Cause to Fear

by Pierce, Blake

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I met her in college, freshman year. From the first date, she was it for me. No sleeping around in college like guys are supposed to do. Four years in college, two after college, most of which was me in the academy. I bought a ring and everything. I was just getting up the nerve, you know? I had that damn thing for six weeks and just couldn’t bring myself to do it. And it was a good thing, too. I came home early one day to surprise her. Had the ring on me, thinking I might pop the question after a really nice dinner.”

  Avery tried her hardest but could not envision Ramirez getting down on one knee. Too much vulnerability, she thought. He must have been a very different person back then.

  “I think I see where this is going,” Avery said. “And you don’t have to finish it if you don’t want to.”

  “Eh, it’s okay,” he said. “I haven’t actually talked about it out loud for years. It’s sort of cathartic, you know?”

  “Yeah, I get that,” she said, fully realizing that she had not yet shared her history with her previous marriage. That’s got to happen soon. Can’t keep dodging it forever…especially since he’s now living with me.

  “So I roll up to the apartment, a little nervous because maybe this is the night, you know? And…man, I can hear it before I see it. And you’d think hearing it would make me not want to see it, but I had to see it. Sounds dumb, huh? Anyway, I walk to the bedroom and realize it’s coming from the shower. The bathroom door is open and we had one of those nice glass shower doors. So I saw it all. This dude’s bare ass as he’s taking her from behind. And she’s really enjoying it. Like really enjoying it.

  “I snapped. I opened the door quietly and the guy didn’t even know anything was going on until I grabbed him by the shoulder and wheeled him around. I punched him and when he fell into the shower, I pushed my girlfriend to the side. I got soaked under that water but it was worth it. I won’t even lie about it. It took her pulling me off of him to prevent me getting in some very serious trouble. I’m pretty sure I broke his nose. Maybe dislocated his jaw.”

  “How did she react?” Avery asked.

  He shrugged. “No idea. I turned around and left. I haven’t spoken to her since.”

  “Not a single time?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “She tried calling me a few times but I never answered. I returned that ring and used the cash for a down payment on a new car. I still have the car, actually.” He chuckled at this, but there was no humor in it.

  It’s a sad story, Avery thought. But it sure does explain a lot.

  “Thanks for letting me know,” she said. “I realize there’s a lot of stuff we still don’t know about one another. I don’t know if that makes this more exciting or sort of cautionary.”

  “A bit of both, I think,” he said.

  “God…that has to sting, thinking about it.”

  “Not really,” he said. “It hurts more to know that I could have probably killed that guy if she hadn’t pulled me off of him.”

  “Still. It sucks you had to go through that.”

  He shrugged and then leaned over and kissed her softly on the mouth. When he drew back, they looked into one another’s eyes and God help her, she had butterflies in her stomach.

  Maybe now is the time to tell him, she said. Everything about Tom and how my selfishness and career obsession ruined it all.

  She summoned up the courage and pushed the first words to her tongue.

  But she was interrupted right away as her phone started ringing behind them. Feeling a little foolish for still being completely nude in the kitchen, she got up and grabbed it off of the couch.

  “It’s O’Malley,” she said.

  “What is it with the bosses calling after sex?” he asked.

  “Could be worse,” she said. “It could have been during.”

  She answered the call, sitting on the couch and pulling a blanket around her. “Hey, O’Malley. What is it?”

  “A third body,” he said. “And this one…Jesus, you just have to see it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  It was just shy of midnight when Avery parked on the street opposite the Boston Public Library, hardly believing where she was—that there could actually be a body in the center of Boston. There were only two other cars on the scene so far, which made Avery think Connelly was trying to keep this new body as quiet as possible. When she and Ramirez got out of the car, it was not the library that interested them, but the little stretch of land on the other side of the street. During most of the winter, this served as something of a makeshift artist’s space. As of late, it just so happened that the city was billing it as an ice sculpture park.

  She spotted O’Malley and Finley right away. They were speaking with a tall man who looked very upset. They were the only three people in the area at the moment. As she and Ramirez drew closer to the three men, she quickly glanced at the creations around them: ice sculptures of angels, snowmen, swans, even one of the Red Sox mascot with the baseball for a head.

  But up ahead was a creation that clearly was not supposed to be there. It was evident in the fact that it was covered by a blanket—the same sort of blanket that was carried around in the trunks of just about every police car in town. O’Malley, Finley, and the tall man were standing in front of it. Whatever the blanket was covering, it was about two and a half feet tall and in a slumped shape.

  Avery wasted no time, hurrying over to the three men. “What have we got?” she asked.

  “Take a quick look under the sheet and see for yourself,” O’Malley said.

  Avery did, not sparing a second to prepare herself for the worst. She had long ago learned that when you expected something to be very bad, it almost never met your expectations, therefore making the crime not seem quite as severe.

  She drew the blanket back and found a naked woman sitting on the sidewalk. She was extremely pale. Her hair had chunks of ice in it. She was sitting in a modified version of what she had called criss-cross-applesauce in school. The woman’s blue eyes were wide open, staring ahead toward the library across the street. It took Avery less than five seconds to see that this woman was hairless, like all the rest. Arms, legs, pubic region, everything except the hair on her head.

  And, like the others, the woman was incredibly attractive. One thing was different, though. This woman appeared to be older than the other two girls. Maybe by as much as ten to fifteen years.

  Behind the body were two simply constructed stands, two beams sawed and nailed together to support her in the sitting position. An iron bar ran between them, sitting flush with the concrete.

  This is it…the proof needed to determine that he sees this as art of some kind, Avery thought. She may not be covered in ice, but she’s been exposed to it—that much is clear from the bits of ice in her hair. And displaying her like this…this is him rubbing our noses in it. No need to send one of his cute letters to the precinct this time. This is his letter.

  Having had her look and allowing Ramirez to also study the body, she covered it back up. “How long has she been here?” Avery asked.

  It was the tall man who answered. His voice trembled when he spoke. “Not very long. I left here at eight thirty. It was discovered around ten after eleven.”

  “Detective Black,” O’Malley said, “meet Jonathan Hughes. He’s a local sculptor who has been overseeing the ice sculpture park. He was the first person we called when we learned about the body. She was discovered by a couple coming home from a bar. They decided to check out the ice sculptures and saw this. There was less than a three-hour window.”

  “Someone had to have seen something,” Ramirez said.

  “Probably,” O’Malley said. “But we got no calls. Just the bar-hopping couple.”

  “Do we have an ID?” Avery asked.

  “We do. And it took Mr. Hughes here to point it out to me. The woman under the blanket is Carolyn Rodgers, vice president of the Boston Historical Society and sometimes-model.”

&n
bsp; “Sometimes?” Avery asked.

  “She’s been in commercials, some print ads, a music video for some country music guy. A shitload of people know who she is—which means that this is the body of a public figure. So I would love to get to the bottom of this before the media smells it.”

  Avery looked around the small ice sculpture park and saw the one thing they had going for them was that the body had not been visible from the street. However, seeing the library across the street gave her an idea. The Old South Church also sat across the street, a gorgeous piece of architecture that sent her mind into motion.

  “Finley, can you make a call to see who we need to speak with to get access to the security cameras at the library and Old South Church? You’re going to piss some people off calling so late, but we need to be looking at footage within the hour.”

  “I don’t see how anyone could have done this without someone noticing something suspicious,” Jonathan Hughes said.

  Cold weather means big coats and stocking caps, she thought. That’s a built-in disguise right there…

  “It’s cold and it’s an ice sculpture park,” Avery said. “If anyone saw someone walking into here with any sort of package—even if it was big enough to be a human body—I don’t know that anyone would have known it was suspicious. We’ll get more answers if we can get something from the library footage.”

  “I’m on it,” Finley said, taking out his phone.

  Avery held in a sigh and turned around to the look at the small area that made up the sculpture garden. At this time of night on a Sunday, it would have been next to impossible for the killer to get a body in here without anyone seeing it.

  He’s bold. He’s courageous in a morbid sort of way. If we don’t catch him soon, this could get very nasty.

  Sure, the passersby might not know it was a body the killer was carrying—but someone within that three-hour window must have seen something. For now, their only hope was finding something on the library security cameras.

  Looking around at the beautiful sculptures while in the presence of the body was eerie. Finally letting out her sigh, Avery shuddered.

  It was going to be another long night.

  ***

  Forty minutes later, Avery and Ramirez were sitting in a very small office with a middle-aged woman in the Boston Public Library. The woman was Jessie Nelson, head librarian and, apparently, the only one on staff that knew her way around the security system outside of the company that installed it—and they could not get anyone out to meet with Avery until around noon tomorrow.

  Jessie was as helpful as she could be, having been pulled out of her sleep shortly after midnight. She was glad to help, though, and showed an attitude of concern as she clicked and scrolled her way through the footage between eight o’clock and eleven fifteen that night.

  Right away, Avery noticed one disheartening thing: the security cameras outside of the library were not able to catch all of the scenery across the street. About a quarter of the left side of the sculpture park was cut off. Still, the small plot of sidewalk where Carolyn Rodgers had been displayed was in plain view.

  As Avery had expected, the flow of foot traffic tapered off around nine o’clock, then dipped down to virtually nothing by ten.

  “Okay,” Avery said over Jessie’s shoulder. “Now, I want you to please stop and play in real time every time someone comes by the sculpture park between ten o’clock and when Ramirez and I arrive.”

  “Got it,” Jessie said, fast forwarding through the footage. She stopped when two people went walking by at 10:06. The two were clearly a younger couple, walking close and holding hands. They walked by the sculptures without walking through the small park and continued on their way down the street.

  A single person walked by at 10:11 and although he walked into the park, he was carrying nothing. Still, Avery had Jessie slow down the footage. They watched the man enter and then presumably exit out of the side that was cut off by the camera.

  Another person passed six minutes later, then a group of five that were obviously college students three minutes after that. Jessie continued to scroll, sitting upright and on the edge of her seat.

  Then at 10:39, someone stepped into view. They were not trying to be inconspicuous at all. It was a figure wearing a thick coat. The hood was pulled up and as they came into the screen, they were looking down at the street. This could be to either hide their face or because they were putting force into pulling the metal dolly behind them. A large wooden crate was on the dolly, teetering on the edge.

  “Holy shit,” Ramirez said.

  “Go back to where they came in and slow it down, please,” Avery said.

  Jessie did as she was asked. They watched as the hooded figure very slowly entered the frame, pulling the crate behind them. They entered the sculpture park as if they belonged there, maneuvering through the sculptures and heading directly for an empty spot near the back, where Avery had seen the body of Carolyn Rodgers less than an hour ago.

  The figure stopped at that exact spot and unloaded the crate from the dolly. The person took a quick look around and then pried the crate open. As Avery had expected, the body of Carolyn Rodgers was inside. The figure remained with its back to the camera as it brought the morbid sculpture out and set it up on its makeshift stands.

  The entire process took about two minutes; in that time, no one else walked by. The figure suddenly stood up, stacking the broken crate in a stack on the dolly. They then walked away from the scene, pulling the dolly behind them as if it was just another normal moment. Like the spectators before the coated and hooded figure, they walked away, exiting to the left and disappearing off of the screen.

  “You see a clear shot of the face?” Ramirez asked.

  “No. Jessie, can you replay that for us, maybe a bit slower?”

  They rewatched the footage and came to only two occasions where the killer’s face was pointed at the camera. The first time, the hood and the shadow it cast across their face hid most of it. All that was visible was the lower left side of the killer’s face. The second shot was a little more promising but still not great; the fluffy trim of the coat’s hood hid most of the killer’s face but did manage to reveal one eye, the slope of nose, and everything from the bottom lip down.

  “Pause it, please,” Avery said. “And can you print that for us?”

  Jessie clicked a few commands and said: “Printing now.”

  She then got up from behind the desk and went to the other side of the office, where a printer was churning the photo out.

  “I don’t care how crazy you are,” Ramirez said. “To drop a body off in a public place like that…that’s pretty brazen.”

  “It is,” Avery says. “And it also scares me. If our killer is brave enough to do something like this, I’m not sure there’s much he wouldn’t do.”

  At that moment, her phone rang. Finley was on the other line and he sounded just as defeated as Avery felt. “Got anything?” Avery asked.

  “No,” Finley said. “I’m over here at the Old South Church with the security guy. None of their cameras pan around far enough to get a clear shot of the sculpture park. We can see shadows of people when they leave, but just barely. There’s nothing of use over here.”

  “Thanks for trying,” Avery said, hanging up and looking back to the screen in front of her. Her concentration was broken when Jessie came back with a printed copy of the man from the footage.

  “Thanks,” Avery said absently.

  She looked to the murky face in the picture. She was slowly overcome with a sense of dread. It was frustrating to know that although this was very likely their killer, the shot did not reveal his face. In that, Avery felt like even from within the picture, the bastard was smiling at her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Avery had managed to catch a quick nap in one of the A1 break rooms, dozing off and on for about two hours. When she came back out into the melee that was the precinct just prior to 6:30 a.m., the place was a m
adhouse. The news was all over the television and the press was already setting up camp in the parking lots and street surrounding the building.

  Sometime between 2:00 and 6:30 in the morning, the press managed to find out the identity of the latest victim—the body that had been made to look like a sculpture. Because Jonathan Hughes, the overseer and curator of the little park was insisting his innocence, it was assumed that the couple that had discovered the body had leaked it to the press, and probably for a nice sum of money.

  The black-and-white photo that she and Ramirez had taken from the library had made the rounds but everyone had a quiet look of disappointment when they saw it. Even when it was enlarged and cleaned up by the experts downstairs in the A1, it was impossible to get any real identity from it. All they had to go on was a dark parka-like coat—probably black. Needless to say, such a feature was beyond common during the winter in Boston.

  She made her way quickly to the bathroom, splashed some cold water on her face, and did her best to make some sort of sense out of her hair. She then made a direct line to the coffee maker, poured a mug, and drank it black and hot right away. No sooner had she swallowed the first mouthful than Connelly came toward her as if they were magnetized.

  He didn’t even bother asking if they could talk in private. He simply cornered her, though not in a hostile way. He spoke quietly and she could tell by the look in his eye that he was tired, too.

  “Sorry I wasn’t at the ice sculpture park,” he said. “Just to let you know, I wasn’t there because I was on the phone with the State Police and the feds. There is some serious talk about the FBI getting involved in this. And Jesus, I really don’t want that to happen. Level with me, Black. Does this new body provide any further details or insights into this creep?”

  “Aside from the fact that he’s brave as hell? I’m afraid not. It does solidify my theory that this might be some obscure form of art to him, though.”