by Burton, Mary
Vaughan’s son had been a fixture at the station and knew everyone who worked there. “He was discussing a cute coed with his roommate when I left.”
“That’s our boy.”
“Text him occasionally, Shep, and remind him to study hard.”
Monroe rested his hands on his gun belt. “Let the kid have some fun.”
“He’ll have plenty. But school is first.” Vaughan tried not to think about the student loan papers he had signed to cover Nate’s tuition. It was a good chunk of change, given his pay scale. “What do we have?”
“Looks like a sex worker tangled with the wrong john. Cut her up pretty good.”
“Do you know who she was?”
“No identification yet,” Monroe said. “There’s a purse under the bed, but it’s covered in blood. I left it for the techs.”
“Anyone see the guy? Hear sounds from the room?”
“I knocked on the surrounding doors. If anyone saw or heard anything, they aren’t sharing.”
The dark-gray door sported the tarnished brass number 107. “Who rented the room?”
“Girl did. She paid enough cash to cover twenty-four hours.”
“That’s a long time for a place like this. Was she working multiple clients out of the room?”
“Manager says no. Said only one guy showed.”
“Description?”
“Medium height and build. Sandy blond or brown hair. Dark clothes. Thinks Caucasian, but isn’t sure.”
“That’s it?” Vaughan asked.
“No one asks questions here, including the management.”
“Did the girl give a name?”
“Elizabeth Taylor.”
She wouldn’t be the first to use an actress’s name. “Let me guess, not her real name.”
“Not likely.” Officer Monroe’s gun belt creaked as he shifted.
Finding an ID in the purse was not a given. Many of the working girls did not carry one, just in case they were busted.
“I might ask the guests what they know.” Sometimes the homicide badge loosened tongues.
“Good luck.”
Vaughan stepped into the room, now illuminated with a portable light that cast a harsh brightness on a place accustomed to shadows. A constellation of blood was splashed on the bed, walls, and carpeting, and a thick coppery scent combined with decomposing flesh enveloped him. Ten years on homicide had hardened him, but he still was not immune to the gruesome scenes like this or the accompanying stench.
Knowing emotions would not serve this victim, he detached from the carnage and shifted into assessment mode. The room had brown carpeting, beige walls, two double beds, a long dresser with a television, and a vanity. A small bathroom adjoined. Low-wattage bulbs spit out light, now supplemented by a lamp brought in by the forensic team.
The two techs, both in Tyvek suits, blocked his view of the body. One sketched the scene, and the other took pictures.
“What do you have?” Vaughan asked.
The shorter of the two turned, and Vaughan recognized Bud Clary. He had a thick waist and a stocky build. In his late forties, he had twenty years in the department, and they had worked dozens of homicides together.
“I thought you had the day off?” Bud asked.
Nate’s college campus was now light-years away. “No rest for the wicked.”
“Tell me about it.” Bud glanced at his notebook, which featured a rough drawing of the room. Cases often did not go to trial for months or years, and sketches helped jog memories. “Jane Doe was in her late teens and was stabbed five times in the chest and neck.”
Vaughan looked past Bud, toward the victim’s long, pale, thin leg painted in blood. Her toenails were purple, and a long scroll tattoo coiled around her left ankle.
Bud held up his hand. “I wouldn’t get too close. The carpet around the bed is soaked. Whoever killed her knew how to bleed her out quickly.”
“Officer Monroe said there’s a purse by the bed?” Vaughan asked.
“I’ll check.”
The other tech, Fiona Tate, was in her late twenties, with short brown hair and sculpted cheekbones. She snapped photos while moving from the bed toward the bureau and a pizza box.
Vaughan’s first unobstructed view of the female victim challenged his resolve to remain emotionally distant. The girl was about Nate’s age, and she reminded him of the young kids he had just seen in the college dining hall earlier today.
Those fresh-faced, smiling kids stood in stark contrast to this girl, whose sallow complexion and drawn skin stretched over her face. Her eyes remained open, staring with a cloudy, unseeing gaze that echoed panic and fear.
The life span of a sex worker was only a few years. If she had not died tonight, chances were good she would have been dead by her twenty-first birthday. He had seen too many girls like Jane Doe get used up and spit out by the streets. Already he wondered if this case would ever see trial.
Bud fished under the bed and removed a purple bag covered in sparkling stones and fringe. He unzipped the top as Fiona continued to snap photos. The tech dug in the purse, coming up with a handful of condoms, lube, handcuffs, and a flip phone. No ID.
“Is the phone password protected?” he asked.
“Yes,” the tech said.
“Damn.” That phone likely contained the girl’s client lists and communications with her killer.
Vaughan walked a wide circle around the bed, removing a pen from his breast pocket, and then flipped open the pizza box. A stale pile of onions stood inches from a collection of shriveled pepperoni slices. “Someone bought a pizza with toppings they didn’t like.”
Bud studied the victim’s slight frame. “She looks half-starved. But the autopsy will confirm what’s in her stomach.”
“She probably was.” Vaughan flipped the lid closed long enough to take a photo of the generic logo before searching around for any kind of receipt. He found none.
Vaughan glanced back at the bed and the faint impression on the end. It appeared as if someone had sat there watching television. “Was the television on when you arrived?”
“It was,” Bud said. “It was a local news channel.”
“He watched television as she bled out.”
“Jesus,” Fiona said.
Vaughan crossed to the bathroom, where he saw the towel crumpled on the counter. The sink and tub handles looked as if they had been wiped down, but there were no traces of blood on the remaining towel. He looked closely at the shower’s drain and saw faint hints of blood around it. The killer had been naked when he had murdered the girl; then he had showered and dressed. The sequence would have ensured his clothes were not stained with blood.
“When you run the victim’s prints, let me know if you get a hit?” Vaughan asked.
“Will do, Detective,” Bud said.
The probability of solving this case was incredibly low. Statistically, girls like this were considered expendable by their families, their pimps, and the justice system. They had no advocate except him and his overworked staff. But understanding the reality did not dampen his determination to give this girl some dignity and reckoning from the grave.
“Bud and Fiona, keep me posted.” And when both techs nodded, he stepped outside. He squinted toward the hot sun, absorbing its heat, knowing there was a monster out there who believed he would not get nailed for this crime.
He straightened his jacket and strode toward the adjoining room. Inside he heard whispers.
“Open up,” he said. “Alexandria Homicide.”
The knob turned and the door opened, catching on the security chain. A woman with gray hair and pale skin stared back at him. “I already talked to the cops.”
“You haven’t talked to me.” Vaughan held up his badge. “A murder occurred next door.”
She rubbed her index finger under her red-tipped nose. “That’s what the cop said.”
“Did you hear anything?”
“Not a sound.”
“When did yo
u arrive?”
“I checked in about midnight.”
That would have been fourteen hours ago and well within the window of the murder. “And you heard nothing?”
“Well, a television show, or maybe it was the news. I could hear it through the walls, but it was muffled.”
He studied her bloodshot eyes before his gaze cut to the bruises near the crease of her arm. “Did you hear any conversation, shouts, cries, screams?”
She tugged down her sleeve. “No. Like I said, just the television.”
If she had been high, as he suspected, she would not have heard a train if it had rattled past the foot of her bed. “When did you shoot up?”
“I don’t do drugs.”
“I don’t care what you put in your arm. I just want a time.”
Her eyes roved down her arm, and then, “Maybe about fifteen minutes after I checked in.”
“And you heard nothing?”
“No. Just the television, I swear. And I didn’t get that messed up.”
If that was true, that meant Jane Doe had been killed before midnight. He took the woman’s name and number and gave her his card.
Vaughan moved down the string of rooms, but each new occupant was less helpful than the last. He spoke to several working girls, gave them his card, and told them he wanted to figure out what had happened to the girl.
Homicide work was tedious, amounting to boots on the ground that led to small crumbs that might lead him to a killer. The forensic stuff would come in handy later in court, if the case made it that far. But his best chances of solving this murder fell within the first forty-eight hours. After that, the chances dropped by 90 percent.
His phone rang, and he tugged it from the cradle nestled beside his badge. Zoe Spencer’s name flashed on the screen.
They had met months ago at a Quantico training session sponsored by the FBI for local law enforcement. She had been lecturing on forensic art, and she’d worn a pencil skirt and black heels that had given him such a hard-on; he had not learned much.
He had approached her after the second week of classes, bribing her with coffee if she would assist him with a case, and she had agreed. Her assistance had helped solve the case, and basically one thing had led to another.
Their paths had not crossed for weeks until early summer, when Nikki McDonald had called in the Jane Doe find. He had called Spencer immediately.
“Agent Spencer. Any luck with my Jane Doe?” he asked.
“I can be in your office in an hour and give you the full story.”
“Can I have the CliffsNotes version?”
“Better to show you,” she said.
“Make it two hours. I’m at a homicide scene.”
“Understood. See you in two hours.”
After he ended the call, he knocked on motel room doors for another hour but discovered if there had been a witness, they weren’t talking.
When he had less than a half hour before his meeting with Spencer, he notified Officer Monroe he was headed back to the station, and then he texted his partner, Detective Cassidy Hughes, about this current case as well as the pending update on Jane Doe. Hughes replied quickly, informing him she would be tied up in court for at least another hour.
He slid behind the wheel of his car and turned on the engine and air-conditioning. As he pulled out of the lot, the motel room sign glinted in his rearview mirror. Already he felt as if he had let the dead girl down. If he got an ID, then he could search arrest records and last known associates. Jesus, there had to be someone out there who had known her.
He forced his mind to shift gears and focus on the Jane Doe Nikki McDonald had found in the storage unit early in the summer. When he and his partner had arrived on the scene, Nikki had already uploaded footage to her social media pages.
He’d asked her to hold off on any more posts, but when she’d realized her post had gone viral, she’d doubled down. He had posted a uniformed officer at the scene to keep curiosity seekers and crime junkies away.
Nikki’s posts had generated a couple of spots on local news, leading to more speculation about the victim’s identity. The pressure to solve the case had steadily built.
He and his partner had interviewed the owner of the unit, but she’d had no idea how the trunk had ended up in her space. There had been no prints on the trunk and no usable DNA in or on it. They had hit one dead end after another.
Now, as he drove toward the station, he hoped Spencer had identified the victim. The snag of traffic irritated him more than usual because he was anxious to hear what Spencer had to say. Fifteen minutes later, he walked through the front door of the police station.
The sergeant behind the desk, a bulldog of a man with a thick mop of gray hair, looked up. “That special agent just arrived. She’s in the conference room.”
Vaughan straightened his tie. “Thanks.”
“This about the head case?” the sergeant asked.
Dark humor might have offended some on the other side of the blue line, but it was how cops coped with very grim realities. “That’s what she tells me.”
Vaughan climbed the stairs two at a time and pushed through the second floor door to find Spencer sitting in the conference room. Her head was bent, and her gaze was on her phone as she quickly typed a message.
Spencer had a long lean body suited for her trademark black suits and tall heels. Auburn hair was always plaited into a french braid, emphasizing her sculpted cheekbones and vivid blue eyes. She wore minimal makeup, but as far as he was concerned, she did not need it.
Vaughan cleared his throat. “Special Agent Spencer.”
Her pensive expression slipped away as she raised her gaze from the phone. “Detective Vaughan.”
As she began to rise, he motioned for her to stay seated. He took the chair across from her. “I’ve texted Hughes. She’s stuck in court.”
“I know she hates that.”
“No doubt.” He didn’t want to talk about his partner. Spencer had been working a case in Nashville the last couple of weeks, and he wanted to tell her how much he had missed seeing her. Instead, he asked, “You have an identification for me?”
“I do.” She opened a file. Her fingers were long. Graceful. Like her legs. She had mentioned something once about being a ballerina but had never explained how a dancer transitioned from the stage to the bureau.
“As you know, I’ve spent most of the summer working on a facial reconstruction project,” she said. “We believe we were able to identify the subject. Her name was Marsha Prince.”
Vaughan sat back in his chair, his thoughts pivoting from her legs to business. “I had just joined the force, and the case made a real impression on all of us. Marsha Prince vanished after visiting a local nightclub.” She had been underage and had used a fake identification. Unlike the Jane Doe back at the motel, Marsha’s case had dominated headlines. “Where in the World Is Marsha Prince?” had been one article. It hyped theories ranging from her being buried in a shallow grave in the Shenandoah Valley to working as a sex slave in Mexico.
“It appears Ms. Prince didn’t make it more than five miles from her family home.” She laid out a picture taken of Marsha Prince her freshman year of college and then beside it a photograph of the bust she had sculpted.
He was struck by how sweet the girl looked. Thick blond hair swept over an oval face sporting a bright, wide smile. She had earned straight As her freshman year while balancing a part-time waitress job and volunteering at a food bank.
“Shit,” he muttered. He picked up both pictures. “The faces look identical.”
“Even I was surprised by the accuracy.”
“It’s one hell of a job, Agent Spencer.”
“Thanks.”
“As I remember, Marsha Prince’s family appeared squeaky clean. Younger sister, Hadley, was a cheerleader and a senior in high school. She was also slated to follow in her sister’s footsteps to Georgetown. However, during the investigation, the cops learned of the father�
��s financial troubles.”
“Her father, Larry Prince, owned Prince Asphalt Paving Company, and her mother’s illness put the family on the ropes.”
“The mother had multiple sclerosis,” he said.
“That’s right,” she said. “Father was not particularly beloved by his neighbors because he was so particular about his yard. He hated it when anyone walked on the grass. But the family overall had no issues that anyone really noticed. And then his daughter vanished.”
“Marsha stayed on the FBI’s missing persons list for a long time.”
“She was removed just today.”
Vaughan tapped his finger on the faux-wood-grain tabletop. “Nikki McDonald said she received the original tip via her website. We tried to trace the sender but had no luck.”
“Not surprising. The killer isn’t ready to be caught.”
“But he could be?”
“I’m betting when the identity is made public, he’ll want more attention.”
“Why now?” Vaughan asked, more to himself.
“He needs recognition and validation to fill some kind of void in his life.”
Vaughan nodded. “He’s suffered some loss or upset in his real life. Lost a job, underwent a divorce or breakup, or maybe even his health.”
“Those are the primary triggers,” Spencer said.
“I discovered that Marsha Prince’s surviving sister now lives in Alexandria,” Vaughan said.
“After Marsha disappeared, Hadley married her high school boyfriend, Mark Foster, and they moved to Oregon. The couple has one child. In January of this year, Mark Foster accepted a new accounting job in Alexandria, and the family moved back east. Hadley is a fitness instructor. The daughter, Skylar, is a senior in high school.”
“You’d think after the pain of losing her sister, Hadley would never have returned to Alexandria.”
“Promotions are hard to turn down, I suppose.”
“I owe her a death notification, unless you’ve done that already,” Vaughan said.
“I have not. This is your jurisdiction. I’m here strictly to inform you of my findings.”
He glanced at his watch. “No time like the present. Care to join me? I know you’re as curious as I am about this case.”