by Stacy Green
Everything outside seemed frozen in place while Erin’s emotions ricocheted and dipped like a roller coaster. She knelt, Beckett hovering near her shoulder, the scent of his mint gum providing a welcome perfume to the smell of drying blood and decaying flesh. She tried not to think about the rancid odor of Bonnie’s bowels.
Her hairless vagina was no more than a milky white slab of flesh, repeatedly sliced into like a block of cheese. The knife had been jammed to the hilt, tearing through her insides.
“It’s a cleaver, right?” Erin’s legs threatened to give out on her. She stood, unable to take the proximity any longer.
Mitchell nodded. “Likely the murder weapon.”
A heady silence descended in the crowded attic between those living and the poor girl whose blood cascaded at their feet.
Beckett finally broke it. “Absolute rage. And he came here intending to kill her.”
“How do you figure?” Erin asked.
“Look at the area around her.” Beckett made a sweeping motion with his long right arm. “Notice what’s missing?”
Dan Mitchell clucked in agreement.
Erin searched frantically, knowing the answer probably dangled in front of her. She only saw blood turning the wood into a muddy river.
“No tracks leading from the body,” Beckett said softly. “And the killer had to have been covered in blood.”
Erin’s face flushed. “He had to take his clothes off and go down at least one floor to clean up.”
“He likely used the upstairs bathroom,” Marie said. “It reeks of bleach. So far no blood anywhere but right here. Not even on the steps.” She shuddered. “Except for the leak.”
Beckett stuffed his hands into the pockets of his pressed khakis. “He probably brought a trash bag or took one from Bonnie’s. Stripped, put his clothes in, and then cleaned.”
Erin rubbed her temples. “But there’s no sign of breaking and entering. Either she knew him well enough to let him in, or he appeared completely nonthreatening.”
“More than likely the former,” Todd said. “Rage like this is usually personal.”
Erin couldn’t stop looking at Bonnie’s ripped vagina. She had to compartmentalize, focus on the job at hand, and stop thinking of the body as a tortured woman. But this poor girl, with so much left to live for ... was she given the gift of unconsciousness before the worst of the cutting started, or did Bonnie endure until the near-end?
Erin cleared the clog of emotions in her throat. “There will be too much damage to tell whether he used anything but the knife. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and the M.E. will find some bodily fluid.”
“There’s more.” Mitchell’s usually confident voice wavered.
Erin’s throat dried up at the change. She tried to force spit into her mouth, but she only succeeded in making her throat burn.
Mitchell made eye contact with Marie, who stood on the opposite side in the dark corner Erin hadn’t paid any attention to.
Marie turned on another light, illuminating the twin box bed in the corner. A rope was tied around one of the headboard’s rails, the flimsy mattress hanging off the right side.
Panic swarmed Erin as she clung to rationality. The attic wasn’t the same. It wasn’t a living space. He wasn’t there, beckoning Erin to sit with him on the loveseat. Yet for a minute, she catapulted to that moment a year ago, her date on top of her, threatening her, while she froze in shock and fear.
No. She wouldn’t allow the memory to come back and unnerve her in front of everyone. If she could work with rape victims, she could handle this. “What the hell is this?” The scratchy voice belonged to her. Erin pointed to the metal objects scattered on the floor along with the studio light. Miniature pliers held together by a flimsy chain—nipple clamps. “Were those used on her during the assault?”
“It’s possible,” Mitchell said. “We haven’t found any corresponding marks, but the M.E. might find some once the blood’s all washed off.”
Sweat ran down her back and Erin fought to hide her fear. A silver set of handcuffs lay near Bonnie, along with a couple rolls of twine, a razor-thin black whip, and a dildo so thick Erin internally flinched.
“When was the last time anyone spoke to her?” Erin asked.
“The guy who found her,” Beckett said. “Will Merritt. He talked to her earlier in the day. Said she was fine.”
“So why is all this stuff up here? I get the killer brings stuff to torture her with, but he didn’t exactly haul the bed with him.”
Marie pointed to the other corner of the attic. “The studio light can be used for film or photography.” She walked past Bonnie, her eyes flickering to the dead woman, to the pile of junk in the opposite corner. “The camera’s been taken, but the tripod is still here. We’ve searched through everything and can’t find it or the computer Bonnie used to upload online.”
Marie held up an oblong black box. “This is a common wireless video transmitter and receiver. Picked up in any store that sells video equipment or online. You can use a digital camera to record and send video to a computer or whatever the transmitter is hooked up to. My guess is she filmed amateur porn, and someone didn’t like it.”
“He must be on the recording.” Erin stated the obvious. “Maybe the guy didn’t know about the recording and lost his shit. Or he finds out she’s recorded him and put him on the Internet. That’s enough to make someone snap this bad.”
“There are two major hosting services allowing users to post their own videos,” Beckett said. “They’re both in the Netherlands. Although the chances of finding any of Bonnie’s videos are about as slim as finding Atlantis. Thousands uploaded per day.”
“She could also do a pay-per-view site of her own,” Erin supplied. “Either way, both the domains and the financial information are going to bounce overseas unless God grants us a miracle.” Which He won’t.
She ran into the issue time and time again in sex crimes when trying to track down child pornography. The creeps ran hundreds of sites off servers in little foreign countries with no use—or reason to cooperate.
Marie kneeled next to the bed, carefully sweeping the messy bedding aside. “Especially if he’s keeping his interest in BDSM a secret. That’s what all this looks like to me.”
“It’s certainly possible someone would want this kept a secret—especially if he’s a married family man.”
“What about the name and address?” Erin remembered Marie’s earlier cryptic answer. “You said he left them.”
“That’s the annoying part. Beckett, I didn’t get a chance to show this to you before.” Marie angled her light toward the center of the attic, illuminating the beam directly over Bonnie’s head.
Erin craned her neck to read. Whore had been scratched into the beam. Beneath that, 1888, Buck’s Row gouged in long, pointed, blood-stained letters.
“The killer had more than one knife then.” Erin’s dry throat longed for water. “The cleaver didn’t make those marks.”
“1888 brings up hundreds of addresses, so I searched by street name,” Marie said. “There’s no Buck’s Row in the District or any of the surrounding suburbs. No street name, no suburb, no neighborhood slang names. Nothing.” She stopped and huffed dramatically, a lock of black hair falling into her eyes. “I’ve got our forensic examiners searching, but I don’t think they’ll be able to find anything either.”
“I don’t think you’re looking for a street.” Beckett’s flat tone sent a strange chill over Erin. He stood a few feet away from the rest of the group, staring up at the carving. His drawn, pale expression appeared far more tortured than it had been minutes ago.
“Then what am I looking for?” Marie’s hands went to her hips. “A business name? Because I searched those terms too.”
“Buck’s Row was a street in an area of London in 1888.” Fear ghosted in Beckett’s eyes. “In Whitechapel. The city changed the name because of the unwanted attention after the murder of the first prostitute.”
The flo
or suddenly turned liquid as Erin slowly looked down at Bonnie’s eviscerated body. Her dry lips cracked as she forced them to move. “1888. Jack the Ripper.”
“No way.” Marie swallowed hard.
Her wide eyes mirrored the heady panic boiling through Erin.
“He murdered prostitutes in the streets. This can’t be a Jack the Ripper copycat,” Marie protested.
“Weren’t all the victims’ intestines taken out? Bonnie’s are still intact.” Erin never understood the infatuation with Jack the Ripper. She didn’t consider him any worse than the sickos running around today. The police just didn’t have the technology then to catch him. “And he didn’t leave anything sticking in their crotches.” The distinctions mattered. Because Erin simply wasn’t ready for a case like this.
“He cut out some of the victims’ entire abdominal cavities,” Beckett said. “As well as their breasts. And he removed more than one uterus. This killer cut Bonnie deep enough he could have been trying to take her organs out. He either didn’t have the fortitude or the right knife to get it done. Which means his planning wasn’t as thorough as it could have been. That might work in our favor.”
Beckett looked at Erin. “But you’re right, there are a lot of discrepancies. Bonnie’s throat was slashed vertically. As though the killer stood in front of her and hacked away at random. The first canonical victim’s neck had a big circle cut into it. The Ripper cut through the tissue, clean to the vertebra.”
He shrugged at Erin’s stare. “I’m a history buff.”
“All right, then.” Her voice sounded far more confident than she felt. Clark’s describing the case as bad barely touched the surface. More like layer upon layer of soul-sucking fear. What if some freak really did want to become a modern-day Jack the Ripper, and Bonnie’s murder was just the beginning? “Copycats obsess over minute details. All we’ve got here is a date and some mutilation. Probably trying to distract us from the real evidence.” Her certainty grew as she spoke. “The Ripper innuendo is nothing but a smokescreen. Not to mention gaining media attention. If the reporters outside hear about this, they’ll freak out the entire city.”
“I agree,” Beckett said. “At least for now.” He took a long look around, his gaze lingering on the carved words.
Erin didn’t like the way his mouth tightened, the cords in his neck straining. She had to keep talking, or she would start thinking about the implications of the name and date. She cleared her throat. “So going with the theory Bonnie knew her killer, are we dealing with a stalker? Someone she thought she could reason with?”
“Whoever did this is beyond reason.” Mitchell said what everyone thought, his Droopy eyes so mournful Erin wanted to cry. “I’d like to start getting her ready for transport if you don’t mind.”
* * *
Erin and Beckett descended down two flights of stairs. Every step away from the attic eased the tension in Erin’s lungs. In the cramped entryway, they related the gory details of the attic to Sergeant Clark. He listened without reaction, his eyes on the stairs as though he expected the terrible energy in the house to materialize.
“Shit.” He pulled on his coat and yanked up the zipper. “So our boy’s got a Ripper fetish he wants us to know about.”
“I don’t think he’s a real copycat,” Beckett said. “But the inspiration is bad enough.”
Clark glared out of the open door. The crowd seemed to have swelled, but so far, no additional press had showed up. Ted Moore’s murder still held court. “Keep the Ripper message tight. Word gets out, Moore’s murder will be old news, and we’ll be up to our eyeballs in media. That reporter from Channel 4 is bad enough.
“You two need to talk to the boyfriend.” Clark turned his back to the door, pitching his voice low. “He’s down at the CID waiting for you. Tomorrow morning, I’ll get our forensic examiners online and see if they can find any of Bonnie’s videos. Maybe if we can get information from her bank and find some deposits from one of the big uploading sites, we’ll have somewhere to start. But don’t get your hopes up. That will take days, and even then, we don’t have enough resources to go through all the content.”
Beckett slouched in the low-ceilinged entry. “If you don’t mind, I have a suggestion. What about asking NCMEC for help?” He pronounced the name as nick-meck, a nickname only privy to those within the organization and the agencies they intimately worked with. “They specialize in finding people, and they have techs who are skilled in searching the dark web.”
“Nick-meck searches for missing kids,” Sergeant Clark’s tone listed toward impatience. “They aren’t going to be interested in this.”
“My girlfriend is a case manager there,” Beckett said. “She’d help us, I’m sure.”
Erin ran through the case managers at NCMEC. She’d worked with all of them, and she couldn’t see Todd Beckett with any of them. Then again, looks didn’t mean anything. Police work 101.
Clark shook his head. “Everything stays in-house. I don’t want anything other than the basics about this case getting out to the media. The Ripper angle is a reporter’s wet dream. You guys head to the CID.” He stepped onto the porch and started for the steps. “See if you can get anything from the boyfriend.”
The CID’s M Street location meant relatively easy access to the interstate as well as a view of the Capitol building. It also meant the drive from Columbia Heights passed too quickly for Erin to collect her thoughts. Not to mention settle the turmoil the attic dredged up.
Her heart kicked into hyper-drive as the memories flooded back. As hard as she fought against it, the sensation of absolute terror and shock at her attack sometimes struck without warning.
Her handsome date had been a casual acquaintance of a colleague. On their third date, he asked her up to his apartment for a drink.
Sweat broke out over the bridge of her nose despite the cold gust of air cooling her skin. She breathed deeply and fought for control over the memory—his overpowering cologne, her body tearing as he forced his way inside of her.
When her date finished, he’d rolled over and smoked a cigarette while Erin lay in shock. How had this happened to her? Why hadn’t she defended herself?
A horn honked somewhere on M Street, snapping her out of it. She pulled a pack of tissues out of her bag, dabbed at the sweat, and made sure her stupid mascara hadn’t run.
She chickened out of reporting the rape despite Brad’s pleading. But how could she hope to maintain any level of credibility in a world still dominated by men? She was a sex crimes investigator and one of only a few female investigators in the Violent Crimes Bureau. Reporting a rape would make her seem more like a woman and not an equal. Damned if she’d fail.
But the cost of keeping silent ate away at her. She’d jumped at the chance to test for the promotion to homicide, even if she’d be dealing with dead people. Erin hoped getting away from all the reminders of her mistake would allow her to put the past behind her.
The theory worked until tonight.
Shooting a gun was easy, quick, and decisive. But to cut someone up the way Bonnie had been, to make her suffer so horribly ... Erin couldn’t understand the type of monster capable of such a thing.
He needed to be locked up before he killed again. A nagging voice in the back of her tumultuous mind worried she wasn’t good enough to catch him. But she’d have to find a way. This killer couldn’t be allowed to walk the streets. Or breathe the same air as decent society.
Her new partner had beaten her back to the CID just like he’d beaten her to the crime scene. She had no right to feel any hostility toward the guy, but his reputation preceded him and worked to his advantage. He’d walked into the crime scene as a brand new officer, and no one had batted an eye. He’d better not be interviewing the boyfriend, Will Merritt, without her.
Everyone accepted he knew how to do his job. Yet Erin being a rookie homicide investigator and a female meant she needed to prove herself on a daily basis.
Because I do, the voice in
sisted. How could she expect to find Bonnie’s killer without assistance from everyone she could beg? She didn’t have the experience. Maybe not the right instincts. Or the ability.
“All in your head,” her twin brother, Brad, always told her.
The soundtrack of her life had been narrated by their, usually telling Erin she wasn’t good enough. Telling herself the same thing came naturally as breathing.
Cold fall wind rustled through the well-lit parking lot as Erin headed into the Criminal Investigations Division offices. The late hour muted the usual sounds of the busy city, making the wind seem louder and somehow more ominous. Traffic and chaos comforted her. They were a sign of life and protection. Less chance of the Boogeyman jumping out of the shadows—or Jack the Ripper.
She shivered. This wasn’t a copycat killer but a cruel bastard begging for attention. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of letting his message shake her objective.
“Will Merritt,” she muttered as she swiped her identification card. “Please give us something to find this madman.”
* * *
When she’d first joined the CID, Erin hoped to be regaled with stories of finding old yearbooks with steamy, silly messages from friends who probably lost touch the moment they accepted their diplomas. Or maybe a ghost story or two, some desperate kid who hanged himself in the bathroom instead of failing his senior year. But the juiciest story ended up being the school’s decade-long vacancy before the city purchased it.
Erin first worked upstairs, stuck in the far corner of the sexual assault unit. Her promotion to investigator meant she had the privilege of sauntering into the first floor homicide unit. Thanks to her miserable heels, instead of sauntering, she limped across the finish line with as much grace as a used up racehorse.
Old coffee stunk up the squad room. Beckett rocked on the heels of his large, loafer-clad feet near one of the desks.