Faces of Evil [4] Rage

by Debra Webb

  “Thank you.” Jess sipped it slowly, using the time to note all she could about the way this couple lived. “You have a lovely home.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Have you lived here long?”

  “Five years.” Sarah looked around the room. “We bought this town house when Jack was promoted to detective.”

  Jess gifted her with a smile. “What a celebration that must have been. A promotion and a new home, too.”

  This time the woman’s smile looked real. “It was, yes.”

  Jess set her glass on the counter. “Thank you so much, Sarah.”

  Sarah immediately picked up the glass, emptied the remainder of the water, and placed it in the dishwasher. Then she rinsed the sink.

  This time Jess led the way to the living room, but she didn’t sit down.

  Taking that cue, Harper joined Jess near the door.

  “One last question, Sarah.”

  “Anything,” Sarah said, her voice almost giddy. “Ask me anything, Chief Harris.”

  “Were you aware of Gabrielle taking any drugs? Oxy-Contin, for example?”

  The woman’s jaw dropped a second time. “Where in the world are you getting these hateful ideas? Gabrielle Grayson would hardly take an antibiotic much less something like that!”

  “There was a large amount found in her tox screen, Sarah. The facts don’t lie,” Jess challenged.

  “There has to be a mistake.” Her arms went over her chest and her head was moving side to side in firm denial. She almost looked angry. “That’s impossible.”

  “The drug came from somewhere. Do you know if anyone in her family or any of her friends used that drug? Maybe someone gave it to her because she hurt herself somehow. Maybe she picked up the baby the wrong way and hurt her back?”

  “I don’t know anyone who uses that drug and neither did Gabrielle.”

  Oh yes. The lady was angry. “Not since your days working at New Life, right?”

  “I have to feed the baby now.” Sarah resurrected that fake smile and all other emotion vanished from her face. “Thank you for all you’re doing to find Gabrielle’s killer. We won’t sleep at night until this horrible tragedy is put to rest.”

  Jess handed her a card. “I appreciate your taking the time to talk to us, Sarah. If you think of anything else you believe might help, please let us know. We’re closing in on a suspect and we want to nail him but good.”

  Sarah’s eyes widened in surprise. “That’s great. I’ve been asking Jack and watching the news, but I hadn’t heard you were so close to solving the case.”

  Jess nodded. “It’s only a matter of time before we take him down.”

  Sarah stared at her, her disbelief as evident as if it had been written across her forehead in blood like the foul words that had been written on Gabrielle’s. Then she seemed to jerk back to the here and now and opened the door to usher them out.

  Jess waited until they were in Harper’s SUV before saying a word.

  Harper beat her to the punch. “Now that was a Stepford wife if I’ve ever seen one.” He shook his head. “As hard as she tried to cover it up, it showed on her face. She alternated between being scared to death of giving the wrong answer and spewing what she’d been brainwashed to say.”

  “Did you notice that nice save when I asked her if she spoke to Gabrielle that night?” Jess had seen the realization in her expression when the idea that phone records had likely been subpoenaed hit her. She’d recovered like a pro. “She specified that she had spoken to her two times after eight o’clock. God, we need those phone records.” Jess hated that these things sometimes took so long.

  “I saw how she was moving. Like she was in pain. You think that bastard beats her?”

  “I think that’s a very strong possibility.” Whatever was going on in their relationship, it was off balance. There was something deeply wrong in that house. Jess could feel it.

  “But that doesn’t make him a killer,” Harper noted with audible regret.

  “That’s true, Sergeant.” A man who would abuse his wife and children was the lowest of the low in Jess’s opinion. She wanted to shake the woman and demand why she would put up with such treatment. But she knew the answer without asking. Most often a twisted bond formed between the abused and the abuser. That kind of narcissistic bond was difficult to sever. Sometimes it ended only when one or the other was dead… until death do us part.

  “But,” Jess told her detective, a scenario forming quickly, “it does open up a whole new avenue of motive that may have set the stage for murder.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “With a bond like that, anything that threatens it would be swiftly stamped out.”

  She didn’t know the ins and outs of where this was going just yet, but Jack and Sarah Riley had just moved to the top of Jess’s suspect list.

  “Let’s see if we can find anything in police reports or medical records that prove Jack Riley is abusing his wife.” That was another avenue they could explore with Sarah’s former coworkers—the same coworkers they were already questioning about Gabrielle.

  “Yes, ma’am. But police reports are doubtful. He wouldn’t have made sergeant if anything like that was on his record.”

  “Unless,” Jess tossed back, “she claimed some unknown perp did the beating.”

  Abusers and victims that deeply entrenched in their bond knew how to work the system.

  “Good point.” Harper pulled his cell phone from his jacket pocket and checked the screen. “Dispatch.” He glanced at Jess before answering with, “Harper.”

  Holy crap… what now?

  Harper listened for five, six, seven seconds. “Chief Harris and I are en route.”

  As he tucked his phone away, Jess asked the question she feared the most. “Is it Devon?”

  “No. Two adult vics. One male, one female.”

  If they had gotten the call, there was some sort of readily distinguishable similarity or connection to the Grayson case.

  Just when Jess thought she knew where this investigation was headed, someone had to go and toss another body or two into the mix.

  Norwood, 11:38 a.m.

  “Both victims were dead prior to the decapitations and the stabbings.” Sergeant Harper indicated the blood, skull fragments, and brain matter sprayed across the dingy wall beyond where the man and woman lay supine on the floor. “Ligature marks on the wrists indicate they were restrained at some point.”

  Jess stepped closer to the couple. “It appears they were forced onto their knees, facing the wall, and took a bullet to the back of the head. At some point after that they were dragged over here”—she gestured to where they lay—“cut loose from their restraints, positioned with their arms spread wide and their legs together, just as Gabrielle Grayson was posed.”

  “Only this time”—Harper crouched down and indicated the area of the neck where the heads were once attached—“the heads were sawed off with a bit more precision.”

  “Or maybe just a sharper saw,” Jess suggested. Her stomach spasmed in revulsion.

  “Definitely sharper,” Harper agreed. “I counted twelve stab wounds on each vic. The pattern is random.”

  Twelve, not ten like Gabrielle. “It’s a miracle they were found before they dissolved into DNA soup.” Christ what a mess. It was all she could do to take a breath.

  The house had gone into foreclosure and was now owned by the bank. The windows were broken and the paint inside and out was peeling. The yard was overgrown. Like several others in the area, the house had sat abandoned and neglected for months.

  But not today. The smell of disuse and emptiness had been replaced by the pungent odor of human decomposition. There was no electricity and no air-conditioning. Even the evidence techs had had to take a break from the smell. The first officers on the scene hadn’t come back inside since discovering the bodies.

  “First officer on the scene”—Harper pushed to his feet and checked the notes he’d made on his phone�
��“said the old man who lives next door—the one who called it in, Pete Hall—identified the vics as Angel Flores and Javier Villa. He says they showed up here about two months ago and have been squatting in the house since. He’s pretty sure they were selling drugs. Not that he bought any,” Harper pointed out with a skeptical glance at Jess, “but he feels confident that’s how they made a living. He hadn’t seen or heard from either of them since last weekend and he thought they’d cut out without saying good-bye until he noticed the smell coming from the house.”

  Jess was pretty sure the old man had been a regular customer and that was how he knew the names of these victims. “Let’s hope they’ve been printed somewhere or dental records exist, because I don’t imagine even the next of kin could identify them now.” A good portion of both victims’ faces were missing. “Maybe the ME will find some identifying marks other than the tattoos.”

  Leonardo Lopez had insisted he did not believe his people were involved with Gabrielle Grayson’s murder. Yet here they were with a similar scene on their hands and both vics were sporting the typical MS-13 tatts. Various forms of the number thirteen, the name Mara Salvatrucha, teardrops, and one Jess hadn’t seen before, 666. Just lovely.

  “Have Officer Cook run the names the neighbor gave us and see what he comes up with,” Jess told Harper.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She crouched down to get a closer look at the bodies. She shielded her nose with a gloved hand, for all the good it would do. “These two have been dead at least a couple of days.” In this heat decomp had accelerated. She studied the damaged tissue around the neck where the head had been severed from the body. First the woman’s, then the man’s. “The beheading was done considerably later. A day at least.”

  “Stab wounds, too,” Harper said.

  The decapitation and stabbings had resulted in little blood loss. The victims’ hearts had ceased to pump blood well before those final acts. Jess considered the one word, RAGE, written in blood on the wall at the other end of the small room. Their perp had avoided the blood, bone, and tissue pattern that resulted from the shootings. Why would he care and where were all the other written comments that had been present at Gabrielle’s murder scene?

  “Another element similar to the Grayson murder,” Harper suggested, noting her attention on the wall.

  Jess pushed to her feet. “Except this time there’s just the one word. And the decapitations are much cleaner.”

  “Do we have some sort of fledgling ritual killer on our hands?”

  Jess wasn’t ready to go there. “I don’t think so. The victims are far too different.” It wasn’t impossible but it was far less probable. She surveyed the small space. Four rooms. All of which were empty save for a mattress and scattered clothes and rotting food.

  “How did the perp enter the premises, Sergeant?”

  She and Harper had come in through the front door. There had been no sign of forced entry there. Of course there was always the chance the victims had known the killer and allowed him inside.

  “The back door. Follow me.”

  Harper had been busy while she studied the victims. She trailed him through each of the rooms. There wasn’t much of a hall. Mostly a small spot where the four rooms converged. The one with the tiny closet she assumed was a bedroom. A tiny bathroom, the living room—where the bodies had been found—and then a kitchen. In the kitchen, the back door had been kicked in. Muddy shoe prints suggested that the breaking and entering had occurred closer to Monday than today. It hadn’t rained since early Sunday night and there sure as hell wasn’t a damp rut around here to be found.

  “Two distinct sets of shoe prints,” Harper indicated the imprints on the worn linoleum. He positioned his right foot alongside one of the muddy outlines. “One set’s about a size ten, the other smaller, a nine maybe.”

  “Gabrielle’s killer was careful not to leave behind that kind of evidence.” She and Harper exchanged a knowing look.

  At the counter Jess had a look at the papers lying there. Documents that announced the bank had repossessed the property. Neatly printed property detail sheets for the Realtors who came through. No business cards though. Typically when a Realtor showed a house, they left their business card for the listing Realtor. Certainly the house hadn’t been shown since the couple in the other room took up residence.

  Jess picked up a copy of the property detail sheet to take with her and roaches scurried across the counter.

  Shouting at the front door drew her attention in that direction.

  “Sounds like the ME’s here,” Harper said.

  Dr. Sylvia Baron’s voice boomed again. “What’re you waiting for? The second coming? We have an oven in here. The sooner you’ve done your job, the sooner we can salvage these victims before they ooze through the cracks in the floor.”

  Apparently the evidence techs had loitered outside a little too long to suit her. This was the kind of scene no one relished dissecting.

  “We certainly don’t want to keep her waiting.” She and Jess had reached a kind of wary alliance. After last night’s bonding moment they might even be friends… sort of. Be that as it may, the law was the law. Dr. Baron might run things at the coroner’s office and, as the ME of record on a case, she had jurisdiction over the body, but she didn’t run Jess’s crime scenes.

  “Good morning, Dr. Baron.” Jess tacked on a smile in spite of the urge to wrinkle her face and gag as the full impact of the smell hit her all over again. The smell was so much less strong in the kitchen.

  “Chief Harris.” Baron surveyed the bodies. “Do we have a copycat or is this the same perp from Gabrielle Grayson’s murder?”

  “Considering these victims were executed gang-style and have been dead for more than forty-eight hours, I highly doubt it. If you’ll notice, the decapitations and stabbings occurred far more recently. I think someone wants us to believe it’s related, but my money’s on no connection whatsoever.”

  Baron turned up her gloved hands. “Well, excuse the hell out of me. I don’t know why I bothered to show up since you have all the answers.”

  Jess laughed. “But you’re the expert. I’m only speculating.” She gestured to the bodies. “They’re all yours.”

  “Thank you, Chief. And by the way,” she said, prompting Jess to lean closer. “Not human. Animal. Feline to be exact.”

  Jess gave her a nod. “Thanks. I owe you one.” The spots on her deck were the same type of blood used to leave that message on the Grayson photo. The only question was, were the blood droplets from the night the message was left inside her apartment or was this from a new message? One her landlord had covered up?

  Why would he do that? It was time she had a long talk with Mr. Louis.

  When Baron started ordering the evidence techs around again, Jess snagged Harper’s arm and ushered him outside. “Get hold of Hector Debarros for me. Tell him I need to speak to Leonardo Lopez.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  An assistant from the coroner’s office hurried from the van to the house with trace sheets and body bags. Good luck with that, Jess thought.

  News crews waited at the corner of the block.

  Jess considered the location. There wasn’t much she didn’t know about this city. Not so far from here was historic Norwood, where the homes were architecturally pleasing and the residents had the means to keep them that way. The residents over there, her gaze followed the street in that direction, pretended their neighbors only a few blocks away weren’t murdered on a regular basis and that crime wasn’t the only game around. If forced to drive along these blocks they overlooked the dilapidated homes, defunct businesses, and abandoned structures decorated with graffiti. As long as it wasn’t on their block, it wasn’t real.

  Her lungs still cramping from the odor inside, Jess turned to the house once more. Whoever attempted to make this resemble the Grayson murder had failed miserably.

  Jess blinked when Captain Ted Allen rounded the west corner of the house. He�
��d been busy interviewing neighbors when she arrived. Now he was headed her way. She braced for an unpleasant encounter.

  Allen was a little older than her, a year or two maybe. He had the tall, lean build of a runner. His dark hair was close cropped in a military style. He wore dark glasses, which concealed the color of his eyes. But there was no mistaking the set of his jaw. He was in no way glad to see her.

  “Chief Harris.”

  “Captain Allen.”

  “What we have here,” he said, getting to the point, “is a gang hit on interlopers. The two vics you got inside were likely trying to start up their own little business in the wrong territory. Whoever showed up and mutilated the bodies afterward has nothing to do with that.”

  He started to turn away. “How can you be so sure, Captain?”

  “Because”—he turned back to her, impatience and dislike emanating from his every pore—“I have informants who report this stuff to me. Those two were taken out late Monday by two MS-13 members in Salvadore Lopez’s clique. They were protecting their territory. The vics were shot once in the back of the head. That’s what MS-13 does to interlopers.”

  Jess crossed her arms over her chest. “And you didn’t report this double homicide? I know you and your joint task force with the bureau and the DEA have this grand plan, but I just don’t get the way you sit back and let these guys get away with murder.”

  Allen laughed. “Frankly, I could care less what you get or don’t get.”

  “Apparently you’re not alone on that one, Captain, considering someone has been sending me some rather firm messages.”

  He backed off, held his hands up stop-sign fashion. “Work the gang world long enough, Chief, and you’ll learn to be grateful for two things. One is to bide your time and choose your battles so you take down the biggest fish. The other is to appreciate when they take each other off the street.” He gestured to the rundown house. “That’s two less dope dealers in there. Color me thankful to whoever took ’em out.”

  Jess gave a little chuckle. “I suppose you’re right. You have to be there to appreciate that sentiment. Kind of like an inside joke.”