Shorts - Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can't Put Down (38 page)

They worked with a young pathologist who seemed to know his stuff. Boldt longed for his longtime friend, Dr. Ray, but the man had retired and would likely never stand under the lights again.

“Her spine is broken,” the pathologist explained in a toneless voice. “Cracked clean in half, which might explain the dance the fisherman saw in the water when she surfaced. There are severe ligature marks, here and here. Two more on both shoulders. Her vaginal and rectal area are torn, though from the same ligature, I’m suggesting.”

“She was trussed,” Boldt said.

This won a sharp snap of Daphne’s neck as she looked up at Boldt.

“Couldn’t have said it better,” the pathologist said. “Bound and trussed…and…well, maybe not.”

“Please,” Boldt said.

Daphne’s eyes said, “Please don’t.”

“It’s just…if I had to guess…and this is only wild speculation with only a small amount of science to support it…Nah…I shouldn’t.”

Boldt encouraged him yet again.

“Conjecture is all. There is at least some circumstantial evidence to suggest the binding was a flexible material. In several weight-bearing places it appears to have pinched the skin.”

“Weight-bearing,” Boldt repeated, for the term caught his ear.

“Yes. That’s the conjecture part,” the man answered. “If I had to guess I would say she was trussed facedown. The ligature was jerked or tugged severely, and was improperly arranged so that maximum stress came here—” he pointed to her shoulders “—and here.” He pointed to her crotch. “It was excessive force, enough to shatter L7 and L8 and to sever the cord.”

“Could she have been dropped?” Daphne asked.

“Dropped? Yes, I suppose that would account for it, but it would have had to have been from a very great height.”

“The elastic cord,” Boldt said. “Could it have been bungee cord?” He leaned in for a close look at the rope burns on her side.

“Indeed,” the doctor said. “Are you telling me she was bungee jumping? The clothes came off during her time in the water?”

“Is it possible?” Boldt asked.

“She was naked,” Daphne said with authority. “He threw her off…I don’t know…a bridge?”

“Threw her?” the doctor asked, “or was it accidental? Too much alcohol, a stupid idea gone wrong.”

“Was alcohol found in her system?” Boldt asked.

“Blood workup will be a day or two, minimum.”

“He threw her,” Daphne repeated, her voice softer. “We’re going to find that the position is important to him. The angel pose. Flying like that. He’s Roman Catholic, or was raised Roman Catholic. Single. Lives or lived with a single parent. He’s under thirty, over eighteen. Uses mass transit, but has a driver’s license. Probably cross-dresses, though not in public.”

“We’re going to need every hair and fiber, every X-ray, every detail of this corpse before it degrades any further.”

“Threw her?” The doctor could barely get out the words. “You’re sure?” This, meant for Daphne.

“He wanted the angel to fly,” she said, having not taken her eyes off the dead woman for the past few minutes. “But he got it wrong, tied it wrong, from what you tell us, and he broke her back instead. Who knows how long he might have kept her alive if she’d have only flown for him?”

The doctor stepped back, as if a few feet might separate him from the truth.

“And the first one?” Boldt asked, also staring at the cadaver.

“I imagine that one went wrong, as well, or he wouldn’t have failed so miserably with her. Poor her,” she whispered. “If she’d only known how to fly.”

The drive back began in silence. Traumatic death had a way of making anything else seem inconsequential and of no importance, even if the discussion was to be the solution of that death. A black hood pulled down over all existence. The road ran before them, people racing to pass, to maintain a position, and to both of them it seemed so insignificant, though neither spoke of it directly. Life’s uglies revealed themselves at such times, man’s clambering for space and position.

“Maybe you should have quit,” she said.

“Then I wouldn’t be in a car with you.”

“Don’t start.”

“Way too late for that,” he said.

“What is it with us?”

He grinned. Didn’t mean to, but it was irrepressible.

“Do you think we’ll ever—”

“No!” he said, cutting her off. “I try to not think about it.”

“—catch him,” she said, finishing her thought. “But thank you for sharing.”

The grin was vanquished. “Oh,” he said.

“And as to that other thing, I couldn’t disagree more. I, too, try not to think about it, but I find I’m not very good at it.”

“We’ll get this guy,” Boldt said.

“But the window of time…”

“Has closed. Yes. We’re way behind the eight ball. No question about it. But it’s you and it’s me. What chance has he got?”

“You sound like John,” she quipped.

“Him, too,” Boldt said. “I’ve got a guy at the U-dub. Dr. Brian Rutledge. Oceanography. He’s going to make a careful study of this and tell us—” the car rounded a bend and faced a long bridge with a dramatic drop, so Boldt slowed the vehicle “—that she was tossed off this bridge. Deception Pass. He’s going to tell us what day, and at what time she went off, because it’s what he does. We’re going to back up and use traffic cams to spot every car that left the highway for this road at the appropriate time. We’re going to box this guy in.”

He pulled to a stop and the two wandered out on to the bridge. Again, they were gripped in silence—in part because of the majesty of the view, gray water and green island shrouded in a descending mist, in part because of what had happened here. They both could visualize it: the body coming out of the trunk, already roped up. He ties a knot; he throws her over.

“Early, early, morning,” Daphne said.

“Because?”

“First light. No traffic—he’s got to hope for no traffic. But there’s no way this guy is tossing her in the dark. He wants to see her fly. This is about satisfying some need in him. His sister jumped off the barn roof and died when he was a kid. His mother fell from a ladder, broke her back. There’s a payoff here that’s fundamental to the crime.”

“Okay,” he said.

“More than you wanted?”

“From you? Get a clue.” He walked farther, into the very middle of the bridge. He squatted, examining the thick metal rail from a variety of angles.

“I doubt bungee jumping is anything new to this bridge,” he said.

“No.”

“So he can take his time tying it. Rigging it. Getting it just right. It’s pulling her out of the trunk, that’s the trick.”

“A public appeal?” she said.

“That’s what I’m thinking, yes. Someone saw his car. Him. Thought nothing of it. Maybe we jog a memory.” He surveyed the surrounding area: rocks and water and nothing but beauty. He found it difficult to think in terms of crime. “Did he use this same bridge for the first one?”

“Yes, I believe he did,” she said. “It wasn’t the location, it was his rigging that failed. Probably failed a lot worse the first time.”

“So we check the waters.”

“Your oceanographer may be able to help you, from what you’ve said.”

“Yes. Odds?”

“That he sent the first one off this bridge? High. You want a number?”

He spit a laugh. “No. I see your point.”

“With two failures, he may now blame the bridge. If you elect to involve the press, then he’ll certainly abandon the area.”

“So we look for other, isolated locations with significant drops.”

“Maybe with some distance parameters. He’s got a woman alive in his trunk. He doesn’t want to test that, to push that. It’s a means to an end—the trunk. It worries him having her back there, and not just out of fear of being caught. He has more respect for the victim than we’d understand. It’s the sister, the mother, the girlfriend. This isn’t a hate crime. Quite the opposite—it’s reverential, a form of worship for him. He wants to bless her with flight. He wants to give her a chance at resurrection.”

“I can look at dead bodies all day long. But I talk to you for five minutes and I’ve got chills.”

She laid a hand on his shoulder. “Glad to hear it, buddy.”

A flight of gulls cawed overhead as they played in the wind. Boldt followed behind Daphne back to the car, watching that machine of hers drive her forward.

Could have walked all day.

With the lab work expedited, Boldt had the building blocks for a possible modus by midday the following day, a Wednesday. He was supposed to be working the graveyard, but had already used up several favors to get someone to sub for him—this, in his first week of duty as CAP sergeant. He and LaMoia, who technically was the shift sergeant, rode in LaMoia’s mid-size pool car, a replacement for a series of Trans-Ams and Cameros he’d owned and driven proudly through the years.

“You gonna explain it?” LaMoia asked.

“Several strands of human hair that weren’t hers. All Asian, but consisting of two different DNAs.”

“Two other women.”

“And one of the hairs was carrying traces of a polymer adhesive. Maybe more than one.”

“A piece. A wig.”

“Yes. And we’ve got a smudge of lipstick in the vic’s hair along with traces of blood. Not her blood, but it is female and it is rich in stem cells.”

“Stem cells?”

“Menstrual blood.”

“On her head?” LaMoia said. “Are you just being gross, Sarge, or is this going somewhere. Is this some stab at me and—”

“No,” Boldt said, cutting him off. “We have hair evidence. We have contradictory evidence of menstrual blood in her head hair. We have two women that simply vanished from their office buildings. Is any of this clicking yet?”

“Two Asians. The polymer. A wig?”

“Well done.”

“But the blood?”

“Where would such bl—”

“A bathroom. A women’s room.”

“And how could a woman possibly get it on her head?”

LaMoia drove through three more sets of lights, dodging angry traffic. He was just pulling up in front of the office tower with the lake view as he barked out his answer. “A trash bin in a woman’s restroom.”

“Our boy goes in drag,” Boldt said. “It has to be damn convincing. He’s wearing an Asian wig—hair from several women. He’s cleaning sinks, mopping floors, waiting for that moment it’s just him and a woman that looks right to him—has to be a certain look.”

“He thumps her,” LaMoia said, “dumps her into one of those waste bins, those giant things on the rollers.”

“Covers her with waste product,” Boldt said. “Including, in this case, some used feminine products. She’s unconscious in there and can’t be seen from the outside.”

“And he wheels her right out past everyone. Down to an alley or a parking garage, someplace innocuous but convenient. And lays her out in the trunk. Changes back to a man in the car—”

“And is gone,” Boldt completed.

“Jesus H.! The way your mind works.”

“Fine line,” Boldt said, making a point of meeting eyes with LaMoia.

“We’re here,” LaMoia said, “to look at security tape.”

“We weren’t looking for housecleaners the first time,” Boldt said.

“We go back and review parking-garage tape.”

“I think we’d have caught it. Has to be the alley. No cameras in the alley—at least from this building.”

“You think a neighboring building?” LaMoia asked.

“Or maybe a CCTV. You check that out while I put up with these security guys.”

LaMoia was twenty yards away when he called back enthusiastically. “We’re close, Sarge.”

Boldt held up his hand to his ear indicating he wanted LaMoia to call him.

Security guys could really drag things out.

Cynthia Storm had been working Health and Human Services for Public Safety for two years. It was a long way up from Social Services, where she’d had to deal with teenage miscreants of every variety. Since the publication of a series of teenage vampire books, and a movie, Seattle had played host to a flood of teenage runaways. A city that typically saw far more than its fair share of vagrant minors, the number had nearly doubled in the past eighteen months, and as far as anyone could tell the only common denominator was that the vampire series had been set in the Pacific Northwest. Portland had seen a large increase, as well. Cynthia was more than happy not to have that on her watch; give her the meter maids and the men in uniform any day. But she hadn’t been promoted to the badges yet. She still mostly dealt with the service staff—all of whom had to be vetted to work Public Safety, and their absences had to be accounted for.

Today, she was chasing down Jasmina Vladavich, a Bosnian housecleaner who’d failed to show to work for two days, had not answered her phone and, as it turned out, had not been seen by her cousin, the woman she’d listed as her emergency contact. Jasmina had a good track record with the department, but was rumored by the cousin to be in the early stages of pregnancy. She was unmarried and distraught about it. Cynthia and her supervisor had decided Jasmina worthy of a house call, to make sure that the baby had not led to prenatal depression or illness.

She rang the bell. It was an apartment complex twenty minutes south of the city, near SEATAC, a neighborhood known for strip joints, drugs and borderline import/export businesses. Laundry hung from wires on half balconies attempting to dry in a climate that dictated otherwise. The sound of televisions competed. Jasmina didn’t answer the bell—no surprise there—but Cynthia used her credentials to talk the super into having a look. The elevator had not worked for three years, she was told. She trudged up five flights, down a hall marked with graffiti and was let into 514.

“Jasmina?” she called out. The super waited at the door. “Hello?”

She heard the groan. It came faintly from the back, barely heard over an episode of
In Living Color
playing next door. “Stay there!” she told the super, who looked ready to bolt.

“Hello?” She followed the soft groans into a back bedroom where a woman was hog-tied and lying on her belly. She’d soiled herself, and her face was streaked with tears and mucus. A nylon knee sock had been used to gag her. She was wearing only underwear and a bra, and there were raw bruise marks—she’d been rocking on her legs, rolling around the room.