Pretty Dead (10 page)

The scene had changed since Elise last saw it: now there was a crowd of about a hundred bystanders hoping to get a glimpse of something horrendous—as if their observation would protect them from ever experiencing anything similar themselves.

As the mayor moved awkwardly through the loose sand, people parted to let him pass. He was someone who’d always been accessible, a people’s mayor. He rode his bike around Forsyth Park. He went to cafés and ordered his own coffee. He talked to people as he waited in line at the grocery store or while pumping gas. So when citizens saw him, they smiled. They waved and spoke to him.

Today he didn’t see anyone. Smiles vanished, and people dropped out of his way. A few produced cameras and snapped photos of the odd expression on his face. The images would be hashtagged, and his grief would make fodder for mass consumption long before the next press conference. By the time reports of the murder hit the local stations, the crime would be old news.

Elise ran to catch up, scanning and assessing the scene as she moved. “Where’s Detective Gould?” she asked a male officer.

“He’s talking to the Scouts in the picnic area. They wanted to get the girls away from here.”

The mayor ducked under the crime-scene tape.

A woman collecting evidence protested when Chesterfield charged forward. Then the evidence collector saw who it was, looked at Elise, looked at the mayor, got to her feet, and stepped aside.

“Don’t touch the body!” Elise said.

The mayor ignored her. Or didn’t hear. He scooped his daughter into his arms and hugged her to him, and it was all the more awful because the rigor hadn’t yet left her body completely and her arms remained stiff and unbending. The grieving man let out the same sobbing roar he’d released in his office, rocking the girl’s body against him as the people processing the scene tried to pull him away.

Finally, after what seemed like minutes, he let his daughter go, laying her back on the ground. He removed his coat and spread it gently over her. “You should have covered her up,” he said. “She shouldn’t be left like this.”

“We’re processing the scene.” The words came from a young female wearing latex gloves.

The mayor zeroed in, directing his anger at her. “I don’t care! Do you hear me? I don’t care! My daughter is dead! Dead!”

The officer recoiled, opened and closed her mouth, and backed up.

John Casper stepped forward. “Sir?”

No response. John tried to get the mayor’s attention once again. This time the mayor heard. His head turned slowly.

“I’m the coroner,” John told him. “We’re almost ready to take her to the morgue. You can see her again there.”

John’s white coat and the mention of the morgue seemed to send the mayor’s emotions in a new direction. He showed a sudden comprehension of his surroundings. He spun around, arms limp at his sides. He spotted Elise.

“You.”

She swallowed.

“Head of homicide.” He spit out the words. “A third murder in less than two weeks. This should not have happened. My daughter wouldn’t have died if you’d been doing your job.”

“I understand,” she said, attempting to placate him. Elise could imagine his tangle of thoughts, each tripping over the one before.

“Do you? Do you really? You have a daughter, right?”

“Yes.”

“A daughter who’s alive, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then you do not understand.”

“No.”

“This is your fault.
Your
fault. My daughter’s death is on your head.”

It was common for survivors to go from blaming themselves to blaming the handiest person. Right now, that person was Elise. She might have been able to shrug off his accusations if she felt she’d done as well as anybody could have done under the circumstances. But when people were still dying, the truth was, she wasn’t doing her job.

It was entirely possible she
was
to blame.

“I’m calling the FBI,” the mayor said. “I’m going to get some people down here who know what the hell they’re doing. People who’ll catch this person and put a stop to this so no one else will lose a daughter.”

“I’ll give you a ride to the morgue,” she told him.

“No.” His face was red. “I can’t look at you anymore. I’d fire you this second, but who would we have left until someone with more experience arrives? Your partner?” He sneered.

What he did next took her by complete surprise. He put a hand to her chest and physically pushed her. Not hard, but a solid shove. People gasped.

And, oh God, she shouldn’t have said it. It was horrible of her, but the words just came out. “You shouldn’t have reassured the public that this was all under control.”

Another gasp.

Everything from that point on was in slow motion.

A fist, coming at her.

In the back of her mind she remembered that he boxed. She wasn’t sure how she knew that about him, but she suddenly recalled that he’d started an after-school boxing program for kids.

She attempted to duck and dodge. If she hadn’t, he probably would have broken her nose. Instead, his knuckles connected with her cheek, the force driving her backward, her body airborne for a brief second before she hit the ground, the wind knocked out of her, the pain in her face creating a burst of light behind her eyelids.

He was still coming.

Like a charging bull.

Someone knocked him aside, bodies flying, his attack thwarted.

It took her a minute to realize who’d intervened. Jay Thomas Paul. He was on top of the mayor, pinning him to the ground, Jay Thomas’s hipster glasses only slightly askew, his hair only slightly mussed.

The mayor pushed him away, or Jay Thomas allowed himself to be pushed. All three of them scrambling to their feet, Jay Thomas keeping a cautious hand to the mayor’s chest.

“You’re gonna be writing traffic tickets!” the mayor shouted, shaking a finger at Elise. “Traffic tickets!”

CHAPTER 14

L
emme see that again,” David said.

Elise paused in the middle of the sidewalk to let him recheck her face. Nothing seemed to be broken, but her cheek was swollen and her eye was blacker every time she looked in the mirror.

“You need to put a bag of peas on it when we’re done here,” David said, then added, “I know I should feel more empathy for the mayor, all things considered, but seeing your face has effectively eliminated any slack I would have cut him. In fact, I want to work him over.”

“I suggest just not voting for him in the upcoming election.”

“The guy decked you.”

“He was out of his mind.”

“That makes it okay?”

“That kind of news can make someone act in ways that go against who they are,” she said softly, reminding him of things that needed no reminding.

“Don’t look at me that way.” He began fiddling with his jacket pockets, searching for something. “Grief is weird. Believe me, I know that. But I also think it can reveal our hidden selves, our darker selves. Right now he’s the guy who hit you, and I can’t see past that. Maybe later I’ll give him a break, but his actions today mean he’s probably hit women before, and that knowledge effectively drives out any compassion I would have felt for him no matter how much we have in common.”

She stared at him a long moment before deciding her expectations had been unfair. “You’re right.”

“We’re cool?”

“We’re cool,” she replied.

“I’m surprised he didn’t fire you. He has the authority.” David found what he was searching for. He pulled the scrap of paper Avery had given him from his pocket, reread the address, and pointed down the block to a three-story house in need of paint. Together they moved toward it.

“I wouldn’t be shocked if firing is just around the corner,” Elise said. “Of course, the punch in the face might make it harder for that kind of action to stick.”

“Right now getting fired sounds pretty good to me.”

He had a point. “Are we the only detectives who talk about losing our jobs as if that would be a good thing?”

“It’d be great, right?” David asked. “We could freelance. We could open our own detective agency. We could take
a damn vacation
.”

The apartment where Caroline Chesterfield had lived was in a crumbling building that should have been condemned long ago. Typical colonial wood-frame home, probably built in the late 1800s. Student shack.

“What do you mean
we
? Your job isn’t in danger,” Elise pointed out. “At least I don’t think it is.”

“I’m not sticking around if you’re gone.”

“That’s sweet, but what about Major Hoffman?”

He scowled and ignored her question. “I can’t believe Jay Thomas Paul came to your rescue.”

“Speaking of the guy with three first names, where is he?”

“Said he was going back to his rental.”

They took the stairs to the front porch. “Which means right now he’s hunched over his laptop, typing up today’s story about his heroics,” Elise said. “And I’ll bet he has photos.” She tried to recall if he’d pulled out his camera. Couldn’t remember. Everything had happened so fast. Didn’t really matter. This wasn’t anything they were going to be able to suppress. Regardless of Jay Thomas’s contribution, the story would hit the media outlets fast. But, come to think of it . . . “People might be afraid of incurring the mayor’s wrath, especially after what happened to me. The local paper might not run the story,” she said hopefully.

“You’re the closest thing Savannah has to a celebrity. Getting punched out by the mayor is going to be news. Mix that with his loss . . . Story will go national by five o’clock.” He gave her a long look. “That’s gonna be one of the best black eyes I’ve ever seen.”

“Go big or go home.”

“Yup.”

David lifted the knocker on the door and let it fall three times. “What’d you say to piss him off?”

She told him. “I shouldn’t have said it. He had a right to be upset.”

“But he didn’t have a right to hit you.”

“You know what the focus is going to be now, don’t you?” Elise asked. “The father-daughter relationship.”

“People love that stuff.”

He pulled out his phone and began poking at it. “Aha.” He turned the device around, giving her a landscape view of a YouTube video. Of her getting knocked down by the mayor. Uploaded by someone named Streetsavannah. Might or might not have been captured by Jay Thomas. “The punch heard round the city.”

She pushed the phone away.

He scrolled, coming across a close-up of her battered face. “What do you want to bet this was taken by your rescuer? If we dropped by his room, we’d probably find him in his lair, posting images—” He stopped. “Yep. His Twitter account. His damn Twitter account. Your name is hashtagged. That son of a bitch. I thought I saw him scurrying away from the crime scene like a spider clutching an egg sac.” More scrolling. “And he’s not being reticent about his role in the event. Takes credit for breaking things up and saving you from serious harm.” He tucked away his phone. “A modest and noble man. A man I’m going to talk to.”

“And here I’ve been feeling awful about not being nicer to him.”

“Never doubt that sixth sense. It’ll save your life.”

The door was finally answered by a young girl with pink dreadlocks, a floral dress, and army boots. She’d been crying.

“It was the Savannah Killer, wasn’t it?” she asked.

That was fast. Killers were given names by the media—not because people were trying to be clever or trying to diminish the horrific events or glorify the killer, but because a name made it quick and easy for the media and even cops to anchor the conversation or journalistic piece. There were a lot of killers, a lot of murderers out there, and a name simplified the discussion. Instead of “the killer who murdered the Murphy girl” or “the killer who left writing on bodies” or “the killer who did ‘this’ or ‘that’” or “the perpetrator of the event on such and such a street,” one universally used name brought clarity. It filled in the blank. Still, it bothered Elise, maybe because there was something immature and school yard about it. A nickname given to a buddy.

The Savannah Killer. She could live with that. It was better than the last one the media had come up with: the Organ Thief.

“Caroline was the sweetest person,” the girl said as they sat down at a table that had been made from a door. “The sweetest. Like wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Standard questions were answered.
No unusual activity. No unusual people around.
They asked to see Caroline’s room and were led to a small space at the end of a hallway. Dark, with piles of clothes everywhere, and a floor that slanted toward the street, a clue that it had once been a porch.

“A really weird place for a mayor’s daughter to live,” Elise noted.

“Her father kicked her out,” the roommate said from her position in the doorway, arms crossed at her waist as if she had a stomachache. “He cut her off completely. He was mad because she turned down Harvard to stay in Savannah and go to school.”

David and Elise looked at each other. She could read his mind.
Yep, not who he wants people to think he is.

The girl glanced around the room, then down at her feet. “Is it okay if I don’t stay in here? I can’t deal with being in her room right now.”

David’s expression went sympathetic. “Sure.”

The girl left, and David said, “Mayor has a daughter. She’s an embarrassment to him. Enter serial killer . . .”

“Are you implying that the mayor might have staged his daughter’s murder to look like the previous ones? That’s ludicrous.”

“Parents kill,” David said softly.

He would know. She shook her head.

“And with an election just around the corner . . .”

“I’m not buying that.”

“Okay, if we back-burner the mayor for now, I say the killer, at the very least, knew her,” David said. “Or rather, he knew who she was.”

“We don’t know that, but like you said, it does seem more than a coincidence.”

They spent two hours digging through the girl’s belongings, turning up nothing. When they were done, they bagged and attached an evidence seal to her laptop. At headquarters it would be combed for clues, with special attention paid to e-mails and social-networking sites. Then they left the building and headed for the bar where Caroline had worked.