Cause to Fear

by Pierce, Blake

  “I’ll be damned,” Weldon said. “Looks like you were right.”

  “I told you,” Norman said over the whir of the drill. “It’s been too cold for it to—”

  They could hear the cracking noise even over the sound of the drill. Right away, Weldon started to backpedal toward the concrete lip of the reservoir. Norman let go of the drill’s trigger and looked to the left where a huge crack had zigged and zagged its way through the ice.

  “Damn,” he said, slowly getting up.

  When he was back on his feet, the ice slid to the left, pitching a bit in the water. And then another crack ran through it, this one going directly between his feet and springing out of the hole he had drilled.

  Weldon was already back on the concrete, looking out like a man waiting for a disaster. “You better get your ass over here!” he yelled.

  I know, I know, Norman thought nervously. If he fell in this water, he’d never hear the end of it.

  Holding his drill tightly, he walked as quickly as he could across the fractured ice. With each step, it cracked more and more, now accompanied by a groaning sound. With scary speed, he felt the ice growing weaker and weaker; he could feel himself bobbing up and down.

  He felt ice water creep across the toes of his boots and he knew he had to jump. If he didn’t, the ice would break apart and he’d go in the water. With about three feet separating him from the concrete, he jumped.

  He almost made it.

  His drill went clattering across the concrete as his body from the waist up hit the concrete. The rest of him went splashing into the water. He let out a little wail of surprise as his legs were soaked in ice cold water.

  Weldon helped him onto the concrete, but he was laughing hysterically. He had even dropped his beer during the whole fiasco and didn’t seem to know.

  “Shut it, Weldon,” Norman said as he got to his feet on the concrete. His feet were freezing and he was beyond embarrassed. He’d been wrong about the ice after all.

  “Shit,” Weldon said. “Norman—look at that.”

  Weldon’s face had gone pale—looking like he had been the one to fall in the water.

  He was pointing into the reservoir, into the icy water that had just about taken Norman. Norman followed his friend’s finger and saw nothing at first. But then it was unmistakable.

  Something was floating in the dark water. It was pale and barely moving at all. As Norman saw it, a sheet of ice coasted into it and bounced off. Norman knew what he was seeing, but his mind refused to accept it. But then he saw the bare breasts and it seemed to snap him back toward logic.

  “Oh my God,” Norman said.

  Both men fell silent as they watched the body listlessly float in the water, staring eternally up at the sky.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  When it was clear that the couch was not going to allow them to become as active as they liked to be, they moved to the bedroom. It was there, amid a jumble of sheets and candlelight, that they finally started talking again.

  “What will Rose think if I move in?” Ramirez asked.

  “I don’t know,” Avery answered. “I’ll talk to her about it. But the fact that you’re even concerned about it makes me want you to move in a little more. It also makes me think you might be getting Round Two tonight before we go to sleep.”

  “I have to say…it would be a weird dynamic. Not only would we be working together as partners and living together—but if you take this sergeant position, I’d also be living with my boss.”

  “Well, let’s be real,” she said, playfully reaching below the sheets and seizing him gently. “I’m sort of the boss here already.”

  “Touché,” he said. “But in all seriousness, I think you should take it. You know that O’Malley and Connelly already basically come to you as if you already had the position anyway. They think a hell of a lot of you.”

  She only nodded because even though it was true, it was still hard for her to verbally admit it.

  “I do, too, you know,” he said.

  “I know.”

  It was a conceited thought, but she was pretty certain Ramirez was in love with her. She supposed she loved him, too. But with their jobs and the things they saw on a daily basis, that was one word neither of them was ready to approach yet. Avery had only said it to two people in her entire life. One had been a stupid boy in ninth grade and the second had been her husband. It was just a dumb word, but she knew how much it changed things when it was tossed out there.

  Ramirez rolled over onto his back and Avery sidled up next to him. She rested her head on his shoulder and placed an arm around him. She had joked about Round Two but she didn’t think it would happen. They were both content and it was nearing ten o’clock. They both liked to wake up early and although the sex was the best she’d ever had, even sex sometimes wasn’t as satisfying as a good night’s sleep.

  Round Two was efficiently ruled out ten minutes later when Ramirez fell asleep. She knew he wouldn’t stir again until morning. It was something she teased him about—how he could just fall asleep right away without brushing his teeth. She was the polar opposite, which was why she got out of bed, draped herself in her robe, and headed into the bathroom. She brushed her teeth and looked out into the bedroom. She loved the way his sleeping shape looked beneath the sheets and knew right then and there that she did want him to live with her.

  She finished up with her teeth, threw on a pair of underwear and a T-shirt, and started back toward her bed. As she went, though, she paused at her window. She looked out, staring into the thin stretch of Boston skyline in the distance. Down below and to her right, she could see just a tiny fraction of the Charles River. It sparkled in ice and streetlights, the small bend of water she had always seen from this view in her bedroom. Now, though, having seen a body pulled from it, it was hard to see the water as anything resembling pretty.

  She looked at the water, visualizing the way it looked year-round; spring turned the water into a mirror of the blooming vegetation along its banks, the summer made it a murky promise of cooling, the fall made it the meandering brooks of calendars, and the winter turned it into a frosty staple of cold weather. It could be appealing to just about anyone in those four stages. But what would draw a killer to it in the winter? A sense of desolation? A sense of things coming to an end?

  Will he use the Charles River again? she wondered.

  Realizing that sleep was not going to come anytime soon, she crept back out to the living room and sat down with the case files. She started by going back over everything she knew about Patty Dearborne. She had been a BU student, majoring in psychology. Twenty-two years old—three years older than Rose. No record, no apparent enemies, a stand-up young lady. Church-goer, tutored in her spare time. Apparently, she had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Or had she? She was beautiful, unblemished. Even in the cold…

  Something about that struck her as odd…as motive almost.

  She then looked to the letter the killer had sent. She read it and reread it, staring at it as if it were some piece of art to be deciphered and understood on a deeper level. She analyzed the words that seemed to stick out the most. Windshield. Erotic. Flower. She started to wonder if it might be worth contacting a Lit professor or maybe someone with a deep knowledge of the constructs of word usage and poetry.

  She also looked at her phone, pulling up an email that had come in earlier in the afternoon. So far, there had been no luck in finding a source of information on the hacking of the elderly woman’s email account that had been used to send the letter to the media.

  Still…someone with enough knowledge to hack into someone’s email account and a killer’s mindset that just happens to be drawn toward ice. This is going to make for a fairly difficult profile…

  Usually by this point in a case, she was able to at least get some sort of grasp on the killer’s mentality. This would allow her to view the case from the killer’s eyes, opening up new avenues to search for l
eads.

  But she was unable to find a way in so far. This killer was unique in a way she had never seen before.

  He wants to be known…maybe even eventually caught. Hacking an email address, writing a letter, shaving and meticulously cleaning the victim. It speaks of planning, of patience, and a structure to his madness.

  Feeling herself at a roadblock of sorts, Avery gave in after a while. She returned to the bedroom and slid into bed beside Ramirez. Just as she pulled the covers up around her, the room was filled with the all-too-familiar noise of her cell phone ringing. As she reached for it on her nightstand, Ramirez let out a little groan of disappointment from the bed.

  “This is Avery,” she said.

  “Hey, Avery,” said a man’s voice. “This is Finley, calling for O’Malley. Sorry to call so late.”

  If they’re getting him to go up the ladder, they need to teach him to get to the point, Avery thought.

  “It’s okay, Finley. What is it?”

  “Bundle up,” he said with a morbid chuckle. “We need you out here. We’ve got another body.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  For the second time in three days, Avery found herself driving outside of Boston to reach a crime scene. This time, the body had been discovered in Cambridge at the Fresh Pond Reservoir. The night seemed even darker that usual thanks to the unforgiving cold. She and Ramirez pulled in behind several other police cars, most of which belonged to Cambridge PD.

  Great, Avery thought. Just what we need…a turf war between the police. Maybe they’ll be as hospitable as the PD from Watertown.

  She quickly located familiar faces in the crowd of a dozen or so police. Finley and O’Malley were speaking with a man in a police uniform. When O’Malley spotted her, he waved her over with a sense of urgency. Avery bustled over with her hands stuffed in her pockets. It was cold as hell out tonight; her phone had read twelve degrees when she and Ramirez had stepped out to respond to the call.

  “Avery,” O’Malley said. “Meet Chief Tagart. This is his show out here in Cambridge but he’s agreed to let you have first run before his guys get in there and busy up the scene.”

  “That’s right,” Tagart said. “Even I can see the similarities in that God-awful case with the Dearborne girl. So do what you can. Just…remember whose district you’re in.”

  “Got it,” she said a little rudely. She hated nothing more than for a man in power to make a sad power play when it was clear that he wanted nothing to do with the problem. Especially when that man was faced with a woman who was more skilled than he was. Still, she knew how to make things work their smoothest, so she wasn’t going to rock the boat.

  She walked out to the ice with Ramirez still behind her. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll be good. If this case isn’t closed soon, I’ll be something of an expert at ice skating.”

  The joke fell flat as she reached the edge of the reservoir and saw that the body had already been retrieved from the ice. She tried not to get too pissed about this, though; from what she could tell, the corpse had been handled carefully. She saw a young woman, maybe eighteen to twenty years of age. Like Patty Dearborne, she was completely naked and, even in frigid death, looked quite striking.

  Two officers were by the body—a man taking notes and a sad-looking woman taking pictures. “You Detective Black?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” Avery said, reaching for her ID.

  “Good riddance,” the woman said. “This whole scene makes me sick. It’s all yours.”

  With a saddened look, the woman started back up the bank toward the bubble lights of the gathered police cars.

  Avery hunkered down by the body, already placed on top of a tarp. She got a closer look at the girl using a small Maglite she took from her coat pocket. As she had suspected, there was not a speck of hair on this girl below the head. Again, there was no jewelry although Avery could clearly see an indentation on her pinky and right ring finger where rings had been until recently. She saw no bruises, no blood…nothing.

  She hated to do it, but she stared down at the body to compare and contrast this one with the body of Patty Dearborne. She tried her best to slip out of detective mode and into the mind of a man that would hunt this type of women. She saw no obvious signs of sexual assault, though that could not be ruled out without a thorough medical exam. And in cases like this, when you removed the sexual aspect as motive, it left far too many questions.

  She studied the body, starting to feel twinges of the sadness and sickness the woman who had just walked away had described.

  Patty Dearborne had blonde hair, while this new body had dark black hair. Patty had been a typical white American girl while a first glance at this new girl indicated some sort of Latin heritage. This girl had smaller breasts whereas Patty Dearborne’s had been much fuller and larger than average. Other than those differences, there was nothing.

  “Ramirez,” she said, remembering that he was behind her.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you get me some evidence gloves?”

  He didn’t say anything but did as she asked right away. While he was gone, Avery looked at the girl again and sorted through her thoughts.

  Both were young girls. Dearborne was a college student at BU. I’d put money on this girl also being a student. First glance shows no signs of violence, so there was likely no struggle or, if there was, it was minimal. Two very attractive girls, both very small in stature. Dearborne’s weight at death was one hundred and ten. This girl looks even smaller. The killer has some weird fixation on beauty…and apparently ice. A weird combination for sure…

  “Here you go,” Ramirez said, returning behind her. He handed her a pair of evidence gloves and when she took them, she gave him a nod of appreciation. She slipped them on and then searched the body a bit more.

  She started with the hair, pulling it lightly part and looking at the scalp for any indication of head trauma. Forensics had not come up with anything like that for Patty Dearborne, but she wanted to eliminate it from the start.

  She then carefully rolled the girl onto her side. Again, there was no sign of violence. There was a very small tattoo on this girl’s lower back, one of those generic Chinese symbols that probably didn’t mean what the victim had thought it meant. She rested the girl on her back again and then lifted up her hands. If there had been any sort of a struggle, there might be some sort of sign on the palms or fingers.

  Again, nothing.

  Shit, Avery thought. Nothing to go on. Other than beauty, what would draw the killer to these two girls? Maybe he hates beauty. But that doesn’t feel right because he’s going out of his way to make them clean, hairless, perfect. Is he capturing them with intent to act out sexual fantasies and then being tormented by guilt and fear? Is he perhaps paying tribute to them by making them so clean and flawless? I mean, this girl is spotless…

  But then she saw the very slight abnormality on the girl’s left pointer finger. The fingernail had been finely polished like the others but there was the slightest little crack in it. More than that, there was a very small piece of fabric clinging to the crack.

  It was a very minor find but at least it was something.

  Avery heard more footsteps approaching. She turned and saw O’Malley and Chief Tagart heading in her direction. “What do you think, Black?” O’Malley asked.

  “I think we need Forensics down here. This girl is in the exact same shape as Patty Dearborne, but there’s a very small bit of fabric clinging to a tear in this girl’s fingernail. It might turn out to yield absolutely nothing, but it’s the only scrap of evidence we have.”

  “Forensics is about five minutes out. Anything else?”

  “Beauty and ice. Those are our guy’s triggers. Chief Tagart, do you know anything about the security camera setup around here?”

  “There are a few cameras, but that’s near the front of the property. You know, Fresh Pond used to be a park but it eventually just became a reservoir. I’ve alre
ady got some men speaking to security to get a look at the footage, but hopes aren’t very high.”

  “I don’t get it,” O’Malley said. “Stripped naked. Young, pretty girls. And there are zero signs of abuse or rape?”

  “Zero,” Avery agreed. “We need a thorough medical exam to confirm, but I feel confident this body will yield the same results as Patty Dearborne—so signs of sexual assault.”

  “What’s your gut say?” O’Malley asked.

  “Everything you just said in addition to the riddle-like letter points to a killer that has a purpose—a purpose they can see clearly. But it also points to the very real possibility of someone suffering from a mental break of some sort. Taking women like this for sexual fantasies or abuse of some kind is driven by an impulse or deep-seated physical need. But to do this so systematically—the shaving, the cleanliness—points to someone that might be—”

  “—fucking crazy?” Tagart asked.

  Avery nodded, wincing. “I was going to say potential guilt, fear, or disgust. Maybe a man that wants the women for sex at first but then bails out.”

  Tagart shrugged, as if he either didn’t really care or was done listening.

  “Anything else?” O’Malley asked.

  “Yes. Given the timeline of these two bodies being discovered and the methodical approach,” she said wearily, “I can guarantee that there will be more bodies to come.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Due to the late hour, the subsequent meeting at the A1 was a small one. That was fine with Avery; she actually preferred it that way. At 1:10 in the morning, she sat at the head of the table with a cranky-looking Connelly to her left. O’Malley sat next to him, then there was Finley and then Ramirez at the end of the table. A few of the guys from Forensics were also in the building but they were hard at work in the lab, doing what they could to work with the Cambridge guys to come up with something—anything—that could provide a solid lead on the case.