Broken (11 page)

The girl’s pale legs were spread and there was something jammed up inside of her. On the alabaster skin of her belly was carved the word “Betrayer”. But it was a lavender bit of lace and elastic around her ankles that started Sam trembling.

“He put my underwear on her. The thong, it’s mine,” she clenched her teeth and tried to blink away the mist of fear that blossomed over her eyes. “He must’ve stolen it from my bag at Sophie and Bill’s.”

Jase ducked into her line of sight, drawing her eyes to his before he wrapped an arm around her. Another glance at the garment and he shook his head, not wanting to believe she was right despite the crawling sensation over his skin.

“Edwards?” Ming asked.

“It’s possible,” he nodded.

Held gently to his chest, he felt Sam stiffen and draw a deep breath. From the corner of his eye he watched her blink back fear and force her breathing to level out. He knew her better than anyone, and because of that, was deeply disturbed by how quickly she seemed to be able to compartmentalize everything that was going on around her.
It’s too much, all this, all at once. I mean no one should have to handle all this. Dave, those Corporate fucks, being a target, it’s not right.

He felt her lean forward and asked Ming, “What’s that?” while pointing to an item inserted into the victim’s vagina.

Other observations came to light as she scanned the scene, and comparisons were made with what she knew of the other murders. “She wasn’t hacked up. Was she sodomized?” she asked in monotone.

“It doesn’t look like it,” the crime scene expert shook her head. “And that,” she pointed to the item, “it looks like one of those FBI action figures; we’ll know more when we get her to the Coroner’s office.”

There was a lack of gross genital mutilation, an apparent lack of sodomy, and in comparison to the others, this one was downright clean. If it weren’t for the duct tape and the vulgar posing of the body it might actually look unrelated. The question was why was his M.O. changing now?

“It’s okay,” she nodded at Ming, who walked her around and shone the light into the victim’s face.

Her makeup was done very similarly to the way Sam did hers, with faint bronze tones on the face and plum colored eyeliner. He’d even found a comparable shade of lipstick to the ‘Dusty Berry’ she usually wore.

The woman’s face was contorted in horror as if she knew what was happening. Her eyes were open and her mouth twisted and bulging, stuffed full with leaves and dirt. Sam could see ligature marks on her throat in vivid violet and the same color in the petechial hemorrhages at the eyes.

“Was the cause of death strangulation?” Sam asked, leaning still closer and holding her hair back.

“Looks like but…”

Sam shook her head, “That’s a
total
deviation. I mean a real BREAK from his established M.O.” she looked between Jase and Ming before nodding faintly. “There’s no duct tape over her mouth, or her eyes, there was none over Diane’s eyes. Who the fuck is this guy?” she met eyes with Ming and finished the woman’s sentence, “You won’t know cause for sure until the autopsy.”

Looking around, she scrubbed her face with her hands. “And the mutilation is really minimal. What happened? It’s like he spiked with Diane and then something started cooling his fire,” she mused aloud, then took in the area surrounding the body. “She looks fresh, but I don’t see a lot of blood on the ground, this is a secondary site, right?”

“We think so,” Ming nodded and looked at Jase. “I’m impressed.”

“She’s a tough cookie,” he agreed and swallowed hard under the lead analysts penetrating gaze.

“No, I’m really not,” Sam shook her head. Her arms twined protectively around her torso and her eyes remained fixed on the corpse. “I’m scared shitless. Her hair color is almost identical to mine, and it’s natural unless he dyed her pubes. Her build is pretty much the same as mine, maybe a little larger. She could be me at thirty,” she said with a shudder.

“There’s lots of symbolism here, Sam, what do you read it to mean?” Ming asked curiously torn between being impressed that the young woman was still standing and wanting to give her something clinical to think about.

“Betrayer,” Sam shook her head, “I get some of it. I mean the action figure, I get it. The vic, she looks like me, the figure represents Jase, but,” she shook her head frowning, her brows furrowing deeply, “Betrayer?” she said in monotone. “It’s not subtle, not even clever, but the point is unmistakable. ‘
Betrayer,’
I don’t,” she looked between Jase and Ming, “I don’t know.”

“Could it be someone who feels you betrayed him? A spurned lover?” Ming asked glancing apologetically at Jase, “Sorry Edwards.”

“Yeah,” Sam nodded then snapped out of her reverie at Jase’s surprised expression, “I mean, yeah, I get it could be someone who
feels
that I betrayed them. I mean, hell, it could be one of my clients, except I’m pretty sure none of them are from Glen Falls.” Her head began to swim with the possibilities, with the veritable ocean of possibilities. “Stalker? Except I don’t
have
one, that I know of.” She muttered around the thumbnail between her teeth.

In a short time that felt like forever, Pete and Captain Zegler joined them near the body. Able to check out the site right over her head, Pete gasped quickly, moving around the others, along with the Captain, for a closer look.

Both Sam’s mind and heart were racing, and the world was starting to spin like cotton candy, when she looked up at Jase, “I need to sit down.”

He took one look at her pasty appearance and ushered her to a nearby patch of grass that was darker green with already disrupted dew.

“Feet first, I think, does it matter?” he asked, trying to keep her talking. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder as she started to shiver.

“I don’t know. Probably. If the doll is representative of you, I mean, it’s a cop right?”

“FBI guy,” he corrected.

“Close enough,” she waved her hand in the air distractedly. “If it’s inside her head first it implies a willingness on your part; if it’s feet first, then it’s like you can’t help it and you’re a victim of my wiles, which places all the blame on me, you see?” she offered her explanation through short tight breaths.

“Keep breathing, sweetheart, nice and steady,” he urged softly.

She nodded and drew a steady, controlled breath, “But, what I don’t understand is ‘betrayer,’ I don’t get it. I’ve never,” She looked at him, “I’ve never been unfaithful, Jase. You gotta know that, I’d never do that.”

“I know.” He soothed.

“So where’s he…” Her knees were drawn up to her chest with her arms locked around herself, protective and nearly fetal, in spite of being upright.

“Let’s go back to the idea that it’s
him
that’s been betrayed. I mean, if that’s the case, then it was probably by a woman, right?”

She nodded, and he continued, “Well, you’re a woman he’s now fixated on, which makes you one of those who would have or could have hurt him, and he’s lashing out,” the detective shrugged.

Shaking her head, she frowned, feeling something still off, “It doesn’t make sense, I mean, he’s gotta be a townie Jase, he HAS to be,” she nodded, “but even the guys on the lists, I swear, personally, I never had a problem with any of ‘em. They probably didn’t even know I existed, except at the bottom of the food chain, y’know?”

“Easy, honey, we’ll get through this,” he tried to comfort her in spite of the telling tightness in the back of his voice that told her he was frightened for her.

“At least he’s not killing the guys, so you’ll be safe.”

“Hey, he’s
not
going to win this. We’re
not
going to let him get to you,” he turned her face to look into his eyes.

The fear he saw there surprised him, but he couldn’t say why, since it mirrored his own.

“Wow,” Pete huffed as he and the Captain approached them.

“Get her somewhere safe, Edwards, twenty four hour guard. ” He ordered, looking between the two detectives. “I know you want the duty, but you get one shift a day until this is settled. Pete can take one shift if you want to split the time.”

“Don’t split them up, Cap. They work best together, and it’s safer for them.”

“It’s not your call, Sam.” Captain Zegler shook his head and she realized that, for the first time since this began, he considered her a genuine target.

“Please,” she argued softly “this guy knows the three of us are close. Maybe he’s using this woman as a warning to Jase to stay away from me, because if he doesn’t, he’ll kill him, too.”

“Take her back and stay with her, Jase,” Pete suggested, clapping his partner lightly on the shoulder before squeezing Sam’s fingers gently. He also knew them well enough to know they could use the comfort of each other at the moment.

“His trigger is sexually active women,” she frowned, rising to her feet and starting to pace, with her brows furrowed, tapping her lips as she thought aloud, “Terry Lowenthal, his first kill that we’re aware of… you guys found semen in her bed, but it wasn’t
his
; but, there was a second semen sample the coroner found at her rectum, right?
That’s
your boy’s sample, right?”

“Right,” Ming nodded catching the thread of thought, “Okay, so maybe it started as territoriality.”

“Right. She has sex with someone that isn’t him. He finds out about it, or even sees it while he’s scoping her place, and when he goes in to rape her, mark her as his territory...” she frowned, tapping her lip again, wondering why she couldn’t get the puzzle pieces to fit right.

“That’s when his cork pops and the killer’s unleashed,” Jase nodded.

“Or maybe he went in there with the intent to kill her instead of just rape her. Either way, the fact that she had a partner seems to be pivotal, right? The other women, the first five that he raped and left alive, they were all single and unattached, right?” she asked.

“Yeah, until Terry.” Jase drawled, then sighed heavily, “He couldn’t put the killer back into the bottle if he wanted to, could he?”

“Not a chance in hell.”

“Shit,” he scowled, then turned to Ming. “Cap’s working on getting warrants, but we’ve got a list of a dozen suspects we need DNA samples from. Everything should be ready first thing in the morning.”

“Soon as they come through, we’ll be ready,” she assured him, then patted his arm, “Get her somewhere safe, Jase,” she admonished.

He pulled Sam tight against his body feeling hollow and helpless against this boogeyman he wasn’t sure he could stop.

Sam pulled out of his arms, her face turned down, “He could be watching us right now from the safety of the crowd. You know as well as I do, it’s not uncommon for the perp to stick around.”

“What do you think he would do if we just walked right up to ‘em and started eyeing every single one of ‘em?” she asked.

“I think he’d see us coming a mile away and would be gone before we got there,” he helped her up and wrapped his arm around her shoulders again, “C’mon, let’s get you out of here.”

“Jase,” she choked and felt tears sliding down her cheeks. Her heart was breaking with just the thought of something,
anything
happening to him. She knew far too well how things left unsaid weighed on survivors of violent crimes, so she turned and faced him.

“Jase, a lot of folks I work with are the ones left alone after a violent crime, and sometimes they can be really screwed up, you’d be surprised, but it usually has more to do with the fact that they never got to tell the ones who died what was really important…”

Don’t you give up, Sam, don’t you dare!
He warned, even as his heart leaped into his throat and did cartwheels at the same time. He knew where she was headed and didn’t want to hear it, even though he really didn’t have a choice.

“The problem is, the ones who die leave a lot unsaid, too,” she looked down for a deep breath, then back up into his glassy eyes, taking his hands into hers.

“I know we’re going to think about this one day and wonder how we’ll manage to get through it. I know that if either of us has anything to say about how all this ends, we’ll survive and be no worse for the wear, but just in case we
don’t
have any choice…”