Missings, The (2 page)

Chase stood back and let the ME get to work. He turned to Akila. “Where are the uniforms?” He had some questions for them.

Akila nodded past the CSU van. “Kirk Wheatley caught the call.”

Chase felt better about the support he’d lucked into. Wheatley had enough experience and street smarts to keep from messing up the evidence.

He headed over to the patrol car and looked in the window. Kirk was filling out his report, using the computer to diagram the scene. Chase knocked on the passenger window and the officer waved him in.

Chase climbed in to the passenger seat. “Hey, Kirk. How did you draw this shift?”

“I’m kind of baching it since my wife left me. I figured I could build up some points if I want some time off later—or need a favor.”

Chase nodded. Personal relationships were tough to maintain in this line of work. He’d been lucky with Bond, but they still had to navigate rough terrain from time to time. “Sorry to hear about the breakup.”

Kirk shrugged his shoulders. “Bound to happen sooner or later.”

“Who called in the DB?” Chase asked. He didn’t mention the pristine crime scene. Professionals expected nothing less.

“Skizzers.”

Chase sighed. Skizzers was a doper. Townspeople provided him with food, and in bad weather, a warm corner in a heated garage. But as careful as they were not to give the Vietnam veteran money, no one had quite figured out that by giving him food and shelter, he could parlay his disability check into whatever street products he could find.

“Shit. Skizzers.”

“Yep. Said that two giant bats swooped in with their Batmobile. Morphed into vampires and one of them split in two, leaving half of itself in the dumpster—which, for some reason, he referred to as a gift box.”

“Someone listened to him?” Chase couldn’t believe a call like that had been taken seriously.

“Not until he got specific about the location, and lucid for long enough to state the fact that two men had dumped a body, and we’d ‘better, by God, check it out.’”

“Did he get a license number?” Yeah, right. Like that would ever happen.

“Nope, but we’ve got a BOLO for the Batmobile.”

“Video surveillance?”

“A couple of cameras. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re working cameras. Or that they taped anything we can use.”

“We’ll check the local businesses tomorrow morning.” Chase looked at his watch. Four-fifteen. “I mean, later this morning.” He needed to get his notes in order and try to catch an hour or two of sleep.

Chase got out and walked up to where Jax and Akila continued to work both the scene and the body. Akila stood inside the dumpster and looked almost comical decked out in baby blue protective gear. She rose to her full height and tugged down her face mask. “I should have taken the walk-on offers. This stinks. Literally.”

“Good, you’re here,” Jax mumbled after glancing in his direction. “I’m ready to secure the victim and could use your help. Akila requested uniform assistance to bag the garbage and haul it to the crime lab, but she could use some muscle now to haul the body out.”

Chase donned protective gear, like it would do any good, and jumped in the dumpster with Akila. “Shit.”

“Welcome to my world.”

The two of them struggled and slipped in the slime to place the body in the bag. Chase fell twice, in awe of Akila’s more sure footage, but stayed on his game. With Jax’s help on the outside of the dumpster, they got the body out intact and ready to roll.

Before he could offer his assistance, Akila put a leg up over the edge of the dumpster and dropped to the ground, covered to her knees in unidentifiable lab specimens. Chase elected to wait a few minutes until he could make the jump out of the dumpster without an audience. His bad knees and questionable back made him more of a target by co-workers than he liked. He also wondered if he could strip down to his skivvies and trash the rest of his clothes so Bond wouldn’t have to deal with them. He didn’t want to show up in their home with pants slimed with unidentifiable goo and bacteria.

One thing at a time.

He wondered if this body had anything to do with the other John Doe on the books. Bad things happen everywhere, even in the idyllic Colorado mountain town of Aspen Falls.

But really bad things, especially here, tended to be connected.

Aspen Falls Police Department

Wednesday, September 19

After he put his notes together into a Word document, Chase went home and fell into bed. An hour later—it felt like ten minutes—he got up, shaved, showered and poured himself a cup of French roast. It didn’t have the desired effect. Maybe he should try mainlining it.

Jax had scheduled the autopsy for nine, a full hour later than usual. Chase managed to cut through the damp fog in his brain and focus on business. Jax swore under her breath a few times, lack of sleep impacting her usually good nature.

Pending lab results, the only information involved things he already knew. All of the young Hispanic male’s internal organs had been cut out, like some kind of frog on a slab.

After the autopsy, Chase paid a visit to the Chinese restaurant and three other businesses in the area, none of which yielded much information. Only one of them, Cobalt Mountain Books, had a working camera. Unfortunately, the snow had made a mess of the lens and only fuzzy movement could be seen. Still, he requested the tape and booked it into evidence. Maybe the crime lab could make something of it. They’d been known to do more with less.

He needed help and made a request through official channels, directly to his lieutenant. Chase’s money was on not getting an answer anytime soon. In Lieutenant Butz’s mind, all murders were not created equal, especially if the victims had brown skin and uncertain social status. If necessary, Chase would go directly to Chief Whitman, but he hated to jump over Butz’s head. Because of Chase’s personal friendship with Whit, Lieutenant Butz tended to take every interaction between them as a direct threat to his job, so it would make an already strained working relationship worse.

Terri Johnson walked into the squad room bearing gifts. More sustenance from The Coffee Pod, not the sludge machine down the hall.
Coffee. The woman has a halo on her head. Tilted and a bit tarnished, but a halo.

She handed him a cup. “I saw you earlier today and you looked like shit. You’re working on the dumpster DB, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Thanks for the coffee.”

“Need help?”

“I’ve asked Butz.”

“What he doesn’t know… ” She set a bag down on her desk. “Want a muffin?”

“Thanks, no. The sugar would be nice for about five minutes, then I’d be in real trouble. And thanks for the offer of help. Don’t need to stir up more with our lieutenant than is already stirred.”

“We’ve got a squad meeting tomorrow. Maybe he’ll come through.”

“We’d have better luck if my DB had blue eyes.”

“Tell me about it. Even breasts wouldn’t be enough for Butthead.” Her cell phone rang and she checked the caller ID. Without a word, she took the call and walked out of the room.

Chase took another sip of his coffee and tried to figure out what to do next on this case. He’d looked for Skizzers earlier when he’d gone to the businesses, but the doper had disappeared and no one seemed to know where he hung out during the day. Chase made a note to call Patrol. The uniforms usually had a handle on the more interesting characters who called Aspen Falls home.

Chase clicked another file in his computer. It was dated four days ago, Saturday, September 15. Some hikers from Lakewood had found a dead body on a trail just south of town. The trail, rated difficult, didn’t get a lot of traffic, and if the body hadn’t been discovered that weekend, the young man’s remains might not have been found until next summer—if at all.

As with all of his cases, Chase had attended the autopsy. Other than the fact the man had undergone a nephrectomy within the last six months, the ME had found nothing unusual.
Kind of young to lose a kidney.
Right now, she’d listed the cause of death as undetermined. Some of the autopsy results should be back next week.

Two unidentified bodies in less than a week. Both Hispanic, both male, both young, both of whom had missing organs (one planned, the other not so much), and both in Chase’s caseload. He needed to find something to link them. Two cases with unidentified victims in a small mountain town were two cases too many.

His life had become complicated. Again.

Chase picked up the phone to call the patrol sergeant. A doper might be his best lead. A doper who thought he’d seen the Batmobile.

The Benavides Home

Wednesday, September 19

General unease fanged into dread as it licked the edges of Elizabeth’s thoughts. Pulling her thick mane of dark wavy hair, she haphazardly knotted it out of the way then tried Rachelle’s cell phone again. Voicemail.

Rachelle never ran late. Elizabeth’s younger sister set her watch ten minutes fast and arrived at her appointments twenty minutes early.
Rachelle phoned to let people know she’d be on time, for crying out loud.

The two hours she had pretended that her sister—who never wanted anyone to worry about her, who always thought of others before she thought of herself—would walk in the door breathless and contrite, morphed into four hours. Then Elizabeth sat and called each one of Rachelle’s friends, her sociology professor (whose class she had gone to that morning), and everyone else she could think of. Her shoulders tightened with each call.

Finally she called her mother. Ramona Benavides didn’t have a cell phone, so Elizabeth had to call Aspen Falls Elementary. After explaining that it pertained to a family emergency, the receptionist forwarded her call to the kitchen where her mother worked.

“Do not talk to anyone else, Elizabeth. I will come home now. You wait.”

Elizabeth paced until her mother came racing in the door, tears streaming down her face.

* * *

“Mamá, quit crying. We have to call the police.” Elizabeth trailed her mother into the family room. She sat on an ottoman while Ramona Benavides fell into a chair and tugged shoes from swollen feet.

“No,” her mother said between sobs. “We are not calling the
policía
. Not until we talk to your father. That is final.”

Elizabeth could barely control the frustration she felt toward her mother. “What time will Papá be home?”

“Not until late. They got a new piece of equipment for the cows that needs to be set up by tomorrow. We raised you to respect your parents. Watch your mouth.
No me gusta tu actitud
. We will wait. Your father will know what to do.”

Carlos and Ramona Benavides shared a traditional Mexican marriage. Elizabeth’s father, as head of the household, revered her mother and treated her like his queen. But all decisions were his to make. Period. Getting her mother to take action without his okay was like kicking a brick wall. Barefoot. Submission to male authority—
all
male authority—came as natural to Ramona Benavides as breathing.

Elizabeth’s hands fisted. “If Robert were here, you’d listen to him.” She wished, not for the first time, to hear her brother’s voice tell her mother what she needed to hear. Tell her what they needed to do. Make Mamá listen. Instead, her brother had a uniform on in the war zone. Robert Benavides was fighting for his country.

And Ramona Benavides sat in her favorite chair in her own home in the land of the free—afraid to call police for help.

Elizabeth rubbed her neck.
Some country
.

“Roberto isn’t here. Your father is. Show some respect. No
policía
unless he say so.”

“The police can help us.”

“They can bring us trouble.”

“What trouble, Mamá? What trouble?”

Elizabeth’s mother stopped rubbing her feet and looked at her with sad eyes. “You know the trouble I’m talkin’ about.”

She was getting nowhere. Her mother would not listen to her.

Elizabeth tried again. “Rachelle is missing, and we need more help than a few friends—and a tiny search—can give us.”

Her mother’s shoulders slumped. A strangled sob ripped the air. “My Rachelle. My baby.”

Elizabeth watched her mother rock back and forth, her movement punctuated by moans. She saw the head of gray hair, the familiar face filled with wrinkles, the swollen red eyes, and wondered when her mamá had gotten old. She moved to wrap the small woman in her arms.

Together, mother and daughter swayed.

“At work they say it is the policía who are behind the other missings,” her mother said. “We do not need to bring more trouble.”

“Mamá!” Elizabeth punched to her feet and began to pace around her mother, arms slicing the air. “We are legal. We have rights.”

“Our rights
cesan
when friends would be in danger if we got your police involved. Our rights cease when we could bring pain to others.”

“But it’s Rachelle. Our Rachelle. What about
her
rights? She isn’t just playing games. She’s in trouble. And no one we know has the power to help her.”

Elizabeth sat back down on the ottoman and reached for her mother’s hand. “Will you at least call Papá and let him know?”

Her mother’s brow wrinkled and tears welled again in her world-weary eyes. “It is a bad day to call him at work. He is busy and his boss need for him to get job done today.”

“Please, call him.”

“We must wait for your father and not bother him at work. It is in God’s hands.” Ramona Benavides stood. “We go to start the dinner.”

Elizabeth went to the coat closet by the front door and pulled out a light jacket.
I need to get out of here
.

“Where you go?”

“I’m going for a walk. I need to get some air.”

Twenty minutes later, Elizabeth walked into the Aspen Falls Police Department and asked to speak to someone to report a missing person.

Aspen Falls Police Department

Wednesday, September 19

Chase met with Elizabeth Benavides for the better part of an hour, drank one cup of coffee and two Red Bulls like they held the secret to youth, and ran some checks while she sat—somewhat impatiently—at his desk. While she told her story, he made notes and searched various databases to confirm her information. At the end of that hour, Chase thought there might be something to what she said. A young girl, who had every reason to return home to her family and no reason to run away, had gone missing.