by Liliana Hart
He could have said a million different things on this first meeting after being separated for so long. He could have asked how I was doing or feeling. He could have pulled me into his arms and tried to rekindle that brief moment before my incident where the sparks between us had almost turned to flame. But he just stood beside me like he had my whole life—solid and undemanding—and given me the one thing he knew I needed more than anything else.
Tears clouded my eyes and I blinked them away rapidly before I made both of us more uncomfortable than we already were.
“It just so happens I’m between jobs at the moment,” I said, taking the gloves.
Our hands met briefly and I jerked, but I felt the heat of his touch all the way to my toes. I pushed the feeling away and busied myself with putting on the gloves so I wouldn’t have to look at him and see that he hadn’t felt it the same as I had.
“Show me the body,” he said, putting on his own gloves and turning on the flashlight. “Walk me through it.”
I discarded my long coat and tossed it back in the Suburban, forcing myself to deal with the cold. I couldn’t afford to ruin a perfectly good coat with blood and other unmentionable things that no dry cleaner would ever be able to get out. My finances were in dire straits at the moment, and a new coat wasn’t on the list of necessities.
“I’d pulled over to the side of the road just there,” I said, pointing to the skid marks my tires had made when I’d slammed on the brakes after my brief panic attack. Jack didn’t say anything, but I noticed the corners of his mouth tighten as he looked at the evidence of my loss of control.
“I didn’t see the body until I pulled back out onto the road and my headlights glanced off him. Scared the hell out of me,” I admitted. “Playgrounds are creepy at night.”
“I’ve always thought so,” he agreed. “Worse than a graveyard.”
We walked up to the tree where the victim was chained, and I felt my strength slowly seep back into my bones. My thoughts were sharper now and the cold had been forgotten. Only the victim existed for me now.
“I don’t recognize him right off,” Jack said, positioning the flashlight on the ground so it acted as a spotlight.
“Me either, but I’m not sure his own mother would recognize him at this point.”
A couple of squad cars pulled in behind us, and the deputies were quiet as they got their equipment out of the car. Jack had managed to amass a competent police force over the few years he’d been sheriff, drawing in men who’d served in larger cities and who had specialized in different areas. I recognized Marcus Colburn immediately. The same man who’d tried to kill me had murdered Colburn’s pregnant lover. I was actually surprised to see he’d stuck around, especially since his lover had still been married to one of Bloody Mary’s council members during their affair. The situation had been messy at best.
I was willing to bet Jack had gone to bat for him. Colburn had worked as a cop in Bloody Mary for ten years, but before that he’d worked violent crimes in Arlington, so his experience was invaluable to a small force like ours. He helped train the younger cops when something like this came up. Jack nodded to his detectives and we took a couple of steps back so they could start documenting and securing the scene.
“Let’s get spotlights set up,” Jack called out. “It’s too dark for Doctor Graves to examine the body. I want everything, no matter how inconsequential, tagged and documented.”
A smattering of yessirs filled the air, and everyone got to work. Lights flashed from the cameras, but I hardly noticed as I tried to take in everything I could with a quick visual examination.
“He’s been tortured,” I said, thinking aloud to myself. “All his fingers are broken. Toes too. Not just broken, but crushed to pulp, as if a hammer had been taken to them. I don’t suppose the mob has infiltrated King George County.”
“Not unless you mean the mob that hit the Piggly Wiggly during that snowstorm in January. I had to arrest three women fighting over the last package of toilet paper.”
“The fun never stops,” I said dryly. “I’ll be able to give you more specifics once I get him on the table. It looks like he’s been out here a little while. Or at least dead a while. He’s already out of the stages of rigor, so I’d put death between 30-48 hours ago.”
“I’ll check and see if we’ve had any missing persons reports,” Jack said, using his cell phone to call into the station and make the request to whoever had drawn the short straw to stay behind.
“Someone was supremely pissed at this guy,” I said once he’d hung up. “His kneecaps are shattered. The blood on the lower half of his body makes it too difficult to see his other wounds, but he was definitely alive when they relieved him of his genitalia. There’s too much blood for it to be otherwise.”
“Jesus,” Jack winced. “Would that be the cause of death?”
“Most likely. If they didn’t clamp the arteries and stop the blood loss, he would have gone into shock and eventually bled out. They knew what they were doing with the torture. Nothing was so severe it would have killed him.”
“What about that?” Jack asked, pointing to the black spot just below the hipbone that was crusted with dried blood.
I leaned in closer to get a better look, and I hissed out a breath between my teeth. It didn’t matter. The smell of charred flesh burned the inside of my nose, and I knew I’d be smelling it in my nightmares.
“He was branded,” I said almost to myself, following the unusual pattern with the tip of my gloved finger. I looked up at Jack and saw the anger smoldering behind his dark eyes. “I’ll take an imprint of it once I get back to the lab so we have a better picture, but it looks like someone left us a calling card.”
“That’ll certainly make them easier to find,” he said.
“I need a camera and a recorder,” I said. “I’ll need to collect some samples here because of the shape the body is in. I don’t want to pick up anything extra or leave something important behind.”
Jack walked back to his cruiser and popped the trunk, producing both items.
“Record for me,” I said, snapping a few close-ups of each area of the body. “The victim is male, between the age of twenty-five and forty-five. Brown hair, brown eyes. Small scar on chin not congruent with current wounds. Probably sustained from childhood. He’s a big son of a bitch. Probably your height, Jack. But he’s got a little more weight on him. Ligature marks are visible around ankles and wrist. Slight abrasions around the neck and a few rope fibers. Bones in the hands and feet are crushed. So is the patella and surrounding bones in the knees. Blood loss looks like COD as there are no other mortal wounds that I can see. Unless he had a heart attack from the stress first.”
I took a step back and looked at what was left of what had been a man. There was pity inside of me, but also anger. I knew what real cruelty was, but it never ceased to amaze me that there were those who found joy in inflicting it.
“Jesus, Jack. What are we dealing with here?”
He held up a finger as his phone signaled a text message. “I don’t know what we’re dealing with, but maybe I know who. Reverend Thomas called into the station last night and said he thought Reverend Oglesby was missing—he’s the new priest the church brought in a few months ago,” he explained when he saw my blank look. “But the officer who took the call didn’t put much credence in it because Oglesby was supposed to be on vacation for a week visiting his father.”
I looked at the man strapped to the tree. A man who could have been someone chosen by the church to do no harm and help whomever he could. A man who was supposed to be gentle and kind.
“He deserves better than this,” I said.
“Everyone deserves better than this. Let’s cut the chains and get him the hell down from there.”
Chapter Three
An audible gasp could be heard from a few of the younger cops as the victim was lowered to the ground onto the clean plastic tarp I’d spread out. I didn’t see any new faces in the crowd.
Everyone on scene had been through the horrors of seeing death up close. But this death was something more. It was more personal. More violent.
“Go ahead and leave him face down and get the shots of his back,” I said to Colburn. I took my own pictures, documenting each laceration.
“You got it, Doc.” He didn’t spare me a look, but he said, “It’s good to have you back.”
I nodded and realized that was as good of a homecoming as any.
“Is the perimeter up?” Jack asked Colburn.
“It’s up. I’ve got Lewis and Martinez following the trail with flashlights, but we’ll wait until daylight before we start combing the area. Nothing but woods and dead leaves around here,” Colburn said, looking around us. “We’ll be lucky to find anything more than beer cans and used condoms. The teenagers like to come out here to party.”
“Yeah, well, at least they’re using condoms,” Jack said. “We’ve only got another hour until sunrise. Call in and get whatever you need for the search. Let’s use three-man teams to keep the traffic down and switch them out every two hours so eyes can stay fresh. I don’t want any screw-ups on our end.”
“You got it, boss.” Colburn moved off to give instructions to the others.
“Colburn seems to be doing okay,” I said quietly. We both kneeled down next to the body, and I looked at the flayed skin on the victim’s back.
“He’s doing better,” Jack said. “I thought I was going to lose him there for awhile. He wanted to quit. Started drinking a bit. But he straightened himself out pretty quick. Colburn’s a fighter. After I convinced him to stay on, the city council decided they needed to get involved and boot him out of town. They wanted to make a law keeping known fornicators from representing the city.”
I felt a laugh bubble up at the absurdity, but held it back in deference to the body in front of me. It was easy to forget that not everyone around us had seen as much death as Jack and I had in our lifetimes. Relieving stress and tension through laughter in the face of violence was commonplace with cops and morticians. But these guys were young and unseasoned, and they just wouldn’t understand. They’d go home and make love to their wives or girlfriends in a frenzy of lust, or they’d find their tempers flare throughout the day while that adrenaline from fear and the thankfulness for just being alive tried to surface.
I scratched at my cheek with the back of my hand so no one could see me smile. “Did you tell them half of the city employees would have to resign? Including their sheriff?” I asked.
He turned to look at me, and I hadn’t realized how close we were. Close enough that our whispers could only be heard by each other. Close enough that I could see how the black of his pupil melded into the dark brown of his iris. My lungs burned and I reminded myself to breathe. In and out. Inhale and exhale. Conscious breathing had become a habit over the past months. I knew all too well what it felt like when the air stopped. When the oxygen didn’t fill the lungs, no matter how hard you tried.
“You’re going to hurt my feelings, Jaye. Haven’t you heard? I’m a changed man.” His smile was pure sin. A little apologetic and a lot determined as he seemed to stare straight through me—to the part of me that was scared down to my toes to examine what it was he was trying to say—to the part of me that wanted him to touch me even though the thought of physical contact with anyone made me physically ill.
I cleared my throat and broke eye contact, not knowing what was going to come out of my mouth until the words formed. “You can tell the victim’s been flogged with something other than a belt or regular whip. The jagged tears in the flesh indicate some kind of metal might have been sewn into the device.” The words were stiff, as if I’d been giving a lecture instead of talking to the one person in the world who knew me best.
I felt more than heard Jack’s sigh. His soft exhalation of breath fluttered the hair around my face, but I tucked the loose strands ruthlessly behind my ear, pretending to be completely absorbed in my analysis. It was a lie. My brain had stopped functioning the moment those dark eyes had dared to show me something a little more than I was ready for. Maybe I’d come back home too soon after all.
Jack didn’t wait for me to get it together. He asked the obvious question. “What the hell is that white stuff?”
I shook free of wherever it was I’d mentally travelled and saw what he was talking about. Little white granules, no bigger than grains of sand coated the edges of the ragged flesh.
“Salt,” I said, hoarsely. “Whoever did this poured salt in his wounds.”
Jack pulled a small black case from the inside of his coat pocket, no larger than one of those useless evening bags women were forever carrying around, and he opened it to reveal an assortment of useful tools. I had one just like it, but I’d tossed it in a box to be given away to Salvation Army before I’d left town.
“Nice tools,” I said, recognizing the set as my own.
“A recent acquisition. I probably even know where you could get a set for yourself.”
“That could be useful, considering my new job.”
He pulled out what looked like a dentist’s pick and handed it to me. I scraped gently at the salt until I had enough to put in one of the plastic Ziploc bags rolled up inside the case. I passed the tool back and grabbed the tweezers so I could get the rope fibers I’d seen around his neck.
“Where are his clothes?” I asked. “Where’s his car?”
“I’ve got a uniform checking out Reverend Oglesby’s house, but he lives over in King George Proper, so it’ll be a while before he reports in.”
“Hand over a couple of the larger bags,” I said. “Most of his fingernails have been removed, but he still has the thumbnail. Maybe he’s got some skin under there.”
I bagged both of the victim’s hands, though the task was more unpleasant than I remembered. It might’ve had to do with his hands feeling like sacks of uncooked rice floating in gelatin instead of skin and bones.
“Do you want to turn him?” Jack asked.
“No. I’ve got everything I need for now. I can do more at the lab. There’s not much more for me to do here.”
Jack nodded and called out to a couple of his men. “Let’s get him loaded up.”
My lab was in the basement of Graves Funeral Home, and it had all the necessary equipment for preparing the flesh for burial or making serious Y-cuts for autopsies. It hadn’t been used in a while, and I was nervous about seeing it after being gone for so long. Would the smell of embalming fluid and antiseptic have dissipated over time, or would that lingering scent of death still hover in the air?
I stood up and let a couple of the uniforms maneuver the victim into a body bag. An ambulance had arrived on scene at some point and one of the EMTs had wheeled over a gurney. The back of my Suburban was stacked high with suitcases and a few boxes of my parents’ belongings I’d found in a closet at the cabin. Once I got rid of the boxes and burned everything inside of them, I’d have a lot more room for bodies in the back. Until then, I had to make do with the ambulance.
“I hope you’re not expecting a fast turnaround on this, Jack. That guy has so many wounds I’m not even sure where to start. And—” I took a shaky breath before I could finish. “I just don’t know how long it will take me.”
I saw his hand coming and braced myself for the touch. He watched me closely as the weight of his hand landed softly on my shoulder. The longer we stood there like that—after I reminded myself to keep breathing—the more I started to relax. The tension crept out of my body and I kept my eyes steady on his. The strength and support of his touch never wavered. I could trust Jack with my life. I already had.
“Just take it one step at a time. I’ll be with you every step of the way on this one. At least until you get settled back in.”
I’d normally be annoyed at having someone underfoot while I was working. Especially Jack. He’d never been comfortable watching the things I had to do down in the funeral home basement, and I didn’t need to lose focus if I w
as going to do this job well. But I was grateful he’d taken the choice away from me. The last thing I wanted was to be alone with a John Doe and my own thoughts. I’d never been truly comfortable with the dead. Or at least I’d never been before. Maybe things would be different now that I’d almost been one of them.
“We need to verify ID so I can notify next of kin. I’ll get his prints and make a comparison from inside his house.”
We walked back to our cars and I pulled off the latex gloves with a snap before shoving them in the back pocket of my jeans. I opened the door of the Suburban and propped my foot on the sideboard before turning back to Jack. The sun was just beginning to lighten the sky to a pearl grey. Colburn and the other cops would be starting a search of the area before too much longer, and I’d be back on familiar ground, keeping company with the dead and wondering why I wasn’t one of them. Life was a funny thing. A finite thing. And you never realized how finite until you’d crossed that line from life to death and then back again.
“Jaye?” Jack asked. By the look on his face it was obvious he’d tried to get my attention more than once.
“Sorry.” I scrubbed a hand over my face and then massaged the back of my neck. “I guess I’m just tired. It’s been a long night.”
“You should grab a couple of hours sleep before you start on the body. He’ll keep until we verify the ID. Where are you staying?”
I turned my head and watched the light spread through the trees as the sun rose. I didn’t want to face the question Jack was really asking. Whether or not I’d be able to stay alone in the house I’d almost died in.
“I’ll stay at the funeral home for now. I’ve decided to put the house on the market.”
It was the first time I’d said it out loud, but immediately I felt as if a giant weight had been lifted off my chest. I was selling the home that I’d grown up in. A crumbling legacy I was supposed to pass on to my nonexistent children. And I was okay with it.