Pretty Dead (3 page)

“I consider myself an aficionado,” Jay Thomas said.

Elise glanced in the rearview mirror and spotted a small silver device in his hand. “Is that a recorder? Are you recording us?” She turned her attention back to the road in time to see the stoplight ahead of them turn red. She slammed on the brakes, and every object that was unattached hit the floor. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

“You okay?” David asked. “You seem a bit more . . . wound up than usual.”

“Forgot my coffee on my desk.” True, but an excuse all the same. Her next choice would be PMS, but PMS got a bad rap. Her theory about PMS was that it simply lifted the veil. It wasn’t always pleasant to see the world so clearly, so it only happened once a month.

The light turned green, and Elise drove through the intersection. At the same time, David unlatched his seat belt and dove at the backseat, swiping the recorder from Jay Thomas’s hand.

“What the—?” Jay Thomas protested as David plopped back down.

“You’re not recording anything.” David examined the device and hit some buttons, presumably erasing files. “Especially not our lame private conversations. Pull that again and I’ll open the door and toss you out in the street.”

“That’s how I work,” Jay Thomas mumbled. “It’s the only way to be a good journalist.”

“Find another way.”

At a stop sign, David lowered his window and stuck out his head. “Hey,” he said to a kid straddling a bike. “Catch.” David tossed the recorder, and the kid caught it while Jay Thomas made a sputtering sound of outraged protest.

“It’s okay,” David shouted to the kid as Elise pulled through the intersection. “I’m a cop.” As if that would explain his actions.

“Is everybody here either hyperreactive or an asshole?” Jay Thomas asked.

David hit the “Power Window” button, once again sealing them off from the rest of Savannah. “Pretty much.”

CHAPTER 3

E
lise saw the beauty that was Savannah every single day. She lived in the heart of that beauty. She drove down the city’s tree-lined streets, passing under shadows of Spanish moss, sheltering and mysterious. She walked past blooming azaleas and magnolia blossoms.

Born here.

Abandoned here.

But time and familiarity hadn’t bred desensitization. Daily, the city took her breath away. Different times, different views, different lighting. But always an appreciation of the brick sidewalks edged with wrought iron and draped in pink blooms. The steeples and palm trees against the bluest sky and the whitest clouds. Fountains and street musicians and ships docked in the harbor. All of those things filled her heart and made her glad she hadn’t left—something she used to swear she’d do. But not so much anymore. Not so much since she’d made a conscious decision to embrace her heritage, regardless of how she felt about Jackson Sweet. Yes, she was the daughter of a root doctor. Daughter of a conjurer.

And maybe a bit of that decision not to leave had to do with David.

As they walked across the grass toward a gathering mob that indicated their target spot, she let out a sigh. “One of my favorite parks. Why in one of my favorite parks?”

The scene was familiar. Police cars, white coroner van, yellow crime-scene tape. Waiting in the wings was a threat of rain hinted at by a darkening sky.

Beside her, David matched her stride. “Beneath beauty lie many dark deeds.”

“I’m not familiar with that quote.” Jay Thomas trailed behind them, forgotten until he spoke. “Who said it?”

Without giving him a glance, David replied, “Me.”

The reporter’s pen scratched in his little notebook.

Elise felt bad about the recorder. Bad for Jay Thomas and bad for herself, because she was sure David’s behavior would mean a call to Hoffman’s office, where she’d be reprimanded. Funny how Elise had thought being head detective might put an end to those visits.

“Stay back,” David told the reporter once they reached the barrier.

Elise and David ducked under the yellow tape and were quickly spotted and recognized by a female officer who briefed them on the situation. “Body was found by a homeless man,” the officer said. “We’ve already taken his statement.”

“Anybody else see anything or hear anything?” Elise asked.

“Right now we only have the one person. Officers are canvassing nearby houses to see if we can find anything to add to the picture. And now”—she glanced up at the sky—“looks like rain. Sent someone for plastic tarps, and the crime-scene team is trying to collect as much evidence as possible before the storm hits.”

Elise and David did a cursory visual of the body. A young woman with long dark hair. Nude. Ankles bound with silver duct tape. Fingerprint bruises on her throat, arms, and thighs. Discolored and swollen face. Blue lips.

John Casper, coroner and medical examiner, straightened away from the body and gave them a nod of greeting, eyes silently communicating something none of them would talk about here.

Even in the darkest of circumstances, John could be counted on to lighten the mood. There was no sign of that happening now, his face pale and looking older than his thirty-some years.

A body left on display in the heart of one of the most beautiful and loved parks in Savannah was especially heinous. This was blatant. This was someone who wanted attention. This was a nose-thumbing at the police department and the city itself.

The young woman had been placed faceup, her arms bent on each side of her head in what Elise would describe as the goalpost position—just like the last body. And again like the last body, this one had what appeared to be a single word, written over and over, covering every visible piece of flesh.

Undeniably ritualistic.

“Damn.”

That one syllable from David said it all. It said everything they were both thinking.

The first body had been put on display, but they hadn’t wanted to think the worst. Sometimes family members or friends or boyfriends or sick kids did such things. It hadn’t meant there would be more—even though the profiler in David had worried that the unsolved crime might be the beginning of something bigger.

They wouldn’t know for sure until the autopsy, but a visual told Elise this was the same killer, same MO. Two didn’t mean serial killer, but it looked like they might be on their way.

“Damn,” David said again.

Someone jostled Elise. She looked over her shoulder to see Jay Thomas standing with a camera in his hand. Just seconds ago she’d felt bad about his lost recorder. Now she wanted to grab the camera, slam it to the ground, and stomp on it.

Instead, she grabbed it and stuck it in her pocket. “Get on the other side of the crime-scene tape and stay there,” she ordered. “And if I have to point out one more stupid thing you’re doing, you’re out of here. For good. Contract or no contract. Understand?”

He blinked behind his glasses. For a second she tried to read his reaction—she picked up on a quiet anger—but then she filed him away as unworthy of the moment and a waste of her focus.

“My camera?” he asked.

“You’ll get it back later. Once I erase the photos.”

He still didn’t leave, and now she was aware of David taking in the exchange.

“I’m supposed to shadow you,” Jay Thomas said. “Everywhere.”

“You are in my world, Jay Thomas Paul. And just because you’re shadowing me doesn’t mean you get a special pass to confidential information that could impact this case,” Elise told him. “Anything confidential will hit your eyes and ears the same time the rest of the media gets it. At a press conference. Understand?”

He looked from her to David, then past them to the body on the ground. Temporarily defeated, he nodded, spun on his heel, and walked away, giving the crime-scene tape an angry tug as he ducked under it and vanished into the crowd.

Elise turned back to the body, David beside her, everyone else engaged in their jobs.

David pulled out his phone and snapped several photos of the victim. “It’s not him.”

His words cut through the chaos in Elise’s head. She didn’t even pretend not to know what David was talking about. Tremain. The Organ Thief. The guy who’d kidnapped her and defaced her body and sexually assaulted her.

“There are similarities.” Her voice, as she attempted to control her emotions, was monotone. “The dark hair. The violence. The tape. The defacing of her skin with ink . . .”

“Tremain is dead.” David spoke slowly and clearly, but with words for her ears alone.

“We don’t know that,” she argued. “Until I see his body on a slab in the morgue, he’ll be out there to me. The possibility of his still being alive will haunt me.” She hated the word “closure,” but that was what she needed.

“I get it,” David said. “I do. But I shot him. He was dead.”

“Then what happened to his body?”

“Alligators dragged it away. Tide came up. Somebody found him and buried him.”

Because David needed her to believe, she pretended. She pretended in the very way she’d been pretending ever since finding out Tremain’s body had vanished from the island where they’d left it. And maybe, with time, the pretending would have worked. It might have eventually led to belief—belief that Tremain was truly dead—if not for these new reminders. If not for this person on the ground in front of her who’d most likely been tortured in much the same way Elise had been tortured. If not for the brutal assault and murder of two women in this beautiful city, both crime scenes deliberately creating an echo that couldn’t be ignored.

Survivor’s guilt. That was what a psychiatrist might say about Elise’s reaction. And it was true. Elise felt guilty for being alive when two women were dead.

She wanted to go home. Just go home.

She imagined herself in the safety of her living room, feet tucked under her in one corner of the couch, a drink in her hand, soft music playing. And after that drink, another. Then bed, with covers over her head.

Even as she focused on the body, Elise’s vision went half-dead in some unconscious primal attempt at self-preservation. She stared with clouded eyes, and her brain struggled to comprehend the shifting and melting in front of her. For a second she wondered if she was passing out.

Finally vocalizing her observation, she said, “The words—they’re moving.”

The letters on the body were changing, the black lines spreading against white skin. And then a cold droplet hit her cheek.

“Rain!” someone shouted.

Rain. Splashing on the body, washing the words away. Not only the words, but clues.

The careful control and methodical feel of the scene vanished. People scrambled to preserve as much evidence as possible.

A sheet of blue plastic appeared. As it was spread, the sound of the rain changed to the kind of silly noise that went along with frivolous pursuits like camping or a wedding that had gotten rained out. Not murder.

Elise found herself sharing a huge black umbrella of mysterious origin with David. The rain and the canopy created their own private world, but nonetheless David urged Elise away from the body in an attempt to find a spot of privacy. Once they were out of earshot of the other officers, he hunched his shoulders toward her and whispered, “Has Savannah ever had a serial killer?”

Serial killer. There it was. The words hung in the air. She wanted to grab them and stuff them in her jacket pocket, then burn the jacket once she got home.

She’d been head homicide detective a total of six months.

She looked up at David, at his blue eyes, his intense gaze, the jaw that always needed a shave, the dark hair, wet from the rain, hanging over his forehead. “I’m not ready for this,” she whispered. A confession for his ears and his ears alone.

“Nobody is ever ready for this.”

His words calmed the quaking in her bones. “Didn’t you work a serial killer case before coming here?” she asked. “I know we had Tremain and the TTX murders, but those fell outside of what I consider a standard serial killer profile. Those were personal, for profit. This . . . This seems textbook.”

An odd and unreadable expression flitted across David’s features while she vaguely recalled something she’d heard about him before he’d come to Savannah.

“A couple,” he said. “When I was with the FBI. I was called in to profile the Puget Sound Killer.”

She nodded. “I remember that case. I remember being thankful nothing like that could happen here.” God, she’d been so naive back then. “It was never solved, was it?”

“No.” As if to reassure her of his skill, he went on. “We were closing in when he vanished.”

“Maybe an alligator got him.” The words were out before she could stop them. Not the time for sarcasm.

“Don’t start that.”

But she felt as though the alligator pitch in reference to Tremain was just as ridiculous. A weak attempt to placate.
There, there
. “What do you think happened to him? The Sound Killer?”

“Maybe he was arrested for another crime. Or he got sick and could no longer kill. Or died. Something that physically put an end to the murders.”

“Like other famous serial killers,” Elise said. “That’s what people speculate, anyway. Because killers don’t just stop killing. Something
stops
them from killing.”

“Right.” He glanced over his shoulder, toward the activity and the body, then back at Elise. “Look, I’m good at what I do. You know that, right? I used to be one of the most promising profilers in the FBI.”

That was before.

“I’m just saying you aren’t alone,” he told her.

He was the stronger one right now. In this hour, this moment. “You should have taken the job as head homicide detective.” She meant it.

“It wasn’t offered to me. And even if it had been, you’re the better person for the position. I’m not exactly the most stable guy in the world.” Before she could either agree or argue, he added, “But I can be. When the situation calls for it. I can be.”

What a pair.

They could do this, she reassured herself. And really, who better to catch the perpetrator than someone like her? Someone who’d suffered at the hand of just such a sick bastard?

Pep talk over, Elise squared her shoulders and turned back to the crime scene.