The Silenced Women
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2021 by Frederick Weisel
Cover and internal design © 2021 by Sourcebooks
Cover design by The BookDesigners
Cover images © CL Shebley/Shutterstock, Aerial3/Getty Images
Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
sourcebooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Weisel, Frederick, author.
Title: The Silenced Women / Frederick Weisel.
Description: Naperville, Illinois : Poisoned Pen Press, [2021]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020020055 (trade paperback) | (epub)
Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3623.E432475 S55 2021 | DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020020055
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Part I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Part II
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Part III
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Excerpt from next Violent Crime Investigations Team mystery
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
For Meg, Chelsea, and Steven
Part I
Chapter One
(TUESDAY, 7:35 A.M.)
The dead woman possessed a rare beauty, Eddie Mahler thought as he looked at the thin, sculpted face and the soft down of her skin—the handsomeness spoiled now by an uneven line of dried blood falling loosely around the throat like a necklace come undone.
The victim lay on her side on a park bench, the body wrapped in a red woolen blanket from shoulders to feet. Mahler guessed her to be nearly six feet and in her mid-twenties. Streaks of red dye had been inexpertly applied through the bangs of brown hair. The eyes were closed, the lips slightly parted, as if she were about to speak. For an instant he imagined the sound of her voice, a word or two left behind, hanging in the air.
Then a car door slammed behind him, and Mahler’s attention went back up the hill to the parking lot. The crime-scene techs had arrived, and two members of his Violent Crime Investigations, or VCI, team were waiting for him with a park ranger.
The bench sat on a hillside in Spring Lake Park, Santa Rosa’s largest public park, beside a stand of oaks with a view of the water. Below the bench, the slope dropped sharply to an access road before falling all the way to the lake’s edge. Valley fog diffused the early light and muted the sounds of the ghostly joggers and dog walkers traveling through the mist along the lakeshore.
An hour earlier, a call from Detective Martin Coyle had brought Mahler to the park. Now Coyle and a new investigator, Eden Somers, were “giving him his space” but checking every few minutes for his signal to join him. Beyond the crime-scene tape, a small group of spectators had gathered to peer down at the bench.
Mahler was short and powerfully built. He had close-cropped hair and wore a flannel shirt, jeans, and a golf jacket. A takeout coffee cup kept one hand warm, while his other hand was shoved in a pocket of his jeans.
He had awakened the night before with a migraine, the pain concentrated behind his eyes. For ten minutes he lay without moving, all his attention focused on the intense headache. Then he rose carefully on an elbow to get an Imitrex from the bedside table. He slid the tiny pill onto his tongue and waited for its bitter taste to spread across the front of his mouth. When the pill was gone, he dropped three Advil in his palm and swallowed them with water. He eased back into bed and was nearly asleep when his cell went off with the call from Coyle. Now, here in the park, the migraine’s intensity lessened, leaving him with a dull ache and sore neck muscles.
He turned again to the woman. Without touching the body, Mahler knew from the blood trail on her neck that a deep wound would be found on the back of her head. He could also tell from the absence of blood on the bench and ground, and the body’s position, that the woman had been placed on the bench postmortem. He thought of the line at the end of the old film Sunset Boulevard, when William Holden says, “Funny how gentle people get with you once you’re dead.”
Closer up, he could see the top of her shoulders and the edge of a dark silk blouse. In the left earlobe, a pierced earring in the shape of a hollow star. The heavy fabric blanket covering her had traces of blond fibers. Animal hair. Maybe a dog.
Mahler had viewed the bodies of homicide victims for a dozen years but never got used to it. He felt how his presence invaded the victims’ intimacy with their death. He had taught himself to see what he needed, to focus on the manner of interruption—the large-caliber bullet opening on the side of a gang member’s head or the knife wound on a farmworker’s chest that left no other trace than an uneven, pencil-thin line across his flesh. At the start, a veteran homicide cop named Tommy Woodhouse had told him, “When you feel like looking away, that’s when you should look.” Now Mahler bent close to the victim and stud
ied the dried blood on her neck. Beside the blood, he saw the dark shadows of bruised skin.
The sight staggered him. As he rose, his legs weakened, and he held out an arm to balance himself. He looked as far from the body as he could, toward the distant lake, its quiet surface just visible in the fog. He thought of the other two times he had been called to this same park, to places across the lake, and stood beside the bodies of young women. The first in jeans and sweater, the second in running gear. Both facedown and so perfectly still among the native ryegrass and manzanita they seemed like something new and terrible growing there.
Mahler drank more coffee and felt his hand squeezing the cup. He waited to recover his balance. Then he looked up the hill and nodded. He wanted to be alone, not to have the conversation that was to come.
Coyle, Eden, and the park ranger worked their way down the hill. Coyle introduced the ranger as Officer Hadley. The ranger had a few inches on Mahler, with the chest and upper arms of someone who spent a lot of time in the gym. He wore a gray uniform, parks department baseball cap, and a pair of deep-black, rimless sunglasses that Mahler figured cost him half a paycheck. He stood stiffly with his hands folded in front of him.
“Dog walker found her about six.” Hadley addressed himself to Mahler. “Older woman with a bunch of corgis. One of the regulars who come in every day before the park officially opens at seven. Entered at the Violetti Road gate at the top of the hill. She was making her way down to the lake when the dogs pulled her over to the bench. Made a call on her cell at six ten. We sent her home, but we have contact information if you want to talk to her.”
Mahler could tell Hadley was speaking in a way he had heard on cop shows. The guard was probably also conflicted. On the one hand, he was in the middle of something important. On the other hand, he was already wondering how this was going to come back to bite him in the ass.
“Mind taking off your glasses, Officer?” Mahler saw Hadley’s face color as the younger man removed his glasses. “How’d the dog walker get in before the park opened?”
“The gate here at Violetti Road is a steel-tube barrier. Closed from seven p.m. to seven a.m. It’ll keep out a car, but people on foot have worn a little path around it. Not much we can do to stop them.”
Mahler looked away. Eden was writing in a steno notebook; Coyle watched a spectator leaning over the caution tape to shoot photos with a cell phone.
“What’s your routine after seven p.m.?” Mahler faced Hadley again.
“Two rangers on duty. We spend most of our time with the overnight campers on the other side of the lake. Every two hours one of us does a patrol in the pickup. We make a loop around the whole park on the paved road, over by the West Saddle Dam, in front of the swimming area, and back to the campground. There’s a ranger hut in the campground where we can get out of the weather. The patrol takes about twenty-five minutes.”
Mahler pointed to the road that passed the parking lot two hundred yards away. “So last night you or your partner drove down that paved road over there?”
“That’s right. Every two hours after seven.”
“You see or hear anything unusual?”
“No, sir.”
“You shine a light over here when you go by?”
“No, sir.”
“Ever vary the route?”
“No, sir.” This last answer was slower than the two previous.
“Ever get out of the truck?”
Hadley looked confused. He turned to Coyle for help but was met with a blank stare. Hadley shook his head.
“You listen to music when you drive?”
Hadley hesitated. “Sometimes I take my phone. But, you know, just one ear.”
Mahler hated everything about the young ranger now—his self-importance, his phony military bearing, and the carelessness with which he wasted their time. He knew the ranger wanted to move but was standing still as a show of strength. “What’s the purpose of your patrol?”
“Sir?”
“The purpose. Why’re you doing it?”
“It’s part of the standing order.”
“Part of the standing order,” Mahler repeated. “Someone—probably at least two people—carries a woman’s body into the park and leaves it here, and you and your standing order don’t see anything. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir. As I said, we run the patrol every two hours. So it could’ve happened between them.”
“Or while you’re driving past listening to Brad Paisley.”
Hadley’s fingers were pressed white around his sunglasses. He looked at his shoes.
“All right,” Mahler said. “I’ll send a couple uniformed officers over to the ranger hut. They’ll get statements from you and your partner and talk to the campers. No one leaves until they’ve talked to an officer. Not even to go on patrol. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.” Hadley replaced his sunglasses and walked up through the oaks toward the parking lot.
Coyle smiled as the ranger reached the top of the hill. “Well, that was fun.”
Mahler finished his coffee. “He’ll get over it. Right now he’s thinking about what it would feel like to punch me in the mouth.” He turned to Eden. “This your first?”
“Seeing a body?” She looked startled at being addressed. “I mean, a victim. No, I’ve seen …others.”
Mahler saw fear trapped in her eyes before she retreated to the notepad. He realized they had spent little time together since he hired her two weeks earlier. She was smart, young for the team, but with a couple years’ experience as an FBI analyst. “You okay? You don’t have to be here.”
“I’m fine.” Eden straightened. “You should do…whatever you normally do.”
“You think this is Partridge again, Eddie?” Coyle asked.
Mahler wondered if Coyle had noticed his unsteadiness a few minutes earlier. “Could be. Last I heard, he’s still in town.” He managed to get the words out but didn’t trust himself to say more.
Coyle stepped close to Eden and gestured at the lake. “Two years ago, a young woman named Michelle Foss is killed in the park, over by the water tanks. Strangled, body left beside a footpath. Small town, public space like this, it’s a huge deal. Chief puts on extra patrols, cars at the gates. We look at locals with a record of assaults on women, and right off the bat, we question a guy named Irwin Partridge. Matches a witness description of a man seen on a park trail the night Foss was killed. But the witness is shaky, and we’ve got nothing to connect Partridge to the killing.”
Eden wrote in her notepad. “So you had to let him go.”
“Yeah, he walks. Three days later, another body’s found in the park. Susan Hart. Middle-distance runner at the junior college. This time down near the boat launch, but same type of victim, same strangulation pattern. It’s as if the killer figures he won’t get caught. The media start calling him the Seventy-Two-Hour Killer.”
“Which scares people.” Eden nodded as she continued to write.
“It’s a circus. San Francisco TV stations have news vans at the park gates. A neighborhood watch is organized on the perimeter. One night our guys find a pickup by the dam—four heroes in the truck bed with deer rifles. Some knucklehead in a house above the park hears a noise outside and shoots his own dog.”
Mahler stood apart. He disliked a lot of talking at a crime scene. The migraine pain now existed as an echo. He closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips on the lids. He remembered the crime-scene techs waiting in the parking lot. He waved at them. A dozen more spectators stood behind the yellow tape.
“What about Partridge?” Eden asked.
Coyle backed her away from the bench to give the crime- scene crew room to work. “With the Hart killing, we look at Partridge again. Hold him on an old failure-to-appear warrant and take his life apart: house, car, job, family, past arrests, the works. All of which comes up with
nothing. DA declines to indict.”
“Then what?”
Coyle shrugged. “Then what? Nothing. We work a bunch of leads that go nowhere. But the murders stop, and the public and the media move on to the next tragedy.”
“Unusual for a successful killer to stop. So the cases were never solved?”
“No.” Coyle looked at Mahler. “No, they never were.”
“So, if our victim here was murdered by the same killer,” Eden said, “he could be starting again.”
“Maybe, but this one seems different,” Coyle said. “Someone bashed her head. The victims two years ago were killed by ligature strangulation.”
“This one’s strangled as well. There’s bruising on her throat.”
Coyle frowned. “You’re kidding. You saw bruising under all that blood?”
“Yes. Just now. Want me to show you?”
“That’s okay. Hear that, Eddie? Did you see it, too?”
Mahler looked back without speaking.
“But this bruising doesn’t look like ligature strangulation,” Eden said. “It’s on the front of the throat, consistent with manual strangulation. Statistically, front-side strangulation is rare, usually committed by someone known to the victim.”
Coyle snorted. “Statistically? Someone’s studied it?”
Eden’s face reddened. “Sorry. Was that the wrong thing to say?”
“Just not used to it, is all.”
Mahler had had enough. He stepped between Eden and Coyle. “Detective Somers, tell the techs I want an initial crime-scene report by ten thirty.” He heard his own voice, as if it were outside of him, talking too loudly. “And we need to find out who this woman is. Call Kathy Byers. Now. Tell her to put out a press release. No photos—physical description and clothing. Email it to the press, and put it on the public website. Have Kathy get tech support to set up an independent phone line for the public to call in.”
He swung around to Coyle. “Where’re Rivas and Frames?”
“With Gang Crimes, picking up Peña. They’ll be back in a couple hours.”
“Text them. Say they’re on this. We’re all on round-the-clock.”