Death Grip

by Elaine Viets

  ‘I do, and he’ll respect me more for doing the right thing.’

  That was very true, and very brave, but I wasn’t going to let Briggs claim another victim. Katie and I had to bring him down before a good cop was banished from the Forest.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The Monday morning sun was streaking the dark sky when Katie dropped me back at home after our bar crawl. As soon as I opened my door, I kicked off those awful red heels – cheap shoes always gave my feet blisters and these were no exception. I climbed the stairs hanging on to the railing, pulled off my clothes and fell into bed. The two pots of coffee didn’t keep me up. I slept away almost the whole day and woke up groggy and cotton-mouthed about six that night.

  I wasn’t as good at pulling all-nighters as I used to be, but at least I was one day closer to what I hoped would be more information on the skeletonized ‘women in the woods.’ If all went well, Dana Murdoch, the forensic archeologist, would have news for us by the end of the week.

  I was on call as a death investigator for two of those days. On Tuesday, no one died, which was good news for the Forest and for me. The second day, Wednesday, I got a call at four-thirty in the afternoon: an eighty-six-year-old woman had died at home, and her teenage granddaughter Melanie had found her when she stopped after school to ‘check on Grandma.’

  At seventeen, the poor girl was too young and inexperienced to understand that her beloved Grandma had had a good death. That afternoon, Grandma Sarah Kenzie had walked a mile both ways to the neighborhood market, bought her groceries and trundled them home in her folding wire cart, put all the food away in the cupboard and the fridge, sat down at her kitchen table and died quickly, possibly from a stroke or a heart attack.

  Judging by the time stamp on the grocery store receipt, her granddaughter Melanie found Sarah about three hours later. Sarah had, by all accounts, been a kind and generous woman, beloved by her family and friends. She would be much missed. Without sounding too morbid, it was the kind of death I hoped I’d have – no lingering illness and long, slow decline – though maybe I’d feel differently if I was lucky enough to get to be as old as Sarah.

  Anyway, this death investigation was quick and uncomplicated. The police contacted Melanie’s mother at her job, and once she recovered from the shock, she rushed to her weeping daughter’s side at Grandma Sarah’s house. We interviewed the women in the decedent’s old-fashioned front parlor and got their statements. Melanie went home with her mother and Sarah went to her reward. It was a good ending for a life well-lived.

  I rode American Hero every day for at least an hour. Time spent with him helped clear my head. At least once a day, Chris tried to call to see how I was. He was working double shifts and was tired, but happy for the overtime. I enjoyed talking to him and grew to miss his calls if for some reason he was too busy to phone.

  Chris couldn’t have devised a better method of courting me – slowly, simply and thoughtfully. Now I looked forward to our dinner together. I knew what would probably happen this Saturday when I had dinner at his house, but it was time I thought about love again. I was still relatively young, and I hoped my heart was big enough to love two men.

  Meanwhile, Katie, Jace and I waited for news about the women in the woods.

  At last I got the call from Katie that we’d all been waiting for. She phoned me at seven-thirty in the evening on Wednesday, when I was just back from riding Hero.

  ‘Dana, the forensic archeologist, has finished. I have the report,’ Katie said. ‘You and Jace will meet at my office tomorrow morning. I want you there at eight o’clock.’

  ‘No way we can meet tonight?’ I asked.

  ‘Nope,’ Katie said. ‘You’ll have to wait until morning. I will tell you this: we caught a break. We were able to identify both women.’

  ‘That is good news,’ I said. ‘Should I bring breakfast? I can defrost a coffee cake. It’s homemade. I bought it at the school bake sale.’

  ‘Good idea. Pick up a tray of fresh fruit at the supermarket while you’re at it,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring the coffee.’

  Jace was already there when I arrived the next morning. Once again, Katie’s desk was turned into a buffet. I poured myself some coffee in the I See Dead People mug, cut a slice of the cinnamon coffee cake, then added a few token pieces of fresh fruit to my plate.

  When our plates and coffee cups were full, Katie began. ‘Jace, we’ve found some physical evidence that supports your theory these two women might have been Briggs’s earlier victims. And they might have died during rough sex. Again, I’m stressing might. There’s no way to prove the victims even had sex, but one victim had a broken right arm, three broken ribs, and a broken neck. The other had more extensive injuries. They were definitely beaten.’

  ‘Those sound like more severe versions of the injuries LeeAnn had,’ Jace said.

  ‘The bodies were skeletonized, so we have no idea what the soft tissue was like,’ she said.

  ‘The first woman was a nineteen-year-old who lived in Daltonville, Missouri.’

  ‘That’s a little town near Harland,’ I told Jace. ‘Was her name Paisley Parker? That was LeeAnn’s missing friend. She was a working girl who got in a car with the wrong john.’

  ‘No, this woman was Annabelle Futch. She had multiple arrests for prostitution and loitering. We know she had long blonde hair. She was about five feet five and had brown eyes, according to her rap sheet. Dana, the forensic archeologist, found the remnants of what look like black plastic boots, a short skirt made of some sort of synthetic material, and a fur-like jacket. The sizes were small, and so was Annabelle. She was young, blonde and thin.’

  ‘Definitely Briggs’s type,’ Jace said.

  ‘The killer tried to hide Annabelle’s identity. He cut the labels out of her clothes, tossed her ID, even cut off her fingertips. But he forgot one thing: her implants.

  ‘We were able to ID her because at age eighteen she had breast augmentation surgery, and went from an A cup to a double-D cup.’

  ‘Ouch,’ I said.

  ‘Right,’ Katie said. ‘Boobs that big on such a small frame are a painful stretch, and I’m not making a joke.’

  ‘Did anyone report her missing?’ Jace asked.

  ‘Sadly, no. Her mother died while Annabelle was missing and we haven’t been able to find any other next of kin.’

  We stopped for more coffee, and I briefly contemplated the short, sad life of Annabelle Futch.

  ‘Who was our other victim?’ Jace said

  ‘The third was a seventeen-year-old girl, a runaway from Keokuk, Iowa, named Brittany Logan Richardson. Before Brittany ran away from home, she’d had very good dental care, and that’s how we were able to trace her, through her dental records.

  ‘Brittany disappeared nearly four years ago. She may or may not have been turning tricks to survive. She didn’t have any arrest record.’

  ‘Any idea why she took off from her home?’ I asked.

  ‘Best guess, according to local law enforcement,’ Katie said, ‘was that her mother’s new boyfriend was way too interested in Brittany. Mom divorced when the girl was fifteen. Her school social worker reports Brittany was “acting out” before she left home, but didn’t say what that was.

  ‘From her photos, Brittany was a pretty, almost ethereal-looking young woman. We know she was about five feet six, slender – a hundred pounds – with blue eyes and long blonde hair. Again, Briggs’s type.’

  ‘What happened to her?’ Jace said.

  ‘Nothing good,’ Katie said. She looked sad as she delivered the grim news. ‘Brittany was severely beaten at the time of her death. She had multiple fractures around her eye sockets and nose. Both arms and hands had more fractures. She may have held them up to protect herself when she was beaten to death. She had two broken ribs and a broken neck. The bones of her right foot and right tibia were lost to scavengers.’

  ‘Any belongings found with the body?’ Jace asked.

  ‘Parts of a plain gray ho
odie, jeans and a gray T-shirt. No shoes or socks.

  ‘We found no connection to Briggs,’ Katie said. ‘Let me stress that: nothing. That’s it.’ She put down her coffee cup.

  ‘No, it’s not!’ Jace shouted.

  I was so surprised I nearly dropped my coffee cup. Jace never raised his voice, but now he sounded angry.

  ‘That … that dirtbag is not getting away with this. I’m driving out to Harland, and I’m going to find that young woman, that LeeAnn Higgs. She’s going to file a complaint against Briggs today!’

  ‘Jace,’ Katie said, trying to soothe him. ‘You know what will happen if you defy the chief’s order to stay away from Briggs. You’ll be fired.’

  ‘I don’t care! That dirtbag has hurt his last innocent woman!’

  ‘Wait, Jace!’ I said. ‘Before you torch your career, let’s exhaust all our leads.’

  ‘Leads? What leads?’ He kicked Katie’s desk. ‘We can’t wait around for something to happen. How do we know that sicko isn’t going hunting tonight?’

  ‘We don’t,’ I said. ‘But I want to check in with Lisa McKim, Rosanna’s mother. I’ve heard through the grapevine she’s hired a private detective.’

  ‘I can’t go with you,’ he said.

  ‘I know that. And I can’t be working on that case. But I can visit an old family friend and see how the search for her daughter is going. I’ll go see her today. Meet you all here tomorrow.’

  ‘Deal,’ Jace said. ‘I’ll bring doughnuts.’

  THIRTY-SIX

  At ten-thirty that morning, I was at Lisa McKim’s split-level. She’d aged ten years in the short time since Jace and I had last seen her. The Lisa I knew was always perfectly turned out from head to toe, with a neat figure. Now she’d gone from trim to scrawny and haggard. Her dark hair was unwashed and untidy and her sweatshirt had egg stains down the front. Lisa wore no make-up, not even lipstick, and her face was pale and lined. I tried hard to hide my shock.

  Lisa greeted me at the front door with a tired smile and took me upstairs to the family room. Cozy and lived in, the room had comfortable couches and overstuffed chairs ranged around a working fireplace. Lisa turned off the TV over the mantel and said, ‘Have a seat, Angela. What would you like to drink? Coffee, tea? Soda? Water?’

  ‘Water’s fine,’ I said. I saw a man’s shirt on the couch and a pair of men’s running shoes on the floor.

  ‘Sorry about those,’ she said, whisking them away. ‘They belong to Kevin.’

  ‘Rosanna’s boyfriend?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, that Kevin. He’s given up his apartment and moved into my basement so we’d have more money to find Rosanna.’

  She handed me a tall glass of ice water and a coaster for the coffee table. The philodendron on the table badly needed water and I was tempted to pour some on it, but feared the ice water would shock its little roots. My mother would have known what to do.

  Lisa had poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down next to me on the couch. She held a red cell phone. ‘Excuse the phone,’ she said. ‘I have a special number that people can call with information about Rosanna. It’s always with me. When I sleep, it’s next to me on my nightstand.’

  ‘Do you get any calls?’

  ‘Lots of them,’ Lisa said. ‘They’re all cranks. Some of them say the nastiest things, calling Rosanna a slut and worse. They don’t even know her. Kevin wanted to disconnect the number but I keep hoping someone will see something useful that can help us.’

  I took a sip of ice water, then said, ‘People can be mean.’

  ‘They can, but there are good ones, too. My neighbors have been so nice. My church has a prayer circle. I believe in the power of prayer, don’t you?’

  ‘It can be a great comfort,’ I said. Prayer was fine, but I believed God helped those who helped themselves. Turned out Lisa and Kevin were working that angle, too.

  ‘Kevin and I have been doing everything we can to find Rosanna. The search is so expensive I sold my car.’

  ‘Your new red Mustang convertible?’ I’d seen Lisa tooling around the Forest on warm days with the top down and her curly hair blowing in the wind. ‘That car is your pride and joy.’

  ‘No,’ Lisa said. ‘My daughter is my pride and joy. I must find her. Kevin and I hired a St. Louis publicist to help us. You must have seen the stories in the newspapers.’

  ‘A few,’ I said.

  ‘We’ve had more than a few.’ Lisa handed me a thick stack of papers, including the St. Louis City Gazette, the St. Louis Riverfront Times, The Chouteau Forest News, and some of the bigger Missouri papers, including the Kansas City Star, the Columbia Missourian, the Columbia Tribune, and the Jefferson City News Tribune. ‘We’ve spread out the ads to cover a big part of the state,’ she said. ‘The KC Star is on the other side of the state, the Columbia papers are in the middle, and Jeff City is up north.’

  She handed me another fat stack. ‘These are the Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach and Miami papers.’

  Some were tear sheets of ads with Rosanna’s photo and the headline, ‘Have You Seen This Woman?’ They described Rosanna (five foot six, 124 pounds, dark hair, age twenty-nine) and the date she went missing, along with a phone number.

  The rest were news and feature stories along these lines: ‘Chouteau Forest Mother Searches for Missing Daughter’ and ‘Was This Young Woman Abducted Before Her Fort Lauderdale Cruise?’ ‘Boyfriend of Missing Housekeeper Vows to Keep Searching for “the Woman I Love.”’

  ‘We’ve had some TV interviews, too,’ Lisa said. ‘I can send you the links. We had these flyers distributed throughout Chouteau County, near the St. Louis airport, the Fort Lauderdale airport, Port Everglades and the cruise ship hotels.’ The color flyers were similar to the ‘Have You Seen This Woman?’ ads.

  ‘Those flyers must have cost a bundle to print and distribute,’ I said.

  ‘I sold my mother’s silver to pay for them,’ she said. ‘I only brought it out on holidays, and there won’t be any holidays in this house if Rosanna doesn’t come home. Kevin sold his comic-book collection to help.

  ‘We also hired a private detective to find Rosanna. We got Gussie Henderson from St. Louis. Do you know him?’ She looked at me hopefully.

  ‘I know of him,’ I said. ‘Gussie is supposed to be the best and I’m not just trying to make you feel better. The police detectives I know respect him. Gussie has a national reputation.’

  ‘Thanks, that’s a relief. Gussie certainly is thorough. Here in St. Louis, he interviewed people at the airport and with the airlines. He talked to taxi drivers, Uber drivers, even some of the airport sky caps. Nothing. Then he flew to Fort Lauderdale and interviewed the people at the cruise line, at the hotels that cater to cruise ship travelers, the airport, Uber drivers and taxi drivers. He has amazing sources, and he still had no luck.

  ‘I made a copy of his report for you and that nice detective,’ she said, and handed me a fat manila envelope.

  ‘Jace Budewitz,’ I said.

  ‘That’s him. Has he found anything?’ Lisa asked.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Jace had been ordered to leave Briggs alone, so I gave Lisa an edited version of the truth: ‘He tracked down one of the young women that Briggs brought to his house. Her name was LeeAnn.’

  ‘Amazing.’

  ‘It was quite a feat, but Rosanna’s diary was a big help,’ I said.

  ‘How was she, that young woman? Did he hurt her?’

  I knew Lisa was looking for reassurance that her own daughter was safe.

  ‘LeeAnn was having a drink at the local bar,’ I said. Well, it was the truth.

  ‘But you don’t have any good leads?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re still looking.’ Hoping to change the subject quickly, I asked, ‘What did Gussie the detective conclude?’

  ‘That the trail started and stopped at Briggs’s house. He thinks Rosanna never left the property – she’s on it, dead—’ Lisa’s voice broke at that word, but she managed t
o pull herself together to gulp out, ‘or alive.’

  ‘And what do you think, Lisa?’

  ‘She’s alive. My girl’s alive. I can feel it. She was part of me. I carried her in my body. We’ve always had a special connection. Please find her for me and bring her home.’ Lisa gave me a tentative smile and my heart cracked in two.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  After I left Lisa McKim’s house, I couldn’t wait to tell Katie and Jace about my visit. Too bad I had to wait almost a full day until we met again, on Friday morning. I was electric with restless energy. I paced my bedroom, and spotted a cobweb in the corner and another by the closet. The windows were streaked with winter dirt and the curtains were dingy.

  In fact, the whole upstairs could use a good spring cleaning. I wore myself out washing windows, scrubbing floors, and dusting everything that didn’t move – even the baseboards.

  When I found myself scrubbing the pull-down stairs to my attic, I knew I’d gone clean out of my mind. I went up those stairs maybe once a year, at the most.

  I shut the door to the upstairs hall closet that hid the stairs and cleaned one more thing – me. It was nine-thirty. Then I fixed myself a quick sandwich and fell into bed.

  By eight o’clock the next morning, we were all in Katie’s office. Jace and I were petting Katie’s pup, Cutter. Now eleven weeks old, the golden-lab mix looked like a fuzzy yellow toy. He was wearing a blue nylon harness and dragging a matching leash.

  ‘I’m leash training him,’ Katie said. ‘He’s catching on quickly. The training video says I’m supposed to let him drag the leash around so he gets used to both the feel of the leash and the harness.’

  I picked up the pup and said, ‘Whoa, Katie, he’s a big boy. What does he weigh?’

  ‘Twenty-two pounds,’ she said. ‘The vet thinks he’ll be seventy pounds when he’s full grown.’

  Cutter slurped my nose.

  ‘Don’t let him get too close to your face,’ she said. ‘He has a bad habit of nipping noses. He nailed Monty after dinner yesterday and spent the night in his crate.’ She stopped a minute and said, ‘Cutter’s crate, not Monty’s.’