Our once sleepy, small town was previously the charming sight of Upstate Washington with a classic lighthouse in the distance, beautiful cliffs, and views of the Pacific Ocean. Since I became a detective, though, it has slowly and unfortunately gone downhill. Most of the rich people moved away, leaving the middle and lower-class folks who can’t afford to move to fend for themselves. Tonight is no different.
Blythe Harbor has become a major import and export for criminal activity. Whether it’s drugs, human trafficking, or smuggling offenders in and out of the country, it all seems to happen frequently. There’s not much the police department does about it, because criminals control the action around the docks and—I’ve heard—parts of the department, as well. Again, it’s not a place to live if you’re looking for a quiet place to raise your family. If you’re a hard-nosed investigator who loves the thrill of catching the bad guy, however, then this is your kind of place.
The scene is busy, and the crowd has grown since arriving five minutes ago. Despite the rain, they don’t mind watching as the police ask questions and tell them to keep back.
I look over to my right and see a scared woman clasping her hand over her mouth, her tears blending with the drops of rain falling on her cheeks. She is shaken to her core as she watches the cops move in and out of the house.
I glance over to my left, seeing the young, teenage kids who are looking on with grotesque curiosity, knowing we will be hauling a dead body from the front door soon. They have their cell phones ready to snap pictures or take a video. I will need to make sure their sights are limited when the medical examiner has to remove the body from the house.
Breaking my sight with the crowd, I look up to the house and take it in. The two-story home is nothing special with its white, distressed paint and ripped screens. It looks like the rest of the homes in this rundown side of town, but two things that stand out are the newly planted flowers in the boxes along the railing of the porch and the recently mowed lawn. There is also a flag pole fastened to the wood siding next to the front door, and a colorful flag flaps in the wind, boasting an array of spring tulips on it. This tells me one thing: the owners of this house didn’t have the money to paint the siding or replace the screens, but they had pride in their home. They were people making the best of a bad situation.
I have a feeling in my gut that they were average, everyday folks who happened to be the targets of someone’s sick game. Those are the cases that are always a challenge, but it’s these types of cases that make me work tirelessly to find who’s responsible.
Slowly, I walk up the five steps and move along the porch. Looking over the flower boxes, I see they are full of newly planted petunias, pansies, and geraniums of all colors. Each one is filled from end to end with flowers, their fragrance overwhelming when you get close enough. Finishing my visual assessment of the outside, I move to the front door where the all too familiar smell of blood crashes against my sense of smell. It’s the metallic smell of death I was thinking about earlier, only now more apparent, cloying even. The rich, copper smell is like no other, and from the potency of it, I know the scene will be a bloody one.
I can see people gathered in the hallway up the stairs, but it’s the flashes from the crime scene technician’s camera that dance along the wall that get my attention.
The living room is decorated in floral designs. From the furniture to the wall décor, there are flowers everywhere, just like outside, so that tells me the owner loved flowers. It appears to be a place of happiness before tonight’s events occurred. However, a single photograph serves as a focal point above the couch, and it’s of a lovely young family.
My eyes immediately go to the man in the picture. He appears to be in his early to mid-thirties with dark brown hair, icy blue eyes, and a small scar running along the line of his jaw. He looks to be a criminal, or at least a reformed one. A few random tattoos are scattered up his forearms, and the scars on the knuckles of his left hand, which is placed on the woman’s shoulder, tell me he’s had a past.
I look into his icy, wolf-like eyes, studying them deeply. I feel he could tell a story by simply looking at you, and judging by the frigid chill that trails down my spine, it’s probably not a happy one.
The woman in the photo looks the opposite. She has deep, reddish-brown hair, chocolate eyes, and a shining smile. Only warmth shines off the image as I study her in the picture. She looks to be around the same age as me or maybe younger, and she is beautiful.
Staring at the two of them, it appears to me that she is a goddess who fell in love with a man from the wrong side of town. Maybe it’s a forbidden love type of scenario; maybe that’s the reason I am here. I will rule nothing out at this point.
I keep studying the picture and see she is holding a little, red-haired boy on her lap, no more than three or four years old, who has the same features as his mother. To the right of her, standing next to the man, is a young lady, low teens probably. Her smile is big as she flashes the metal braces on her teeth. Her hair is darker, looking more like the man, and when I look to both of them, they have the exact same eyes. They are shaped like round, cerulean diamonds and so intriguing you’re held prisoner by them, becoming even more fascinated the longer you gaze. They are definitely father and daughter, and my instinct is getting a sense of family tragedy.
I tear my eyes away from the picture and walk deeper into the house, knowing the smell of blood isn’t coming from one dead body. It’s coming from several, perhaps a family—this family.
Distracting me from my thoughts again are the bright, flashing lights coming from the camera in another room that’s around the corner. I can hear the murmurs of the other officers filtering through the air. My feet start to slowly follow the noise, and when I round the corner into the kitchen, I see what appears to be a man lying face down in a pool of his own blood.
He is wearing a pair of plaid pajama pants. No socks and no shirt, but his exposed skin shows a multitude of tattoos across his shoulders and down his spine. The back of his skull is blown out, and fragments of brain matter are floating in the pool of blood. It is splattered along the baseboards and two feet up the wall.
I pull out my small notebook and write: Victim one: white male, single gunshot wound to the head.
I never interfere with the crime scene team. They are my eyes, seeing the smallest details, and I appreciate the work they do when it comes to collecting evidence. I always hang back and let them work, simply observing the evidence they collect and remembering the words they speak. As they work, I will jot down notes in my book and work on building the events of the night.
I take my eyes from the bloody mess on the floor and watch the tech hold a shell in her long, metal tweezers. She lifts her arm higher and holds it to the light. “Looks to be a pump action, twelve gauge shotgun,” she says to her coworker as she drops the piece of shell into a plastic evidence bag. “And the condition of the wound reaffirms it.”
The medical examiner, Jim Pittman, appears from outside. He’s an older, slightly overweight man who is close to retiring. I’ve worked very closely with him over the years. With his experience and pristine attention to detail, I know he’s amazing at his job.
He moves around the body then he and his assistant carefully roll the deceased over. The devastation to the victim’s face is worse than I was expecting. It will be impossible to identify him from looks alone. There is nothing except a gaping, bloody hole through the middle of his face. Skin is shredded away from the bone. Only the destruction of the shotgun remains.
I look to the only part of visible, bloodless skin. His body is inked on this side, as well as chest, neck, and arms—but it’s covered with blood, making them hard to see. When I look at the man closer, something is etched in his torso. It’s very hard to make out with the amount of blood covering his body, so I lean down as far as I can without interfering with the medical examiner’s assessment.
“Jim,” I say to the overworked M.E., “what…? What is that?�
� I point to the man’s stomach.
Jim adjusts his glasses, pushing them up the bridge of his nose, and leans in closer. He motions for his technician to snap a picture, and the flash goes off.
I move to the end of the body, placing myself at the victim’s feet and look harder. It appears to be a carving of some sort.
“Is that a letter?” the technician asks, making a V shape in the air with her fingers.
I cock my head to the side and definitely see the point at the end. “I believe it is,” I say as I scribble down the discovery in my notebook.
This is an interesting turn of events. The killer is marking his prey. It’s his symbol, letting anyone who sees this body know he was here and will be remembered.
A small glimmer of excitement moves through me at the thrill of a good serial case. However, no serial murderer will ever compare to Victor Zaretski, the butcher of Blythe Harbor, or that’s what the papers called him.
Growing up in Russia, the horrors he survived in his youth caused him to fall off the crazy train and fall hard. All that was left was a very disturbed man and a stack of hacked up bodies. He was my breakout case, the one that put me at the top of all the homicide detectives. I kicked everyone’s asses when it came to finding that freak, including the FBI.
The sound of the gurney being brought in takes me out of my past and back to the present. The M.E. orders the body to be removed, so I move out of the way. I walk back into the living room and study the family picture again.
The tattoos on his forearms match the man with his face blown off, which means it shouldn’t be too hard to identify him.
Abandoning the living room, I move toward the stairs, ascend, and come to the first bedroom. Police officers are flooding the room, and flashes from the camera mirror what’s happening downstairs. When I walk into the master bedroom, though, I find a woman tied by her ankles and wrists. She is naked, and the letter V is etched into the pale, white skin of her stomach, matching the carving on her husband. The blood has since dried, leaving a trail of crimson lines down her sides.
From the appearance of her body, it would seem she was sexually assaulted as well, but we won’t know until the tests are done. Her face was untouched, which helps me identify her as the woman in the photograph.
Her head is lying on a blood soaked pillow, and upon closer inspection, you can see she was stabbed through the temple—one single, fatal wound through the side of her head.
Two family members are dead, and the only question right now is why?
I abandon the room and go to the next bedroom. It’s like the scene was duplicated, only with the daughter. She, too, is tied to her bed, spread eagle, and her midsection is lacerated with the letter V and covered in blood. A single stab wound to her temple.
I can feel the hate boil underneath my skin. It grows immensely when I look at this young girl; I want nothing more than to nail this prick. I was fortunate enough to survive my attacker. They still remain at large, but at least I’m still alive to talk about it. This girl was probably a lot like me at the age of fourteen: worried about her friends, taking an interest in boys, and wondering what to do on a Saturday nights. Now look at her. I am disgusted by this very sight.
I swallow down the obscenities and hatred attempting to spew from my mouth then jot down the condition of the bodies. I shake the thoughts and get myself back to investigator mode. I know this has to have some kind of significance, and I need to find what that is.
I am growing anxious as I step from the room and head toward the final bedroom. I have to see if the boy is alive. My hunch is telling me he’s not, but I need to see it with my own eyes.
When I walk over the threshold, I see him lying in his bed. The room appears to be untouched. Toy airplanes are hanging from the ceiling. The train table was probably left as he last had it with the action heroes straddling the train cars, and there is a hamper full of clothes in the corner. He is tucked under his covers, as if that is how his mother left him for the night, and seems like he is just sleeping. Yet, when I get closer to the body, I can see he, too, has been stabbed through the temple.
The blood is pooling under his head and has soaked into his airplane pillowcase. It’s a single, painless kill, telling me the person or persons responsible wanted a more merciful kill than they did for the others. When I look closer, I can see a small V carved into his wrist. It’s not as deep as the others, but it’s there, nonetheless.
Why? Why wasn’t the little boy killed with the same brutality, with the mark placed on his stomach? Does this person have a code when it comes to children? And if so, why didn’t he kill the young girl the way he killed the little boy? Why violate her if there is a code in place?
I write the questions in my notebook then walk back down the hall and down the stairs. I will stay on scene. I will not leave until I have processed it myself, until I am left alone with the horrors that seem to remain within these walls after such a heinous crime.
I walk outside where it is still raining, but it’s changed from a downpour to a light drizzle. I’m immediately greeted by Gabe O’Connor, my partner. If it were my choice, I would not have one, but he is the only person I can tolerate for more than an hour at a time. As a result, I can’t complain too much. However, some days it’s questionable.
With a crime this massive, I’m sure my lieutenant will want to form a task force. I hate task forces. All they do is screw crap up and take twice as long to work the case when it’s usually my leg work and detective intuition that solves the cases.
I jot down in my notebook to have a conversation with my boss, pleading with him to at least give me a couple of weeks before he forms the task force.
“Stowe.” Gabe walks up from the bottom of the driveway, coming out of the gathered crowd, and ducks under the yellow tape. “You just get here?” He holds his cup of coffee to his lips in his left hand and passes me a fresh, hot mug with the other.
I shake my head no and inhale the savory, rich coffee as I the crowd.
Gabe knows I’m not much of a talker when I am processing a scene, so he tends to leave me be. I like to observe. I don’t do the initial interviewing of witnesses at the scene. I will leave that to Gabe. I simply look over the area and take in as much as I can. Once I’m done after the first night, I will call or interrogate people.
“Can you believe this? It’s probably the worst case we’ve had in two years.” Gabe swallows his disgust for what happened to the family.
“I’ve seen worse,” I respond blankly. Bullet holes and stab wounds are a dime a dozen, but to cut people up into little pieces the way Victor did, removing their eyeballs and other organs, now that is intense.
“Are you completely dead on the inside, Stowe?” Gabe snaps at me, and I roll my eyes.
I do see his point. If anyone should have lived, it should have been the children. It’s never easy working a murder case when kids are involved. For many of the officers, it’s hard to disconnect the personal feelings because they have children of their own. I don’t know what it feels like to have a connection with a child, nor do I want to; therefore, I can keep the personal vendetta out of my head. Then again, maybe that’s not true. My reaction to the little girl was out of character for me. Normally, I can look at the deceased and not have a reaction.
“Did you get an ID on the deceased?” I ask, changing the subject then tasting the hot, black coffee on my tongue when I take a slow sip.
“Yeah, I’ve got names.”
I glare at him as he stumbles to get his notebook out of his pocket while juggling his coffee at the same time.
“Hold your horses, Stowe. I’ve got it here.” He flips the page open and shakes off the excess rainwater. “The deceased male and owner of the home was Ryan Smith. The woman upstairs was his wife, Monica, and then there was his daughter Leah and son Ryan Smith the second.”
Smith—that’s a pretty common name. There’s probably a million living on the West Coast alone, but I doubt there are too
many Ryan Smiths in the state.
I write the name on my notepad then abandon Gabe on the front porch. I pull my iPod from my pocket and turn on “Oats in the Water” by Ben Howard. I’ve played this song thousands of times, and I find the sound of his voice and the beat of the music enough to drown out any other outside noise without distracting me from the task at hand.
I walk down the small sidewalk and look up at the house one more time. The song begins to mellow out my state of mind and leaves me searching for the details. Questions upon questions are bouncing in my head as I sweep my sight across every inch of the house. I look over the withering structure one more time before I turn my sights to the collected audience.
I can still see the woman who was overwhelmed with grief standing in the same spot as earlier, and the punk kids messing with their phones. My eyes scan over them, simply looking for the tiniest clue. If we have an insane, psychological freak out there, I can guarantee he is watching us work.
I work my way from the left, starting with the punk kids, looking back to front, waiting for those certain eyes to connect with mine—the eyes of a killer. I turn my gaze to the middle, past the upset woman and over to the back of the crowd. He blends in so much I almost miss it, but when I connect my glare with his, my stomach drops to my feet.
There they are: the eyes of a guilty man, the eyes of a killer. I can feel it in my gut. Half a detective’s job is based on their gut reaction, and right now, my gut is swimming in the reaction of looking at the enigma in the crowd.
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