Cold Truth (3 page)

Cass could see the woman now, facedown in the marsh, her arms outstretched, hands grabbing on to the only things she could reach . . .

She stood and walked back up the path to the road, snapping shots of everything she felt relevant, then she caught Spencer’s eye.

“Got something, Burke?” Spencer called, and she responded by waving him over to where she stood.

“I think I found the path the killer took into the marsh,” she said when Spencer joined her.

“This is his way in, and out, I suspect,” she told him. “And down here—please watch where you walk—look here . . .”

She led him down the path and to the depression in the reeds.

“I think she may have been unconscious when he took her out of the car and began to carry her down here. Then, when he got about here, she either became too heavy or woke up and began to fight, and he dumped her on the ground over there.”

“What makes you think she was still alive?” Spencer asked, and Cass pointed to the bunched and broken reeds.

“I think she grabbed on to the reeds and tried to crawl away. I think this is where she was attacked. I think he hurt her here.”

Cass knelt on one knee to obtain close-up shots of the broken stalks.

Spencer stepped off the path and looked around.

“He could have taken her down this way,” he pointed toward the left, “right to the stream. He might have waded through it, just like we did, to avoid leaving footprints.”

“Let’s check it out.”

They picked their way through the marsh to the bank of the stream. From there they followed the current back to where the body lay.

“Find anything?” Tasha asked without looking up from her task, scraping under the victim’s fingernails into small plastic bags, one for each finger.

“We found evidence that she may have been alive when she was brought down here.” Cass stepped from the water onto a nearby rock and described the scene they had discovered in the marsh.

“I agree, she died here.” Tasha turned to drop the bags into a container. “Fixed lividity here on the right hip and along the thigh and upper arm. Just the way we found her. Rigor’s set in, we got the flies but no maggots yet, so we know right off the bat that we’re within twelve hours. Body temp right now is 85.1 degrees Fahrenheit, so, since we know that the body loses about one and a half degrees every hour after death, that means . . .”

“She’s been dead about nine hours.” Cass looked at her watch. It was just a few minutes after nine. “Which takes us to around midnight last night.”

“That’s my best estimate, though it could have been a little less. It was cool last night, could have lowered her body temp a little faster.” Tasha stood up and motioned for the county medical examiner. “Dr. Storm, she’s all yours.”

“Thanks.” The ME, a stocky woman in her early sixties, stepped forward, her expression solemn.

Tasha stripped off her gloves and dropped them into her open bag, telling Cass, “I should have something for you by tomorrow. At least by then I’ll know if he left any DNA. I’m hoping there are some skin cells under her nails, if nothing else. Then we’ll see what Dr. Storm has for us. In any event, I’ll be in touch as soon as I know something.”

Cass nodded. “I’d appreciate it.”

“By the way, cause of death appears to be manual strangulation,” the tech told Cass. “Looks like she was sexually assaulted, but we’ll have to wait for the ME’s findings to know for sure. We’ll also want to know which came first, the assault or the strangulation.”

Tasha closed the black bag into which she’d tucked the samples she’d painstakingly collected. “I’ll head on back to the lab now, and try to sort this all out.”

She smiled at Cass, then added, “Then you get to figure out what it all means.”

“With luck.”

“Anyone know who she is?” Tasha hoisted the bag over her shoulder.

“Not that I’m aware. Helms found her clothes in the marsh, they’ve been bagged for the lab. Jeans, T-shirt, bra, panties, one brown leather sandal, canvas purse,” Cass told her.

“Guess you weren’t lucky enough to find a wallet with ID in the purse?”

“No wallet.”

“Well, I guess that’s your job, right?” Tasha started toward the county van, which was parked up near the road. “To figure out who she was and why this happened to her?”

“We’ll do our best.” Cass fell in step alongside Tasha.

“When was the last time you guys in Bowers had a homicide?”

“Aside from the hit-and-run we had last month, this is it. We’ve had a few domestics over the years, but for the most part, this has been a pretty quiet town. I guess if you had to depend on us to keep you busy, you’d be pretty bored,” Cass said when they reached the van.

“Please, we have plenty to do without your homicides.” Tasha opened the back of the van and set the bag in. “We cover the entire county. There’s always something going on somewhere. And there’s no shortage of rapes, assaults, burglaries, you name it. Plus, things will start to pick up now, especially when the kids start coming for senior week.”

Tasha grimaced. “I hate senior week. Then, of course, straight through till Labor Day the entire county is hopping. All these little shore towns with their rentals—families and college kids—and then there’s the daytrippers. Over the past few years, we’ve had a bunch of homicides. I hope this is the only one you’ll have to deal with.”

Tasha opened the driver’s-side door and hopped in.

“I’ll get back to you as soon as I can,” she told Cass.

“Thanks. I appreciate it. I’ll make a set of photos for you and send them over.” Cass stepped back and watched the van pull onto the highway, then scanned the small crowd that gathered around the officer who had found the body, and who was now retelling the story for the newly arrived chief of police.

Denver stood quietly, occasionally nodding, until the officer concluded his verbal report. Then, without so much as a comment, the chief followed the path to the body, and stood over it, wordlessly watching the ME’s ministrations. Finally he turned and looked up to the crowd at the edge of the roadway. When he met Cass’s eyes, he held them for a very long minute before turning away abruptly and walking back to his car.

Cass watched Denver’s Crown Vic pull away from the side of the road before motioning to Spencer, who was in deep conversation with one of the EMTs.

“I’m going to go back to the station and check for missing persons,” she called to him.

“I think I’ll stick around here for a while longer, grab a ride back with Helms,” Spencer replied.

“Okay. I’ll see you there.”

Cass walked back down toward the stream, pausing about ten feet from where the body lay sadly exposed. The limbs, where rigor mortis was beginning to set in, were covered with eager flies seeking an opening. The medical examiner was still conducting her inspection of the body, and Cass found she could not bear to watch this latest invasion of the unnamed woman. She crossed the stream and followed the trail along the other side to the two-lane road where she’d left her car. She got in and turned on the ignition, her movements becoming more and more robotic with each passing moment. She turned the car around and drove, not to the station, but to a lonely stretch of road.

Six miles down, she took a right on a narrow lane that led toward the bay. Minutes later she reached a run-down house that sat off the side of the road, the sole structure for another quarter mile in either direction. In the overgrown yard sat the shell of an old Boston Whaler, its hull dry-rotted. Cass parked the car behind the boat and walked around to the back of the house, where three rickety steps led to an even more unstable back porch, which once upon a time had been painted white.

Time and neglect had stripped the wood and weathered it gray. The screen on the back door had long since eroded, and the windows no longer closed tightly. Cass sat on the top step and looked off into the tall cattails that grew from the marsh straight on up to the back of the dilapidated garage. Off to the left was a pond, and from where she sat, she could see a small blue heron wading through the water, head down, cautiously stalking its prey.

She balled her hands and covered her eyes, but all she could see was the body of that dark-haired young woman sprawled out upon the rock.

Oblivious to the sweat that covered her face and dampened her light blue T-shirt down to her waist, she sat immobile and tried to control the emotions that churned within her. Of course, she’d seen dead bodies before, but she’d never reacted like this.

Well, hadn’t her therapist warned her that this might happen someday? That if she persisted in a career in law enforcement, sooner or later she might have to deal with something that might take her back to a place she’d rather not go?

The ringing of her cell phone jarred her, and she answered it on the second ring.

“Burke.”

“Are you on your way in?” Spencer asked, his voice tense.

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll meet you there. I just heard from Denver.” He paused. “Apparently we have a situation.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.” She hung up and slid the phone back into her jacket pocket.

She sat for another few moments and watched the heron grab something from the water, throw its head back, and swallow its meal in one quick motion. The wind hissed through the cattails, the hushed sound soothing her as few things could. She remembered countless nights when she lay awake in the room under the eaves, right up there on the second floor, listening to that very same sound as she fell asleep. It had comforted her then and it comforted her now.

A moment later she was walking toward her car, her hands steady, her pulse almost normal, wondering what, on this day marked by murder, constituted a “situation.”

Craig Denver sat in the chair the town council had surprised him with as a gift for his twenty-fifth year on the job and simply stared out the window next to his desk. For years, he’d wondered what he’d do if this day ever came, and now it was here, and he was still wondering.

He spread the piece of paper that had arrived earlier that day in a plain white envelope that bore no address. Phyl had found it on the floor of the lobby, near the front door, when she was on her way into the building after having picked up lunch for herself and the chief. She would have tossed it, except for the fact that it was sealed. Her curiosity piqued, she’d opened it, and having glanced at the message once, took it immediately to the chief’s office.

The paper itself was undistinguished, everyday computer stock, the kind that could be purchased at any one of a number of chain office-supply stores. It was the message that had caught Phyl’s attention, a message comprised of glued letters cut from newspapers and magazines, much as a child might do for a homework assignment.

Hey, Denver! Have you found her yet?

She’d carried it down the hall, holding it between two fingers to avoid getting her prints on it, walked into the chief’s office without knocking—something she rarely did—and dropped it on his desk. He had unfolded it, then stared at it for the longest time.

Finally, he asked quietly, “Where did this come from?”

“I found it on the floor in the lobby.”

“You didn’t see anyone . . . ?”

“No one. I’d just picked up lunch from Stillman’s, I wasn’t gone ten minutes. I didn’t see anyone on my way out, or on my way back in.”

“Okay.” He’d nodded slowly. “Thank you.”

Most of the force was still out at Wilson’s Creek, so he dusted the envelope and the white sheet of paper for prints. There were none except for the smudged partials that he suspected would prove to be Phyl’s. He’d reached for the phone, and called in Spencer and Burke.

Denver sat back in his chair and sighed deeply, wanting nothing more than to start this day over and have it turn out differently.

Coincidence, or copycat?

Either way, it wasn’t good.

Either way, shit was going to be stirred up, sure enough, and he wasn’t the only one who was going to have to deal with it.

He rubbed his eyes wearily and waited for his detectives to arrive.

T
wo

Cass flew into the parking lot and swung into her reserved spot. Once inside the building, she waved absently to the desk sergeant as she walked briskly through the lobby.

“Spencer here yet?” she asked over her shoulder.

“He went back about a minute ago,” the sergeant replied.

Cass followed the hall to the chief’s office, knocking on the door although it stood partially open.

Denver motioned her in without looking. He sat at his desk, a thick file in front of him.

“We’ve had an odd development.”

He slid a piece of white paper across the desk, and both detectives leaned forward to get a closer look. “This was found in the lobby today.”

Hey, Denver! Have you found her yet?

“That would refer to the victim we found out in the marsh?” Spencer asked.

“Yes.”

The chief tapped his pipe on the edge of the desk. The bowl was empty of tobacco, as it had been every day for the past four years since he’d successfully given up smoking. He still, however, had a need to handle it in times of extreme stress. Like now.

“So he’s taunting us?” Spencer again.

“In a way. He’s deliberately trying to remind us of one of our old cases.”

“How old is old?” Spencer asked. “Two years? Five?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Twenty-
six
?” Spencer looked from the chief to Cass, then back again. “Twenty-six
years
?”

Denver nodded as he slipped on a pair of thin plastic gloves and opened the file. He took out another white envelope and removed a sheet of white lined notebook paper, which he unfolded and held up for both detectives to see. The message had been composed with letters cut from newspapers and magazines.

Hey, Wainwright! I left something for you on the beach!

And then a second sheet from a second envelope.

Hey, Wainwright! Did you find her yet?

“George Wainwright was the chief of police here in Bowers Inlet for almost thirty-five years,” Denver explained, his voice softening.

“Well, the notes sure look the same. Did you ever find out who sent those?” Spencer pointed to the letters that lay, one next to the other, across the center of the desk.

“We know who sent them. We just don’t know his name.”

“I don’t understand . . .”

“The Bayside Strangler mailed those letters to Chief Wainwright,” Denver said.

“The Bayside Strangler?” Spencer leaned forward in his seat. “Hey, I heard about him. Geez, he must have killed, what, nine, ten women . . . ?”

“Thirteen,” the chief told him. “He killed thirteen women, back in the summer of ’79.”

“All in Bowers Inlet?” Spencer asked.

“No. Just the two here,” Denver replied. “But over the course of that one summer, he hit several of the other small bay towns as well—hence ‘the Bayside Strangler.’ Killion Point, Tilden, Hasboro, Dewey—he hit all of ’em at least once. Then the killings just stopped.”

“Just like that? Like, he just left the building?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Denver said dryly.

“And there was never a suspect?” Spencer frowned.

“Nothing. No idea who he was or why he started, why he stopped.” Denver shook his head. “No one had ever seen this guy. We had no description, no evidence to help us narrow down the field. And think about how huge that field was. Besides the permanent residents of all these little towns, you have the summer people. The ones who come back every year and own or rent the same house, the ones who used to live here but come back in the summer because their family still owns property here. You have the rentals—Christ, they change every week or two. And then you have the summer help, the kids who come for ten weeks to work at the shore, then leave and go back to wherever they came from. Day-fishers, day-trippers.”

“So he just moved away . . .”

Cass spoke up for the first time. “Most serial killers only stop because they die or go to prison. Moving away doesn’t usually stop them from killing.”

“I guess if there’d been a serial killer someplace else with the same MO you’d have heard about it.”

“Maybe, maybe not. If he’d gone on another spree like he did here, it would have made the papers, but we may not have seen those papers out here,” Denver said.

“Twenty-some years ago, there wasn’t any way to track something like that,” Cassie noted. “No national data banks, no central records.”

The chief nodded. “You’re right. Chances are, he just moved on. Now, the young woman found in the marsh . . . do we know who she is?”

“Not yet. There was no ID, no wallet,” Cass said.

Denver stared at her.

“Chief?” She waved her hand in front of his face.

“No ID at all?” he asked.

“None. Why?”

“Just coincidentally, the Bayside Strangler always took his victims’ wallets,” he replied. “Of course, not knowing if this woman had a wallet on her at the time, we don’t want to jump to conclusions.”

“That’s a pretty odd coincidence,” Spencer pointed out.

“She might not have carried ID. I can’t tell you how many times my own daughter has gone out and left her purse or her wallet right there on the kitchen counter.”

“Still—” Spencer began, but Denver cut him off.

“We’re not going to connect the dots just yet, Detective. Understand?” Denver shrugged. “As tempting as it is. It’s more likely that someone is trying to throw us off.”

“Yes, but—”

“Let’s focus on our victim, shall we? Start checking the missing persons reports, statewide. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find, in the end, that we’ve got a guy who’s killed his wife or girlfriend and has enough knowledge of the Bayside Strangler to try to muddy the waters. It was no secret that the Strangler had sent Wainwright taunting notes. Anyone could have remembered that. And the fact that the victims’ IDs were stolen, well, maybe this guy figures if he takes the wallet, he sends the letter, everyone will assume there’s a copycat Strangler out there and take the heat off him. Let’s not automatically buy in to that, all right? I wanted you to be aware of what we dealt with before, but let’s not assume. Let’s start by finding out who our victim is.

“Put your focus on her,” Denver repeated, “so that we can find her killer.”

“But we can compare the evidence, right?” Spencer asked as he stood. “The old to whatever new forensics comes up with?”

“Back then, fingerprints were the best you could hope for, and unfortunately, this guy didn’t leave any. None that we found, anyway. Thank God, investigative techniques have come a long way since then, but we don’t have anything to compare.”

Spencer scratched behind his right ear. “All those crime scenes and no evidence? Hard to believe.”

“Today, a good CSI can get prints off a victim’s skin. Scrapings from under the nails. Fibers and hair. They can test trace found at the scene. Dirt found on carpets, all sorts of things. Back then, the techniques were not quite as sophisticated. DNA was just a glimmer in the eyes of a few scientists twenty-six years ago.” Denver seemed distracted for a moment, then said, “I was a rookie here in 1979. I worked that case. I have to admit, seeing that body this morning took me right back. It’s uncanny . . .”

“Then, you remember those cases firsthand,” Spencer said.

“Like it was yesterday. The first victim here in Bowers Inlet was a thirty-four-year-old woman named Alicia Coors. She disappeared from her home and was found the next morning on one of the dunes down past Thirty-sixth Street. And that was just the beginning. Every few days, there’d be another, somewhere in the area. All women about the same age—late-twenties to mid-thirties. All were sexually assaulted and found dumped in one of the marshes. Cause of death in each case, manual strangulation. All left posed in the same manner.”

“How were they left?” Spencer asked.

“Pretty much the way that woman was left this morning.”

“Why would he do that?” Spencer scratched behind his ear.

“That’s a question a profiler might be able to answer. Unfortunately, back then, there were no profilers.” The chief shrugged. “I don’t know what motivated him then, and I don’t know what’s motivating someone now. And I don’t want to jump to conclusions. So let’s just follow the evidence and hope it leads to the truth.”

He stood up, a clear indication that the meeting had concluded.

“Spencer, I want you checking missing persons immediately.”

“On my way.” Spencer got up and headed out the door.

“Anything in particular for me?” Cass asked.

“Yes. I’d like a word with you.” He pointed to the door and said, “Close it.”

Cass did as she was told, then turned to face the chief.

“Are you going to be all right with this?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Seriously, Cass, if it’s going to be a problem for you . . .”

“It’s not going to be a problem.” Cass was beginning to bristle.

Denver sighed. “I’m asking because I’m concerned about what you might have felt, looking at that body today . . .”

“She wasn’t my first dead body, Chief,” Cass told him softly. “She won’t be my last.”

“I’m aware there have been others. But this one . . . I just wasn’t sure if this might not be . . . troubling for you.”

“Of course it troubles me, but not in the way you might think.” She smiled at him with true affection, grateful for his kindness, understanding where he was going with this. “I appreciate that you . . . remember. And that you care enough to ask. But I’m fine. I have to be. This is my job.”

He nodded. “I’m going to have to take your word for it. Give the county CSI team a call and see if they have anything yet.”

She started for the door, then turned and said softly, “You know, Chief, I didn’t see her that day. I never saw her body.”

“I’m sorry I brought it up, Cass. I really am. It’s just that . . .” He shook his head, not certain that he could put into words what he wanted to say.

“It’s okay. Thanks, Chief.” She walked through the door and closed it behind her.

Denver rose and walked to the window and watched a pair of catbirds as they diligently built their nest in the tangle of rosebushes not ten feet away.

“I didn’t see her that day. I never saw her body . . .”

Denver wished he could say the same. When he’d seen the young woman’s body this morning, he’d had one of the first true déjà vu moments of his entire life.

And even now, in his mind’s eye, he could still see the body of Jenny Burke, lying on her back on the floor of her bedroom, her hair spilled around her like a dark halo, her eyes open but unseeing. For just a moment, back there in the marsh this morning, it had been Jenny’s face he’d seen. It had been the hair, he told himself. It was just all that long dark hair, and the way the arms had been positioned.

Of course, that was where the similarities between the two situations ended. The crimes—and the crime scenes—had been totally different. And Jenny had not been sexually assaulted.

And, he reminded himself, Jenny’s killer had been found hiding in the garage, covered with Bob Burke’s blood. He’d been arrested, tried, convicted. The Strangler, on the other hand, had never been identified.

It had just been the hair, Denver told himself again, that had reminded him of Jenny. All that long dark hair, spread out over the rock, had, just for a split second, brought back that day. For just a moment, he’d been a rookie again, standing in the doorway looking at the first dead body he’d ever seen. That it had been the body of a woman he’d known had marked his baptism with that much more fire.

He’d hated to bring it up to Cass, but he’d needed to put it on the table. Had he overreacted? Maybe so.

Oh, hell, of course he had. He had forgotten that Cass had never made it to her mother’s bedroom before the killer had turned on her. She wouldn’t have known the way the body had lain, the way the hair had fanned out.

“I didn’t see her that day. I never saw her body . . .”

He shivered, remembering that nightmarish day.

They’d talked about it, when she’d come in for her interview. She had her reasons for becoming a cop, and he respected her for it. But she had to know up front he’d been there that day, and if she had a problem with that . . . if working for him would be a daily reminder of things she couldn’t deal with, she needed to face up to it before she started.

“No,” she’d said. “I knew who you were before I applied for the job. You knew my parents before . . .
before.
I know what you did that day. I want to work for you.”

“I won’t give you special treatment because your folks were old friends,” he’d told her, “or for any other reasons.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

“Well, you scored highest in your class in all areas. You’re the best marksman in your group. I’d be a fool not to hire you, wouldn’t I?”

“It could be construed as discrimination, sir,” she had said, a tiny smile turning up one side of her mouth.

“Yes, well, we wouldn’t want to discriminate against you, would we? Don’t want the FOP on my back.”

“Thank you, Chief Denver,” she’d said before she left his office that day. “I’ll be a good cop.”

And she had been. When the detective position had opened up three years earlier, she’d been the first to apply. He’d had no doubts that she’d qualify, and he’d been secretly pleased when she’d beaten out all the other candidates for the job. Only the fact that she couldn’t be everywhere, day or night, had prompted him to ask the town for a second detective earlier in the year.

In his heart, the chief knew that he’d been bound to her by the events of that day twenty-six years earlier, and he made an effort to never let it show.

Was she aware of it? He wondered sometimes.

True to his word, he’d never shown favoritism in any way, and in fairness to her, she’d never asked for any. She did her job well, was well liked in the community, and had been commended on a number of occasions. Today was the first time in her ten years on the force that he’d ever even brought up the subject of their shared past. He hoped it would be the last time he would feel compelled to do so.

He picked up the stack of photos of the still-unnamed victim and studied them, one by one.