Pretty Dead

by Anne Frasier

  In the lamplight, she recognized him from the bar. He’d been polite and had left her a nice tip. Not the kind of guy you’d notice in a crowd, but someone a girl would feel comfortable around. Safe around.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  She laughed, thinking he was probably talking about the mascara running down her cheeks.

  “Would you like to grab a cup of coffee?” he asked. “There’s a place on Abercorn that’s open all night.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I’m a good listener,” he assured her. “And I have sisters,” he added, almost as an afterthought, smiling at what having sisters implied. He understood young women. He understood this kind of breakdown.

  It might be nice to talk to someone totally removed from her life. Her roommates didn’t get it. Poor rich girl, reduced to working and living just like the rest of them. No sympathy there.

  But it wasn’t about the work. It was about the rejection.

  She pulled in a stabilizing breath.

  Footsteps drew her attention away from the guy in the car. She looked up to see a man heading down the sidewalk toward her, his gait uneven.

  “And you really shouldn’t be out here by yourself,” the guy in the car said, not in a judgmental way, not in the way her parents would have done, but concerned. For her. And God, it had been so long since anybody had shown her any concern.

  He leaned across the seat and swung the passenger door open.

  The man on the sidewalk was getting closer, close enough for her to see his rough beard and tattered clothes. And he was coming straight for her.

  The city was buzzing about the two girls who’d been murdered. Not smart to walk home. She’d taken a cab for a few days, but cabs were expensive. And anyway, in a recent televised press conference she’d been forced to watch in the bar, her father had stated that the victims had been prostitutes and drug addicts. No need for worry.

  But the weird guy was still coming toward her.

  Decision made, she dove into the car, slammed the door, and locked it. “Thanks,” she said breathlessly.

  Her rescuer smiled, put the car in gear, and pulled away.

  CHAPTER 11

  Body is no longer in full rigor mortis,” John Casper said after a brief, preliminary on-site evaluation. “I’d say she’s been dead close to forty-eight hours.”

  David’s phone had rung at 6:30 a.m. with a report of another murder, and now here they were. Sometime during the night the nude body of the female victim had been displayed on a narrow strip of beach along the Savannah River, the body discovered just after dawn by an unfortunate group of Girl Scouts.

  “Judging from the lividity, the victim was moved after death,” John added.

  “Seems like the killer might have waited until she was close to full rigor to display her,” Elise said.

  Early morning, a chill in the air, wind coming in off the water, sun still low in the sky, seabirds calling overhead while sandpipers scurried along the river’s edge. Beauty and horror.

  John nodded. “Looks that way.”

  Same MO. A young woman, nude, displayed in a public place. Body covered in a single word, just like the others.

  “Cupio.” Coffee mug in one hand, David pulled out his phone and did a quick search of the word. “It means ‘desire’ in Latin.”

  Avery broke in. “Got an ID on the vic,” he said with an odd look on his face. He lived closer to the crime scene and had arrived thirty minutes before Elise and David. “Caroline Chesterfield.”

  “The mayor’s daughter?” Elise asked in disbelief. “You sure?”

  Avery turned his phone so she could see the headshot of a young woman. Blond hair, smiling at the camera. “Matches the missing person report. We still need family confirmation, but I’m betting it’s her.”

  Things were a little strained between Elise and Avery, but they were both doing a good job pretending the other night had never happened. She wouldn’t mention it, and hopefully he never would either.

  David lowered his coffee. “Who reported her missing?”

  Avery pocketed his phone and flipped through his notes. “Roommate—after getting a call from the bar where the victim worked. She didn’t show up for her shift. Roommate didn’t report her earlier because she figured she’d stayed the night with someone. As far as a timeline . . . looks like Caroline was last seen two nights ago walking home from work.”

  “Have an address?” David asked. “I’d like to talk to that roommate.”

  Avery tore a sheet of paper from his small notebook and handed it to David, who examined the address before tucking it into his breast pocket. “That’s a pretty shady area for the mayor’s daughter to live.” The whole story was odd.

  “Excuse me.”

  David looked up to see a young female officer standing with one hand on her belt. “I overheard you discussing the identity of the victim,” the woman said. She looked upset. “It’s Caroline Chesterfield.”

  “How certain are you?” Elise asked.

  “A hundred percent. I know the family. My younger sister and Caroline were best friends for years. She used to stay at our house. It’s her.”

  “Don’t release any information yet,” Elise told both Avery and David once the officer left. “Until I break the news to the mayor.” She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Call me if you come across anything substantial.”

  Avery nodded.

  Wanting to talk to Elise in private, David fell into step beside her as she headed for the parking lot, her car, and a waiting Jay Thomas Paul.

  “The mayor’s daughter,” Elise said. “What the hell?”

  “Think it’s calculated?”

  “Could be a coincidence. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “That would be a helluva coincidence. A dead girl who doesn’t fit the victimology, who just happens to be the daughter of the mayor, who just happened to appear on the news a few nights ago talking about how everything was under control and the killer was going to be arrested at any moment.”

  They paused in the soft sand. David offered his coffee mug to Elise. She accepted and took a drink.

  “I’m going to work on the assumption that this isn’t random until we find out otherwise,” David said. “There are few coincidences when it comes to serial killers. And there’s a strange and rapid escalation to this that doesn’t fit standard serial-killer profiles. This is more in keeping with a seasoned killer. The stakes are increasing too rapidly.”

  “Seasoned? What are you saying? That he’s been doing this awhile?”

  “I think this person is a pro, and I think he’s got more than three kills under his belt. It’s long been suspected that the most elusive serial killers don’t stay in the same location. Our killer might have come here from somewhere else. We need to check all open serial killer cases around the country and see if we can find any with his MO.” Not an easy task. At any given time there were at least twenty open cases in the United States, and that was probably being conservative.

  “Is that all?” Elise eyed him with suspicion. “Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

  “Nothing worth sharing at the moment.” He had his theories—theories he wasn’t yet convinced weren’t just part of his own hysterical mind.

  Elise gave him a long look, passed the coffee mug back, turned, and headed up the wooden walkway, her black jacket and dark hair billowing in the morning breeze. From where he stood—just an ordinary day at the beach.

  He watched as she spoke to Jay Thomas, words he couldn’t hear. The reporter nodded, a solemn expression on his face. Then they both disappeared behind a row of trees.

  David took a deep breath and turned back toward the crime scene.

  CHAPTER 12

  Elise maneuvered her blue Camry toward Bay Street, heading for Savannah City Hall and the mayor’s office, Jay Thomas beside her in the passenger seat, thankfully sub
dued and not full of questions for once.

  She parked on the street and left the reporter in the car, fearing he might put two and two together but hoping he didn’t.

  She planned to break the news to the mayor face-to-face, but if he wasn’t in, a call would have to do because this kind of thing would hit Twitter feeds before the cops had the full story.

  The mayor was in.

  It wasn’t until that moment—until she’d gone through the metal detector and walked past the cast-iron clockwork in the lobby—that Elise realized she’d subconsciously hoped to find him gone so this unpleasantness could be taken care of over the phone.

  Coward.

  Rather than take the cage elevator, she chose the privacy of the marble steps to the second floor. Down the hall, past the framed photos of previous mayors. Knocked on the dark door. That was followed by a secretary leading her to the deeper office and to the mayor, a Southern gentleman who got to his feet as Elise entered.

  Mayor Chesterfield had a suave nature about him and that good-old-boy persona. Their few conversations had left Elise reluctantly charmed by his skill at manipulation and diplomacy. He was a true politician.

  She saw from his expression that he expected news about the murder cases. Good news.

  “Detective Sandburg!” He motioned toward the leather chair across from his massive desk. “Have a seat.”

  Behind him were photos of his family. His family. Beside the framed images were the requisite flags and maps and awards. Beyond those, the windows that revealed the street below. Cars and tourists moving along as if it were just another day. That was the thing about homicide. The world kept moving even when you felt deep in your heart that everything should stop for at least a moment of silence. Just a moment.

  Elise sat.

  She faced the mayor, hands clasped in front of her as if she were clinging to herself, holding so tightly her knuckles turned white. “I have some news,” she said quietly.

  He smiled from his seat across the desk.

  His world was about to change, and he didn’t know it.

  Part of her wanted to give him this day. Postpone this moment. Maybe she’d suggest he take the afternoon off. He and his wife would go to Tybee Island and have a picnic. Watch the cargo ships go by and feed the birds. And then they’d come home, tired from a day at the beach, but feeling at peace, a feeling that was undoubtedly rare when you were the mayor. A carefree day. A day just for him.

  Oh, how she wanted to give him that.

  But it wouldn’t happen. Maybe ten years ago a person could have gotten away with it. But today, with social media, every minute she wasted was a minute closer to his hearing the news from somewhere else.

  “It’s about your daughter, Caroline.”

  He reacted in the way she expected. The smile faded, and then came the fear.

  The fear was the awful part of death and dying. The awful part of life. Thing was, death wasn’t bad. It was the fear that came with it that was hard. The fear of how you would go on. The fear of tomorrow and the next day.

  “I’m sorry to tell you this, but your daughter is dead.”

  Your daughter is dead.

  Words that would bring Elise to her knees.

  He struggled to put it all together. Fill in the plot holes. The how and when, all the while avoiding what deep in his heart he knew to be the cause of death—murder. He was on to the next step, which was clinging to the less awful of the awful. Death by anything but someone else’s hand.

  Looking as if his body had no bones, he shrank in his chair. “That can’t be . . .”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “How . . . ?”

  This was where detectives had to spell it out very clearly and carefully; otherwise the loved one would grasp for something, anything, and cling to it. The false thing. The thing that wasn’t true and wasn’t real. She wanted to give him that false thing.

  “Your daughter was murdered. Her body was found this morning.” And now the cruelest part. The repeat pounding of the words in hopes of penetrating the roar in the survivor’s head. “Caroline is dead.”

  Then came the shaking. Something so exaggerated it never looked real. It started in the mayor’s core and radiated out, moving through his torso to his extremities until his arms were practically flailing, his legs shaking so violently, the pens in the cup on his desk began to rattle.

  He stared at his arms. He stared at his hands as if he wanted to pour all of his attention into the strange phenomenon going on within his body. Focus on that and nothing else. Certainly not the pain. Certainly not the horror. Not the fear.

  She reached across the desk and grabbed one palsied hand, gripping it tightly. Instead of stopping, the involuntary movement traveled from him to her, the shaking so violent that her own arm began to shudder.

  His hand under hers turned into a claw, and as she held on, he pounded a fist against the top of his desk. That was followed by an inhuman roar that was half sob, half anger.

  The sound itself seemed to startle and galvanize him. He thrust her hand away and sprang to his feet, eyes wild. “Where is she?”

  “On the beach, but they’ll be moving the body to the morgue soon. You can see her there.”

  “I want to see her now. I don’t believe it’s her. I think you’re wrong.”

  This was the way it went. The denial. The brain struggling for an alternate route, finding it, clinging to it.

  “She’s not a drug addict.” His spine straightened, and he looked at Elise with accusation, and then loudly and clearly, all tremors gone, he said, “She’s not a prostitute!”

  “I’ll take you to her,” Elise said quietly. There would be no belief until he saw the body, even though seeing her the way the killer had left her would be a thousand knives to his heart.

  “Later today we’ll need you to answer questions about your daughter. Details of her daily life,” Elise told him.

  He blinked, surprise pulling him away from his denial. He frowned, thinking. “I doubt I can do that,” he finally admitted. “It’s been a year since I last saw her.”

  “A year?”

  They lived in the same city, and he hadn’t seen her for a year? Of course Elise, of all people, knew that father-daughter estrangement wasn’t uncommon. Maybe less uncommon than a lot of people let on. Funny how that was. The way people didn’t want to admit they were no longer on speaking terms with close relatives, and yet in her years of homicide investigation, she’d discovered that familial breakups were almost epidemic.

  “We had a falling-out,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “School. She was accepted to Harvard. She was offered a scholarship. She didn’t take it. She stayed here . . .” He stopped talking, going off somewhere in his head, then finally coming back. “I kicked her out,” he whispered, his eyes connecting with Elise’s. “I kicked her out.” The words were a confession, everything he knew suddenly folding in on him as he found the person at fault here. The person at fault was always the survivor. “I kicked her out and cut her off without a penny.”

  The subtext and the horrified expression on his face said it all: if he hadn’t kicked her out, she’d still be alive. And the worst part? That was probably true. But it fell into the brain game of what-ifs, and once you got going on that, it just didn’t stop. What if I hadn’t turned right at that light? What if I hadn’t gone out for a drink? In Caroline’s case—what if she hadn’t chosen to take a certain path home from work? The randomness of life was unforgiving.

  “Your daughter made an unwise decision,” Elise said, speaking words that might have appeared to blame the victim. Not her intention. “She shouldn’t have walked home alone. That was a poor choice on her part.” She wouldn’t mention that just days ago the mayor had reassured residents of Savannah they were safe. When would he make that connection? That his televised reassurance might have played a part in his daughter’s death. That in this blame game he truly did have a role.

 
She traced the story back to its roots. If he hadn’t disowned her, Caroline wouldn’t have been living in a dangerous part of town and she wouldn’t have been working at the bar. And she wouldn’t have walked home alone late at night. He would always blame himself.

  And maybe that was the lesson here. Love your kids, no matter who they are and no matter what choices they make. Respect those choices.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated, recognizing the inadequacy of her words. And then she lied. For him, because what difference did the truth make now? “You aren’t to blame.”

  If he heard those words a million times, he would never believe them. Because this story began with him. And he was to blame, however indirectly.

  “I can take you there,” she said. “To your daughter. To the park. My car is outside.”

  He gave her a numb nod, and together they left his office.

  “Mr. Morris is here for his meeting,” the secretary said as they moved past her desk.

  A man in a suit got to his feet, a look of expectation on his face.

  “Cancel everything,” the mayor instructed. It was almost as if he’d forgotten he was the mayor, a job that no longer held any importance. He looked at the man. “I can’t meet with you today. I’m sorry.”

  “An unexpected event has taken place that requires the mayor’s immediate attention,” Elise explained. Then she and the mayor left, heading for the beach and sunshine and immeasurable grief.

  CHAPTER 13

  I’m Jay Thomas Paul,” the reporter said, introducing himself from the backseat where he’d relocated to allow the mayor to take the passenger side. “I was at the press conference a few days ago.”

  “Not a good time.” Elise slid behind the wheel. Beside her, the mayor stared numbly through the windshield. Jay Thomas was unaware of the identity of the woman on the beach, but in another ten minutes the whole city would know—if word hadn’t gotten out already.

  Jay Thomas dropped the hand he’d extended toward the mayor. Picking up on the tension, he shot Elise a questioning look, and she gave him an almost imperceptible shake of the head. He didn’t press it.