Authors: J. A. Carlton
“Baski,” he answered in monotone.
“Ming just called. You and Edwards need to get your asses down to the East end of Fiddler Woods.” Captain Zegler announced tiredly on the other end.
Not another one,
“Jase is in Glen Falls, Cap, what’s up?”
“Looks like your boy hit another one.”
“You sure?” Pete closed the case file stuffing the folder under the pile of newspapers and circulars that covered the dining table before slinging his jacket on.
“Yeah, Ming’s pretty sure, except its uglier this time than it’s been before.”
With a sigh, he pat his buddy on the head, feeling his strong purr buzzing through his skull, then headed quickly out the door.
“I’m on my way.”
Even if he hadn’t been on the force for almost 12 years, and partnered with one of the most tenacious detective’s County had to offer, Pete still would have been drawn to the axis of activity, Ming Lee. She was the sun around which county forensics revolved, and no one was exempt from her gravitational pull.
Over on a park bench, surrounded by EMT’s, Paulson and Rumsfeld; a fifty-something balding jogger sat panting and looking infinitely worse for the wear.
“Hey, Ming.” Pete greeted the tiny woman with the majestic bearing.
“Baski.”
She motioned to a cordoned off area guarded by uniformed officers, “Body’s over there.” then turned her attention back to her notebook.
“In a sec,” he nodded, “who found her, Mr. health-and-fitness over there?”
“Yeah, not a pretty sight, I’m surprised he didn’t keel over himself,” she shook her head, her ruby colored lips bowing downward.
“You said it’s different this time?” He asked, knowing what a frown of that particular depth meant.
“I think your boy’s about to shoot down that proverbial slippery slope. So far, he’s been fairly well controlled, but this, this was …different,” she scowled.
Copycat different? How different?
“You sure it’s the same guy?” he asked quietly.
She flipped back a page in the notebook, nodding distractedly, “Bound with duct tape, hands behind the body before posing, sodomized, no prints that we’ve been able to find yet,” she nodded, “everything points to him.”
Pete scrubbed his buzz cut frustratedly, “Son of a bitch.”
Off to the side, the jogger lurched off the bench to the trash can where he retched violently.
“Running man’s taking it pretty hard,” Pete muttered a scant second before an irate Ming grabbed him by the arm, dragging him through the uniformed officers to the scene where she pointed to the body.
“You think ANY civilian should be ABLE to hold their hurl after finding that!”
Details jumped out at the detective,
it never gets any easier, I guess that’s a good thing.
The first thing that screamed for notice was the yellow of the cervical vertebrae exposed through the meat and severed vessels of the woman’s neck.
He could see that the back of the blouse was white, but the front was red and brown depending on the level of saturation by blood.
Okay, so she was face down when he was stabbing her. That tracks with the sodomy. Some of the hits were forceful enough to go all the way through but…
he looked around on the ground and shook his head.
She was moved. Where’s the rest of the blood? Where’d he do the deed?
He wondered, taking in the rest of the details.
Had to have been relatively close by,
he noted the position of the left hand, strewn through the underbrush, begging for attention.
Her skirt was rucked up over her waist, her knees were bent and spread, though her ankles were still bound, and her right hand had been positioned between her legs.
Pete leaned over the face, fighting a squirrelly feeling in the pit of his belly. The woman’s eyes were rolled partially up into her skull, but the sudden frown that pulled his mouth down was telling.
“You know her,” Ming realized.
Swallowing hard and pulling his cell phone the detective nodded, “Son of a bitch…”
--
Jase couldn’t help the frown that came with the sight of the woman he loved looking so pale and drawn. Everything was up in the air, her life was in shambles, and since it wasn’t his case, the only thing he could really do about it was to be there. He tried not to remember the last time he felt so inept.
“I’m so sorry, Sammy.” he tried to console, wondering when she’d be able to really deal with the fallout from the bomb that old biddy Gertrude Waldham dropped this morning.
They’d no sooner reached Sophie and Bill’s front door than the bell rang.
“
Ms. Waldham,” Sam greeted in surprise, actually backing into Jase.
The old woman with the dowager’s hump and the black lacquer cane forced her way past them both and into the entryway.
“
I thought you were going to call?” Sam asked. Her voice was edged in tension, a warning sound that Jase knew well.
She was perturbed.
“
I decided you’ve waited long enough, is there some place we can discuss this privately?” she sneered. In spite of the fact that she was at least a foot shorter than Jase she somehow still managed to appear to be looking down her nose at him.
“
I’m sorry, Ms. Waldham, we’re on our way back to Dubuque, we have business to attend to.”
“
I assure you, there is nothing more important than what I have to say.” The old woman peered left and right before deciding on the slightly more formal living room.
Jase felt Sam stiffen beneath his touch for a split second before she slid out and away from him.
“
Excuse me!” Sam demanded, following the uninvited harridan deeper into the house.
“
I’m sorry, ma’am, but you have NO clue who I am or what my business is, and frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass about YOUR business…” the young woman stormed.
“
We’ll see.” the old woman lowered herself shakily into a chair, sliding kid skin gloves from her knobby twisted fingers.
‘
Lady you don’t wanna get my girl riled up,’ Jase thought while drawing an immediate comparison between the old woman and the Wicked Stepmother from Disney’s Cinderella, ‘yep, retro hairdo, waaaaaaay too much make-up, probably got a ridge tied down underneath that scarf too.’
Sam leaned forward, “With all due respect, ma’am, take your sadistic games and get out before I have you bodily removed from this house.” Sophie and Bill had chosen just that moment to come to the kitchen entryway with questions on their faces.
Sam held up a hand stopping the older couple in their tracks.
“
I really wanted to keep this private, but I see you won’t allow an old woman that little bit of dignity,” Gertrude sighed even though the malicious glint in her eyes should have been a warning.
Thankfully, Sam didn’t fall for her attempt at manipulation and instead simply nodded, “That’s right, now...”
“
David Backer was NOT your biological father.” The woman announced.
“
Excuse me?” Sam asked in a whisper as Jase moved to her side.
The old woman sighed, her mouth drawn into a lemon-sucking pucker, “Amelia is your mother; your real father’s name is Jesse Cruz. The night you were born you were placed into Mr. Backer’s possession, traded for the dead infant that it killed his wife to deliver. Do you understand now why I would have preferred to have this conversation in private?” she asked coldly.
The vibration of his cell in his pocket snapped Jase out of his reverie while Sam crouched and opened the safe.
“Hey, Pete,” he greeted listening intensely to his partner while Sam opened the safe searching the shelves, “Yeah, we’re at the office now.”
“It’s not here.” Sam shook her head.
Jase rolled his head and nodded, “Son of a bitch. Yeah, Pete, looks like…”
Sam moved to his side, leaning toward the phone trying to hear what he was hearing, but to her surprise, he ducked away.
“Uh huh, yeah. We’ll go back to her apartment and get a few things packed up. I’ll drop her at your place and meet you at the office.”
“Jase?” she asked feeling tears welling up. The missing envelope she KNEW Diane had put into the safe, him ducking away from her, the timing of Pete’s call, all these things set her internal alarm bells clanging sharply.
“No,” she shook her head backing toward the wall, her eyes flicked to the safe then back to Jase and his sympathetic expression, “Please.”
He closed the distance between them and pulled her tight, “Be there as soon as I can. I will.” He snapped the phone closed and felt himself starting to tremble inside.
“It’s Diane, right? She’s dead, right? The envelope isn’t here, she wouldn’t take it with her, he was watching the place, right? Jase?” she questioned.
“Yeah, looks like.”
“But why’d they call Pete?” she asked looking up, watching his jaw muscle clench and the color drain from his face beneath the dark shadow of stubble.
“Oh no,” she shook her head breaking out of his arms and backing away, horror on her face, “Oh, God, no! Please tell me, tell me they
knew
he knew her…” she pleaded and bounced into the far wall breathing hard.
Jase shook his head, “Sam, please, calm down, honey, you’re gonna pass out.”
She bent over, clutching her knees while her head spun, “She was, he, how bad? Jase? What did he do? They thought it was…
WAS
it? Is
that
who killed her? Was it
YOUR
guy? Your serial, oh God.” Jase slid a chair to her side and guided her into it then knelt in front of her.
“We don’t have confirmation yet. It could be unrelated.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“No,” he shook his head, “I don’t, neither does Pete.”
A tremor rocked her beneath his hand as she looked up, “That means your case, your rapist, it’s almost definitely someone from Glen Falls, or maybe someone who looks like they could fit in there?”
Slowly he nodded, “Looks like. He was unnoticed among the mourners at the Shiners’, stands to reason he’s from there.”
“And he’s raping and killing here because he doesn’t wanna crap in his own back yard,” she reasoned then seemed to perk up a bit, “I can help. He’d, he’d be somewhere between eighteen and thirty five, approximately. Rapists usually slow down when they get into their mid or upper thirties; their most violent behavior tends to be in their late teens and twenties,” she shook her head and rose to pace the office. “But this guy’s different, a late bloomer maybe? He’s taking on adult women, that’s bad enough but he killed my dad, that’s not just a sex offender.” She looked up into her love’s eyes, “This guy just slid through a whole bunch of categories to become something else Jase.”
He nodded, “I know. Look, Sam, we need to get you somewhere safe, okay?”
“I can
help!
I
know
I can. I need the sign in book from the funeral, that’ll help.”
He nodded wrapping his arms around her, stopping her frenetic pacing, “C’mon, let’s get you a bag packed and get you to Pete’s, okay?”
“Pete’s? Why not yours? I’ve already got stuff there.”
He cocked his eyebrow at her smirking just as it dawned on her, “Right, I’m part of the case now. Forget I asked.”
She turned in his arms and looked up into his eyes, her own were filled with sorrow and apprehension, “I should see her, I should…”
“No. Pete already I.D.’d her. There’s no need.” He shook his head as she covered her face and let the tears flow.
--
“I should have called her at home and told her to stay out of the office, just showed up with you and Pete.” She rummaged through the dresser for a couple more t-shirts and pairs of jeans.
“Don’t do this to yourself, Sam, you can’t think about the ‘what ifs.’ This isn’t your fault, you know that,” he tried to use her own advice on her.
“When are we going to be sure if he’s your guy?” she asked moving to the bathroom for her spare toothbrush and anything else she might need.
“Few hours. The lab’s going to run a DNA comparison with a sample we know is from our guy. He’s not big with the rubbers, and thankfully, doesn’t seem to have difficulty performing.”
“There haven’t been any hits from CODIS? No matches on AFIS?” she asked, looking over her shoulder as she tossed a few more odds and ends into another overnight bag, doing everything she could to box up the feelings that were threatening to overwhelm her, and to keep her head firmly in the world of police procedure as she knew it.
He shook his head, “No, he wears gloves from the get-go and is pretty meticulous, aside from the semen that is…”
“So, it’s probable his prints are on file somewhere, but no genetic material from before this started; he wears gloves, no prints, no hits on AFIS. If he’s your rapist and he’s from Glen Falls, AND if he’s the guy that killed my dad, then it’s logical to assume my dad found him out somehow.”
“It does give us another angle to pursue.”
“And Glen Falls is much smaller to investigate, but it won’t necessarily be easier.”
“From what I heard last night at the Shiners, folks liked your dad, why wouldn’t they help?” he asked, wondering if she was going to say something about small towns and secrets.
Shaking her head, she smiled sadly, the weight of the last few days showing in the deeper etching of lines around her eyes. He could swear there were strands of gray around her temples that weren’t there last week.
“They’d want to, I think,” she started, “I just don’t think most of them would be able to conceive of it being ‘one of us,’ y’know?” she tried to explain.
Reluctantly, Jase nodded, “Community based denial.”