Silenced

CHAPTER EIGHT

Wednesday

To call the Red Light motel seedy may have been clichéd, but Lucy Kincaid couldn’t think of a better adjective. The motel boasted hourly rates, weekly specials, and was at least a decade overdue for a paint job. Under the sweltering July sun, the exterior appeared a molted shade of green, but up close Lucy realized it was sun-bleached wood.

“What a dump.” Noah flashed his badge to the DC cop standing in front of the crime scene tape that blocked off room 119. Six people crowded the room that couldn’t be more than three hundred square feet, four wearing bright Windbreakers identifying them as CSU.

“Wait here,” the cop said, his husky voice matching his hefty frame. Into his radio he said, “Detective Reid? The feds are here.”

A female responded. “Dammit, Taback, keep them outside, too many people. I’ll be there when I get there. Shit, Greg, didn’t you—” The radio cut off.

Though the body had been removed, flies buzzed in and out of the doorway, attracted to the smell of dried blood and the lingering scent of decomposing flesh. At noon, the temperature topped ninety-nine degrees with humidity to match, just like yesterday’s crime scene. It was on days like this that Lucy missed her hometown of San Diego.

Lucy and Noah stepped away from the door to let two CSU technicians exit with large evidence bags already sealed and labeled, though Lucy couldn’t make out the wording.

“We shouldn’t even be here.” Noah stood straight, hands behind his back, legs slightly apart, looking more like former military than she’d seen him. He watched everything through narrowed eyes, his irritation increasing with the temperature.

When the call came in from DC asking for an assist, Slater assigned Noah. They’d been behind closed doors for ten minutes before Noah walked out, the apparent loser in the argument. He’d hardly spoken on the drive over.

“I thought Josh was fine about you taking the Wendy James murder.”

“We’re still on it. We’re here,” he jerked his head toward room 119, “because of budget cuts and lack of manpower, both for DC and us. There was no one else Slater could send this morning, unless he called in one of the resident agencies.”

All they’d been told was the homicide had special circumstances. A serial murderer, maybe, or perhaps the victim was a federal official, or there was another federal crime component to the case.

Noah continued, “I wanted to be at Stein’s meeting with the U.S. attorney this morning. He wouldn’t postpone it.”

“It’s his way of reminding you he’s in charge.”

A dozen cops filled the parking lot, keeping nosy bystanders behind the crime scene tape. Human curiosity to stop and observe death, pain, and suffering had always saddened and angered Lucy. Did any of them care enough to help someone in trouble? Or was their compassion limited to being horrified only after tragedy?

The creepy sensation of being watched made Lucy shiver, even in this heat. Second-floor guests peered over the railing above her, many shirtless, some smoking, all watching the investigation with unveiled animosity. Watching her. One young punk made a crude gesture when she accidentally caught his eye. She averted her eyes, cheeks flaming, embarrassed and disgusted.

“This crime scene is a mess,” Noah muttered.

A sharp, feminine voice snapped, “Sorry to be such an incompetent local.”

They turned to face the lead detective who’d been on the other end of Taback’s radio. Detective Reid had dark skin with equally dark hair cut close to the scalp. Only the wrinkles around her eyes suggested she was closer to fifty than forty.

She jerked off blue latex gloves and dumped them in a plastic bag, which she handed to another cop. Lucy noticed a long, jagged scar that started midway up her left tricep and disappeared under her sweat-dampened short-sleeved white blouse. Lucy wondered at the circumstances of the nasty injury. Had she gotten it on the job?

“Detective Genie Reid, senior detective. And you’re the feds.”

“Special Agent Noah Armstrong, analyst Lucy Kincaid. And the crime scene is a mess.”

“Don’t I know fucking know it. Shit!” She pulled out a coin purse from her pocket. “Whenever I get a case like this, I owe my grandson big.”

She took two quarters from one side of the coin purse and put them on the other, bulkier, side.

“Your grandson?” Lucy asked, curious.

“I promised Isaiah—he’s nine—that I’d stop swearing. On the honor system, I give him a quarter every time I say anything worse than ‘damn.’” She looked down at her coin purse. “I started with five dollars in quarters today. He’s already earned three-seventy-five and it’s not even noon.”

Lucy grinned. “You’ll be paying his way through college.”

“I already have, honey,” Genie said. “I told the CSU to clear out.” She hollered into the room. “I meant clear out now, people!”

“We’re nearly done, Detective,” one of the men said.

“Has the coroner been here?” Noah asked.

“Come and gone,” Genie said. “Good thing because it still reeks of death and the vic was hauled away thirty minutes ago.”

They stepped into the room, just the three of them, as the last of the crime scene unit left. Torn wallpaper, the dresser missing one leg, water stains on the sagging ceiling—the room was uninhabitable even before the murder. Lucy couldn’t picture anyone willingly staying here.

Desperate people.

What had led the victim to this room last night? How desperate was she? Did she know her killer? Invite him in?

Noah raised his voice over an ineffective, but loud, air-conditioning unit. “What are we looking at here?”

Genie kicked the dented wall appliance. “It doesn’t do anything to cool this place down, but every time I turn it off someone turns it back on.” She turned the old, chipped black knob from hi to off. The unit rumbled and clanked as it shut down.

She continued in a normal voice. “Victim was a twenty-year-old hooker named Nicole Bellows. One of the uniforms recognized her, she’d been busted over a year ago. I ran her sheet, she’s been clean since. Looked healthy—other than having her throat slit so deep it severed her vocal chords—no obvious drug use, no needle marks. Maybe she had a sugar daddy who got tired of her, or a pimp who thought she wasn’t pulling her weight. Or, maybe, a john who can only get his rocks off when he kills.”

Lucy’s chest tightened at the image.

A john who can only get off when he kills.

All the people who’d stared at her outside fueled her panic. The bystanders. The cops. Watching, waiting for her to crack.

Did they know?

They don’t know anything about you. They can’t see you anymore. They’re outside, you’re inside. They aren’t watching.

A flash of memory wiped out everything in her vision.

She didn’t see the bed, the blood, the filth, the flies. She heard Genie and Noah talking from far away. Her blood rushed to her ears, swirling, pounding. Her knees buckled, but she willed them to work.

Focus, Lucy, get it under control.

She leaned against the wall when her knees refused her command. The memories hit her, one right after the other, in a rapid series of snapshots.

The mattress. The knife. The ropes. The camera’s evil eye, watching. Always watching.

focus focus focus

Lucy shifted her body, the urge to run so great she leaned out the door. The sharp edge of splintered wood jolted her back to reality. The colors around her turned vibrant and she closed her eyes.

You are in control. Breathe in. Breathe out.

The mantra was working. Voices brought her back to the present.

Genie was explaining what they’d found in the room, how the body had been positioned. Lucy focused on the detective’s crisp cadence.

Noah was looking at her, his face expressionless, but she saw his eyes questioning her. Or was he questioning his own judgment in bringing her here? God, what must he think? It was only a few seconds, had her panic been that obvious?

She forced an I’m-just-fine smile on her face and waved away flies. She didn’t know if Noah bought her act.

It’s not an act. You’re fine. You’re in control.

“Except,” Genie was saying, “the coroner said no external sign of sexual assault. But that really doesn’t matter, because there’s something bigger here than a prostitute getting whacked.”

“What do you mean?” Noah asked.

Lucy bit her lip to keep from adding a comment about how the detective denigrated the victim. That physical pain helped assuage her panic. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. She knew, from being raised in a household full of cops and working at the morgue, that cops often needed to compartmentalize. They couldn’t look at the victim as a person, lest rage and defeat cloud their judgment. But she still looked at victims as people, and while she didn’t condone the prostitution lifestyle, she empathized with the circumstances that put many of these young girls on the streets.

“You need to see it for yourself. Don’t think we’re going to get much here—too many guests, too little cleaning—but I have my best cops canvassing. Called in the night manager, because the day manager swears he never saw the girl.”

“You believe him?”

Genie shrugged. “Eh. We’ll see. Don’t know that anyone here is going to tell the truth, they don’t like cops, don’t want to get involved, don’t want to squeal.” She glanced out the door at the crowd, bitterness sharpening her crisp tone. “Don’t matter the crime, they clam up.”

Genie handed them sterile gloves from a box on the dresser. Lucy put hers on, the routine familiar and calming. She looked around more carefully now, focusing on what Noah had probably already taken in while she quietly panicked in the doorway, which had nothing to do with the crime scene itself.

The blood-soaked mattress had been grimy even before the murder. “She died here?” Noah asked.

“Found on the floor.” Genie indicated a numbered card on the floor next to the bed. “Partly wrapped in a sheet.”

Lucy said, “With this much blood, she bled out on the bed.”

“Like I said, he cut her so deep he nearly decapitated her.”

Genie gestured to the blood spatter on the wall behind the bed, the castoff to the left. “The killer was left-handed, our CSU said. From the trajectory, we deduced they were both standing. He probably killed her, dropped her to the bed, she bled out. The manager who came in and found her swears she was on the floor when he got here and that he didn’t touch anything, but who the fuck knows?”

Without comment, she pulled out her coin purse and moved another quarter.

“Why?” Lucy asked rhetorically. She surveyed the room. There were no suitcases or anything personal. “Was there luggage? Toiletries?”

“No suitcase, no purse. Several travel-sized bottles of shampoo, lotion, soap, toothpaste, things like that were in the bathroom. We bagged and tagged them. But no clothing. Just the T-shirt she wore and sandals next to the bed.”

“That’s odd,” Noah said. “She didn’t walk in here wearing a T-shirt and nothing else.”

“I’ve seen stranger things,” Genie said.

“The killer may have walked off with her belongings.” Noah made a note. “But why? Did she have something valuable? Why take her clothes?”

“I’ve been a cop for twenty-nine years and all I can say is that most killers are stupid,” Genie said. “Who knows why they do what they do?”

The motive of the killer and victimology were equally important psychological clues to solve crimes. “If it were rage, I’d expect to see more brutality,” Lucy said. “Multiple stab wounds. Blood everywhere. Evidence of struggle. This scene looks too…” she scrambled for the right word.

“Efficient,” Noah said.

“Exactly.”

“When the victim was arrested last year, did she have a pimp?” Noah asked. “Do you have the file on her?”

“Never admitted to having a pimp, but she was probably lying. She wasn’t a regular—said she came from Jersey. Cops there have nothing on her, either. Probably lied about that, too.”

“Do you have a current address?”

“I’ll shoot the file over to you as soon as we’re done here, if you want the case.”

“You want to give the FBI this case?” Noah asked, unable to hide the surprise from his voice.

“Well, not hand it over lock, stock, and barrel, but I’ll give you lead if you keep me on board. I have twenty-three active cases I’m working right now, and Lord knows how many inactive files. While I don’t like you feds swooping in and taking over whenever you want, I know when I can use help.”

“We have a heavy workload, too,” Noah said. “I don’t know what you think we can do that your more-than-capable department can’t accomplish.”

“Maybe,” Genie said. Lucy watched Genie’s eyes drift from Noah to the bloody bed. She could practically hear Genie’s thought process.

No one’s going to care about one more dead hooker.

Lucy couldn’t bear the thought of Nicole Bellows’s murder going to the bottom of anyone’s workload. A black hooker in a bad area wasn’t going to get much attention. Genie was a good cop, but if she didn’t get any leads in the next seventy-two hours, the case would be cold, replaced by three others.

“But we can handle this,” Lucy interjected.

Noah jerked his head toward her, eyes wide, surprised and angry in a way she had never seen him. She realized she’d contradicted him, and she wanted to apologize, but couldn’t bring herself to back down. If she didn’t fight to prioritize Nicole Bellows’s death, who would?

“Genie said the killer left a message, shouldn’t we look at it before we just cut loose?” Lucy said, almost tripping over her words to get them out. “This isn’t a simple robbery. What if it matches with a cold case? What if the killer is targeting other prostitutes? How many of these young women have to die before people pay attention? Wendy James has the media all over the place, but a black prostitute in the slums isn’t going to get an inch of column space, let alone featured on the five o’clock news.”

She’d overstepped big-time. Noah’s fists tightened just once, but for a man who rarely showed his temper, she noticed.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and meant it. “I don’t know where that came from.”

But she did know exactly where her outrage came from: fear. Fear that victims like Nicole Bellows would be forgotten. Panic that more victims would follow and no one would care. That if they couldn’t solve this murder and put the killer in prison, Nicole Bellows would haunt her. Worse, that she couldn’t stop the violence.

Noah didn’t say anything to Lucy. He turned to Genie. “Where’s the message?”

Genie’s expression showed her curiosity over the exchange, but she simply replied, “The bathroom. You can’t miss it.”

Noah walked into the small bathroom first. There wasn’t room for both of them, so Lucy waited. When he came out, he said, “I’ll call my boss.”

He walked out of the motel room without looking at Lucy.

Lucy stepped inside. The stained and bloody pedestal sink had no counter. Inside the cracked basin lay a good-sized rat, dead and gutted. The poor creature’s internal organs had been pulled half out of its body, a bloody mess Lucy could barely identify.

The butchered rat was bad enough. But a message had been written in blood on the aged, cracked mirror.

Six blind mice

See how they run

Then Lucy noticed the rat’s tail had been cut off.