LH: That became her MO.
CS: We haven’t encountered this sort of a black widow before. Publicly planting the bodies was a new twist on this breed of a killer. Clarke also kept souvenirs, like many of the male serial killers we’ve investigated. She tape-recorded the sounds of some of her victims dying so that she could relive the deaths over and over.
I stopped the recording, moving the play bar back. She needed the bodies to be found publicly to create an exaggerated level of drama and attention.
I thought about the element of poisoning in the Wallace Lake murders. And then there was the issue of escalating violence. I found it interesting that the physical assaults and stabbings occurred from behind, which told me the killer avoided direct confrontation with the victim. But why? One element was clear: trust was involved. These female victims were comfortable enough to turn their backs on the killer.
“It’s a woman,” I said.
Our killer, though, was not a black widow. She broke all the molds like Linda Clarke. She killed women, not men. It was possible the killer was a lesbian; as a general rule, serial killers who are heterosexuals kill the opposite sex, while homosexuals kill the same sex. And there was something more to the location where the bodies were found. Yes, our killer dumped her prey in a place where the bodies would certainly be found—a main thoroughfare for the canoeing and kayaking community, ensuring that the victims would be found in a relatively short amount of time. Perhaps that also meant our killer was counting on us to determine these women’s identities and make those findings very public through the media.
There was something more to it—a threatening element. Our killer wanted to invoke fear through the placement of bodies. She wanted the surrounding community to know she was hard at work and that no one in Wallace Lake, Ohio, was necessarily safe.
Chapter Five
Day Two: 9:30 a.m.
I waited with Dr. Harper Bennett in the Wallace Lake County morgue. Detective Alison Harvey was close to thirty minutes late for our morning briefing without so much as a text.
We lucked out—the prints Bennett took from one of the victims hit sometime before dawn. Janice Dawn Taft. Richardson pulled her arrest records and found Taft’s next of kin: a grown daughter living in Dayton who would arrive in the next few hours to formally confirm the victim’s identity.
“I’m sorry to take up your time,” I offered Bennett and checked my cell for a message again. Even though I didn’t really know Harvey, I was embarrassed and felt like I needed to make excuses for her unprofessional behavior. Partnership runs deep in law enforcement, even when you’d only just begun working together.
“It’s certainly not your fault,” Bennett said. “Besides, this happens sometimes with Harvey.”
Bennett sat down on the other side of her state-issued metal desk after she handed me a cup of coffee. Her office was a small room adjacent to the open work area of the morgue. Like other MEs’ offices I’d visited, there was a large plate glass window that served as a wall where Bennett could look out over the dead bodies. I always found these windows to be interesting, and, in a strange way, comforting. Bennett and other medical examiners served as the death keepers. They are the ones who took in a victim, generally after all sorts of untold violence has happened, and vowed to keep the body safe until it could be returned to a loved one. Medical examiners were the ones who took the time to learn every centimeter of the victim’s body, to carefully record all the damage done before sending it on to people like me who worked to bring the killer to justice. Time spent with a medical examiner was like a reprieve in the chain of events for a victim. The medical examiner served as the quiet harbor after such deadly violence. Sure, the ME had to perform an autopsy, which could be violent in its own right. Afterward, though, the doctor carefully put the victim back together again, cleansing the body and hair to make it as presentable as possible to avoid further traumatizing loved ones. It was the ME who gently washed away the killer’s violations and all the bloody traces left behind. And when the ME finally rolled the victim into a cooler to await its next stage, the body could finally rest in some variation of peace.
Bennett wore her oversized protective eye gear perched on top of her head like sunglasses. She reached up and tossed the clear glasses on her desk then ran her fingers through the cropped thatch of her dark curls. I found myself looking for any evidence of a commitment ring. Was there an indentation or a tan line that hadn’t quite filled in yet the same way mine from Rowan hadn’t?
Don’t, I warned myself. Don’t go there.
Something definitely intrigued me about this medical examiner, who was beautiful in a quiet way. There was absolutely nothing artificial about Harper Bennett—no makeup, no polished nails, and no jewelry. She had powerful features with sharp cheekbones and a squared-off jawline. Her shoulders were muscular, athletic-strong—the perfect combination for this woman who struck me as fresh and clean…so much the girl next door.
I tried again: Don’t even notice her, Luce.
A wave of guilt pinged my heart. Not all that long ago, I’d been so wrapped up in Rowan I barely would have noticed this woman. That was then, though, and Dr. Bennett was someone I knew I wouldn’t be able to easily forget.
Bennett nodded to the newspaper. “Have you seen this yet? They released the victim sketches.”
Bennett pushed the newspaper toward me. “The story ran in all the papers—Wallace Lake, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati—all the southern Ohio towns. I heard the story and the sketches made it north. It’s also in the Akron and Cleveland papers.”
Murder was big news in the heartland, and the paper took full advantage of the multiple victims. Its coverage of the case took up three-fourths of the front page, complete with a timeline of when and where each of the four bodies had been found. The first two victims were named, complete with the artist’s rendition of their faces, and a brief description of their lives followed. The article explained that a tip line had been set up for information and that the BCI had been called in to assist in the case. The paper featured a photograph of Sanders and me standing on the riverbank waiting for Captain Tom Riley to reach us in his canoe. The camera lens captured the features of my face all the way down to those lines I hated so much that crinkled around my eyes. I was already an outsider in this small community, and this photograph would give the locals more reason to push me out. There would be no hiding in plain sight now.
“I might as well have posed for a head shot with them, huh?”
Bennett chuckled. “Not a bad picture, though, and you never know what’s going to help with these kinds of crazy cases.”
“Let’s hope the press drums up some information on a possible suspect.” I pushed the paper back across the desk to Bennett and stood to stretch my legs.
I’d only had one experience with a high-profile case. Willow’s Ridge broke me in to the chaos that sometimes followed the media. I always wanted to fly under the radar when I worked a case, to move about a town without recognition and surprise possible suspects with the BCI’s involvement. Instead, the press had the power to blow my cover and gave suspects information that helped them avoid me. There could be a flip side to the media involvement, though. The press had the ability to reach the entire community with safety information and to alert them as to what they should be on the lookout for. The press also had the uncanny ability to make suspects, who always seemed to follow their crimes in the press, believe we had more information than we really did and, in some cases, lure them into speaking with us or coming forward. When done right, the press and law enforcement should work together to solve cases, but like most relationships, ours was rarely perfect and most often tense.
I paced inside Bennett’s office, a space that was simple, clean, and free of any clutter. Large metal bookcases leaned against the far wall, and the books seemed to be organized by subject. There were only two framed items in the small room: a portrait of a woman I recognized from somewhere and the quote: Arrange w
hatever pieces come your way—VW. I recognized the woman the way I vaguely recognize photographs of people featured on the History Channel or in textbooks.
“Do you know her?”
“Hmm?” I asked. Bennett watched me closely. “I think I recognize her.”
Bennett chuckled. “Virginia Woolf. The woman and the quote.”
“The writer, right?” I felt stupid—I’d heard of Woolf before in school, but she wasn’t someone I paid much attention to.
Bennett laughed. “She’s my writing idol.”
“You write?”
Bennett nodded. “Mostly medical science articles, but I dabble in writing some poetry and stories, too.”
I’ve always had a soft spot for artists. Always. Something told me this amazing woman did a lot more than dabble in writing. Bennett seemed like the type of woman who excelled at everything she tried.
I noticed the oversized glass jar, chock full of colorful stones. Some of the rocks had dates written on the sides along with initials. Beside the jar sat a collection of medals and trophies.
“And these awards? Are they for rowing?”
Bennett nodded. “I competed for a few years, mostly in college. Now I kayak the Powell River and Wallace Lake. Do you kayak?”
A poet and a rower?
“I’ve never kayaked,” I said, “but I’d like to learn.”
I did the only thing I could think to do while in the company of a beautiful woman: I turned the conversation back to work. I fumbled with the transition, though, and tripped over my words while she intently watched me. What was Bennett thinking, anyway? It was hard to tell.
“What about the items found at the crime scene?” I asked. “Is there anything for us to go on?”
Bennett leaned against the corner of the desk, crossed her arms, and pulled her lab coat tightly around her. Her voice reverted back to its careful, professional tone. “We collected about ninety items yesterday—most of it debris and trash. There’s a lot of traffic on that river with canoeing and kayaking into Wallace Lake, so it’s difficult to know what could have been left by the killer or just a kayaker out for a pleasurable day.” She sifted through the envelopes on top of her desk. “We did find one item that I’m not sure what to make of.”
I pulled two gloves from a box on Bennett’s desk. She tipped the open envelope into my open palm. A worn piece of leather fell out like a long worm. The strip, about a fourth of an inch wide, had a tie at one end as if it had been used for a bracelet or anklet. The leather had been torn open beside the tie. A thin patch in the center suggested there might have been a pendant worn on the leather strip.
“Where was it found?” I asked.
“Lodged into the muck at the bottom of the river close to the land bars. I tried it on our two latest victims for size, but it doesn’t fit. If it’s a bracelet, it’s small. Made to fit a child or a small woman.”
I rubbed the soft leather between my fingers. It reminded me of something a teenager would wear, layering multiple bracelets along her wrist. I let the worn leather strip fall back into the evidence envelope.
After a quick double knock on the heavy metal door, Harvey stepped in and dropped into an office chair. “Sorry I’m late.”
Harvey wore the same clothes as yesterday, a sure sign the detective hadn’t gone home last night after our interview with Wilma Henderson at Gary’s Girls. Harvey gave me one of her charming smiles and finger-tousled her short, wet hair to help it air dry.
“We’ve been waiting for you. We’ve identified one of the victims from yesterday.” There was an icy chill in Bennett’s tone.
Harvey nodded. “I got the message.”
I realized the situation as soon as I caught the edge of an annoyed smile from Harvey. These two women had a history.
Harvey used her hands to smooth out her wrinkled khaki pants along her thighs. She must have tumbled hard with a woman last night. Harvey was young in her career, and while she might have been hungry to climb the food chain of command, she hadn’t figured out yet how to balance her social life with her work life. She obviously hadn’t learned the Golden Rule yet: don’t sleep with your co-workers unless you want to marry them.
“Well,” Harvey said, matching Bennett’s tone, “let’s get to it.”
“Sure, boss,” Bennett said with a roll of her eyes. She stood, put her hands inside her lab coat pockets, and led us out to the white mound on the gurney.
Always the coldest room in any law enforcement compound, the morgue felt like a refrigerator, and I wrapped my arms across my chest for warmth.
Bennett pulled back the sheet that ghosted the body. The morgue smelled of a strange mix of freshly brewed coffee, the bitter sting of antiseptic from the sterilization procedures, and the ever-present reality of death. Both Harvey and I leaned in to get a better look at the dead woman.
“Janice Dawn Taft, sixty-one years of age,” Bennett said. “Her last known address was in Akron over seven years ago. She’s served time for drug possession and sales. There are multiple arrests for prostitution.”
“She’s got a long rap sheet with minor convictions,” I said. Taft probably spent no more than a few months to a year inside at one time.
Bennett handed me the file with Taft’s latest mug shot from a prostitution arrest in Dayton. The woman in the photograph and on the table had the look of what I called rode hard. Taft’s face was pocked and wrinkled, causing her to look much older than her early sixties. She’d lived her life on a rough edge, and it had taken a harsh toll on Taft’s features and body.
“What exactly killed her?” I asked. The large Y incision that Bennett used to expose the woman’s sternum screamed out to me. I hated to see the work of an autopsy—I understood the process was invaluable in the search for evidence, but the act itself seemed so horrific, particularly for someone who had already been through a violent death. I always had to remind myself that this violence was measured and done with a hand in search of justice. And it was always my wish that the ME’s autopsy was the last violation of the body a victim would ever suffer.
Bennett’s gloved hands turned Taft’s head to the right, exposing the large neck wound. “Here,” she said. “The knife blade nicked the carotid artery. The pressure of the blood dumping out of the carotid ripped the artery open farther. She bled out in only a matter of a few minutes.”
Bennett rolled Taft’s head back to the neutral position on the small headrest. Taft’s body had stiffened with rigor mortis, so it took some strength on Bennett’s part. She did so with an observable gentleness, and I admired her respect for the victim.
“Along with the neck wound, Taft also has injuries to her legs and arms consistent with forced movement before death. She was most likely unconscious, and the killer dragged her to a specific location.” Bennett pulled back the sheet to reveal Taft’s legs from the thighs down.
I let my gloved hands float just above Taft’s legs and moved down toward her feet. I called this maneuver reading a victim, a technique I’d learned in the academy that helped me to memorize the wound locations. I moved around the table and knelt near Taft’s feet. The skin of both of her heels had been torn away, the right scraped much deeper than the left. The scrapes continued up along her Achilles tendon. Someone had gripped the victim under her arms and pulled her across cement or blacktop.
“She was still alive at the time?” Harvey asked. “These wounds didn’t happen after she died?”
Bennett shook her head. “The wounds had time to begin to scab. She was actively bleeding at the time she was injured, which indicates Taft was alive.”
“Did you find any bruising under the arms?” I asked.
Bennett nodded.
I stepped closer to Bennett to examine where she pointed—Taft’s knees.
“She was also dragged facedown. See here?” Bennett pointed out the scrapes to the victim’s chin and the tops of her shoulders.
“She must have given the killer one hell of a fight,” I said.
“So the forced movement, as you call it, proves Taft didn’t die at the river. She was moved there,” I said.
Bennett confirmed that the river was only the place for the body drop. “We found very little blood on the land bars. Water could have carried some of it away, but if she was alive, Taft would have bled significantly into the sand. We didn’t find that.”
“Or any disruption to the land. Footprints. Knee prints. That kind of thing,” Harvey added.
“What about toxicology?” I asked.
“Most interesting,” Bennett said, “there is a connection between the victims in the toxicology. A loose one, albeit, but a connection.”
Bennett had all of my attention. We needed any connection we could get.
“Both Taft and the other victims’ blood work showed they were all clean at their time of death. Their bodies, though, show signs of long-term drug abuse in the past, and sobriety didn’t come all that long ago for them.” She guided us up to look at Taft’s face. She pointed out the pockmarks I’d noticed earlier. “Look at the distinct pitting in her cheeks and around the mouth. These are consistent with meth abuse.” Bennett pulled the victim’s mouth open to expose what few teeth Taft had left. “Do you see these small red sores along the inside of the cheeks and the gum line? The damage is consistent with meth abuse. Some of her arm and leg veins are partially healed and were blown most likely from multiple punctures for intravenous drug use.”
“The other body shows a change in the killer’s MO,” I said, noting the evidence of the killer escalating. “The first two were killed with poison before dumping. What about the body found in the water?”
“I ran a hair analysis on both of them found yesterday, and it shows that they had been drug-free for, at best, two months. Heroin doesn’t remain in the body for long. But there is evidence on each of the bodies of damage typical to the long-term abuse of heroin. I’d say it was a coincidence, but I don’t believe in them.”
Forsaken Trust Page 6