by Stacy Green
Home maintenance necessities filled the shed. Various tools, a push mower, and a weed wacker, weed killer, grass seed. And a nasty smell reminiscent of the bags of rotting leaves Brad left in the yard for a week before finally taking them out to the curb.
Beckett pulled a pair of wool gloves out of his pocket. “Do you have any?”
She shook her head, and he handed her one of his.
“Try to use one hand.”
They stepped inside, careful to make sure the door remained open. The shed wasn’t much bigger than Abby’s bedroom, and Malek kept it neat and orderly, organized to the point of compulsion. The sight of the two discarded black yard bags made Erin’s skin crawl.
“Might be rotting yard clippings,” she said. “That stuff gets putrid, especially if it’s wet.”
Beckett opened the first bag.
The smell hit Erin like a train, slipping into her throat and making her gag.
Beckett held the bag open. “That doesn’t look like yard clippings to me.”
He hooked the finger of his gloved hand around the collar of the men’s dark blue dress shirt and carefully pulled it out of the bag. Dried blood covered nearly the entire front of the shirt, patches of it so thick they still appeared to be congealing.
The awful smell stole Erin’s breath.
“Call Clark,” Beckett said. “I think we’ve got enough for a warrant.”
“And probable cause to go into the house right now,” Erin said. “You up for it?”
She let Beckett do the honors of breaking a windowpane in the back door. He fished his hand inside, and the door unlocked with a click. Beckett slowly pushed it open, once again announcing their entry.
They stepped into a small but immaculate kitchen. Erin sniffed. “Bleach. Faint, but it’s there.”
“Why would he wear the bloody clothes into his house?” Beckett asked. “He’s got the means to clean off outside.” He eased through the door into the next room. Like most houses this age, this one didn’t have an open floor plan. Moving from room to room meant checking doorways, their weapons ready. First the dining room, then the living room.
“Nothing personal,” Beckett whispered as they slipped through the house. “No family photos, nothing that ties him here. He doesn’t want to implicate anyone else. Or leave a trail.”
They reached a home office that appeared to have been ransacked.
“Jesus Christ.”
Erin halted next to Beckett and stared at the dried blood coating the hardwood floor. A torn piece of college-ruled notebook paper had been placed in the middle of the pool, presumably after the blood started to dry because the words scrawled below the picture were still legible.
The female wasps crawl through the streets like rats, strewing their filth behind them! No remorse for the lives they ruin. Only the drink appeals to them. I will take as many as I can before the demon eats me whole. He kept a kidney tonight. I do not know what will become of it, only that I am descending further into hell for which there is no escape.
—JTR
30 September, 1888
“Is that a kidney?” Erin stared at the shriveled human organ acting as a paperweight.
“Looks like it.”
Streaked through the blood was the familiar signature: Jane the Ripper.
Within an hour, cops and crime scene technicians descended like locusts onto Yari Malek’s property. The malodorous yard bag contained his dress shirt and pants, a pair of shoes and socks, and blood in various stages of drying, which coated nearly everything.
“Egotistical fucker embroidered his initials on his shirt.” Erin huddled in the front yard with Beckett and Clark to bring him up to speed. “And then he didn’t make sure he’d locked the shed door. It’s like he wanted to get caught.”
She shivered. “We found the rest of the missing equipment from Bonnie’s attic in the trunk of his car. Including the digital camera. But the memory’s been cleared.”
“That bugs me.” Beckett’s rounded shoulders, drawn up to his ears to stave off some of the rain, made him resemble a hunchback. “Malek’s careless with everything else, but he erases the memory?”
“Maybe he figured having a recording of him killing her would make his sentence worse,” Erin said. “But D.C. doesn’t have the death penalty. Double homicide means life without parole.”
“Again, it makes no sense.” The more bits and pieces they uncovered, the worse the situation smelled—literally.
“So whose kidney is that?” Beckett’s chin disappeared into the turned up collar of his jacket. Windburn stained his cheeks. “Did you get anything out of Aleta?”
Clark shook his head. “Not much more than what she told you. Insists she doesn’t know Jane, Mina, or Charlie, and she has no clue where Malek would run. She maintains she’s never had contact with Simon Archer. But guess what? Gilani’s not her real name. She doesn’t come up in the system.”
Erin rubbed her temples. “So it’s possible she did this and then called to throw us off her trail. At this point, I feel like we’re getting further from the answer instead of closer.”
Clark stared into the gathering crowd of media. “I want to believe this is a man we’re dealing with because then we’ve got a real suspect in Yari Malek. We’re going to get into his computer. Maybe we’ll get a break and see he liked the Ripper, and this is all an elaborate distraction. In the meantime, she’s cooling her heels in a cell. But she called a lawyer. Unless we get her real name and find something to hold her on, she’ll be out by tonight.”
The fine mist had turned into heavier drips. The flimsy hood on Erin’s jacket barely covered the top of her head, leaving her forehead and face exposed. Her hair stuck to her cheeks, her lips were frozen, and her canvas tennis shoes had soaked through the toes. She cast a bitter glance at the squawking media already preening across the street. Torrence and her crew showed up minutes after the crime scene crew. Her lackey held a different umbrella this time, a giant yellow one matching Torrence’s coat. Erin wanted to run across the street and smack her upside the head with the yellow monstrosity. Instead, she huddled closer to Beckett, whose umbrella barely covered one person. She had to crane her neck to make eye contact with Clark, resulting in cold rain dribbling down her neck.
Beckett worried his lower lip, his plain face pale. “Malek runs, but he leaves everything behind, including his computer that probably has evidence on it? All his expensive, monogrammed clothes? Jewelry? His car I can see, but he just left with the shirt on his back? The damn case has practically been handed to us, which is exactly why this all smells like bullshit.”
Erin’s phone vibrated; the caller ID read Brad. She sent it to voicemail. “Meathead and his fanboy showed up around seven a.m. this morning, and Malek had already gone. That’s a minimum eight hours’ head start for Malek—or his killer.”
“So we’ll track Malek’s credit cards,” Beckett said, “Put out a BOLO. Go back to Sid’s and hammer at his manager. I bet he’s got an entire stable of girls on the side who have nothing to do with the strip club and everything to do with the sex trade. We need a list of those. And we need to find a way to get Simon Archer’s financial records.”
Clark blew on his hands, flexing his wet fingers. “Keep dreaming. Not happening unless everything leads to him and is giftwrapped with a big, fat bow. We’ve got two options: Malek’s the killer, and he used Jane as a distraction so he could skip town, or he’s dead, and the killer planted all this stuff. Number one suspect is Aleta Gilani, who apparently goes by a fake name ‘cause she doesn’t exist in any system. Her sending us here is just another mind game.”
Erin’s phone rang again with Brad’s number. She stepped away from the two men and punched the green button. “I sent you to voicemail because I’m busy, so this better be an emergency.”
“Mommy!”
Her daughter’s terrified cries sliced through Erin like shrapnel.
“Mommy!”
Erin’s throat swelled, and tea
rs burst in her eyes at the sound of her daughter’s distress. “Abby, what’s wrong?” Erin dug her keys out of her pocket, vaguely aware of Beckett and Clark’s worried stares.
“S-s-s-something’s wrong with Uncle Brad. He’s lying in the hallway, and he won’t get up. Mommy, he’s so cold!”
In that moment, time stopped. Her surroundings faded into a gray mist. The cold rain pricked her face like glass shards and mingled with her tears.
From far away, as if he were talking through a tunnel full of cotton candy, Beckett asked whether she was okay. Her chest felt like someone had forced her into a corset and had cinched it tight. She couldn’t catch her breath.
Her eyes stung as bursts of light hit her from all sides, and she screamed her throat raw telling Abby to call 9-1-1 before her life went black.
The next hours came in flashes: a mad rush to her home where the ambulance sat, its emergency lights off; Abby in Mrs. Bakas’s arms, sobbing uncontrollably, her blue eyes wet and filled with pain; Mrs. Bakas gripping Erin’s arm and telling her not to go inside.
The paramedics took off the blood pressure cuff. Erin recognized the taller one from years on patrol. He silently stuck his stethoscope down into his uniform and shook his head.
Erin saw her brother—her anchor in this world—crumpled in a heap, his hands already going stiff in the beginning of rigor. A woman’s ear-splitting keening drilled into Erin’s eardrums and pierced whatever sense of control she had left.
She was the one screaming.
* * *
An undiagnosed brain aneurysm had ruptured—a tragic and fairly common occurrence, according to Judy Temple. Dan Mitchell took Brad to the Consolidated Forensics Lab, and Judy Temple came in on her day off to rush the autopsy.
With Abby at a friend’s, Brad had been completely alone.
“Did he know what happened?” Erin sat in Judy’s office that night. “Did he know he was alone and dying? If I had been there, could I have called the paramedics in time?”
Temple handed Erin a tissue. The normally harsh lines of her face smoothed into an almost motherly expression. “He might have had a terrible headache, some severe neck pain. But it was a very large rupture. Once it happened, it was all over quickly. You couldn’t have saved him.”
“But he wouldn’t have died alone.” Erin had gone numb as if a powerful force had ripped her from her body and imprisoned her in purgatory.
Temple’s cool hand folded over Erin’s. “You should go home and be with your daughter and the rest of your family. You can make the arrangements together in the morning. There’s no rush.”
A bitter laugh scraped through her raw throat. “God, the arrangements. I can’t wait to sit down as a family and do that.”
Her parents had arrived at the CFL while Temple conducted the autopsy. Both of them appeared as numb as Erin felt. When Temple came into the small room designated for family counseling, she quietly told them the cause of death. Calvin and Helen Prince cried in each other’s arms, asking God for guidance. They left together, and Erin promised to handle things that night. Except she had no idea what those things were.
“Who’s driving you home?”
She blinked, looking at Temple but not actually seeing her.
“Erin.” Temple rarely used her first name. She spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable. “Your car isn’t here. You rode in with Dan, and your parents have left. Do I need to call someone?”
“I’ll take her home.” Todd Beckett’s voice snapped Erin out of her trance.
He stood in the doorway of Temple’s office, his coat soaked and his hair plastered to his head. “I’m sorry it took so long to get here. Clark wanted me to stay at Malek’s house until the crime scene crew finished.” Beckett took a hesitant step forward to touch her shoulder. “Erin, I am so sorry.”
She stood up on legs as wobbly as a newborn calf’s. Nausea rolled up from her stomach and into her throat, but she had emptied her stomach hours ago. She licked her chapped lips and rubbed her throbbing head so hard the skin on her temples burned.
“Do you have a headache?” Temple stood as well, touching the space above Erin’s ears.
“I’m fine. Dehydrated.” Was that stone cold voice hers?
“Do you frequently get headaches?”
“I’m working the most stressful case of my career,” Erin said. “I get headaches.”
Temple pursed her lips, her hands going to her broad hips. “I’m not one to tap dance around things. Headaches are one of the few ways aneurysms can be caught. A person’s been suffering, she goes in for a checkup, and hopefully the doctor sees it. Or she’s there for something else going on, and it’s a lucky catch. My point is”—she paused, peering at Erin as though trying to figure out exactly how much more she could handle for today—“sometimes, these things can be hereditary.”
Erin swayed, grabbing onto the back of the chair. “What are you saying?”
“It’s probably nothing, but you should look into your family history. Most physicians believe two deaths from aneurysms in a family warrants a closer look. And if there’s someone within a few generations with the diagnosis, then you and anyone else in that direct bloodline should be checked out.”
Erin simply couldn’t take another shred of life-changing news. She wasn’t sure she could put one foot in front of the other long enough to make it to Beckett’s car. “Thank you for what you did tonight, Dr. Temple.” She pulled on her still damp coat and zipped it up, turning her attention to her partner. “Let’s go, please.”
* * *
Beckett eased to a stop in front of Mrs. Bakas’s house. The neighbor insisted she and Abby stay with her for at least the night. Erin hadn’t put up a fight. She stared down the block at her own dark home. How could she live there without him?
She hadn’t been able to find the energy to speak since leaving the CFL. The lights of Washington flew by like a dream, the monument shining above all the rest. She watched the blinking light at the top until Beckett’s monotone GPS told him to turn, putting the city in the rearview mirror. Her brain slogged, unable to form a clear thought beyond the paralyzing sorrow leaking into every part of her body. Memories of Carmen and Neil Archer flashed and then Rylan Walton. Only days ago, Erin wondered how she would cope if she were in their positions.
“Erin?”
She continued to watch the house she shared with her twin. Had shared, she corrected herself. Only the night itself seemed darker than the empty house. Brad always left the porch light on for her.
Brad was dead.
The pain came in a jolt, crushing her lungs. She pressed her hands against her mouth to hide the sobs, but they persevered. Tears soaked her cheeks and fingers. Her airway ceased to work, the pressure on her chest so strong she could have been drowning. She could only manage nonsensical sounds. A coherent thought refused to come. Her back smacked against the back of the seat, her body rocking in time to the anguish.
“Erin!” A warm hand gripped her shoulder, holding her in place. “Breathe.”
She clawed at her throat.
Beckett grabbed her wrists in his other hand. “Listen to my voice. Erin, you need to calm down. Your daughter needs you. Abby needs you.”
Slowly, the debilitating panic subsided enough for Erin to see Abby in her mind’s eye. Her sweet, broken little girl who walked in after an afternoon out with a friend and found her beloved uncle dead. “Abby.”
“Yes, Abby.” Beckett let go of her wrists but kept his hand on her shoulder.
“What is she going to do?” Erin’s throat stung with the effort of speaking. “How can I help her through this?”
“Kids are resilient,” Beckett said. “More than most adults. And you’ll help her because you love her. All you can do is be there for her and allow her to grieve.”
“But I don’t know how to be me without Brad.” And that was the heartbreaking truth. From birth, their lives were intertwined; one could not do without the other. She trusted Brad more th
an anyone. He and Abby were the center of her world, and now half of it had vanished. How was she supposed to be strong enough to handle losing Brad, much less strong enough to help her daughter?
“You’ll figure it out because you have to,” Beckett said.
She faced him for the first time since leaving the CFL. “Thank you.”
Beckett drew a long breath. “I’m sorry there’s nothing I can do or say to make it any better. There’s no making a person feel better in this situation. I’m here if you need me. And Lucy too. She’s still a licensed social worker. If Abby needs to talk to someone, call me. Lucy has plenty of connections.”
Erin nodded. “The case—”
“Forget about it,” he said. “If you want updates in the next few days, text me. But focus on your daughter.”
She didn’t know what to say, and she couldn’t have spoken over the lump in her throat. So she squeezed his arm and exited the little car.
Hundreds of people attended the funeral. Erin recognized less than half of them, and most didn’t know Brad. Mostly her father’s colleagues and friends came to pay their respects. Lisa had enough heart to keep her usual insults to herself. She used the wake as an opportunity to mingle and schmooze, but Erin didn’t care as long as she wasn’t talking trash about Brad. Beckett came, along with Fowler and Clark.
True to his word, Beckett kept her updated, but things had stalled. In addition to Virginia Walton’s blood, the medical examiner found traces of Bonnie’s on the clothes Yari Malek stashed in his shed. Erin couldn’t imagine Virginia allowing him into the house if he wore the same clothes he’d killed Bonnie in, but the medical examiner was confident the clothing contained both victims’ blood.
Malek had vanished and hadn’t used his credit cards. Aleta’s lawyer sprung her, and she’d gone off the grid. Beckett and Fowler convinced one of the older girls to give up Aleta’s real name. “Aleta Gionese. Charged with prostitution, drug trafficking, and possession five years ago. Couldn’t get the drug trafficking to stick, she served a few months for possession,” Beckett confided. “Not a single blip on the radar after her release. No credit cards, no driver’s license, no utility bills.”