds Spanish?”
She walked to a table and put on plastic gloves and a mask. I did the same.
“Cuban,” she said. “But I was born in Tampa. My father escaped as a child, just before it was too late.”
“So, your mother is American?” I asked, as we walked towards the steel table where the covered body was.
Yamilla grabbed the white blanket and lifted it. “Yes and no. She was born on American soil, but has Cuban roots too. Both her parents are Cuban. We have a way of finding each other. Only she’s second generation, and like me, she has never been to Cuba.” She paused and glanced down. Then she pulled the blanket off.
I swallowed hard at the sight of Laura Bennett once again. Next to her, on another table, lay the cut off parts. Yamilla took in a deep breath.
“We don’t see many of these kinds around here.”
“We sure don’t,” I said, and looked closely at the body. “So, what can you tell me about her?”
“She was strangled to death. But not with his hands or anything tied around her neck. You see, there are no marks on her throat. “The Petechiae under her eyelids is a sign of strangulation. He didn’t use his hands.”
“He’s a gentle killer,” I said. I looked at the mouth. “There is no sign of aggression. No anger. Any marks under her upper lips?”
Yamilla smiled. “Someone has seen this before,” she said. She grabbed the upper lip and lifted it. “As you can see, she has marks here. Her lip was pressed against her teeth, leaving the marks. But there is nothing on the outside to indicate anything was pressed against her lips.”
“A pillow,” I said. “Leaves no marks.”
“Exactly. The killer went to great lengths to not leave any trace.”
I leaned in over Laura Bennett’s face and studied it closer. “Or, maybe he didn’t want to bruise her. He cares about her body, not about her.”
“That could be a theory,” Yamilla said.
“Anything else? A time of death?” I asked.
Yamilla looked at me from above her mask. “Between one-thirty and two in the morning.”
I wrote it on my notepad, thinking that eliminated Travis Connor, who had been seen at the Beach Shack from ten-twenty till it closed at two. The bartender told me he was positive the guy had stayed there till two, since he had trouble getting him to leave.
“Anything else?”
Yamilla paused. There was something.
“She was washed.”
“Yes. We determined on the scene that she had been in the shower,” I said. “There were still water drops and dirt on the sides of the bathtub. We figured she had been in the shower when the killer surprised her. That’s why I’m quite surprised at the time of death. I was certain it had been in the morning hours. I was sure she had gotten out of bed, then was taking a shower when the killer came in.”
“No,” Yamilla said. “She was washed after death occurred. She was washed with bleach. There is nothing on her body. It’s completely clean. No fingerprints. No DNA. Not even a drop of sweat, which there would be if she struggled for her life during strangulation. Her body would have released noradrenaline, a hormone closely related to adrenaline. Yet, I find no trace of anything on her. It has all been washed away.”
Chapter Eighteen
January 2015
I said goodbye to Dr. Yamilla Díez and hit the road again. Across the first bridge that took me to Merritt Island, the island between my beloved Cocoa Beach and the mainland, I couldn’t help thinking about this new information. The killer had washed Laura Bennett’s body after he strangled her. Who did that? Who washed her with bleach just before starting to cut her up? Was it some kind of weird ritual? Was it to get rid of DNA? Bleach was known to get rid of DNA. Bleach contained sodium hypochlorite, an extremely corrosive chemical that could break the hydrogen bonds between DNA base pairs and degrade a DNA sample. In fact, bleach was so effective that crime labs used it to clean workspaces so that old samples didn’t contaminate fresh evidence.
A picture of the killer had started to shape in my mind. The picture of a guy who took his time with his victim. A killer who enjoyed what he did and wanted the moment to last. He was also very controlled. He made no mistakes. This was no ordinary guy. On top of it, he was gentle with the victim’s body.
I passed the second bridge and drove into Cocoa Beach shortly after. Tourists and snowbirds were on the roads everywhere, not knowing where to go, cruising down A1A, slowing the traffic down.
At a meeting at the station, I told everyone what I had learned at the medical examiner’s office. They didn’t seem to buy into my idea of him being a gentle killer much, especially not Weasel, who looked skeptically at me from her seat at the end of the table.
“I still say we take a closer look at
the husband. He’s the one with the best motive. It was the wife’s money. He’s getting everything. She was about to leave him. They lost a child, and he blames her for it. Lots of reasons to finish her off in an angry tantrum while drunk, then pretend to pass out.”
“But he doesn’t remember anything,” Joel Hall said. “When we got to the house and talked to him, he was completely out of it. Hardly knew who he was, let alone what had happened the night before.”
“How is the guy doing?” Weasel asked. “Can we interrogate him soon?”
“I was with him last night, Marty took the morning shift,” Jim Moore said. “I left the hospital at four in the morning, then slept till nine. Brandon Bennett was completely knocked out all the time I was there. But I can go call Marty and see if there is any news.”
“Do that,” I said.
Jim left the table with his phone in hand. I looked at the others.
“We have to think about who else might have a motive besides the husband,” I said. “He might be telling the truth.”
The Weasel snorted. “It’s him. I just know it is. I can smell it. He’s bad news. Besides, there’s no sign of breaking and entering on the house. Whoever did this knew Laura Bennett.”
“Being bad news doesn’t make you a killer,” I said.
“True,” Weasel said. But she didn’t mean it.
“We need to look in other directions as well,” I said. “I’ve ruled out the neighbor who lives down the street, Travis Connor, since he has an alibi, and as far as we know, he was the only one who visited the house on the night of the killing. But there might have been others. He left pretty early. There could have been someone else. Joel, have the other neighbors said anything useful?”
Joel shook his head with a sigh. “Not really. I mean, Mrs. Jeffries told us she saw Mrs. Bennett smoking on the porch at eleven, but that’s about it. No one has seen anyone else on the street. But, I’m not done. I still have a couple of houses left on the street that I haven’t talked to, since they weren’t home.”
“You’ll continue that today. There might be someone sitting on important information that they don’t think is useful,” Weasel said.
Joel Hall shrugged. “Sure. But it is a fairly quiet street, and on a Sunday night, most of the people were in bed early.”
Weasel smacked her hand on the table. “Come on. This can’t be it, people. Someone must have seen something. At least they must have heard her scream. Ask if anyone heard any screams between one and two in the morning.”
“There was loud music coming from the Bennett’s house,” Joel Hall said. “It could have drowned out any screams. Besides, people are so used to hearing them quarrel.”
“Plus, she was strangled by a pillow,” I said. “She probably couldn’t scream.”
Weasel growled and leaned back in her chair with a mommy isn’t happy look on her face.
“I’ll ask around anyway,” Joel Hall said, to smooth things out.
At the same time, the door opened, and Jim Moore stepped in. “He’s awake,” he said. “Brandon Bennett is awake.”
Chapter Nineteen
January 2015
“I don’t remember anything. I swear. I really don’t.”
Brandon Bennett was sitting up in his bed at Cape Canaveral Hospital. Marty had taken his son, Ben, and the dog to the cafeteria to get a hot cocoa at my suggestion, while I spoke to the dad. The dog had been allowed to stay overnight, given the circumstances. Everyone felt bad for Ben and wanted him to feel safe. I talked to the doctor before entering the room, and he confirmed that Brandon Bennett had been drugged with Rohypnol, or a Roofie, as it was also called. The date-rape drug. That was why he had been so out of it and why he had been slipping in and out of consciousness for the past twenty-four hours. I had called Yamilla at the medical examiner’s office and she told me they had already checked Laura Bennett’s blood, and there were no signs of any drugs. Lots of alcohol, but no other drugs. In other words, it was only Brandon Bennett who had been drugged. That told me the killer just wanted to get rid of Brandon, and that Laura had been his real target. That was my theory.
I got up and walked to the window of the third floor. The hospital was situated on a small peninsula and had water on three sides of it. Brandon Bennett’s room had views over the Banana River, with Cape Canaveral’s huge cruise ships on the horizon waiting to take off later in the day.
“You gotta help me out a little, here, Brandon,” I said. “Your wife turns up killed in your bedroom after a night you and she had been drinking heavily. We learn from neighbors and friends that you often fight loudly and violently, especially since the death of your child. People tell me you blame her for it. With her death, you’re going to inherit a lot of money. You like to gamble. Convince me that you didn’t kill her.”
I turned and looked at his face. He was pale and looked ill. He threw out his hands. “I…I don’t know what else to say.”
I rubbed my forehead, then stared at him, scrutinizing him. Was he a brilliant liar? Or was he telling the truth? He didn’t seem to be that bad guy everyone else was so busy making him out to be.
“Did you do it?” I asked. Mostly because I had to. I knew what answer he would give me.
Brandon Bennett looked appalled. “Of course not. Are you kidding me? I loved Laura. I adored her. If she was here, she could tell you. I gave her flowers every week. Ask the local florist. Every freaking Wednesday I had her send my wife flowers. I loved everything about her. I know I was never the model husband or father. I have a problem. I’ll admit to that. I drink and I gamble. And I hate myself for that. Believe me. It is destroying me and my marriage.”
His voice cracked as he spoke. It made him sound sincere. I cursed it. I really wanted him to be guilty. I wanted him to be the bad news Gabrielle Phillips had talked about. But when I looked at him, that wasn’t what I saw. Tears were piling up in his eyes now as he looked at me. His body was shaking from the restraint of holding them back.
He was truly sad that his wife was gone.
“I have no idea how to do this on my own,” he said. A tear escaped the corner of his eye and rolled across his cheek.
I handed him a tissue.
“What about Ben? How is he going to get by without his mother?” he asked, choking up.
“All right,” I said and nodded. “Let’s say I believe you. How much do you remember? Let’s start with Sunday evening. What did you do?”
Brandon Bennett sniffled and wiped his nose. “We ordered pizza. Then Laura put Ben to bed. We had a couple of drinks. It was sort of an anniversary for us.”
“What were you celebrating?” I asked.
“Not celebrating. Drowning our sorrows while trying to forget. It was a year since our daughter died.”
I noted it on my notepad while biting my lip. I couldn’t even imagine how devastating it had to be to lose a child. Thinking of any of my three kids, it hurt inside to imagine being without them.
“Okay, so you were drinking. What else?”
Brandon Bennett looked like he was thinking. “It’s all a little blurry, but I believe Travis came over and had a drink or two,” he said. “He didn’t stay long, though. He wanted to hit the Beach Shack when they opened. I guess we weren’t such great company either. We were pretty depressed. When he left, we started fighting, as we always did when we had a little too much to drink.”
“What were you fighting about?” I asked, studying his face for reactions to what he was saying.
“I actually don’t remember,” he said. “Probably what we always fight about.”
“And what is that?” I asked.
“My gambling. It always starts with her telling me I gamble too much, and that it’s her money I’m using. Then, I blame her for losing our child, and after that, there’s no turning back.”
“I can imagine there isn’t,” I said with a sigh. I remembered the things Arianna and I could say to one another during a fight. It wasn’t pretty. Why did couples do t
his to one another?
“What else do you remember?”
He shrugged. “That’s it. We fought and then we went to bed.”
I looked at him with dissatisfaction. “And you can’t remember what time you went to bed, I take it?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Did anyone else come over during the night?”
“I…I…”
“You don’t remember,” I said, and wrote it down.
“There might have been someone else. It’s all very blurry.”
“So, what else do you remember? Do you remember waking up and the police coming to the house?” I asked.
He shook his head again. “I don’t. I remember drinking and fighting, and then waking up here in the hospital a couple of hours ago, and being told what happened.”
“That’s all?” I asked.
“Yes. I’m sorry, Officer. I seem to have lost a big part of my memory. The doctor told me it was the drug. Mixed with alcohol, it messes with one’s memory completely. Again, I’m sorry. I really want to help.”
I put my pen away and was ready to leave. “Well, Mr. Bennett. The doctor told me you’ll be able to take your son home later today. Don’t leave town, all right? We’re not done here.”
Brandon Bennett shook his head. “I have no intention of doing that. I want this guy as bad as you do, Officer.”
“I’m glad. But for now, make sure you take care of your son. He needs you more than ever.”
“I will. Thank you, Officer.”
I was walking towards the door, when Brandon Bennett suddenly stopped me.