Silent Graves (Brandon Fisher FBI Series)

by Carolyn Arnold

  Most of their faces were familiar to him. He scoured this information every day, sometimes more than once day. It had become not a fascination, but an obsession.

  Who would take these women? How did the husbands lose track of their wives?

  Not that Trent had any experience being married. He was only twenty-four and preferred to hold onto his single lifestyle as long as he could. He didn’t need a woman telling him how to live his life.

  He dropped forward and cupped his forehead in the palm of a hand for a few seconds. His bangs brushed the back of his hand. Silly how, at a time like this, he thought of his mother and how she preferred his hair cut above his collar. He let it grow out, only trimming its length periodically. The women he took to bed liked to run their fingers through his hair.

  The door opened, and a woman in her late sixties walked in. Her blue eyes stood out in stark contrast to her pale face and gray hair. Tears had dampened her cheeks.

  “I should have called it in. I shouldn’t have driven all the way here.” She shook her head, and tremors ran through her body as if she fought off a chill.

  Trent rounded the desk. “Ma’am. Slow down. You’re safe now.”

  The radio crackled to life, and Officer Tulson confirmed she was returning to the station.

  “Sorry about the interruption. Ma’am?”

  In the time he listened to the transmission, the woman had collapsed to the floor. She sat there with her knees tucked into her chest.

  “Ma’am. I’ll call you an ambulance. You’ll be fine.”

  She reached for his hand and tugged on it. “There’s no time.” Her eyes seeped fresh tears. “It’s there…I found it. I should have called.”

  Trent agreed with her assessment that she should have stayed put at home and called it in, but he didn’t verbalize this. “It’s okay. You said “it’s there” ma’am? It what?”

  She nodded, slowly. Her eyes reached into Trent’s. Her body heaved with another bout of crying. Her hand covered her mouth, her eyes pinched shut, and her head burrowed to her knees.

  Oh, he thought, please don’t be another crazy.

  “Ma’am, I can help you, but only if you talk to me. Let me help you off the floor.” He held out a hand to her, and she took hold. He helped raise her up, but when she reached about halfway, her legs faltered.

  “You have a face like my grandson.”

  He pulled up on her, attempting to straighten her out—this time assuming most of the responsibility against gravity. He feared that, if he let go, she’d crumple back to the floor.

  “I could go home and pretend I never saw a thing. I’ll shut my eyes, and the body will be gone.”

  The body?

  Morbid excitement pulsed in his veins.

  A homicide case—in his lap? Maybe this was the break he was waiting for?

  He reined in his emotions which were balanced quickly by the realization that this body was once a human being, or at least he hoped so, although, even that thought sounded bad to him. He didn’t need a crazy making a fool of him. If he took her seriously and an investigation revealed nothing more than a decomposing cow on a riverbank, or even worse, thin air, he’d never make detective.

  He considered the empty station. If anyone came in, no one would be at the front desk. “Excuse me. One minute.” He spoke into his radio. “Officer Tulson, what is your ETA?”

  “Tulson here. Pulling in now.”

  “Roger that.” He turned back to the woman. “We’ll just wait for Officer Tulson and we’ll make out a report.”

  The woman nodded. She understood. Good. She had some wits about her.

  He studied her in those few seconds. Her eyes, although misted, were cognitive. There was awareness behind them. Her pupils followed his as he took in her face. They were not dilated or pinpricks. She wasn’t on medication.

  “Honey, I’m home.” Becky walked in the front door, her steps coming to a standstill when she saw the woman.

  He went over to Becky.

  In the limited space of the station, her sexual pheromones sparked making it impossible for any man in her vicinity to ignore them. She had a uniquely shaped face, and, when paired with her confidence, it made her beautiful.

  “I need you to watch the front for a bit.”

  “Sure.”

  The way Becky’s gaze pierced his eyes, he wondered if she read his thoughts. Then she smiled, but only a partial display. The light in her eyes completed the expression.

  Trent led the older woman to a conference room, thankful his sergeant wasn’t there to take over. If he got in over his head, though, he had someone he could call—Hanes—but he’d reserve that as a final option. Technically, he should have driven her to PWPD, but why squander this opportunity?

  “Would you like some water?” he asked.

  She was already seated at the table. “Yes, please.”

  He poured a glass and sat beside her. “My name is Trent Stenson.” He dropped the officer part, not because he lacked pride in his position, but what did it matter in here? If he wanted her to relax and feel as an equal, he needed to level the playing field. “And you are?”

  “Audrey Phillips.”

  Holding a pen in his hand, he fidgeted with the pad in front of him. He would rather listen to her recollection of the situation and then make notes, but he had to follow things by the book if he would ever rank. He wrote her name on the form.

  “Now, you said you found a body?”

  Her face paled further, eyes blank and distant. She nodded.

  “This was a human body, I assume.”

  Seconds passed before she answered. “Yes.”

  This would take a long time if all he received were simple answers, direct, concise, and to the point. “Continue.” His pen was poised, eager to spread some ink on the page.

  “Most of her…” Shivers jerked her shoulders upward and her head twitched. “Most of her was skeleton, but her face, her hair, it was there. And she was…gray. Is that normal?”

  Excitement laced through his insides. Could this be one of the missing women?

  “Where did you find her?”

  “Out back. On my property.” She gave him the full address and waited while he took down the details. “She was in the field. Just…just lying there.” She covered her mouth with a hand, lowering it a second later. “We had flooding, but it’s receded now. Do you think she came up in the river?”

  It was too early to offer an opinion, and they needed men out on the scene. The longer the body remained exposed to the elements, the more contaminated it would become.

  “How old do you think she was?”

  She lifted her shoulder and nudged it against an ear. “Thirties. I took this. ” She pulled out a plastic sandwich bag and extended it to him. Inside was a gold band.

  He wanted to scream, you touched the body, but, instead, countered with, “She was a married woman?”

  Audrey nodded.

  He took the bag and pinched the ring between his fingers. Saying those words out loud caused images from the missing persons database to play through his mind as if on fast forward.

  Could it be her?

  He studied the ring and got the burning sensation in his gut, the one that contracted it into an acidic raisin. “Can you excuse me for a minute?”

  “Yes, of course.” Her brows sagged, and the corner of her mouth twitched as if she were confused by his rush to leave the room.

  “I will be back. We need to get some officers over to your place.”

  His heart beat fast, the pressure in his gut not easing up, instead, intensifying. He pulled out his cell and dialed. “Len…you’re at home…this is important. You know all those cases we’ve been talking about? How I think they’re all connected somehow? Well, now we have a body.”

  Detective Lenny Hanes stood in the doorway of his kitchen. He watched his wife cleaning up the dinner dishes and loading what would fit into the dishwasher. Nicole and Brett, both under eight years of age,
had been put to bed not long before. Lenny hoped the ringing phone hadn’t wakened them.

  “You’re sure this is her?” he asked into the receiver.

  His wife looked at him and he mouthed the words, it’s a case.

  “When isn’t it?” She closed the dishwasher door and started the cycle, leaving him in the kitchen but kissing his cheek on the way by. “See you in the morning?”

  Lenny made a sad face. He held her hand until it filtered out of his, keeping his eye on her until she disappeared up the staircase.

  “The ring. It matches, I swear to you.” Trent sounded out of breath.

  “And she took the ring off the woman’s finger?”

  “Off Nina’s finger? Yes.”

  “Before you get all caught up on—”

  “I swear to you, it is. The engraving on the band matches the one noted in the missing persons database and there’s—”

  “There’s what?”

  “Audrey Phillips, who found the body and took the ring, she took some of the flesh with it.”

  Bile hurled up Lenny’s esophagus. He swallowed—roughly. “What is wrong with some people?” His stomach tightened, compressing his dinner into a reduced space.

  “Don’t know. She seems like a sweet woman, but I don’t get it.”

  “People do strange things when faced with extreme circumstances.”

  Lenny remembered one case where a woman leaned over her husband’s body and open-mouth kissed him. She only admitted that he was dead when he didn’t reciprocate. The hole in his head and the blood pool around him wasn’t enough. He shook the memory from his mind.

  “And you haven’t told anyone else about this yet?” A couple of seconds passed. “Trent? You hear me?”

  “Sorry, I was shaking my head.” He let out a small laugh. “Guess you couldn’t see that.”

  “No.” Lenny sensed a mixture of emotion coming through the line. Trent was excited that his fixation on the missing women hadn’t been in vain, but, at the same time, he came across as regretful that his assumptions might be correct.

  “We’re dealing with a serial killer Len. It’s obvious. Amy Rogers went missing just last week. They called in the FBI for her. They need to know about this.”

  “We can’t rush to conclusions. I’m going to notify the chief to let him know about the find and contact crime scene and the ME. I’m heading out to her place now. Stay with the woman there, keep her calm, and let her know we’ll take care of it.”

  “It?”

  “The DB Trent. The victim. You have to learn to think of them that way, otherwise the job will eat you up.”

  “I’m not babysitting this woman. I’m going to the crime scene.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not.”

  “Len—”

  “There isn’t room for debate here. You have to stay there. That’s your job. This is mine.”

  “So you keep reminding me. Just remember, I connected everything before the detectives of PWPD even had a clue.”

  “Now you’re resorting to digs? Come on, Trent, you know I’ve got your back. I always have.”

  “I still don’t see detective on my badge, and, yep, I’m definitely in uniform.”

  Lenny laughed. “Stop sulking. I’ll keep you posted.” He hung up the phone, went upstairs, and told his wife there was another case. His hours around home would be hit—and more likely miss—for the next while.

  “Just take care of you.” She brushed a hand on the side of his face, and he kissed her forehead.

  “That’s why I love you.”

  “Love you.” Her nose went back into her paperback. She would be carried off into a fictional world before he hit the front door.

  Chapter 4

  Prince William County, Virginia

  Monday, 8:45 p.m.

  “I’m picking up on the smell and, according to the property owner, the body should be right over—” Detective Hanes cast the flashlight across the field as he walked and stopped just shy of making contact with the corpse. If it had been another second, he would have tripped over the thing. It’s good that he didn’t have any aversions to dead bodies because this one would top the list of gruesome finds.

  Jimmy Chow, the lead crime scene technician, came up behind him. As his name suggested, the man was Chinese. He called things how they were, had a wacky sense of humor, and repeatedly proved more loyal than a canine. Chow gestured for a couple of his people to move out over the area. Portable lights were set up and turned on.

  Chow pinched his nose and spoke. “Surprised we didn’t pick up on this odor from farther back.”

  The smell of death occupied not only the sinuses but seeped into the skin and clung to clothing. This case would have them reeking of it from every pore and breathing it from their lungs. “You’re acting like a newb. Isn’t it worse breathing through your mouth? Come on, you’ve been around—”

  “No, not quite this bad.” He dropped his hand, swallowed deeply, and analyzed the body. “She appears to be mid-thirties. You said Stenson thought this was Nina Harris? I quickly looked at her file before coming. She’s the right appearance. At least I can imagine it.”

  Unlike Chow, Hanes didn’t need to study her file. Trent and he had shared many beers talking about the missing women from the area.

  Hanes infused life into what had simply become a shell, a carcass. He imagined Harris smiling like she had in her wedding photo. He envisioned her eyes rolling back and the sultry expression piercing her lips into a subtle pout. He pictured her on the arm of her husband, being his pride and sense of accomplishment.

  “It gives you a point of reference to ID the body,” Chow said.

  “But it can also limit perspective. One step at a time.” Hanes circled the body, trying to take in every angle. Despite wafts of decomp tearing up his eyes, he pushed through. “There’s the finger Audrey Phillips took the ring from. God, it is missing flesh.”

  “She took the finger with the ring.”

  Chow’s rhetorical summation caused Hanes’s belly to perform a flop like it had when he first heard about what Phillips had done.

  What was left of the victim’s skin was bloated and appeared to float over the bone mass beneath it, as if one could poke the flesh with a pin and have it hiss out air. Many of her fingernails were gone, and her eyes were missing. The decayed milky slime likely washed away in the river, or had been picked on by fish for food.

  The flesh that remained was gray, and in some areas, the skin appeared waxy and held a brownish tinge. The body that would have once been considered beautiful and have garnered the attention of men, now, resembled something that could star in a swamp horror movie.

  Animals hadn’t disturbed the remains which Hanes found unbelievable due to the odor she gave off. Maybe even wild creatures had a tolerance threshold.

  Around her wrists and ankles there were darkened markings. Hanes bent down next to her left ankle. The stench, being this much closer, stole his breath for a second.

  “It looks like she was bound.”

  “I was just noticing that myself.” Chow pointed with the tip of a pen to her wrists. “She was definitely held for a period of time to create these impressions.”

  “Agree. Also, there are contradictory signs as to the age of the remains. She has flesh in some areas, but even they don’t tell an accurate timeline.”

  “Very astute Detective Hanes.” Hans Rideout, the Medical Examiner, came over to them.

  He worked out of the Department of Forensic Science in Richmond. He was in his late forties with a full head of gray hair and a wash of white sideburns. He had a contagious smile, and the lines around his mouth testified that he shared the expression often. His work with the dead never brought him down. Hanes wondered sometimes if the man was clairvoyant due to the clarity with which he saw the victims.

  “I’d also say she didn’t die here. This is a secondary crime scene,” Hanes said.

  Rideout laughed, jacked his thumb toward Hanes. He spoke
to Chow. “That’s why they pay him the big bucks.”

  Chow smiled. “I keep trying to tell him.”

  The joviality in ME’s eyes narrowed with intensity as he focused on the body. “She has been dead for some time. There is some evidence of adipocere.” He must have sensed their energy and added the explanation. “That’s the result of the chemical process saponification. The body’s fat petrifies into a wax-like substance, kind of like soap.”

  Hanes cast a glance at Chow. He was surprised the man held onto his stomach contents given his earlier reaction.

  “I wouldn’t suggest exfoliating with her.” Rideout’s sometimes inappropriate sense of humor garnered a smile from Chow. Hanes suspected it helped him fight the urge to vomit.

  Rideout continued. “This process results in what you see here.” He pointed to the areas that appeared waxy and brownish gray in color. “The victim appears as if she were in good physical condition. It might be why there isn’t more of it, or it could simply be the length of time to discovery wasn’t significant enough to complete the process over her entire body. This tells me two things immediately. She’s been dead for months, and the body’s spent time in a warm, damp area, deprived of any oxygen.”

  “So, she died in the river, or on the side of the river?” Hanes asked.

  “Not necessarily. Even moist soil. She could have been buried. It’s possible the high waters eroded her burial site, swept her into the river, and voila! She’s before us now.”

  Voila! Like it was a magic trick, Hanes thought.

  “How much time would you say she spent in the river?” Hanes asked, considering timeline and estimating distance traveled. If they could figure that out, maybe they could pinpoint an entry location.

  “It’s hard to say for certain. If she was buried, her decomposition would have started in the soil, and, as I’ve stated, the soil would have been moist and contained bacteria that would result in adipocere. She’s missing most of her fingernails. Based on submersion in water alone, that takes approximately eight to ten days. The water around here, on a blanket hypothesis, would be temperate, but, like I said, time of death would date back months.”