Boneyard (11 page)

Doyle shook his head. “Nothing.” He was oddly subdued, Kelly thought as she examined him. It was Friday, two days after their visit to Club Metro. She’d instituted nine-o’clock breakfast meetings for the unit to brainstorm, mainly because she’d quickly learned that if she didn’t lock down Doyle in the morning, she’d waste half the day trying to find him.

“Too bad, ’cause there are a hell of a lot of sexual predators around here. Fifty level three’s in this county alone, and those are the baddest of the bad,” Monica noted. “Rapists, child molesters, you name it. Hell, we’ve got fewer than thirty high-risk offenders in our whole state. Must be something in the Massachusetts water.”

Doyle rubbed his chin without responding, distracted.

“What’s up?” Kelly asked after scrutinizing him.

He glanced up at them, seemed to deliberate for a moment, then held up a file. “I got some DNA matches back on the other bones.”

Kelly held out her hand for the file. He paused for a beat, then reluctantly handed it over.

“What’s it say?” Monica asked, standing to peer over her shoulder.

“Two more boys were ID’d, Brooks Ferrucio and Matt White.” Kelly’s eyes narrowed as she scanned through the pages. “Both in their late teens, both had prior arrests for solicitation and possession. Mostly here, but a few in New York and Vermont, too.”

Monica let out a low whistle. “Lost hikers my ass. Jones was right, our guy targets gay hustlers.”

Doyle grunted. “Doing the world a favor, you ask me.”

“How enlightened of you,” Monica said. “Maybe when we catch the so-and-so you can give him a medal.”

“Looks like your lab did some good work here, Doyle,” Kelly said grudgingly as she continued to peruse the files. “Bones were too degraded to give an accurate cause of death, but they’ve got a timeline for us.” She turned to the whiteboard and erased the titles “John Doe #3” and John Doe #5,” replacing them with the boys’ names.

As she read aloud, she recorded the lab results below their names. “Brooks Ferrucio, age 19, last arrest May fifteenth in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Lab says he’s been dead for at least three months, so he must have disappeared sometime around the end of May. Matt White was seventeen, last arrest was a year ago, lab says the bones look like they went through the winter. They’re estimating he’s been dead for six months to a year.” Her cell phone rang, and she absentmindedly clicked it open. As she listened, she bent over and scribbled notes on a pad. “Got it,” she said into the receiver. “We’ll be there ASAP.”

“What?” Monica asked as Kelly snapped the phone shut.

Kelly’s brow creased. “Either of you know how to get to Cherry Plain State Park?”

“What, in New York?” Doyle asked, puzzled. “Yeah, that’s a few miles across the border.”

“Can you get us there?”

Doyle shrugged. “Sure. Why?”

Kelly gathered up her purse and grabbed her gun from the top desk drawer, reholstering it. “It looks like our killer has been busy.”

“Thanks again for contacting us,” Kelly said as she slipped on a pair of latex gloves and paper booties.

“Captain heard about your task force, thought the MOs might match up,” the deputy said, then leaned in to her. “In all honesty, I think he’s pawning them off on you. Our homicide clearance rate is nothing to write home about, last thing he wants is two more bodies on that list.”

“Understood,” Kelly said stiffly. At least it didn’t look as if there’d be any jurisdictional issues here, which was a relief. When she got the call that two more bodies had been found across the New York state border, she’d inwardly cringed. But as long as the New York authorities didn’t throw up any hurdles, this might actually help her team. Two fresh bodies would offer a lot more information than the long-dead ones they’d been dealing with. Of course it meant she wouldn’t be going home anytime soon, either. Still, she much preferred pursuing an active investigation to one where the trail had long since gone cold. Fresh victims meant that whoever they were tracking was still around. This was finally shaping up to be her kind of case.

They were in Cherry Plain State Park, just outside the small town of Berlin, New York. They had parked next to a small beach, more dirt than sand, on Black River Pond. A deputy had met them in the lot.

“How big is this park?” Kelly asked.

“One hundred seventy-five acres, give or take,” The deputy said.

“Many campers?”

“A few. Honestly, we call it redneck camping, mostly folks who get too drunk to find their car keys at the end of the day and pass out on a picnic table. The highbrow crowd cross the border and pitch their tents off the Appalachian Trail.”

“Who found them?”

“Park ranger. He’s pretty shook up, I told him to stick around in case you wanted to talk to him.”

“Great, thanks.” Kelly held aside branches for Monica and Doyle as they marched into the woods off the parking lot. A hundred yards in she recognized an acrid tang in the air and held a finger under her nose. Just past a pair of nestled pine trees, two corpses were laid out perpendicular to each other, facedown on a thick carpet of pine needles. An older man in shorts and a sweaty T-shirt stood off to one side.

“That’s our coroner,” the deputy explained, jerking his head toward him.

“Smells pretty ripe, you sure they just got here?” Monica raised an eyebrow.

He shrugged. “Ranger said he went through here yesterday, this is his regular route. And they weren’t here then.”

“Regular route to what?” Kelly asked.

“Maintenance shed, back through the trees that way.” He waved an arm vaguely off to the left.

“All right. On the off chance there are more bodies here, I’d like to call in our K-9 team, have them sniff around. It means keeping the park closed for a day or so.”

“Not a problem.”

“Why are they facedown?” Kelly asked.

“That’s how we found ’em. Figured you’d want to see them that way before we moved them.”

“That’s awful considerate of you. See, Doyle? That’s how it should be,” Monica said.

“Stow it, Lauer,” Doyle replied as he hunkered down over one body. “These been photographed?”

The deputy nodded. “Yep, and our crime-scene unit already went through.”

“What was the cause of death?” Kelly asked.

“See for yourself,” the coroner chimed in.

Kelly nodded for him to flip the first body. He eased the boy over, then stayed down on one knee beside him as he explained, “Rigor’s already passed with this one.”

“Eyes have been gouged out,” Kelly noted. “Can you tell with what?”

The coroner shook his head. “Tough to say, but whoever did this really dug at ’em. Could’ve used almost anything, a knife, screwdriver…”

“What about the other marks?”

“You got everything from cigar burns to deep lacerations and puncture wounds. Looks like he was chained up, too, there’s marks on his wrists. None of those were deep enough to kill him, though.”

“They took his man parts,” Monica noted, subdued. “And his throat’s slit.”

The coroner nodded. “That would be my guess for cause of death. I can tell you for certain after the autopsy.”

All of which made the fact that the bodies were found facedown even stranger, Kelly thought. Removing the genitals indicated a sexual aspect to the murders. Usually in cases like this the victims were displayed faceup, posed to flaunt their vulnerability. “How long has he been dead?” she asked.

“That’s where it gets weird,” the coroner said, brow furrowed. “Based on the level of decomposition, I’d say anywhere from a few days to a week.”

“But he just showed up today?” Kelly mused, puzzled. She bent to examine the wounds more closely. Someone had spent a lot of time hurting these boys, there was barely an inch of skin left unscarred.

“Would you mind if one of our guys sits in on the autopsy? We’ve got a forensic anthropologist on the team.”

The coroner shrugged. “Hell, he can run the autopsy if he wants. It’s my daughter’s birthday, I’m already catching hell from my wife.”

“What about the other vic?” Kelly asked.

“That’s strange, too,” he said. “He’s fresher, and there’s no sign he was ever chained up. No bleeding down there, so his privates were removed postmortem, thank God for small graces. Based on rigor and body temp, I’d say he’s been dead for eight to ten hours.”

As the coroner flipped him over, the deputy chimed in, “You might get lucky, it looks like your perp was sloppy. Found some loose change next to this one. We bagged it, maybe you’ll get a hit on some prints.”

Kelly and Monica exchanged a look. “Pennies?” Kelly asked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“How many of them?”

He shrugged. “Dunno. I can check for you, put in a call to CSU.”

“What does it matter?” Doyle asked, eyeing her narrowly.

“Kelly, look.” Monica elbowed her in the side.

Kelly directed her attention to the other dead boy. She caught her breath. Despite the damage, there was no mistaking him. “Let’s go find Sommers,” she said, jaw set as she turned back toward the parking lot. “I want to know how another of his ‘boys’ ended up dead in the woods.”

“Easy does it…whoa, you gotta go easy on your old man here.” He laughed as he tossed his daughter back over his shoulder, upside down. “Coming through with a sack of potatoes…hey, did you order potatoes?”

His youngest, Stephanie, rolled across the lawn on her back, gasping for air between peals of laughter. “No, Daddy!”

“Put me down!” Jennie squealed over his shoulder, pounding on his back with her tiny fists.

“No potatoes for you? Well, I guess I’ll have to eat them all up myself. Maybe I’ll make mine into French fries…mmm, yummy.” He pantomimed rubbing his stomach as he licked his lips.

“I don’t want to be French fries!” Jennie cried over his shoulder.

“No? Are you sure?” He pursed his lips. “Because I sure do love French fries…”

His wife appeared at the screen door off the porch. She grinned at him and waved a phone in the air. “You got a call, sweetheart. Girls, time to come in and wash up for lunch!”

“All right, you heard your mom. Time for lunch.” He winced as he lifted Jennie off his shoulder and eased her to the ground. The girls ran inside, still laughing.

His wife regarded him with concern as he took the phone from her. “Shoulder acting up again?”

He nodded. “Played nine holes the other day and forgot to ice it afterward.” He took the phone with his good hand and kissed her on the cheek, then said, “Hello?”

She stepped behind him and massaged the injured shoulder with both hands as he listened. From that angle, it was impossible for her to see how his face darkened. After a moment, in a level voice he said, “Two of them? Huh, that’s terrible. Well, thanks for letting me know, Chris.”

“What was that all about?” his wife asked after he hung up.

“They found more bodies out by Berlin, in Cherry Plain Park.”

“How terrible.” She clutched at the pendant on her necklace. “I’m starting to think it might actually be safer back in the city!”

“It’s starting to seem that way, isn’t it?” he said pensively, gazing out across the lawn.

“Try not to let it get to you, honey. See, it’s a mistake for me to go back during the week. I should stay here and take care of you,” she chided. “Besides, the girls miss you.”

“You know how hard it is for me to get work done when you’re all here.” He followed quickly with, “Not that I mind you coming up early this week. That was a nice surprise.”

“Well, I thought we should take full advantage of the long weekend. Besides there’s much less traffic when we leave on a Thursday. Remember last Labor Day, when we were stuck in it for six hours?”

“I remember,” he said absentmindedly.

She shifted around to look him in the face. “Oh sweetie, you’re so pale! I’ll get you an ibuprofen, that should help with the pain.” She took his hand and led him inside.

Ten

Kelly pounded on the door again, crossing her arms over her chest as she waited. Monica was already at the living room window, hands cupped over her eyes as she peered inside. “I don’t see anyone. But man, someone trashed the place!”

“Really?” Kelly joined her at the window. Monica was right, the house looked like a tornado had ripped through it. Sofa cushions were strewn about, plants had been knocked over, paintings in broken frames were tossed to the ground.

“We better get in there,” Monica said.

Kelly blocked her with one hand. “Not without a warrant.”

“Really?” Monica paused. “But Sommers might be bleeding to death somewhere in there. I think we better chance it.”

Kelly shook her head; she was already dialing the phone. “If Sommers turns out to be our guy, I don’t want to lose the case on a technicality. There’s too much at stake. Doyle? Jones here. Listen, how are we doing on that warrant?” She listened hard. “Call him back, tell him the place has been tossed. We really need to get in there ASAP.”

“No luck, huh?” Monica asked. Kelly shook her head, lips pursed. “So much for those judicial connections he was bragging about,” Monica snorted. “Should’ve known better. Now what?”

“Now we wait,” Kelly said. “Five more minutes and we should have a warrant.” She leaned back against the door frame. Monica plopped down in one of the wicker rocking chairs and tilted back, gazing up at the ceiling. She nervously tapped one foot on the floorboards. It was a quiet afternoon, the heat tamping down all noise. A squirrel crossed the lawn, reared up on its haunches to regard them intently, then settled back down.

“So. You do this, all the time? Chase these guys?” Monica asked, breaking the stillness.

Kelly nodded. “Pretty much.”

Monica shook her head. “Don’t know how you handle it. Those two today…I mean, I’ve seen plenty of bodies before. But not like that.” She paused a beat before continuing, “You know, I got a boy about that age.”

“Really?” Kelly said. “For some reason I assumed he was younger.”

“Sure, ’cause I don’t look a day over twenty-nine.” Monica winked at her, and Kelly laughed in spite of herself. “I was pretty young when I had him. Things didn’t work out with his dad, early on, and now he’s on an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf somewhere. So it’s pretty much always been me and Zach. I look at those boys, and I just cannot understand it, how anyone could be so cruel. I mean, they were just kids.”