Unknown Means
Authors: Elizabeth Becka
Tags: #Mystery, #Mystery And Suspense Fiction, #Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths, #Medical examiners (Law), #Police, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction - Espionage, #Divorced mothers, #Fiction - Mystery, #Detective, #Police - Ohio - Cleveland, #General, #Cleveland (Ohio), #Suspense, #Women Sleuths, #Large type books, #Thrillers, #Mystery fiction, #Fiction, #Thriller, #Women forensic scientists
UNKNOWN MEANS
ELIZABETH BECKA
For my sisters,
Mary and Susan,
my friends,
my support
Contents
THE WOMAN’S BODY HAD BEEN POSED, SOMETHING
Evelyn had read…
1
A MERENGUE BEAT SPLIT THE AIR, TRILLING FROM THE
Nextel…
13
THE TELEPHONE SHATTERED THE DARKNESS, SNAPPING
Evelyn to attention with…
21
HER WORKPLACE HAD BEEN TITLED THE TRACE EVIDENCE
Department for…
35
EVELYN TOOK OVER A PARKING SPACE FROM A DEPARTING Channel…
47
THE OFFICERS HAD ALREADY INVESTIGATED THE
stairwell, and she did…
55
SHE FOUND RAFE JOHNSON IN HIS OFFICE, A FORMER
supply…
65
EVELYN TRIED TO REACH ANGEL AT HOME, BUT NO ONE… 77
AS IF FROM A DISTANCE, SHE HEARD A VOICE: “DAMN…
89
HOLDING A BAG OF ICE TO HER THROAT, EVELYN sized…
97
THE ARMCHAIR IN WHICH SHE RESTED HAD ABSORBED
most of…
109
EVELYN DID NOT BOTHER GOING HOME. THE ONE, PERHAPS
two…
119
I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M DOING THIS, EVELYN THOUGHT. NOT
again.
129
FRANCES DUARTE HAD ONLY ONE LIVING IMMEDIATE
relative, her sister…
135
DAVID COULD HAVE INSISTED THAT FRANCES DUARTE’S
accountant come to…
147
OUR KILLER IS THE UNKNOWN SUBJECT IN FIVE
UNSOLVED rapes,”…
157
THE LOBBY INTERCOM AT THE QUAY 55 BUILDING HAD
been…
163
THE SWELLING’S GONE DOWN,” ROBERT TOLD EVELYN
as they stood…
171
YOU’RE IN EARLY,” MRS. ANDERSON SNAPPED AT
her. “I haven’t…
179
THE VACUUMINGS FROM GRACE MARKHAM’S APARTMENT
consisted of fibers from…
187
DAVID AND RILEY SPENT THE MORNING TRACKING
down four of…
197
EVELYN WAS CONVERSING WITH THE AFOREMENTIONED
waste of flesh at…
207
THERE IT IS,” JUSTIN TOLD HER. “YOU’RE IN LUCK.
Pickup…
215
WOO-EEE.” TONY HELD HIS NOSE AS EVELYN
deposited her bags…
223
YOU SEEM PRETTY PERKY FOR A GIRL WHO JUST
cheated…
231
THE BRICK BUILDING ON THE SITE OF THE DEFUNCT
Fagan’s…
237
AFTER TWENTY MINUTES ON THE PHONE WITH HER
mother, Evelyn…
245
CRAIG SINCLAIR HAD PASSED HIS TWENTY-SECOND
birthday the week before.
253
RILEY, WHERE’S DAVID? I TRIED HIS NEXTEL AND HIS
pager,…
259
THE PLAIN DEALER BUILDING HAD BEEN AT THE CORNER
of…
263
FINDING DAVID’S CAR IN HER DRIVEWAY FILLED HER
with conflicting…
269
EVELYN RAN THE FTIR SPECTRUM OF CRAIG SINCLAIR’S
crayons against…
277
DAVID BROWSED THE C GATES NEWSSTAND AT
Cleveland Hopkins Airport,…
285
EVELYN LEFT ED TO EAT HIS BREAKFAST AMONG THE
compressed-air…
293
WHEN SHE DARED TAKE HER EYES OFF THE ROAD, Evelyn…
301
SHE COULD HEAR HIM BREATHING, AND NO DOUBT HE
could…
307
AND THE ELEVATOR ROLLED TO A SMOOTH HALT.
315
SHE RELEASED THE UP BUTTON TO GRASP HIS SANDY
blond…
319
IT’S JUST A LITTLE SHOCK,” THE PARAMEDIC TOLD
David. “She’s…
323
Other Books by Elizabeth Becka
THE WOMAN’S BODY HAD BEEN POSED, SOMETHING
Evelyn had read about but never seen. Twenty-eight, white, dead Grace Markham sat upright at her kitchen table, silky black hair skimming her cheeks. Mesh straps held her shoulders and waist to the high-backed wooden chair. One of the same straps had been used to strangle her, to judge from the width and pattern of the indentations in her skin. Her arms lay on the table in front of her, stretched forward far enough to keep them from slipping back off.
She might have been sitting at a meal, were it not for the bulging eyes and tongue, and her head lolling to her chest. Perhaps the killer had not had time to fix that detail, or couldn’t figure out how.
Evelyn James turned off the filtered vacuum that she had been using to pick up any loose hairs, fibers, or trace evidence on the floor’s surface. Thunder rattled the windows, extra loud in the sudden quiet. “Is it ever going to stop raining?”
“It’s the lake effect. Besides, April showers bring May flowers,”
Detective Riley told her.
“They also bring flash floods and backed-up sewers.”
She leaned toward the body, close enough to catch the scent of fresh death. Grace Markham had tried to save herself, to judge from the scratches along her jugular and the broken fingernails, the red
2
slash of constriction etched deeply into her neck. Part of a gold necklace had been caught against her skin so that the diamond pendant hung awry. Evelyn shifted the gem with one finger. “This has to be two carats, at least.”
Homicide Detective David Milaski spoke for the first time since Evelyn had arrived, twenty minutes earlier. “I’ll pick up one for you to wear to Marissa’s wedding. Oh, that’s right, I’m a cop. I can’t even afford cubic zirconium.”
An olive branch, an attempt to get past their argument that morning. She tried to reciprocate. “I’d just sell it to pay for Angel’s college anyway. I don’t know how else I’m going to afford tuition.”
“Of course.”
Wrong choice of subject. Evelyn held his blue-eyed gaze for another moment to tell him so.
“You two arguing again?” Riley asked. David’s partner, the rumpled Detective Bruce Riley, had been a cop for thirty-two years and could pluck a tense tone out of the air like a sonic baseball. “If this has to do with Freedman’s bachelor party, I want it on the record that I told him not to go.”
“That was a great party,” a uniformed cop, the contamination officer for the scene, murmured from the foyer.
Evelyn removed the filter from the vacuum and sealed it in a brown paper bag before she picked up her camera. The viewfinder framed Grace Markham’s preternaturally still form like a bizarre piece of modern art.
Evelyn had seen death by strangulation before, more times than she cared to tally. The Medical Examiner’s Office dealt with two or three homicides per week, and each one had to be examined by a forensic scientist—meaning her, until the Trace Evidence Department budget could allow for more staff. But this particular murder broke new ground.
Instead of in a violent back alley, Grace Markham rested at her own kitchen table, and in one of the most expensive high-rise suites on
3
the Lake Erie shore. The Markham suite spanned the entire tenth floor, with four bedrooms, three baths, two offices, a TV room, and a sauna. At the main entrance, where the contamination officer stood to keep unwanted personnel out of the scene, the elevator opened directly onto the foyer’s granite squares—rich people did not fumble with keys.
The kitchen and open eating area flowed into a living room filled with leather furniture, a plasma flat-screen, and artfully lit photographs, the white walls and carpeting as clean as an unused operating room.
This was new. And not in a good way.
Most murders occurred on the spur of the moment, impulsive acts of rage or desperation that the killers tried to cover up or escape as quickly as possible. There should have been some sign of struggle or disturbed items to indicate the killer’s process, his agenda, his desires. This guy had left them nothing but one very dead body.
Evelyn twisted the camera’s lens, focusing on Grace Markham.
“Where was the husband?”
“At work,” David said. “He’s an architect, currently designing the new Rhodes office complex in the Flats. No children. Miller and Sanchez are with him right now, finishing up his statement. He last saw Grace when he left for work this morning, around six. Grace had a nail appointment at ten and a doctor’s appointment at eleven—prenatal visit. She is—was—two months pregnant.”
Evelyn looked up. “Damn.”
“Yeah. She didn’t make either of her appointments, to judge from the messages on the answering machine. Meanwhile, the husband’s been showing a proposal to a client all day, in full view of at least five people at any given moment. When’s time of death?”
“Four a.m. to ten a.m., at a guess. The husband could have killed her before he left. We’ll know more after the doctor does a liver temp at the lab.”
“Why tie her up like that?” David asked.
“I don’t know, babe.” She gave him a weary smile. “I just got here.”
4
“Do you think there’s been a sexual assault?”
“The clothes are a little messy—sweater pulled out of the skirt, a run in the stockings—but that could have happened in the struggle.” Evelyn used a ruler in her photographs of the straps, the scratches, a slight bruise on the left bicep, and the indentation in the woman’s neck. “If I find anything, I’ll have Marissa run the DNA as soon as she can. If I can tear her away from Cleveland Bride.”
“Going to be a lot of young men upset about Marissa getting married,” Riley said as he went through the victim’s purse, which had been left on the counter.
“They had their chance.”
“You going to be a bridesmaid, Evie?”
“There are things I won’t do even for my best friend, and wearing a poufy dress is definitely one of them. Hey, don’t walk on the other side of the table yet,” she warned David as he leaned in to get a closer look at the body. “I’m going to dust the floor tiles in a little bit.”
He remained next to her, hovering, as if hoping for insight. Unlike Riley, he had less than a year in the homicide unit, and Evelyn knew he felt the pressure of being the new guy. She smelled the cologne she’d given him for his birthday. He said, “I’m used to gangbangers, domestics, and liquor store robberies. But who does something like this? Think maybe it was a home invasion gone bad?”