Next, I contacted Willow to let her know where I was going. I not only wanted her to know I’d be out of the area, but also, I needed to find out whether she wanted me to pick up anything in Glenwood. They had quite a few home improvement stores, and she was in the middle of furnishing her new old house.
Good thing I asked. She wanted me to drop by a lighting store and bring home a pair of sconces she’d ordered for the upstairs guest bathroom. I wasn’t sure what a sconce was, but that didn’t matter. They were holding them under her name.
-o-o-o-
Manny got lucky with the cadaver dog. He found one available for free to law enforcement. All he had to do was pay for the mileage from Grand Junction and meals for the mutt and its handler.
It took me an hour to get to the Glenwood Springs Police Station, only forty miles away. The traffic on Highway 82 was terrible, as usual. Aspen was too popular for its own good.
While Manny and I waited for the dog to arrive, he showed me a dozen pictures of the foot they’d recovered and the area behind Homer’s. I’d eaten there many times, and if everything worked out, I might take a pie home for dinner. Then, I remembered—things rarely worked out the way I hoped.
A young, freckled guy named Roger showed up with Diva, a five-year-old white Lab. She was a sweet dog despite her predilection for dead stuff. Boomer liked her, but he liked everybody. And he wasn’t going to complain about the stink from some decaying body or portion thereof.
Roger and I took our dogs to the south end of town and systematically checked every commercial trash container we could find. Even if it was locked when we got to it, that didn’t mean it’d been locked when a killer had dropped by, probably last night.
One of the Glenwood cops followed us in case we needed a dumpster diver. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the guy, Manny’s newest hire. The rookies always got the worst jobs. That was the pecking order in our culture.
Diva was well-trained—unlike some dogs I knew—and she barely paid attention to the trash. Even ignored a half-eaten burger lying on the ground. Boomer strained at the leash to munch on it, but no snacking between meals.
Roger took Diva around each refuse receptacle we came to. She held her nose in the air and breathed in the stink from rotting garbage like it was a fine French perfume. No reaction.
I’d heard Labs had great noses. Maybe not as good as a bloodhound’s, but close. After five stops, though, I wondered whether Diva might have a head cold or something. Nothing seemed to impress her.
“Is she having an off day?” I asked.
Roger smirked. “Why don’t you chill? I can tell you one thing—three months ago, she found a snow leopard’s skin that had been sealed inside five layers of plastic and shipped directly from Nepal to Salt Lake City. The container had been packed inside a crate full of curry. So, let’s let the little lady do her job?”
“Sorry.” I backed up while making a mental note not to ask Roger for help in the future. I could be socially inappropriate, but his reaction to my natural worry seemed overdone.
-o-o-o-
Whenever I’d played craps, which wasn’t often since I’d left the Corps, eight had always been my lucky number. I had some magical knack for throwing that number, and it didn’t matter whose dice I used.
It turned out, eight was magical for dumpsters, too. Diva didn’t even get close to that container before she woofed a half-dozen times.
Roger grinned. “Hah! So much for having an off day.”
I motioned for the cop to take a look. Roger fished a baggie full of dog treats out of his jacket’s pocket. Tossed two to Diva and one to Boomer, for keeping her company, I guess. Maybe the kid wasn’t quite the jerk I’d thought.
The cop put on one of those white hazmat suits, gloves, and a respirator. The dumpster’s lid was unlocked. He flipped it all the way back with a clang. I made a stirrup out of my hands and lifted his foot high enough for him to climb in.
“The object is probably wrapped in black plastic,” I reminded him.
“This container isn’t too bad,” he said. “Mostly cardboard and packing materials.”
We were standing behind a strip mall, but I hadn’t paid attention to the business signs out front. “Lucky for you. Seafood restaurants are the worst, trust me.”
He laughed and dug around for a few minutes. “Got something. Wrapped in black plastic and taped closed. As big as a toaster. Whatever’s inside is squishy.”
Disgusting, but that was our life. “You probably ought to cut into the plastic just a little to see if what’s inside reeks.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, like I was his boss.
“Jesus! Definitely smells like roadkill.”
“Congratulations on your discovery.” I called Manny with the news.
“Yeah,” he said, “not surprised.”
“Me neither, but I was beginning to wonder whether we were going to have to visit the neighboring towns, too.”
“I’ll send the assistant coroner over,” he said. “Tell Sam to make sure that’s the only package. We didn’t find anything else behind the pizza joint, but you never know when dealing with these nutty killers.”
Chapter 7
Boomer and I worked another long but productive day. One dumpster in four contained human remains. Diva, God bless her, found nineteen similar bundles. We recovered most of a human female, but her entire chest, neck, and head remained missing.
The Garfield County Coroner worked with Dr. Dan to perform the autopsy. The cause of death remained unknown, but the woman’s extremities showed evidence of a severe beating. Someone whaled on her before death using a long, small-diameter weapon like a fireplace poker or a metal pipe. A vicious end to someone’s life.
On the plus side, we didn’t have any trouble convincing CBI to rush this blood sample for DNA and toxicology. One of Manny’s officers delivered the blood to CBI’s lab near Denver.
Boomer and I did eat Homer’s pizza for dinner, but Willow found something healthier for herself.
-o-o-o-
In the morning, I met Dr. Dan and Randy at our office.
“We got the tox screen back already,” the coroner said. “The main news is that she was sedated with Ketamore. It’s a new, proprietary mixture of ketamine and another anesthetic. It’s supposed to minimize hallucinations, thereby eliminating its value as a street drug.” He looked at us as though he thought that would mean something.
“Sorry,” Randy said, “haven’t heard much about that one.”
I only knew about ketamine as a street drug, so I kept my mouth shut to conceal my ignorance.
“Ketamine’s mainly used as anesthesia in surgery for people or animals. It induces a trancelike state while providing pain relief, sedation, and memory loss. The new formulation called Ketamore was created to eliminate the hallucinations. It isn’t a drug the average Joe would acquire from his connection. The killer has to be connected to the medical or veterinary professions in some way.”
The case got weirder by the moment. “How many docs or vets in Aspen would have access to this stuff?”
“A couple of dozen, including me, but add in an equal number of nurses and vet techs.”
“Plus, lots more folks in Basalt and Glenwood,” Randy said. “Too many for us to interview at this point in the investigation. Any results on the DNA test?”
Our doctor shook his head. “She’s not in the system. You’ll know better than me how to collect DNA from the relatives of missing persons.”
“Yep,” Randy said, “we’ll work that angle. Any other news you can give us?”
“We have most of her body below the rib cage, plus her arms. Her skin is soaked with blood, presumably hers. In addition, the skin was cut off her left bicep. We have no idea why.”
“My guess would be some kind of identifying mark, like a tattoo,” I said.
“Sure,” Dr. Dan said. “Her wrists and ankles are scarred from being bound by som
e abrasive material. All of the cuts were made by a butcher’s saw or something similar.”
“How about the victim’s age and hair color?” I asked.
“Difficult to estimate age without her head, but definitely younger rather than older. Her skin and joints showed no signs of the deterioration that comes with age. Let’s say she was somewhere between eighteen and forty. Her hair color is black, based on pubic hair.”
That raised another question. “Was she raped?”
“Impossible to say because of the way her pelvic area was mutilated.”
“What about time of death?” Randy asked.
The coroner gave us a tight smile. “With this victim, we can be much more precise. My esteemed colleague and I believe the woman died about two days ago. That’s assuming her body wasn’t immediately refrigerated. Longer, if it was.”
“Very helpful,” I said. “We’re looking for a victim who probably disappeared recently. There’s a chance she was kidnapped earlier and imprisoned for a long time, but I doubt it. The risk of a live captive being discovered is too high. I’m going to set my initial search parameters narrow and look for women who disappeared within the last two weeks. Sound reasonable?”
“Sure,” Dr. Dan said. “If that doesn’t produce results, you can go back further. I doubt you’ll need to.”
I glanced at Randy. He’d placed his hands on the sides of his head like he was trying to keep it from exploding. “This had better not be a serial killer focused on young women. The press will go crazy with that.”
“I’m not keen on the idea either,” I said. “Willow, Linda, and I fit the target category. Even so, we’re going to have to put out some kind of notice about an apparent multiple killer.”
“What can we say?” Randy asked. “Another lunatic’s on the loose? How does that help anybody? I think we should wait until we have more info.”
“Actually, it’s not solely our call,” I said. “We need to check with Manny. The second corpse belongs to him.”
The other two men nodded. I dialed his number on the phone in the conference room and asked for the police chief.
“I was just about to call you guys,” Manny said. “The local paper’s got wind of the story. We’ll need to issue a joint statement soon.”
I sighed. “Agreed, but let our coroner run down his latest news first.”
Dr. Dan filled him in on what he’d learned from the autopsy and CBI.
Then I asked, “Chief, how do you want to handle the media?”
“This is really big news for us,” he said. “I can soft-pedal the link to your case, but I doubt that’ll work for long. I’ve already gotten a call from that Jasmine gal at Aspen Public Radio.”
I expected her and Angelina from Denver would be all over us soon. “Randy makes a good point that we don’t have enough info to say much, only that a second, dismembered body has been discovered. And we’ll be pushing hard to collect DNA from the relatives of missing persons on the Western Slope.”
“Works for me,” Manny said. “I’ll write up a news release and run a draft by you guys. Let me know what you find out on the DNA angle.”
He hung up, and I began calls to other law enforcement agencies asking for more details on young to middle-aged women with black hair who’d been reported missing over the last two weeks.
-o-o-o-
To my surprise, all the cop shops in the area were already well aware of the second murder. Bad news travels at the speed of light on the cop gossip network. Unfortunately, some of the info they passed round was flat wrong, and I spent quite a bit of time knocking down crazy theories. The most popular one was that the women had been killed in snuff films. We had absolutely no proof of that.
After working the phones all morning, I came up with a list of four potential victims. Actually, I’d found five, but one of them was from Guatemala. She was working as a drug courier and using a fake identity, which meant we had no realistic chance of finding her relatives.
The police departments in Telluride, Grand Junction, Meeker, and Breckenridge agreed to collect DNA from next of kin and fast forward it to CBI. I prayed that one of the four would turn out to be our victim. Otherwise, I’d have to expand our search dramatically.
-o-o-o-
Manny’s press release, which Randy reviewed for our office, went live on both county sheriff websites right after lunch. I immediately got a dozen calls from various reporters and Mom. During our trip to Denver, Willow had explained to her how to get news alerts on her phone. I’d tried to cut my girlfriend off, but too late. As soon as Mom had heard that was possible, she’d insisted on getting the right app. Willow could be too damned helpful sometimes.
This go around, at least, Mom wasn’t too alarmed. There were a hell of a lot of dark-haired women in the state, so I didn’t particularly stand out. After settling her down, I reminded her how careful I always was. But being a cop’s mom was a tough gig. I hated the fact that she worried so much, but I loved the job.
To end the call on a bright note, I mentioned our next ballet trip, which was the week after Christmas. We were both looking forward to that. And when I signed off, Mom asked me to give Willow her regards. A big step in the right direction.
For minutes, I glowed inside. Mom and I were never going to agree on LGBTQ issues, but she was trying to make up for a decade of cold war. Her change in attitude meant the world to me.
-o-o-o-
After the glow wore off, I shifted gears and called reporters, or at least one. Of the dozen who’d called, only one had helped me out—Angelina. Much as I hated trading favors, she’d done me a solid by publicizing the hooker’s photos to the right follower.
I called her, and she picked up immediately.
“Hank, is that you? I was about to call again. I saw the press release and freaked out. A serial killer is hunting girls like us in Aspen. What’s going on?”
“Dial it back, girl. Don’t make me regret calling you, and don’t record this conversation. Agreed?”
She huffed. “Fine. You don’t have to get all pissy about it. I’m just trying to keep the public informed. And it sounds like the killer is going after us! Excuse me for a second while I have a heart attack.”
I hated drama queens. “Easy, don’t get ahead of the facts. What we know is very limited. Working hard to find out more.”
“You not telling me anything new, Hank,” she said. “According to other, very reliable sources, the latest victim was a young, black-haired woman. Am I right?”
Some cop had obviously blabbed. “I’m neither confirming nor denying.”
She snickered. “That always means I’m on the right track. Listen, I’ve got a cousin who’s the teacher in Grand Junction. Is she in danger? She’s got two little kids! They’re cute as hell and need their mom.”
What the hell am I supposed to say to that? Then I remembered that Angelina was a supremely talented manipulator. I paused for a moment to calm down. Not taking the bait. “We’re doing our best to find a pattern to the murders. Don’t know enough yet to provide any specific warnings. I just wanted to thank you for helping us identify the first victim. One of your followers clued us in to her name, Natasha Rybár.”
Angelina screamed, “Yes! I need you to say that on video.”
I should’ve known better than to call her. It wasn’t like I could get anything useful out of her, not this time. After fending her off for a few more minutes, I jumped off the line. Didn’t call any other reporters.
-o-o-o-
A few minutes later, Willow called me. “Do you know Angelina Esteban on Channel 5? She’s reporting that a serial killer centered in Aspen is hunting young, black-haired women?”
I groaned and told her about my chat with the little schemer. Finished by saying, “I wasn’t her source for the story. She’d already gotten the details from somebody else. Some blabbermouth cop trying to score with a hot reporter.”
Willow snickered
. “Hank, you gotta learn to be much more careful around the news media. Check out her Facebook page, and you’ll see what she says you said. If I were you, I’d start recording every phone call you make with those vultures.”
My girlfriend had a point, as usual. I checked the TV station’s website while she remained on the line. Listened to Angelina’s segment.
“That sneaky little bitch!” I said. “She wove what I said into what she’d heard from somebody else. Made it sound like I was her source for everything. Salieri at the county commissioners is going to go nuts.”
“Sorry, Hank,” Willow said. “You may be better off communicating with the press by email.”
“I’d like to, but the two main reporters I’m dealing with, Jasmine and Angelina, always want audio or video.”
“How about you get what you want for a change,” she said and hung up.
My girlfriend knew her shit. The newshounds needed me a lot more than I needed them.
-o-o-o-
It didn’t take long for the powers that be to launch a retaliatory strike, but not from Salieri this time. Instead, I received a call from Carol Hickok, the current president of Aspen Restaurant Association. She owned a French place called Formidable! Willow had told me about her visit there. The name came from the French word for wonderful, but according to my favorite Frenchie, the food was merely tolerable. Then again, Willow was a food snob.
For at least a decade, Carol had been claiming she was the reincarnation of her famous old ancestor, Wild Bill. I doubted it, but they were both champion assholes.
Her way of saying hello was to ask, “Why the fuck did you tell a Denver TV reporter that Aspen has a serial killer on the loose who’s chasing young women?”
“Always great to hear from you, too, Carol,” I said in as even a voice as I could manage. “Actually, Angelina got that little tidbit from somebody else. All I told her was that we and Glenwood PD were investigating two murders. She’d already gotten the details from some other loudmouthed cop.”
I hoped the truth and a little self-effacing humor would calm Hickok down. Wrong again, doofus.
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