by Elle Gray
“What are we doing here?” Astra asks.
“I got a call from a friend this morning,” I reply. “They’re fixin’ to release Sylvia Benoit’s body to the family, and he thought we might want to come have a look at it.”
“Excellent. I always enjoy starting my day looking at a mutilated corpse,” she mutters sarcastically.
“If it helps, I don’t think she was mutilated.”
Astra laughs softly and paces around the small waiting room with her arms folded over her chest. I lean back in the chair and pull my phone out of my bag to check for any new messages. Seeing none, I call up my email and see that I’ve got several dozen to sort through. I sigh and close out of it, deciding to deal with them all later. The one thing nobody ever told me about being in charge was that the job came with so much bloody paperwork.
The door that leads to the autopsy suites in the back of the building opens, and Rebekah Shafer, my old roommate and best friend from college, steps into the room. We hit it off from the start. Like me, she has a sarcastic edge and tells it like it is. She’s not a super political person, but she’s smart and smooth enough that she can navigate the waters a lot better than I can. She has a natural charm and can often have people eating out of the palm of her hand in a matter of minutes of meeting them. It’s the sort of superpower I’d kill for, quite frankly. After college, she went off to med school and I went to Quantico, but we’ve kept in touch over the years.
Rebekah’s a short and petite five-three, with hair the color of rust in a pixie cut, brown eyes, and the sort of soft, girl-next-door appearance that often leads people to underestimate her. But she’s fiercely intelligent, tough, and very driven. I have a feeling she’ll be running the entire ME’s office sooner, rather than later.
She crosses the room and pulls me into a tight embrace. I laugh as I hug her back. But then she steps back and looks up at me with a wide smile.
“It’s so great to see you, Blake,” she says.
“It’s wonderful to see you too. I’m sorry we haven’t been able to get together for drinks or dinner or something since I’ve been back－”
She waves me off. “This is a man’s world and we both work in fields that require us to work three times as hard just to be considered slightly less competent than some slacker jagoff who couldn’t think his way out of a wet paper bag. I get it,” she says.
“Oh, I like her,” Astra says.
“Beks, this is my partner, Astra Russo,” I say. “Astra, Dr. Rebekah Shafer.”
“Partner? I think the word you’re looking for is indentured servant,” Astra protests.
“Same thing,” I shrug.
“Beks is fine,” she tells Astra with a wide smile. “I only make the guys around here actually address me as Dr. Shafer. Keeps them humble.”
“I really like her,” Astra says.
They shake hands and then Rebekah turns to me, her eyebrow raised and expression serious.
“But do pencil me in for dinner and drinks sometime before the apocalypse, if you would be so kind,” she says. “It’s been way too long, girl.”
I laugh. “That’s a deal,” I say. “But you didn’t have to dangle a dead body as an enticement to get me to come see you. A text message would have sufficed.”
She grins. “I know you, Blake. And the best way to get you to come running is by promising you a homicide victim.”
I open my mouth to reply but close it again and shrug. She’s not entirely wrong. Beks knows I’m usually entirely consumed by my work because she’s the same way. Career first, everything else a distant second.
“Besides,” she says, her voice little more than a whisper, “a mutual friend tipped me off that you were working this case and suggested I let you see the body. Said it might help the investigation.”
I look at her for a long moment. There are only two people who know I’m working this case, which means it was either Paxton or Detective Lee who tipped her to the fact that I’m on it. Lee obviously being a homicide cop means he’s probably had some dealings with Beks before. But it’s possible that Pax did as well, even though he never made it out of patrol before he was fired.
If I had to wager on which one it was, I’d say it’s more likely going to be Detective Lee. He’s still plugged in at the SPD and is doing his level best to help guide and shape the investigation in his way. He doesn’t think the task force is getting results, and likely won’t. It’s why he gave me all the murder books in the first place.
But that worries me for him. He’s sticking his neck out a lot further than he should. The SPD is good at one thing: covering their own butts. They investigate and crackdown on leaks with the sort of energy and vigor I can only wish they’d pursue actual criminals. And if they find out Lee has been leaking their task force information to me, he’s going to pay a price.
“This mutual friend,” I tell her. “You might want to tell him to be careful. The SPD brass chases leaks as hard as we chase serials, and I’d rather not see him exposed on this if at all possible. Although, I appreciate everything he’s done.”
A smile flickers across her lips, telling me I’m right about Lee being the one who tipped Beks off.
“Well, if there’s somebody I trust to actually close this case, it’s you and your team,” she replies, then adds quietly, “I trust you guys to do it a hell of a lot more than I trust this SPD task force. Eighteen months they’ve been at it and still have bupkis.”
“Well, to be honest, I’m afraid we don’t have much more than that at the moment,” Astra says.
She shrugs. “You guys have been on it what, a week? If, after eighteen months, you’re still stuck on square one, then I’ll have something more to say about it,” she points out with a grin. “In the meantime, follow me on back.”
“Appreciate you doing this, Beks,” I say.
She looks me in the eye, her expression earnest. “Unlike some, I know you are only interested in finding justice for these women. I know you’re not going to let political and public relations crap get in the way of finding this monster.”
We follow her through the warren of corridors, all painted either canary yellow or sky blue, as if the bright, cheery colors can distract people from the gloomy pall of death that lingers here. We turn a corner and walk down a short hallway that ends at a pair of doors that have a window set about head height. She presses a button to the side of the door and they both swing inward with a soft pneumatic hiss.
The antiseptic smell in the room is thick and cloying, and it seems that between the stark white tiles and stainless steel, the brightness in the room has been turned up to eleven. We walk to a bank of stainless steel doors set into the back wall. Beks grabs the handle on one of the doors and pulls it open, then reaches inside and slides the tray out. And on the tray lies the body of Sylvia Benoit.
Her fiery red hair is pulled back and I can see what look like permanent bruises in the shape of long, slender fingers encircling her neck from where the unsub had choked her out. A thin blue sheet has been pulled up to the top of her breasts, with the tops of the surgical stitching made by the Y incision barely peeking out from under it. Sylvia’s skin looks like it’s been bleached whiter than bone as the waxy pallor of death has firmly settled over her.
“She looks healthy,” Astra notes. “I mean, she looks healthy, aside from the whole being dead thing.”
“She wasn’t malnourished or dehydrated, that’s true,” Beks confirms. “I didn’t make note of any broken bones or other wounds on her body. Other than being dead, she’s the picture of good health. It seems she was well taken care of. She does have that puncture wound in her neck, of course, and her tox screen came back positive for pentobarbital.”
“So he’s knocking them out,” Astra notes.
“But they were wide awake when he strangled them,” I add.
“Seeing that fear in their faces is probably what gets this guy off,” Astra speculates, and I nod, agreeing with her.
“Si
ck, sadistic bastard,” Beks sighs.
I look down at Sylvia’s feet and notice there’s some scar tissue around her left ankle. It’s a patch of skin a couple of inches wide that encircles her whole ankle. As I lean forward and really look at it though, I realize it’s not a scar. It’s not like she had a patch of her skin removed. It’s more like a callus. Like she’d been wearing something that rubbed her skin for an extended period of time and it formed a callus.
“Do you know what this is from?” I point.
Beks shakes her head. “I don’t. Not with any certainty. And unfortunately, I couldn’t tell you if that callus formed before or after she was taken,” she says. “What I can tell you is that I’ve seen two of the other bodies the SPD task force is looking at and they had matching calluses. Take from that what you will.”
“There was nothing in the murder books about them,” Astra tells me.
“I don’t recall seeing it mentioned in any report either.”
“Sloppy work,” Astra says.
“Very sloppy,” I agree.
“Knowing who’s on that task force, I’m not surprised,” Beks says as she hands me an unmarked file.
“Could that callus be the result of a shackle? Like perhaps she was chained to something by it?” I ask.
“Again, I can’t be certain. But it’s entirely possible. Perhaps even likely,” Beks says. “The callus pattern seems consistent with a shackle.”
I nod as I flip through it, taking a good look at the crime scene photos before I hand them over to Astra. We read all of the final and official ME’s reports quickly before slipping them back into the file. We’ll give them a closer look once we get back to the shop. Things feel like they’re gaining momentum again and I don’t want to slow anything down. But there’s something from the photos and reports that’s nagging me. Something tickling the back of my mind. I don’t know what it is just yet, so I’m going to let my mind noodle it over for a while.
“Where was she found?” Astra asks.
“Just outside of Bothell,” Beks replies. “Off the main highway and up into the woods a bit. A couple of hunters found her.”
“Just off the highway. Easy access for somebody to get in and out,” Astra muses.
“Not if they’re lugging a body,” Beks says. “Somebody had to have seen something.”
“Not if they did the dump in the middle of the night. That time of night, traffic is light on the highway. Plus, it’s darker than pitch. The unsub could have carried a hundred bodies from his car to the dumpsite and it’s possible that nobody would have seen a thing or been any the wiser,” I say.
Astra and I give the body another look but don’t see anything else that’s out of the ordinary. There’s not much for us to see or do here, but I suddenly have a thought to make one stop on the way back to the shop.
“Thanks, Beks,” I say. “This is really helpful.”
“Just do me a favor. When you get this guy, put him down like the rabid dog that he is,” she says.
Astra grins wide. “I really like her.”
“Call me,” she tells me. “Let’s get together soon.”
“Count on it,” I reply, then turn to Astra. “Let’s take a ride.”
Twenty-Five
Along State Route 527; Just Outside Bothell, WA
After getting dressed in clothing appropriate to a hike, and donning our FBI windbreakers, Astra and I got on the road. Half an hour outside of the hustle and bustle of downtown Seattle lies the city of Bothell. A city of around fifty thousand people, it’s got the laid-back pace of life, peace, and tranquility of a small town. Some would call it idyllic. A good spot to raise a family. And I guess they’d be right if that was your thing.
Running through Bothell is State Route 527, or as the locals call it, the Bothell-Everett Highway. It’s always busy with commuter traffic by day and a deserted stretch of black asphalt at night. The 527 runs a grand total of nine miles, north to south, connecting the northern Seattle suburbs of Bothell, Mill Creek, and Everett, and leading them to various other state routes and interstates. A good section of SR 527 is fronted by thick, lush forest, which makes it ideal as a dumping spot. Sylvia Benoit isn’t the first body to be dropped here and I doubt she’s going to be the last, either.
Astra and I get out of the car, which I pulled as far onto the shoulder as I can, and we’re buffeted by a blast of wind from a passing eighteen-wheeler. I look around and figure that given where Sylvia was found, that the killer probably parked here, or somewhere close by.
“What are you thinking?” Astra asks, shouting to be heard over the passing traffic.
“I’m thinking we need to take a soothing walk in the woods,” I call back.
We step off the shoulder and follow a narrow but firm path down into the depression on the side of the road. Standing between us and the edge of the forest is about twenty yards of tall grass and a riot of color on the flowering bushes. It wouldn’t be too hard to get a body from a car to the woods. But it would require some level of fitness－which is a nugget of information I store away for future use.
We walk through the grass and step into the forest. The trees are all pressed close, the trunks wide, and the heavy, musky smell of the forest saturates the air around us. In here, the density of the trees blocks out most of the highway noise, reducing it to little more than a buzzing in the background.
Once inside the forest, it isn’t hard to follow the path of detritus that leads us to where Sylvia was found. The path is on a slight upward grade and the footing in some places is treacherous. It’s not a grueling hike, but it could be difficult if you were hauling a body. Fragments of the yellow crime scene tape flutter in the breeze and all of the foliage and undergrowth have been trampled as thoroughly as if an army had passed through.
Small red triangular flags remain in the ground where Sylvia’s body was found, so I step over to it and squat down. I turn my face up to the thick canopy overhead and listen to the birds chirping as they flit from tree to tree. Astra is walking the perimeter of the scene, eyes glued to the ground around her as she checks to see if the initial responders missed anything. And given how sloppy the investigation looks to be to this point, I’d say it’s a pretty valid concern.
I look at the ground beneath me, trying to picture the scene as it might have played out. The puncture wound suggests that he sedated Sylvia before driving her out here. It makes sense, especially when you consider that he had to get her from his car to this spot; it’s a task difficult enough without having to fumble about with a woman writhing and wriggling around violently as she tried to save her own life.
I close my eyes and picture it. Her hands and ankles bound with duct tape, he lies her down here on this soft patch of dirt, pine needles, and forest foliage. With the boughs of the trees above blocking out the light, it would have been pitch black here. So how was he able to maneuver Sylvia from his car to this point in the dark? He probably wouldn’t have been able to carry a flashlight or a lantern－and Sylvia－at the same time. Not while trying to watch his footing on the upward, rocky path he had to follow to get here.
“Headlamp, probably,” I mutter to myself.
It makes sense. You can wear one of those around your head and it’ll leave your hands free. So what then? He gets her here, lays her down, and then… waits?
“What are you thinking?” Astra asks.
“That Beks was right: this guy is a sick, sadistic bastard.”
“Duh.”
A grin touches my lips as I stand up again. “He waited. After he sedated her, he waited until she woke up from it,” I postulate. “And then, when she was conscious again, he strangled the life out of her.”
“Like I said, he gets off on the fear,” Astra says. “Watching the life leave their eyes, maybe feeling it in his hands as he strangles them… maybe that’s what gives him his release.”
I shake my head. “There’s evidence that Sylvia and the others were all sexually assaulted. Violently,�
� I say. “According to the ME’s reports, there was a lot of scar tissue in the vaginal cavity.”
“But they couldn’t say definitively whether or not that was caused by him personally, or if he used a foreign object.”
I nod, conceding the point. “But in most cases, impotent killers are piquerists. The act of penetrating the body with a knife, or what have you, is the substitute for sexual penetration.”
“Most cases. But not all,” Astra counters. “If there’s one thing this job should have taught you by now, it’s that there are always exceptions to every rule.”
I laugh softly. “This is true. There are always exceptions,” I say. “There is just something in the back of my mind telling me he is raping these women. That he’s not impotent and is forcing himself on them.”
“You’re definitely right. But don’t get so married to one theory,” Astra says. “Look what happened to me. I was sure it was Cassie Cooper who killed her fiancé. I’m still trying to wipe the egg off my face from that one.”
We share a laugh, but it eventually tapers off and we fall into a sober silence. It’s almost like the heaviness of the place, or maybe the fact that death is still saturating the air around us, doesn’t allow any good humor to last for very long.
“There’s also something about the crime scene photos I’ve been noodling around,” I tell her.
“What’s that?”
“The way he laid her out here. After he’d killed her, I mean,” I say.
“What about it?”
“The way he’d posed her, hands over the chest, body laid straight, and her hair pushed back from her face,” I explain. “What does that say to you?”
Astra frowns for a moment and then looks at me, a curious expression on her face. It’s as if she can sort of see where I’m going with all of this but hasn’t quite gotten there yet.
“Sounds a bit like remorse,” she says.
“Perhaps,” I nod. “But I think it sounds more like he cared for her. Cared about her. He made sure she was comfortable, even in death.”