Girl With The Origami Butterfly

by Linda Berry

While standing guard, Sidney made a mental checklist of what needed to be done. A small town, with a tight operating budget, demanded that law enforcement personnel have several areas of expertise. Sidney and her three officers served as detectives as well as patrol cops. Darnell had IT experience, and Amanda was certified to conduct crime scene inspections. Collecting forensic material was a race against time before weather or the victim’s physiology degraded evidence.

  Amanda and Granger arrived and set to work preserving the crime scene, which freed Sidney to talk to Ann and Matt. When she returned to the vehicles, Darnell was sitting in his Jeep Cherokee patrol vehicle under the dome light, head bent over his computer. He rolled down his window when she approached.

  “Find anything?” she asked.

  “Not yet. Matt’s clean.”

  “K9 unit?”

  “Fifteen minutes away.”

  Sidney walked to her Yukon, slid into the driver’s seat, and looked at her two passengers over her shoulder.

  “What’s going on?” Ann asked, anxious. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “This is now an active crime scene,” Sidney said gently.

  “Did you find Bailey?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  Ann looked stung.

  “It’s possible Bailey got frightened and ran away in a panic. Not unusual for a dog.”

  “He knows his way home,” Ann said, her expression lifting slightly.

  “Ann, I need to talk to Matt.” She turned to face him in the back seat. “Will you accompany me to another car?”

  “Why does he have to leave?” Ann asked.

  “Police policy. Just routine questions,” Sidney said in a soothing tone, but she needed to rule him out as a suspect. “It’ll only take a minute.”

  “Mom, it’s fine,” Matt said. “Chief Becker is just doing her job.”

  Ann nodded and released Matt’s hand. He accompanied Sidney to Granger’s truck, and they climbed into the front seats.

  Sidney momentarily studied the young man. Matt had a handsome, angular face, shadowed by dark stubble, dark hair, which fell over his brow, and his mother’s blue eyes. He sat with his hands relaxed on his lap, yet she sensed his tension. “Thanks for your cooperation, Matt. Like I said, these are just routine questions. Mind if I record our conversation?”

  “Go ahead,” he said, frowning.

  She placed her cell phone on the console between them and turned on the recorder. “Tell me what you do for a living.”

  “I have my own business—Greenlife Landscaping.”

  “I’ve seen your trucks around town. Many clients?”

  “We stay busy.”

  “How many employees?”

  “Nine.”

  “When your mom came home from that brutal experience, she sounded surprised to see you. Why’d you show up at her house so late tonight?”

  “I store supplies in her shed. I need turf builder and fertilizer for work tomorrow.”

  “You couldn’t pick them up in the morning?”

  A muscle twitched slightly near his mouth. “We’re on site at six. I didn’t want to get up any earlier than I had to.”

  “Did you go into the house?”

  “No, I didn’t want to wake Mom.”

  “The lights must’ve been on. She was out walking Bailey.”

  He hesitated, broke eye contact, and met her gaze again. “I figured she fell asleep with the lights on.”

  “Why were you standing in the shadows when she arrived home?”

  “I was walking to my truck when she came tearing in, soaked to the skin, frightened out of her mind.” His eyes narrowed. “Holy hell, Chief, you don’t think I chased my mom through the woods, do you? Whoever that psycho was, he meant to hurt her, to shut her up.” He paused for effect. “I’d never do anything to hurt my mom. I know she can’t recognize faces, but the man in the woods didn’t.”

  Matt had a good point, but she wasn’t ready to rule him out entirely. Something about him disturbed her. He was in the area during the time of the murder, his dark clothing fit the description of the suspect, and with his muscular build he could have easily dragged or carried a woman a long distance. Matt and the victim were about the same age, which meant he may have known her, maybe even went to school with her. In his favor, he had no criminal background. It seemed unlikely Matt would chase his mother, but psychopaths operate from their own playbook, and many had been known to terrorize, even kill their parents.

  Headlights appeared in the rearview mirror. The medical examiner. “Matt, I’ll get one of my officers to drive you and your mom home. It’s not advisable to leave her alone tonight.”

  “I plan on staying with her.”

  “How can I reach you if I have more questions?”

  He recited his cell number and address, and they both left the truck.

  Sidney tapped on Darnell’s window, and he rolled it down. “Get anything else?” she asked.

  “Other than parking violations, they’re both clean.”

  “Drive them home, then come back and help process the crime scene beyond the taped perimeter with Granger.”

  “Got it. How you holding up, Chief?”

  “Good. You?”

  He made the okay sign with thumb and forefinger.

  She smiled, then headed to the M.E.’s van. Garnerville was fortunate to have an M.E. Most small towns had to hire a pathologist from the county, but Dr. Linthrope had moved here from Portland twenty years ago for the same reason she did—big-city burnout. The doctor had worked under both Chief McDonald and her father and had since overseen the removal of every dead body in Garnerville. If a death was even remotely suspicious, his scrupulous post-mortem examination revealed the cause—natural, accident-related, suicide, or the rare homicide. Her father had thought highly of Dr. Linthrope, and so did she.

  Dressed in field scrubs, the doctor and his assistant rolled the gurney out of the back of the van. Florid-faced, with wild white hair, Linthrope looked like a portly version of Albert Einstein, and at age seventy-one, his intellect was still scalpel sharp.

  “Sorry to get you up this time of night, Doc.”

  He pushed his bifocals higher on the bridge of his nose and smiled. “Morning’s more like it. We’re closing in on two a.m.”

  “I feel it in my bones.”

  “I brought you coffee.” He lifted a chrome thermos off the gurney and handed it to her.

  “Bless you, Doc.” Sidney opened the thermos, poured a cup, and sipped. Strong, rich, hot.

  She nodded at Linthrope’s assistant, Stewart Wong, a studious Chinese-American with thick glasses and a slight frame. An introvert through and through, with a hyper focus for minute details. She suspected his single mindedness was due to OCD, which made him an excellent forensic specialist—but socializing, not so much. He’d barely spoken five complete sentences to her during her tenure.

  Stewart nodded back, solemn-faced. A Digital SLR camera hung from his neck. “The body?” he asked.

  “We have a Jane Doe.” She screwed the cap back on the thermos. “Follow me.”

  The wheels on the gurney bounced over the ground as the caravan carved its way through the underbrush. Granger and Amanda had illuminated the area with generator-powered lights and marked off a wide berth with black and yellow tape. Amanda was on all fours, her gloved hands sifting through the damp debris around the body. Granger was searching outside the perimeter, placing an occasional plastic marker on the ground.

  The doctor’s eyes widened when he viewed the victim, and his gaze met Sidney’s.

  “Same as Mimi Matsui?” she asked.

  “The very same.”

  His confirmation chilled her. Possibly, she had a serial killer on her hands. Spirals of memories unraveled in her mind of past investigations where her team hunted down serial killers with specific traits: highly intelligent, calculated, organized—essentially invisible. Sidney had been a relentless investigator—compulsive, her colleagues said—but her
doggedness paid off. Some tiny oversight the killer missed often broke the case.

  The doc and Stewart snapped on latex gloves and ducked under the yellow tape. Stewart photographed the area surrounding the body, then the body itself, and finally moved in closer to check for marks and trace material. Ignoring the popping camera flashes, Sidney watched closely as Linthrope methodically examined the victim.

  Jane Doe appeared to be in her mid-twenties, pretty in a round-faced, cherubic way, her perfectly highlighted brown hair brushing her shoulders. She might even have been beautiful, if not for her bloodless pallor. Her big hazel eyes stared at Sidney, seeming to follow her movements, as though challenging her to find her killer. Sidney made her a silent vow. The killer made a mistake by moving back into her district. She would bring him in. The bastard was heading straight for a lethal injection.

  Linthrope searched the folds and pockets of the victim’s gaily-flowered skirt for identification but found nothing. He carefully searched all exposed skin. “No sign of restraints on her wrists or ankles. No sign of a struggle. No bruising, defensive wounds, or broken nails. Same as Mimi Matsui.”

  “How was Mimi constrained?” Granger asked, watching from outside the taped perimeter.

  “Injected with a neurotoxin that paralyzed her.” He glanced up at the officer. “Mimi’s killer wanted her fully conscious. She knew exactly what was going on, but could do nothing about it. Not even twitch the smallest muscle. Mimi’s expression looked peaceful, just like this young woman, but on the inside, she was quietly screaming.”

  Sidney broke out in goose bumps, imagining the woman’s last terrifying minutes on Earth.

  “Why are her eyes open, Doc?” Amanda sat back on her heels with an evidence bag and tweezers in her hands.

  “It appears, like Mimi, her lids were glued open.”

  Amanda gasped. “He forced her to watch while he killed her.”

  Granger’s eyes flashed with anger. “Sick sunnuvabitch.”

  Her two officers had been listening to every word. Just as well. They needed to know every grisly detail. Still, even to Sidney, this killer seemed especially pitiless and inhuman.

  Amanda brushed debris from her pants and stood. “Nothing from Mimi’s autopsy could identify her killer?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Mimi had been dead for almost twenty-four hours. It rained. Forest scavengers had access to the body.”

  “Thanks for the Norman Rockwell images, Doc,” Amanda said.

  “Death is a natural part of life, Officer,” he said calmly. “Flesh goes back to nature. The deceased are at peace, unlike the living.”

  “Too peaceful for my taste.”

  “Our Jane Doe died within an hour of you finding her, Chief.” As he spoke, the doctor lifted the woman’s hair on the left side of her neck. “Just as I suspected. Here’s the injection site.”

  Sidney leaned over the doctor’s shoulder to view the angry red mark on her skin.

  “If this is the same neurotoxin, it’s extremely powerful. It doesn’t take much, just a pinprick. Her killer must have come up behind her and jammed in the needle.”

  Amanda visibly shuddered.

  They were all silent for a moment. The rain dripping from nearby branches tapped out a steady, morose melody.

  After Linthrope and Stewart bagged the victim’s feet and hands to preserve trace evidence, they proceeded to stretch a shiny black body bag on the ground with a clean sheet on top. They gently wrapped the woman in the sheet, placed her in the bag, and zipped it. The imprint of her body remained pressed into the forest debris between two wide pools of blood.

  Sidney was grateful the victim could no longer peer at her, but she knew Jane Doe’s wide-eyed stare would live in her memory.

  “Let me help you carry her.” Amanda stepped forward, and she and Stewart carried the body to the gurney.

  “Stewart will stay to help process the crime scene, but my work here is done.” Linthrope stripped off his gloves, his good-natured expression undaunted, hazel eyes bright beneath his bushy white brows. A man who unraveled the mysteries of death from corpses without losing his composure brought a sense of calm to the ghastly event. “I’ll start the autopsy today and notify you with the results.”

  “Appreciate it, Doc.”

  Granger and Amanda negotiated the gurney back toward the van. The doctor lagged behind. “A miracle you found this body so quickly. Who called it in?”

  “Ann Howard.” Sidney shared the details of Ann’s flight for her life.

  “Harrowing. Poor woman. Ann’s had more than her share of violence.” He shook his head. “First her husband, now this.”

  Sidney’s antennae shot up. “What happened to her husband?”

  “Why, she and Matt killed him, eight years ago.” His brow furrowed. “You didn’t know?”

  Sidney felt ice touch her spine. “No. Their background checks came up clean.”

  “Ah, of course. No record. It was ruled self-defense. I’m surprised your sister never told you. Selena and Ann are like Siamese twins.”

  “Protecting Ann’s privacy, I guess.”

  “I did John Howard’s autopsy. We can go over his file tomorrow when you come by.” Linthrope cast his gaze toward the gurney, now disappearing into the darkness. “I better get moving.”

  “See you tomorrow, Doc.”

  He nodded politely and hurried away.

  Only Stewart remained behind, his camera flash popping at the edge of her periphery. The sudden sharp barking of dogs back where the vehicles were parked told her the K9 unit had arrived. Hopefully, they’d find some evidence leading them to the killer’s identity. At least his entry point into the woods.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AS DAWN CREPT ABOVE the tree line, Sidney drove down the empty streets of Garnerville feeling the fatigue and deep chill from a long night in the woods. Downtown looked peaceful in the golden morning light. Many of the red brick buildings, built in the late 1800s, had been perfectly preserved, and it was easy to imagine life as it was back then—dusty streets bristling with commerce, wagons transporting goods, ranchers, lumbermen, and women in long dresses and bonnets patronizing small merchants. Many of the descendants of the original settlers now occupied the town’s rolling green hills, leafy suburbs, and shoreline properties of Lake Kalapuya, named after the Native Americans who once inhabited the region.

  Sidney slowed in front of the red brick storefront that had been her mother’s shop for twenty years. Molly’s Thrift and Gifts. Her father brought in a comfortable salary, while the store barely broke even, but her mother’s core objective had been altruistic—providing low-income families with clean, functional merchandise at minimal cost. The Becker family benefitted as well from the constant stream of “lovingly used” items that found their way through their front door. The repurposing of commodities taught Sidney to respect the planet’s limited resources and to be charitable to those less fortunate. After she and Selena moved their mother into the memory care center, her sister took over the space. The increasingly neglected, dusty, and cluttered thrift store morphed into Samara Yoga Studio—light, spacious, airy—and Selena prided herself on filling her classes mat-to-mat with students seeking a dose of mindfulness with a challenging yoga workout.

  Sidney turned into the driveway and drove behind the studio. The family home, which she shared with her sister, stood hemmed in by flower and vegetable gardens, the colors now turning with the changing season. Heartwarming memories flickered through her mind; her dad flipping burgers on the grill, her mother knee-deep in flowerbeds, the endless parade of neighborhood kids who eventually traded roller skates and bikes for cars and plans for college. Most of those friends were now married with children of their own.

  She pulled into her father’s old parking spot, fondly picturing Chief Clarence Becker sitting behind the wheel of his Crown Victoria cruiser. He used to pull pieces of candy from his pockets for his two daughters when he arrived home. Sidney recalled the feel of his starched
uniform against her cheek and his big warm hands holding her close.

  She found the door to the house unlocked. Again. Sidney needed to warn Selena that lax habits had to change as more strangers moved into the area. She bolted the door, stowed her Glock 19 sidearm in a gun safe in the laundry room, climbed the stairs to her childhood bedroom, stripped off her uniform, and sank into a dead sleep within minutes.

  〜 〜

  The alarm went off at 9:00 a.m. Sidney woke with a jolt and gasped, suffocating. One of Selena’s four cats, an orange tabby, was draped across her throat, purring like a motor in neutral. “Off, Chili.” As she lifted the limp ball of fur from her neck, the gruesome memories of Jane Doe came rushing back, and she remembered the task force meeting she’d scheduled for 10:00 a.m. Three-and-a-half hours of sleep would have to do. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, unable to stifle a jaw-cracking yawn, Sidney headed for the shower.

  Fifteen minutes later, dressed in a clean uniform, hair damp around her shoulders, she headed downstairs. She followed the smell of coffee and something delicious baking, through the living room—decorated in her sister’s bohemian style with bright reds and yellows, comfortable furniture, Tiffany-replica lamps, and a worn Oriental rug—to the dining room where two calico cats sprawled in a shaft of sunlight on the hardwood floor. The fourth cat, a gray angora, sat on a deep windowsill among pots of African violets, hypnotized by the sprinklers spraying water to and fro in the yard.

  Selena stood cutting up veggies with a large chef’s knife at the kitchen island. Sidney was struck by how different she and her twenty-eight-year-old sister were in appearance. While she had a muscular build, auburn hair, freckled skin, and hazel eyes like their father, Selena had inherited their mother’s Scandinavian coloring—pencil-straight blonde hair, pale skin, celery green eyes fringed with dark lashes. A Mexican peasant blouse and long tapestry skirt hung gracefully on her slender figure. The only physical similarity between the two sisters was their lofty stature; six feet, give or take a half-inch.

  “You’re up.” Selena’s perfectly shaped eyebrows knitted together. “When did you get in?”

  “At dawn.” Sidney made her way to the coffee pot and filled a big ceramic mug to the brim.