Fear Collector

CHAPTER 11

It was early the next afternoon, that time of day when nothing happens, the so-called dead shift. Snickers bar in hand from her trip to the employee vending machines, 911 dispatcher Luna Demetrio was barely in her chair when she picked the next call from the console that fed calls from all over Tacoma and Pierce County, one desperate caller at a time.

LUNA: What’s your emergency?

CALLER: I need to tell somebody something bad happened.

LUNA: All right, sir. Can you tell me your name?

CALLER: (muffled noise, no answer)

LUNA: You there? I hear you breathing, are you all right?

CALLER: I’m not going to give my name. I’m calling from a pay phone. I’m going to leave the second I’m done with you so don’t send someone.

LUNA: I can barely hear you. Please speak louder. What’s your emergency?

CALLER: I think, I mean, I’m pretty sure there’s a dead body by the river. I saw it.

LUNA: What river?

CALLER: I didn’t know we had more than one. The Puyallup. Off River Road. Over by the bridge there’s a gravel lot.

LUNA: Sir, please tell me your name.

CALLER: No. Good-bye.

The call ended one minute and twenty seconds after it started. Luna typed up a message that was transmitted to the first responders for calls of an urgent nature. Luna was a very thorough operator, one who’d been honored for her attention to detail with two Starbucks cards and a potted hibiscus from her manager.

She typed the details of the call into the report and added: Caller was almost inaudible. Not sure if male or female. When I asked for an ID, which he/she refused, there was a long pause. During that pause I heard the sound of someone else talking. Maybe the radio. Not sure. That’s all.

The tip from the informant or witness had yielded a grisly discovery as a team of CSIs, Pierce County Sheriff ’s Department officers, and two homicide detectives from Tacoma gathered around the edge of the lazy Puyallup River, just east of Tacoma’s gritty downtown. Three-foot-tall grass and a noxious weed called tansy ragwort had drawn a partial curtain around where the body had been put to rest. As a cacophony of crows hurled their calls through the air, the group of men and women went about their tasks. Some took photos. Some ran the length of a tape measure. Others merely secured the scene. There was no question when Grace Alexander laid eyes on the figure that they were looking at the remains of Lisa Lancaster.

Or rather, most of Lisa.

While the sum of her body parts had been laid out in a hellish repose, they were in pieces. Lisa was all there, but she’d been butchered with the kind of hideous brutality that could only be the work of a madman.

And not a very skillful one at that.

Grace kneeled down next the victim. Her eyes carefully tracing the tentative cuts that had severed her right arm.

“Look,” she said, “he hesitated a little.”

“Yeah, I see that.” It was Paul Bateman, who had joined her while the medical examiner pushed everyone else away from the scene.

“Found some cigarette butts. Bagged and tagged.”

“Saw it,” she said. “Did you get the fishing bait bag?”

“Yeah, but I doubt anyone would kill someone here and go on fishing.”

Grace’s eyes stayed on the body. “Probably not. But maybe this is a favorite place. A good place he thought to hide her. I mean, it is a good place in a way. It isn’t that far off River Road. Anyone could just go by and miss her.”

It was true. More than a thousand cars passed that spot per hour, as people commuted to jobs in Tacoma or the Puyallup Valley. The only thing that brought any solace to the tragic scene was the fact that, however long Lisa had lain there, she had not been alive. She had not been one of those victims who were stashed alongside the road trying to summon the strength to call for help. Grace thought of the case of the California woman who’d crawled to the roadside after being left for dead-her arms severed from her body, but her will indomitable. Lisa Lancaster hadn’t had that chance.

Lisa had never said a word. Her final words, her final screams, had likely been given in a place where no one could see her, hear her. There was very little blood around the body. It was obvious that she’d bled out somewhere else.

Grace could feel the bile in her stomach rise. A sick person like the one who’d done this had probably savored her last breath as though it was something to enjoy. To revel in. What lay in pieces in the tangle of weeds just above the muddy riverbank had been brought there and reassembled.

“Hey!” a Pierce County deputy called from a tangle of brambles. “Got something over here.”

Grace stayed with the body, while Paul went in the direction of the deputy. He was a young officer, a total newbie. It was easy to spot those. They still allowed the excitement of finding a piece of evidence come to their faces.

“Plastic garbage bag,” the kid said. “Looks like blood on it.”

Paul nodded. “Good work. Now, please step back.”

It was a black Hefty bag, the heavy-duty kind that Paul had used when his ex, Lynnette, threw him out and told him to get his stuff out of the house. He shook his head. He hated how thoughts of Lynnette infiltrated his mind all the time. Having to see her every day at work was bad enough, but having even the most common objects recall some incident with her was beyond cruel.

The black bag had been carried out into the water and tossed into the brambles about twenty-five yards from where the killer had deposited Lisa, bit by bit. It was hard to tell in the flat light among the Himalayan blackberries if there was blood on the bag, but from where Paul Bateman stood it appeared that there could be. If so, the bag was a monumental discovery and a major mistake by the perpetrator. Plastic bags held latent prints. Trace evidence from the killer’s vehicle could easily adhere to the sticky, bloody plastic. If this was the bag he’d brought ninety-five-pound Lisa Lancaster in to reassemble on the riverbank then it also had topped its manufacture’s promise of holding “up to seventy-five pounds without tearing.”

Grace joined Paul by the thorny vines.

“They’re transporting her now,” she said.

Paul pointed to the bag. “Techs will process this and the cigarette butts. Are you sure it’s Lisa?” he asked, his eyes unblinking.

“Sure enough that we better get over to Ms. Lancaster’s before the press does.”