Vicious (3 page)

Even in B-rated movies, it was always the person who walked through the door left ajar or into the dark alley who ended up dead or who discovered the body. It was a miracle anyone who had ever watched a movie like that still took the risk. Morbid curiosity, Jess supposed.

“Chuck’s is a restaurant? Bar?” She didn’t recognize the name, but then she’d been gone for a long time. Most of the places she had frequented as a fake ID toting teenager were long gone.

“Popular nightclub over on Tenth. Detective Wells is there now interviewing the manager and the employees who worked last night.”

Lori Wells was another respected member of SPU. Though Jess had only been away for the day, she was glad to be back at work with her team. She glanced at Harper’s profile as he drove through the darkness. These people felt like family.

Her arms went around her waist. Being a part of a family was something she’d never been very good at. Her sister, Lily, would say Jess was too busy with work for family stuff. Frankly, it was high time she got the hang of balancing the two. The child she carried was depending on her.

The baby was a secret she had to keep for a while longer—or at least until she figured out how to prevent Spears from discovering what he would no doubt see as a new pawn to use in his evil game.

Raleigh Avenue, Homewood, 10:33 p.m.

The small bungalow sat on a corner lot in a neighborhood that had seen better days. The homes were older, the yards a little larger. The cars belonging to the victims were parked in the driveway. Four BPD cruisers were on the scene with two blocking the street, while the officers kept traffic and pedestrians clear of the area. The crime scene unit had arrived and, of course, the usual news crew suspects. Questions were shouted at Jess as she walked toward the house. She ignored the reporters. There was nothing to tell just yet.

“The ME en route?” she asked as she and Harper ducked under the yellow tape officially proclaiming the property as a place where bad things had happened.

He nodded. “Dr. Baron’s heading this way now. She’s sent me three,” he glanced at his cell, “make that four text messages wanting to know what was taking us so long. She didn’t want to show up until you were on the scene.”

They were all waiting for Jess to arrive and take charge. Murder was her specialty. Typically, she considered that an asset, somehow tonight she just felt tired.

As tired as she was, she was surprised Deputy Chief Black wasn’t here insisting his division work this double homicide. He and Jess had issues when it came to who was assigned what case. Maybe Black was resigned to having her around.

If he wasn’t, he might as well get that way. Jess was here to stay.

“Officer Cook is taking statements from the two uniforms that were first on the scene.” Harper gestured to the official BPD car parked in the driveway behind the victims’ vehicles. “Jernigan’s waiting in the cruiser. She didn’t want to stay in the house.”

“Can’t say as I blame her.” Jess looked from the cruiser to the home now filled with official personnel. “I’ll come back to Jernigan after I’ve had a look inside.” The sooner she examined the scene, the more quickly she could start to form an assessment of the killer. His every move told her something about him and his reason for committing murder. Uncovering the motive was key in finding the killer.

The uniform guarding the front door stepped aside as Jess approached the stoop. Harper passed her gloves and shoe covers. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

“I know you’ve seen a lot in your time with the FBI,” Harper was saying as he tugged on the required protective wear, “but this is damned bizarre. Whoever killed these women is one sick puppy.”

Jess reminded herself to catch a last big breath before entering the house. “Lead the way, Sergeant.”

The odor of coagulated blood hung thick in the air. Not that it had far to go in the small home. Forensic techs were snapping photos and dusting for prints in the main living area. There were no immediate indications of trouble. The space was sparsely furnished, with little of the usual clutter of everyday life. If the home had air conditioning, it wasn’t working very well. It was as hot and humid inside as it was out, making the smell all the more overwhelming.

“No air conditioning?” Jess dabbed at her forehead, perspiration forming on her skin already. If she didn’t know better, she would swear she was suffering with hot flashes.
Did pregnant women get hot flashes?

“On the fritz,” Harper explained. “Windows are painted shut. Doesn’t look like anyone’s tried to open them in the last couple of decades.”

Jess wondered how the women had made it through the long, hot summer. And there were still another three or four weeks to go.

“We believe the killer washed up in the bathroom,” Harper gestured to the kitchen side of the living area, “and then exited through the back door.”

Jess followed him across the room, studying the details that painted a picture of how the victims had lived. Unwashed cups in the sink and paper plates in the trash suggested busy women on the go. Cabinets were mostly bare but there were grapes, yogurt, and vitamin water in the fridge. She opened the freezer door, found one unopened bottle of Vodka and a carton of chocolate ice cream, a girl’s best friends after a bad date.

She turned to the open back door. “Maybe that’s what he wanted us to think.” If he’d gone to all the trouble to clean up, why not close the doors? Why leave the front door ajar and go out the back? Were one or both open while he went about his heinous business?

Was he just arrogant enough not to care? Or was he driven by emotions fierce enough to prevent him from thinking logically? Then again, someone or something may have interrupted him, forcing him to rush away.

Jess considered the room once more. “No indication the locks were tampered with?”

“None.”

“Seems unlikely the killer was a stranger.” Either that or the ladies failed to lock up when they came home. Had the killer followed them home or was he invited? Were the victims’ actions compromised by excessive amounts of alcohol or some other drug?

“The bodies are this way, ma’am.”

Jess’s stomach did a little quiver and she hesitated. “Let’s see where our perp washed up first.” She couldn’t remember the last time she had put off her assessment of the victim—victims, in this instance. The ME wasn’t here yet so she had some time. Still, she didn’t like this unexpected need to hesitate.

Had pregnancy hormones overridden her usual unflappability?

As she followed Harper, she hoped all the fatigue and turbulent emotions she was experiencing were limited to the first trimester. Otherwise, she might just have to take that vacation Dan wanted so badly for her to consider.

Like that was going to happen with Spears setting the agenda.

Keep your mind on the business at hand, Jess
.

The main living area flowed into a cramped hallway. Harper stood to the side of the bathroom door on the right so Jess could have a look at the tiny space. Bloody footprints led from the hallway’s hardwood floors to the usually white tile of the bathroom floor. More blood was smeared on the white walls, the sink and the tile in the shower. The hand and footprints were too small, in Jess’s opinion, to be a man’s. She crouched down and had a closer look. Size seven, she decided. Same size she wore.

“There are an awful lot of prints here for one perp,” she noted absently. Either the killer had done a lot of going back and forth or there was more than one, both about a size seven. And a hell of a lot of blood. What had the perp done, used it for body wash? The blood was dry now. The killer or killers had been gone for a while.

“There’s a lot of smearing,” Harper pointed out. “Makes lifting a good print more difficult.”

Just their luck. Jess pushed to her feet. “The killer certainly didn’t appear to care about leaving behind possible evidence.” There was no visible attempt to clear the endless impressions away.

“We could be dealing with perps who were strung out on something,” Harper offered. “Too messed up to think straight.”

She examined the footprints once more. “Could be teenagers.”

“Definitely someone of a smaller stature,” Harper agreed.

Jess turned away from the bathroom. “Possibly female.”

“That would explain a lot,” Harper said, rather mysteriously. “This way, Chief.”

There were maybe six steps between the bathroom and the first bedroom. The stench of decomposition grew stronger but the room was clear of any visible blood. There was a single bed and a dresser. An art easel with a half finished scene on the canvas waited on one side of the room. Jess leaned close to the unfinished art and sniffed, smelled the oil in the paints. She touched it. The paint was still a little tacky. Recent work. The closet in the room was empty, and so were the dresser drawers.

Back in the hallway, a few more steps brought them to the second of the two bedrooms. It was this slightly larger room where the final act in two lives had played out. Jess braced herself.

“No one’s been in here yet except for the responding officers and then me.”

Harper’s voice sounded far away as Jess stared at the scene, her mind centering completely on the grotesque images.

Both victims were naked and restrained. Jess moved toward the first. She lay supine on the bed. Braided nylon ropes secured her wrists and ankles to the brass bedposts. A sex toy intended for giving a partner pleasure was fastened across her pelvis. Around her neck, a leather strap was pulled tight. The way her eyes bulged and the open mouth suggested asphyxiation. Then there was the pièce de résistance—a gapping hole in the center of her chest.

“Alisha Burgess, twenty-six. School teacher.” Harper waited at the foot of the bed. “No criminal record.”

Burgess had dark blond hair. She was tall and thin. Her finger and toenails were well manicured. Her body was lean and toned.

Jess shifted her attention to the final act of depravity committed by the killer, the one that told far more about him or her than anything else in the room. The victim’s chest had been opened in a savage, primitive manner. A number of tools—hammer, box cutter, hatchet and pry bar—had been used to hack open her ribcage and then abandoned haphazardly around the room. Was this killer just careless or totally arrogant?

The lack of arterial spray confirmed the damage to the chest had been done after the heart stopped beating. At least the vic hadn’t suffered that horror before taking her last breath.

Leaning closer, Jess’s stomach did a warning flip-flop even as her throat tightened. “Her heart is missing.”

“Yes, ma’am. If either one is here, we haven’t found them.”

A generic list of motives for removing a victim’s heart immediately cataloged in Jess’s thoughts. Jealousy. Regret. Hatred. She moved around the bed and to the other side of the room to get a better look at the second victim whose body hung in front of the the closet doors. The doors were a set of bi-fold louvered ones about four, maybe five feet wide. Wrist shackles had been mounted to the wood facing on either side.

At least one of the two women was no novice at sex games.

To each her own
.

The second vic was tall and slender as well, with long auburn hair. She hung by her wrists, her head lolled to one side and dropped back as if she were staring heavenward.

“Lisa Templeton,” Harper said. “Twenty-seven. She was a manager at an adult entertainment shop over on Valley Avenue.”

Whatever her cause of death, which wasn’t readily discernible, Templeton’s heart, like her roommate’s, had been excavated from her chest. There was more blood but not arterial spray. Gravity had drained a good portion from her body. Blood had spread across the hardwood floor.

That tightening in her belly warned Jess again. She hadn’t barfed at a crime scene in twenty years, but being pregnant wasn’t going to make this part of her work easy.

Templeton’s wrists didn’t bear the markings of a prisoner who had attempted to escape her bonds and her feet were unrestrained. What had prevented her from fighting her killer? Jess scanned the body for some indication of cause of death. The state of rigor and visible lividity in both bodies indicated death had occurred more than a few hours ago.

Templeton’s eyes bulged and her mouth was open but there were no ligature marks on the neck or any other indication of strangulation on the throat or face. Jess dug a penlight from her bag. She needed a look into Templeton’s throat, but that wasn’t possible without a stepladder.

“I’ll grab a chair from the kitchen,” Harper offered, recognizing her problem.

“Thanks, Sergeant.”

While he hurried back to the kitchen, Jess worked at calming her stomach’s reaction to the scene. These two women needed her on her toes. No one deserved to die in such a vicious manner.

Harper returned with the chair. “ME’s here.”

“Just in time,” Jess muttered as she climbed up onto the chair’s wooden seat. The victim was in full rigor, but her mouth was wide open. Jess aimed the light into her throat and immediately spotted what she imagined would prove to be the cause of death. Something neon pink and possibly plastic or rubber had been jammed deep into the woman’s throat. “Well that explains the asphyxiation.”

Harper helped Jess down. However experienced these women were at sex games, their ménage-a-trois or whatever it was, had taken a wrong turn.

“Sergeant, check with Detective Wells and see if we know yet who these ladies left the club with last night. We need names and descriptions, if possible, of anyone who left about the same time they did.” Jess considered the room again. “We need to know who they partied with on a regular basis.” She exhaled, wished she could exorcise the smell of rotting blood from her lungs. “Let’s start with Templeton’s coworker.”

“You want to question her here?”

By now neighbors would be gathering near the police blockade. Reporters would be growing impatient. “Let’s take her downtown. Also, locate the landlord and find out how long the ladies have lived here and if there’s been any trouble.”