Killer Heat (8 page)

“Right. Got it. Thanks for the advice,” he said dryly.

When she hesitated, he expected her to switch topics, but she didn't. Evidently, that call from Lori had her thinking about the fact that he was past thirty and still hadn't remarried. “Lori's such a good person, so supportive and friendly.”

Yeah. Whenever she wanted something…

“You don't think the two of you could ever get back together, do you?”

“No.
Never.
”

She acted surprised by the absoluteness. “Wow, I never would've guessed you were so bitter. You seemed like such an ideal couple, and then it was over, just like that. I'm still not sure why you two broke—”

“Irreconcilable differences,” he cut in. “I've got to check my GPS, Mom.”

“So check it,” she said.

“My phone won't let me talk at the same time. I'll call you later, okay?”

“Fine,” she said with a huff. “But don't forget to contact Lori.”

“I heard you the first time. Thanks again, Mom.” He hung up. After that little stunt, Lori could wait until he got back to California for her damn letter. He didn't have time to pull over, whip out his laptop and do it now, anyway. According to his GPS, he'd passed Peeples Valley and was coming up on Kirkland. That meant he was only seven miles from Skull Valley, and Francesca wasn't far behind.

What would they find when they got there? he wondered. But nothing could've prepared him.

T
he smell drifted all the way to the car, triggering such revulsion Francesca almost couldn't force her legs to carry her the short distance to where she saw Finch and Hunsacker. They were with several police officers and a few other people, probably from the Yavapai County Medical Examiner's Office, judging by the van, working outside the chocolate and gift shop. Once she did get close, she regretted it. She'd hoped to identify April from the picture she had with her; she'd wanted to know for sure that her latest missing person had been found. April's sister, Jill Abbatiello and her husband, Vince, had been distraught ever since she didn't report for work on Monday. Of course, murder was the worst possible outcome, but it was at least an answer, which relieved the wondering and the waiting. However, the state of the corpse made visual identification impossible.

“You okay?” Jonah asked.

She hadn't realized that she'd crowded so close to him. Professional pride demanded she back up, tell him she was fine. But she was trying so hard not to retch that she couldn't move or speak. Fortunately, Finch whirled around and spotted them, interrupting before her inability to react became obvious.

“What's
she
doing here?” He addressed Jonah while hiking a thumb at her as though she wasn't standing within earshot.

Francesca understood that he was angry about yesterday, but holding a grudge over a little humiliation seemed pointless. How could he worry about something so petty in light of
this?
Not long ago, the blob of putrefying flesh sitting on the concrete had been a living, breathing human being….

As Jonah's eyes shifted to the victim, his nostrils flared, which told her he was struggling with what he saw, as well. Still, he kept his voice steady. “I thought she might be able to identify the deceased, but—”

“Actually, I'm glad you brought her,” Finch broke in, and nudged Francesca as he motioned to the victim. “Now this is what a corpse looks like.”

Despite the dizziness that nearly overwhelmed her, she somehow remained standing and managed to give him a dirty look as she found her voice. “No kidding.”

Hunsacker joined them. “So? Do you recognize her?”

Too preoccupied to put him in his place, even when he laughed, Francesca answered without the stinging reprisal that would've been part of her response on any other day. “No.”

The victim's head looked like a jack-o'-lantern that'd softened and caved in on one side. Her right eye was missing and her nose had been so badly pummeled it resembled putty more than human flesh. The features that were still distinguishable were swollen out of all proportion and her tongue protruded in a grotesque fashion.

Jonah's stoic expression melted into a grimace. “Looks as if she took a severe beating.”

Finch sobered. “Like the others. You can bet she's got plenty of broken bones to go with that fractured skull.”

Hunsacker rolled his feet to the outside in his habitual way. “So you think this might be the work of the same killer?”

“Dead Mule Canyon's only a few miles away,” Jonah said. “The victims there were beaten, too.”

“Shit.” Hunsacker spat on the ground.

“Once word of this gets out…” Finch didn't finish.

Francesca was listening but it felt as if she stood at a distance too removed to participate. Mostly, she could hear her own heart pounding in her ears. The body wasn't easy to look at, but would've been worse if those wounds had been recent. The coagulated blood surrounding the woman's injuries appeared to have dried a day or two ago, based on the blackish color. It was the dirt that Francesca found curious. Tiny granulated rocks, the kind so characteristic of desert soil, clung to the woman's hair and her gaping wounds, suggesting she'd been buried and subsequently disinterred.

Why? Why would a man kill a woman, bury her, then dig her up and prop her in such a public place? How could anyone be so morbid?

Francesca didn't ask this question, but when she tuned in to the conversation again, she realized Finch had inadvertently answered it.

“He's proud of his work, eh?”

Jonah thrust his hands in his pockets. “He definitely wants it to be seen.”

“What a monster,” she murmured, but was this monster the same man who'd sat in her lawn chair last night throwing rocks at her window? Was it Butch?

The image of him wielding that bat popped into her mind. It was a frightening memory. But his audacity, his
lack of fear, provoked her at the same time. He wouldn't get away with this. She'd make sure of it.

Anger provided some much-needed adrenaline, making it easier to stay on her feet, breathe, think. “A bat could've done this.”

Hunsacker didn't seem impressed with her detective skills. Either that or he wasn't willing to credit her with much intelligence. “So could plenty of other things.”

“How long do you think she's been dead?” she asked Finch, but it was Jonah who answered.

“At least thirty-six hours.”

Francesca tried to rub away the goose bumps that'd jumped out on her arms. The temperature was quickly climbing and would likely top yesterday's high before the day was over, but somehow she felt chilled to the bone. “How do you know?” she asked. Having switched her specialty from employer-solicited background checks to missing persons only a year ago, she hadn't seen a lot of death.

Obviously warmer than she was, Finch loosened a tie that'd already been loosened once. As usual, he looked uncomfortable in his work clothes. “He knows it's been at least that long because there's no rigor. Rigor generally comes on in the first twelve hours, remains unchanged for twelve hours and dissipates in another twelve.”

“From the bloating, I'd say it's actually been longer,” Jonah added. “See the marbling? Takes a while for that to set in, even in this heat.”

Because Francesca couldn't think of a worse indignity than being left sprawled on the ground, naked, for the whole world to see, and in such a horrific condition, she hadn't let her gaze fall any lower than the neck. Now that she had a reason to look, however, she could see that the woman's stomach had swollen to the size of a large
watermelon. Her belly had also taken on a grayish-green cast, much like a bruise, and the inky weblike veins that showed on the torso seemed to be traveling up the neck, toward her face.

This corpse could've stepped right out of the movie
Zombieland,
Francesca thought sadly. No one should have to suffer the way this woman had. No one should be displayed in such a state.

“So how long would you say?” she pressed.

“We'll let the M.E. determine that,” Finch said, but Jonah spoke at the same time.

“I'd say a good five days.”

Five days… That took the murder back to Sunday, which was awfully close to Saturday, the night April Bonner had met Butch Vaughn at the Pour House.

 

Francesca sat alone at a table in the Palace Restaurant and Bar in downtown Prescott. Touted as the oldest frontier saloon in Arizona, the Palace had been in operation since 1875 or thereabouts. But, according to the story she'd read on a placard posted here in the historic district, in 1900 a drunken miner kicked over a kerosene lamp and started a fire that destroyed most of the town, including the Palace and a lot of other saloons on what was then called Whiskey Row. Even the state's first capitol building, a log cabin, had burned to the ground.

Fortunately, some of the men who were there that night were either sober enough or smart enough to drag the highly carved bar, which had come all the way from New Jersey, out of the Palace and into the street. They continued to drink and watch the fire from there, but when the saloon was rebuilt a year later, the bar took its rightful place once again. Now it stretched along the wall to Francesca's left. Memorabilia, including guns,
ammunition, money and other artifacts from the 1800s, as well as bits and pieces of information about Palace regulars like Doc Holliday, the Earp Brothers and Big Nose Kate, hung on the rest of the walls. She studied these relics as she listened to a honky-tonk piano player, who was dressed in period costume, and waited for her burger.

Hungry though she was after skipping breakfast, she doubted she could eat. What she'd witnessed in Skull Valley was too new, too present in her mind. She'd spent an hour with Jonah and the investigators at the sheriff's station afterward, sharing what she knew about April, but that suddenly seemed like a thimbleful of information compared to what there should have been to adequately represent a life. April had never been married. She'd had just two romantic relationships in her life, only one that lasted a year. She'd been thrilled to finally meet someone when she began e-mailing back and forth with “Harry Statham.” All the other teachers at her school, even the principal, talked about how happy the promise of their “love” had made her. And Francesca could see why. Harry had pretended to be everything a woman could want. Claiming he was a widower who'd lost his wife six months earlier, he'd flattered her with compliments on her picture and the cleverness of her responses, told her he wanted to take care of her for the rest of her life and keep her safe. He'd sent her gifts, too.

Francesca had read the e-mails she'd found on April's computer, but thinking of them hit her harder today than ever, and she wasn't ready to drive home yet. After losing her purse, her cell phone, her car and office keys, even the security she'd once enjoyed at her house, she felt she'd been cast adrift, somehow cut off from regular life. She couldn't even retreat to Adriana's, which would've been
natural for her under any other circumstances. Suddenly, after more than a decade, Jonah stood between them again. No way did she want to discuss his presence at her place this morning, but she knew any conversation they had would be awkward if she didn't.

So she'd chosen to recuperate at the Palace. The old saloon wouldn't remind her of the years she'd spent in the police academy and, subsequently, as a rookie cop with Jonah, her confrontation with Butch yesterday, the body at the gift shop or the fact that this morning's find might be connected to April Bonner's disappearance as well as seven other murders. She loved history, spent at least one weekend a month visiting Arizona's many ghost towns. But the upbeat music, the chatter of the tourists who streamed through, the high ceilings and wooden floors, didn't carry her away as she'd hoped. She kept picturing the abused corpse propped outside the gift shop and thinking about the bat Butch had wielded so eagerly.

Whoever had killed that woman had done so in a brutal manner. If it was Butch, he was one sick bastard. And that sick bastard seemed to have become fixated on her. She even wondered if he'd dug April—assuming this
was
April—out of the ground and placed her in the center of Skull Valley as some sort of message. Why would he provide the police with a body, which could offer so much evidence and other information, unless he had a compelling reason?

Yesterday's events could've given him that compelling reason. She'd gone to his salvage yard to search for April and brought the police down on him. And he'd basically flipped her off by delivering what she wanted in any condition but the way she preferred.

He was the real deal. So why hadn't he tried to enter
her house when he had her in such a vulnerable position last night? Why had he settled for letting her know what he
could
have done?

Because he thought he could get to her anytime he wanted….

The waitress appeared with her meal.

Francesca managed to smile and offer a brief thanks, and then attempted to eat a French fry or two. But she couldn't taste the food and her stomach felt too queasy to force it down.

Giving up without touching her burger, she tossed fifteen bucks on the table and left the relative safety of the Palace. As much as she wanted to blend in with the shoppers outside and be anonymous for a while, she needed to get to a pay phone and call her assistant. Heather must be going crazy. She hadn't heard from Francesca all day. They usually kept in fairly close touch. But then, Francesca usually had a cell phone.

That was what she needed to solve first, she decided. She had to shake off her fatigue and her reaction to the events of the past twenty-four hours and buy a new cell. While she was waiting for her phone to be activated, she could use one of the other phones at the store to call Heather; Heather could make sure her home line was repaired and check in with the locksmith, who hadn't been able to leave a message because of her severed line.

But in order to buy a new phone, she needed to withdraw some money from the bank. And without her ATM card or her ID that wouldn't be easy.

Fortunately, she knew the manager of her local branch. She could only hope he'd believe her about her purse being stolen. She'd try to get there before closing and hit the DMV tomorrow. There wouldn't be enough time to do everything in what was left of today.

Butch had put her in a real bind.

And this might be just the beginning.

 

“Hey, I'm taking off.”

Jonah blinked, realized where he was and lifted his head off the desk to see Dr. Price at the door. He'd gone into the back office to check his e-mail and contact a forensic profiler he'd used in the past and must've fallen asleep. Fatigue still dragged at him, but he was hoping he'd feel better in a few minutes. At least he'd had a nap. “Good. You need a break, a chance to return to regular life,” he told her.

“I don't really have a choice. It's my daughter's birth day and I promised to watch the kids so she and her husband can go to dinner. You can't let work take over completely, you know? You have to draw a line somewhere.”

He got the impression that pep talk was aimed more at herself than him, but she was right. She needed to be there for her kids, despite the case they were working on. “I agree.”