Missings, The (4 page)

“I was thinking the same thing.”

Two mismatched bookcases, filled with novels and a few books on economics, sat against one wall. Chase walked over to examine it more closely. Some of the novels were classics. In Spanish. A small desk butted up against another wall under a window. It was organized and ready for the next time someone sat down to study. Two dog-eared textbooks on social work caught his attention. One dealt with immigrants and refugees, the other with health care.

A small laptop was closed in the center of the desk, and Daniel unplugged it from the wall to take back to the station. His expression as he readied the laptop for transport told Chase that Daniel had figured out the purpose for his presence had been more diplomatic than technology-inspired.

“You could have just asked, Chase.”

“I didn’t have time. Forgive me?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“While you’re thinking, would you get in touch with the college and make sure she made it to her class this morning? We have to get a timeline going.”

Rachelle Benavides had left the house at seven o’clock that morning to catch a bus to her economics class at the college. She should have been home by eleven o’clock.

Even without the two Hispanic DBs Chase had on his caseload, this whole situation felt bad. Rachelle Benavides was either in trouble—or dead.

Aspen Falls Police Department

Thursday, September 20

Squad
meeting. Chase sat with Daniel Murillo and Terri Johnson. The three detectives in the Aspen Falls PD—plus Lieutenant Butz, who hadn’t investigated squat since 1987 and wouldn’t know a bloodstain pattern if it had a label, and whose last name inspired more than one deserving joke—sat in the room. All three detectives had better things to do, but when your superior called a mandatory meeting, and you liked your job, you went.

Welcome to my world
. Chase kept capping and uncapping his pen, a dead giveaway to everyone who knew him that his brain had processed Lieutenant Melvin Butz’s carefully planned detective squad meeting outline, and it no longer mattered. Chase knew all of the questions and all of the answers, and the total waste of time galled him.

The officer-involved shooting Chase had just closed wouldn’t come to trial for months. He’d already met with the DA’s office and turned over his file. The court case would take a chunk of change from his day, but what else was new? Detectives often spent more time in court than on any other part of the job.

The delay before trial gave him time to focus on his other workload. He had two open missing persons cases. One was a probable runaway. Chase suspected the seventeen-year-old boy would either come back home or turn up on another town’s police blotter. He hoped, for the sake of the kid, the first scenario won.

The second one, the Rachelle Benavides case, worried him. That one had kept him at his desk far longer into the night than he’d wanted. He’d gone back to the Benavides home and talked with the father. Carlos Benavides was a quiet man with a defeated posture. As he considered all of the things that may have happened to his daughter, his already collapsed shoulders curled in toward his heart even more.

Both the patriarch’s wife and daughter seemed surprised at his willingness to do whatever necessary without question. Chase knew about family secrets and miscommunication. He guessed those issues weren’t exclusive to one culture. He understood the feeling of helplessness Carlos Benavides must be experiencing at this moment. It sucked.

Chase had spent the morning with Rachelle’s friends from school while Daniel interviewed the neighbors. They’d both come back to the station empty.

For the thousandth time he hoped they would find no connection between the girl’s disappearance and the two other corpses discovered earlier. Both of those were also young. But they were male. Hispanic. One mutilated. One not. No IDs and no families looking for them—at least not through official channels. Only two facts connected Rachelle to the murder victims—age and origin. He hoped the fact that she was a
she
, that her family was clearly involved in finding her, and that at this point she was only missing, would be enough to keep her on one list and off another.

Butz’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Waters, you got anything more on that missing? Not the boy, the wetback.”

Chase pushed down the words he wanted to use to put Butz in his place. This wasn’t his battle to fight right now. He set his pen down and the silence stretched. He wanted to give Daniel a chance to say something. To give the Hispanic detective a chance to stand up and be strong for his heritage. He waited. Nothing. He wanted to kick Daniel—make him speak up, but Daniel’s position wasn’t Chase’s battle to forge either.

When no one moved, Chase answered, “Rachelle Benavides is a young woman with close ties to the Hispanic community. She’s a part-time student at the college and not likely to be a runaway. She attended her economics class yesterday. Nothing unusual. Daniel and I have interviewed her family, her neighbors, and a few of her friends from school. Daniel is going through everything on her laptop but we don’t have anything yet. There’s no reason for her to have left on her own, and so far, there’s no evidence of foul play.”

Chase paused, then: “What exactly did you mean by ‘wetback’, Lieutenant?”

After an initial clueless look the man at least had the grace to flush crimson.

“My apologies for not being
PC
,” Butz said. He gave a perfunctory nod in Daniel’s direction. “Especially considering.”

Chase closed his eyes and shook his head. The man was a relic. His pension couldn’t come soon enough. How he’d managed to hold on to his job for this long, particularly with an African-American chief of police, proved a testament to the collective bargaining system.

“I don’t know how you cut opening a case when the spi—uh,
señorita
has been MIA for less than twenty-four,” Butz said. “If it weren’t for those other two DBs, you’d figure along with the rest of us that she was just movin’ on like those people do. You waited for the juvie white boy but not the Mexican. This world is gettin’ stranger and stranger.”

“Lieutenant, I did not delay any search for the ‘juvie white boy.’ His parents didn’t make a report until he’d been gone for two days.” Chase rarely chose a wait-and-see attitude when a person went missing. Especially a kid. He’d much prefer to waste a little bit of time than come in too late.

A knock on the half-open door and the undeniable bulk of their commanding officer presented itself. Aspen Falls Chief of Police Cornelius Whitman.

“Please excuse my interruption of your meeting, Lieutenant,” the chief said.

Butz looked like the kid caught spraying graffiti on the playground. Had Whit heard any of the exchange? Wouldn’t matter. The chief knew all about the overweight, past-due-for-retirement Lieutenant Melvin Butz.

“I have some pertinent information for Detective Waters and I wanted to get it to him ASAP.”

Butz nodded and squinted suspiciously at Chase. Chase bit back a laugh. He had absolutely no designs on Butz’s job.

“The body of a young Hispanic female was discovered this afternoon. Could be your missing girl. There was no ID.” Whit checked the paperwork he’d brought with him before handing it to Chase. “Her heart, both kidneys, and lungs had been removed.”

The parent in Chase kicked into gear and he felt the horror, followed by anger and resolve. Then his professional self resurfaced. “Any connection to our other victim?”

“Other than being gutted like a fish and left somewhere to rot?” Whit asked.

“Yeah. Other than that.”

Ute Indian Burial Ground

Thursday, September 20

The body had been found in the old Ute Burial Ground southwest of town. Chase parked his SUV on the shoulder by the other county cars, clicked off the ignition in the middle of a Coltrane riff, and hiked up the hill. Graves of Ute Indians, most still marked by piles of rocks, dotted the hillside.

He shook his head and tucked the half-eaten red licorice twist in his pocket. Wherever he worked a murder the space felt desecrated.
But here?
Something sour and burning worked its way up his throat into his mouth. The Ute had called this place the Shining Mountains. Both the land and the Indians had been here long before gold brought prospectors, civilization, and ski resorts.

And murder.

Crime scene tape surrounded a relatively small area, and Jax Taylor—the Medical Examiner—stood in the middle of it, alternately taking photos and diagramming the site. Chase watched her work. You do enough of these scenes and you learn to point and shoot with one hand.

When Dr. Taylor saw Chase coming toward her she let the camera fall against her chest and waited for him. Pulled down the mask covering her face.

“Detective.”

“Hey, Doc.”

She stepped to the side and allowed him to get his initial impressions. Some detectives liked the ME to tell them everything. Chase liked to see things for himself, and Jax Taylor knew the way he preferred to work.

He saw a young woman, her face chewed beyond recognition. From the look of her nude body, and judging mostly by her hands, which were smooth and unwrinkled, she was in her late teens to early twenties. He felt a flash of the horror she must have felt. The fear. He wondered if she’d been killed quickly or tortured.

Long black hair tangled and matted. Hispanic. Could she be Rachelle Benavides?

“Clothes or ID?”

“Not near the body.”

He walked around to the other side of the dead girl. Squatted to get a closer look. It was like someone had done the autopsy already, but hadn’t replaced the organs. A long, deep incision, from just below her neck to her abdomen gaped open. The exposed bones of the sternum reflected clean slices.

Shit.
Chase closed off the part of his brain that wanted to cry out and rage against what this young woman had gone through. She would come to him in his dreams. She would be there when he woke in the mornings. But right now the best thing he could do for her was act as her advocate. Do his job.

He closed his eyes and heard the crackle and pop sounds of the masses of maggots who claimed their part of the body. Flies were all over the interior where once a heart pumped blood and lungs drew in oxygen. Chase waved away the flies and saw the empty spaces, the remaining internal organs almost unrecognizable. He saw bite marks around an area where flesh had been ripped away.

“Could wild animals have taken her heart and lungs?”

“Nope. They were surgically removed. Even with all of the decomp, the cuts are clean.”

Chase examined the victim’s face. It had been chewed to the point of obliteration but he couldn’t see any obvious contusions on either her face or her head.

“Before you ask, other than the obvious, there are no other signs of trauma.”

“You read my mind, Doc.”

He observed the surroundings. No obvious blood pooled into the soil, no trampled ground to suggest a struggle. This was a dumpsite. Just like the other. Again, he didn’t have the advantage a crime scene could give him.

Jax confirmed what he already knew. “Akila Copeland came to the scene but there was nothing much for her to find. She identified a few drag areas and that’s all. What we have is a body without any other clues.”

“How long ago, do you think?” Chase asked. The wind shifted and he pulled out his handkerchief and put it over his nose. The pungent vinegar smell burned his sinuses. Even trying to use his mouth to breathe couldn’t keep the smell at bay.
Pretty fast decomposition if this was Rachelle Benavides.

“Based on the deco juice and skin slip, I’d say she’s been dead about a week. But with the missing organs and the fact that she wasn’t sewn up afterward, it could be five days.”

The Benavides girl had only been missing a day. This young woman was someone other than Rachelle Benavides. He now had three DBs, all Hispanic.
What the hell is going on?

The Waters Home

Thursday, September 20

Bond put the finishing touches on the hurry-up dinner so Chase could get back to work. “It’s a lousy time to catch a new case, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Like there’s ever a good time?” Chase grabbed her and pulled her to him, then gently brushed her hair out of her face. When he nuzzled her neck in the way guaranteed to make her knees weak, she pressed against him. In their twenty-plus years, it had never failed to work.

“Funny.” Bond pushed him away and pointed to the kitchen table. “Sit. Eat.” She felt a warmth that stretched beyond her body’s response.

“Girls!” She shouted up the stairs. “Come spend some time with your dad before he has to leave.”

Seconds later Stephanie pounded down the stairs and flew past. Angela caught Bond looking in her direction and immediately slowed to a leisurely amble. Her oldest daughter looked like a younger version of Bond. Tall, long brown hair, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, she exuded all kinds of casual elegance. Stephanie had chopped her still white-blond hair off to a length which, with the right amount of goo, she could shape into spikes. Her personal expression of independence, she’d insisted on styling it all on her own. Clearly, the purple tights, lime green lederhosen, and hot pink and yellow striped blouse weren’t enough. Not for the first time, Bond shuddered when she thought of the teenage years yet to come with this one.

She followed her daughters into the kitchen and wondered at the little-girl infatuation they both had with their dad. Were they ever that way with her? Chase’s job seemed to leave her in the role of a single parent more often than not. Even though they tried to even things out, he got to be the hero while she played taskmaster and disciplinarian. Some days, it got to her more than others.

“Are we gonna do balloons tomorrow, Dad?” Angela asked.

Bond’s throat tightened.

“Yeah, Daddy. Tomorrow is David’s birthday. It’s his party,” Stephanie said.

Tears, rarely bidden except for when she needed release, filled Bond’s eyes.
Damn
. Not the time. Her husband looked to her for some help, his own eyes pleading.