Will watched Sara through the window. She was making a notation on a clipboard. She had unzipped her suit and tied the arms around her waist. The baseball cap was gone. She’d pulled her hair into a loose ponytail.
Faith asked, “Is it Sara?”
Will looked down at Faith. He often forgot how tiny she was. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Look of perpetual disappointment. With her hands on her hips and her head bent up so far that her chin was level with his chest, she reminded him of Pearl Pureheart, Mighty Mouse’s girlfriend, if Pearl had gotten pregnant at fifteen, then pregnant again at thirty-two.
Which was the first reason that Will would not talk to her about Sara. Faith forcibly mothered everybody in her orbit, whether it was a suspect in custody or the cashier at the grocery store. Will’s childhood had been pretty rough. He knew a lot of things about the world that most kids had never learned, but he did not know how to be mothered.
The second reason for his silence was that Faith was a damn good cop. She would need about two seconds to solve the Case of the Suddenly Silent Girlfriend.
Clue number one: Sara was an extremely logical and consistent person. Unlike Will’s psychotic ex-wife, Sara had not been vomited up from a rollercoaster hellmouth. If Sara was mad or irritated or annoyed or happy, she reliably told Will how she had gotten that way and what she wanted to do about it.
Clue number two: Sara didn’t play games. There was no silent treatment or pouting or nasty quips to interpret. Will never had to guess what she was thinking because she told him.
Clue number three: Sara clearly liked being married. In her previous life, she had been married twice, both times to the same man. She would still be married to Jeffrey Tolliver right now if he hadn’t been murdered five years ago.
Solution: Sara didn’t have an objection to marriage, or to sideways proposals.
She had an objection to marrying Will.
“Voldemort,” Faith said, just as the clippity clop of Deputy Director Amanda Wagner’s high heels reached Will’s ears.
Amanda had her phone in her hands as she walked down the hall. She was always texting or making calls to get information through her old gal network, a frightening group of women, most retired from the job, whom Will imagined sitting around a secret lair knitting hand-grenade cozies until they were activated.
Faith’s mother was one of them.
“Well.” Amanda clocked Will’s cheddar-streaked pants from ten yards. “Agent Trent, were you the only hobo who fell off the train or should we look for others?”
Will cleared his throat.
“Okay.” Faith flipped through her notebook, diving straight in. “Victim is Jesus Rodrigo Vasquez, thirty-eight-year-old Hispanic male, six years into a full dime for AWD after failing a meth quiz on ER three months prior.”
Will silently translated: Vasquez, convicted for assault with a deadly weapon, served six years before he was paroled, then three months ago failed his drug test while on early release, so was sent back to prison to serve the remainder of his ten-year sentence.
Amanda asked, “Affiliation?”
Was he in a gang?
“Switzerland,” Faith said. Neutral. “His sheet’s full of shots for keistering phones.” He was caught multiple times hiding cell phones in his ass. “I gather the guy was a real spoon.” Always stirring up shit. “My guess is he got taken out because he kept running his mouth.”
“Problem solved.” Amanda knocked on the glass for attention. “Dr. Linton?”
Sara stopped to grab some supplies before opening the door. “We’re finished processing the murder scene. You don’t need suits, but there’s a lot of blood and fluids.”
She handed out shoe protectors and face masks. Her fingers squeezed Will’s when he took his share.
She said, “The body is out of rigor and entering decomp, so that, combined with the victim’s liver temp and the higher ambient temperature, gives us a physiological time of death that’s consistent with reports that Vasquez was attacked roughly forty-eight hours ago, which puts time of death toward the beginning of the riot.”
Amanda asked, “First minutes or first hours?”
“Ballpark is between noon and four on Saturday. If you want to narrow down an exact time, you’ll have to rely on witness statements.” Sara adjusted Will’s mask as she reminded Amanda, “Obviously, science alone cannot pinpoint precise time of death.”
“Obviously.” Amanda was not a fan of ballparks.
Sara rolled her eyes at Will. She was not a fan of Amanda’s tone. “There are three locations to the Vasquez crime scene—two in this main area, one in the kitchen. Vasquez put up a fight.”
Will reached behind Sara to hold open the door. The smell of shit and urine, the rioting inmates’ calling card, permeated every molecule inside the room.
“Good God,” Faith pressed the back of her hand against her face mask. She wasn’t good with crime scenes in general, but the odor was so sharp that even Will’s eyes were watering.
Sara told her assistant, “Gary, could you get the smaller channel locks from the van? We’ll need to unbolt the table before we can remove the body.”
Gary’s ponytail bobbed under his hairnet as he happily made his departure. He’d been with the GBI for less than six months. This wasn’t the worst crime scene he’d ever processed, but anything that happened inside of a prison was all the more soul-crushing.
The flash popped on Charlie’s camera. Will blinked away the light.
Sara told Amanda, “I managed to get a look at the security video. There’s nine seconds of footage that captures the beginning of the argument and goes right up to the tipping point into the riot. That’s when an unidentified person came up off-image, behind the camera, and cut the feed.”
Charlie provided, “No usable fingerprints on the wall, cable or camera.”
Sara continued, “The argument started at the front of the room by the service counter. Things turned heated very quickly. Six inmates from a rival gang jumped into the fight. Vasquez stayed seated at the corner table over there. The eleven other men at his table ran to the front of the room to get a better view of the fight. That’s when the feed cuts out.”
Will gauged the distances. The camera was at the rear of the room, so none of the eleven men could’ve slipped back without being seen.
“This way.” Sara led them to a table in the corner. Twelve lunch trays sat in front of twelve plastic seats. The food was moldy. Soured milk spilled across the surfaces. “Vasquez was attacked from behind. Blunt force trauma created a depressed skull fracture. The weapon was likely a small, weighted object swung at velocity. The force of the blow sent his head forward. There are bits of what appear to be Vasquez’s front teeth embedded in the tray.”
Will looked back at the camera. This felt like a two-man operation—one cut the feed, one neutralized the target.
Faith’s facemask was sucking in and out as she breathed through her mouth. “The first blow, was it meant to kill or to stun?”
Sara said, “I can’t speak to intent. The blow was significant. I didn’t visualize a laceration, but a depressed fracture is what it sounds like—the broken bone displaces inward, pressing on the brain.”
Amanda asked, “How long was he conscious?”
“We can infer from the evidence that he was conscious until the moment of death. I can’t speak to his state. Nauseated? Certainly. Blurred vision? Likely. How cognizant was he? Impossible to say. Everyone reacts differently to head trauma. From a medical standpoint, anytime you’re talking about a brain injury, we can only know that we don’t know.”
“Obviously.” Amanda had her arms crossed.
Will crossed his arms, too. Every muscle in his body was retracted. His skin felt tight. No matter how many crime scenes he investigated, his body never accepted that being around a violently murdered human being was a natural thing. He could deal with the stench of rotting food and excrement. The metallic tinge that blood gave off when the iron oxidized was
a taste that would stay fixed in the back of his throat for the next week.
Sara said, “Vasquez was beaten to the floor. Three left-side molars were cracked at the root, the left jaw and orbital bone were fractured. Prelim suggests left-side rib fractures. You can see the blood splatter on the wall and ceiling has a semi-circle pattern. We’ve got three sets of footprints here, so you’re looking for two assailants, both likely right-handed. My guess is a sock lock was used, so there won’t be any obvious damage to the assailant’s hands.”
A sock lock was pretty much what it sounded like—a combination lock inside of a sock.
Sara continued, “Vasquez somehow ended up barefooted after the initial attack. We haven’t found his shoes or socks anywhere in the cafeteria. His assailants were wearing prison-issued sneakers with identical waffle patterns. We were able to infer quite a lot from the shoe and footprints. The next location they took him to was the kitchen.”
“What about this tattoo?” Amanda was across the room, looking down at the severed hand. “Is it a tiger? A cat?”
Charlie answered, “The tattoo database says a tiger can symbolize hatred for the police or that he’s a cat burglar.”
“A con who hates the police. Remarkable.” Amanda rolled her wrist at Sara. “Let’s skip ahead, Dr. Linton.”
Sara motioned for them to follow her to the front of the cafeteria. Empty trays were on the conveyor belt, so at least some inmates had finished their lunches before the riot started.
She said, “Vasquez was about five eight, one-hundred-forty pounds. Undernourished, but that’s not surprising since he was a heavy IV drug user. Track marks on his left arm, between the toes on his left foot and at his right carotid, so we can assume he was right-handed. There’s a meat cleaver in the kitchen prep area and a lot of blood, indicating the left hand was removed there.”
Amanda asked, “He didn’t chop it off himself?”
Sara shook her head. “Unlikely. Shoe and footprints indicate he was held down.”
Charlie added, “There’s no distinguishing marks on the waffle treads from the sneakers. Like Sara said, they’re standard issue. Every inmate has a pair.”
Sara had reached Vasquez’s final resting place. She squatted down in front of another table. Everyone but Amanda followed suit.
Will’s nostrils flared. The body had been festering in the heat for almost two full days. Decomposition was well on its way. The skin was slipping off the bone. Someone had obviously shoved Vasquez’s body under the table with their foot, kicking him out of the way like dirty clothes under the bed. Streaks of blood and waffled shoeprints showed where at least two men had put him there.
Vasquez’s bare feet were caked in blood. He was on his side, folded at the waist. One hand was reaching out in front of him. The bloody stump where his other hand used to be was tucked inside his belly. Literally. Vasquez’s murderers had stabbed him so many times that his gut had blossomed open like a grotesque flower. The nub of his wrist was jammed inside his body cavity like a stem.
Sara said, “Absent contravening evidence, cause of death is likely exsanguination or shock.”
The guy certainly looked shocked. His eyes were wide open. Lips parted. He had an otherwise ordinary face, if you dismissed the bloating and dark, black crescent where his blood had pooled to the lowest point of his skull. Shaved head. Porn mustache. A cross hung on a thin gold necklace around his neck, legally allowed by the GDOC because it was a religious symbol. The chain was delicate. Maybe a gift from a mother or daughter or girlfriend. It said something to Will that the murderers had taken Vasquez’s shoes and socks but left the necklace.
“Shit. That’s shit.” Faith clamped both hands over her mask as she dry-heaved. Vasquez’s intestines hung out of his abdomen like uncooked sausage. Feces had pooled onto the floor, then dried into a black mass the size of a deflated basketball.
Amanda told Faith, “See if they’ve tossed Vasquez’s cell yet. If they have, I want to know who did it and what they found. If not, you do the honors.”
Faith never had to be told twice to leave a dead body.
“Will.” Amanda was already typing into her phone. “Finish up here, then start the second-round interviews. These men have had enough time to get their stories straight. I want this solved quickly. This isn’t a needle-in-a-haystack situation.”
Will thought it was exactly that kind of situation. There were roughly one thousand suspects, all of them known criminals. “Yes, ma’am.”
Sara nodded for him to follow her into the kitchen. She pulled down her mask. “Faith lasted longer than I thought she would.”
Will pulled down his mask, too. The kitchen was in similar disarray. Trays and food and blood were splattered everywhere. Yellow plastic markers on the butcher’s block indicated where Vasquez’s hand had been chopped off. A meat cleaver was on the floor. Blood had spilled over like a waterfall.
“No fingerprints on the knife,” Sara told him. “They used plastic wrap around the handle, then shoved it down the sink.”
Will saw that the drain under the sink was disconnected. Sara’s father was a plumber. She knew her way around a P-trap.
She said, “Everything I’m finding shows they had the presence of mind to cover their tracks.”
“Why take the hand into the cafeteria?”
“Best guess is they threw it across the room.”
Will tried to gather a working theory of the crime. “When the fight started, Vasquez stayed seated at the table. He didn’t get up because he’s not affiliated.” Inmates had their own form of NATO. An attack on an ally meant you were in the fight. “Only two guys went at him, not a gang.”
“Does that narrow your field of suspects?” Sara asked.
“Inmates tend to self-segregate. Vasquez wouldn’t have openly mixed with inmates outside his race.” The haystack had grown marginally smaller. “This feels like a crime of contingency. If a riot happens, this is how we’ll kill him.”
“Chaos creates opportunity.”
Will rubbed his jaw as he studied the bloody shoe and footprints across the floor. Vasquez had fought like hell. “He must’ve had information they wanted, right? You don’t chop off somebody’s hand just because. You hold him down, you threaten him, and then when he doesn’t give you what you want, you take a cleaver and chop off his hand.”
“That’s how I’d do it.”
Will smiled.
Sara smiled back.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn’t answer. “Vasquez was known to hide phones on his person. Could that be why they gutted him?”
“I’m not sure they gutted him so much as stabbed him repeatedly. If they were searching for a phone, the sock lock to the ribs would’ve had a sort of Valsalva effect. There’s a reason prison guards make you cough when you bend over. The increased abdominal pressure reduces the constrictive force inside the sphincter. The phone would’ve dropped out with the first blow,” Sara said. “Besides, cutting in through the belly doesn’t make a lot of sense. If I was searching for a phone up your ass, I’d look up your ass.”
Faith had impeccable timing. “Is this a private moment?”
Will took his phone out of his pocket. The missed call had been from Faith. “We think Vasquez’s killers were looking for something. Information. Maybe a stash location.”
Faith said, “Vasquez’s cell was clean. No contraband. Judging by his art collection, he was a fan of half-naked ladies and our Lord Jesus Christ.” She waved goodbye to Sara as she led Will back through the cafeteria. Her hands cupped her nose to block out the smell. “Nick and Rasheed have narrowed down our list of suspects to eighteen possibles. No one with murder on their sheet, but we’ve got two manslaughters and a finger-biter.”
“His own finger or someone else’s?”
“Someone else’s,” Faith said. “Surprisingly, there are no reliable witness statements, but plenty of snitches offered up bullshit conspiracy theories. Did you know the Deep State is running a pe
dophile ring through the prison library system?”
“Yes.” Will asked, “Does this murder feel personal to you?”
“Absolutely. We’re looking for two Hispanic males, roughly Vasquez’s age group, on the inner ring of his social circle?”
Will nodded. “When was the last time Vasquez’s cell was tossed?”
“There was a prison-wide search sixteen days ago. The warden brought in eight CERT teams to toss the cells. The sheriff’s office provided twelve deputies. Shock and awe. No one saw it coming. Over four hundred phones were confiscated, maybe two hundred chargers, the usual narcotics and weapons, but the phones were the obvious problem.”
Will knew what she was talking about. Cell phones inside a prison could be very dangerous, though not all prisoners used them for nefarious purposes. The state took a cut off the top of all landline calls, charging a $50 minimum to open a phone card, then around five bucks for a fifteen-minute call and almost another five bucks every time you added more funds. On the other hand, you could rent a flip phone from another inmate for roughly $25 an hour.
Then there were the nefarious purposes. Smartphones could be used to find personal information on COs, oversee criminal organizations through encrypted texts, run protection rackets on inmates’ families, and most importantly, collect money. Apps like Venmo and PayPal had replaced cigarettes and Shebangs as prison currency. The more sophisticated gangs used Bitcoin. The Aryan Brotherhood, the Irish Mob Gang and the United Blood Nation were raking in millions through the state prison system.
Jamming cell phone signals was illegal in the United States.
Will held open the door for Faith as they walked outside. The sun was beating down on the empty recreation yard. He saw shadows behind the narrow windows in the cells. More than one man was screaming. The oppression of the lockdown was almost tangible, like a screw slowly drilling into the top of your head.
“Administration.” Faith pointed in the distance to a one-story building with a flat roof. They took the long way, using the sidewalks instead of walking across the packed red clay that passed for the recreation yard.
The Silent Wife: From the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author comes a gripping new crime thriller (Will Trent Series, Book 10) Page 3