The Bitterest Pill

Fifty-two

It had been a long time since Jesse was awakened by both his cell phone and landline, and when it happened, it never meant anything good.

“Dad, Brian Lundquist is on the phone for you.”

Dad. He hadn’t yet gotten used to Cole calling him that. He wasn’t sure he ever would. He certainly liked it. It was just that he didn’t quite trust it yet. He didn’t trust that it wouldn’t disappear with a change of mood. But for the moment his concern was Lundquist’s call.

Jesse reached over for his cell and dumped the incoming call. He stumbled into the kitchen. Cole was already dressed for work.

“I have to go,” he said, handing the phone to Jesse. “Take care. See you tonight.”

“See you.” Then he put the phone to his ear and spoke. “What’s up?”

“We got a John Doe outside of Helton. Fits your missing kid’s description.”

“Homicide?”

“From what I’m hearing from the locals, the vic looks like he could have been killed five times over. I’m heading that way. You want me to swing by and pick you up or you want to meet me there?”

“I’ll meet you there. Text me the location.” Jesse looked at his wall clock. “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

“No worries. We won’t move him until you arrive.”

“Thanks.”

The sun was coming up behind Jesse as he drove west to Helton. Helton was an old mill town, one Jesse was familiar with. Not for any reason he liked. It was a place of old redbrick buildings covered in soot that had once bellowed from its factory chimneys. Nowadays the only thing it manufactured was hopelessness. It was the sort of place that gets skipped over when times are good and suffers the most when they’re not. But Jesse’s unease had nothing to do with the economics or sociology of the place. It was the red line that began with the case that had brought him to Helton, a line of blood, geography, and time. It had begun with the murder of a teenage girl that resonated through time until it ended with a bullet ending the life of Diana, Jesse’s fiancée. No, there was nothing about driving toward Helton to lift Jesse’s spirits.

He turned off the four-lane road out of Helton and into a thickly wooded area that had been taped off by the state police. The usual collection of official vehicles was parked in a small clearing. Along with the Staties, the Helton PD, the office of the local medical examiner, and the local fire department ambulance corps were all represented. Jesse recognized Lundquist’s car as well. He grabbed a file containing photos of Chris Grimm, some given to him by his mother, others generated from the security footage at Kennedy Park.

At the tape, Jesse showed his shield and gave the uniform his name. The uniform pointed the way. It was a scene befitting the kid’s last name — Grimm. At some crime scenes, even at homicides, there’ll be a smiling or disinterested face. That wasn’t the case here. The sight of those faces told Jesse that Lundquist hadn’t been exaggerating. Lundquist heard Jesse’s approach, turned away from the body, and came to meet him.

Lundquist pointed at the file in Jesse’s hand. “Photos of the Grimm kid?” Jesse handed the file to Lundquist who opened it up. Lundquist winced. “Good-looking boy.” He nodded over his shoulder toward the body. “He doesn’t look like this anymore. Whoever did this to him was either raging at him or enjoyed inflicting pain.”

“Helton PD’s case or yours?” Jesse asked.

“Mine.”

“Good. I want to spend as little time in this town as possible.”

Lundquist was going to ask why and then thought better of it. “Come on, let’s have a look.”

People say the anticipation of bad things is always worse than the real thing. Not always. And this was one of those “not always” occasions. Jesse, who had seen bodies in all manner of disrepair, was surprised at the level of brutality that showed on the kid’s body.

“Are those entrance wounds?” Jesse asked the local ME, pointing to where dirt had caked around spots on the boy’s hair and on his chest.

“Looks that way,” the ME said.

Jesse said, “You think they were the COD?”

“If they were, they saved the boy from an incredible amount of pain. I haven’t even had a very close look at him and I can tell you he was thoroughly tortured premortem.” The ME pointed with his gloved finger. “There are visible burn marks on his neck, face, and hands. There are an array of broken bones. Teeth are missing, and some fingers. And if those bullets were postmortem, then the person or persons who did this to him were even more twisted than I would care to imagine.”

Jesse walked around the body. “He wasn’t murdered here.”

“No,” Lundquist answered. “And rigor has come and gone. He’s been here several days.”

The ME asked, “Is this your missing boy?”

Jesse asked Lundquist for the photos and handed them to the ME.

“I think so. It looks like him. His clothing is a match for the footage we took from cameras at a local park on the day he disappeared.” Jesse waved at the ME and then pointed at a spot where no one was standing. The ME followed Jesse. “Doc, I noticed the kid’s missing fingers look as if they were sawn off. Do you think he was mutilated in any other way?”

The ME was confused. Then, understanding the implication, nodded. “I see your point.”

“Yeah, when I break the news to his mother and she comes to identify him, I need to prepare her. And God help us if she needs to see more than his face.”

“I understand, Chief Stone. Give me a moment.”

The ME went back to the body and asked everyone standing around the shallow grave to move away and to give him some privacy. A minute later, he came back to where Jesse was standing.

“Until I get him on the table I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but I think he’s... intact.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

Lundquist came over to Jesse as the ME went back to his business. “What was that about?”

“I needed to know some things before informing the mother.”

“My case now, Jesse. My job, but if you want to come...”

“I think it would be a good idea. So tell me how he was found.”

“Marathoner was training before dawn. She tripped over the hand. Used her cell phone flashlight to see what she tripped over. Called nine-one-one.”

“And the Helton PD called you. Any ID on the body?”

“Nothing obvious. No wallet. No phone. When they get him to the morgue, they’ll be able to do a more thorough search.”

Jesse gave Lundquist the Walterses’ address in Paradise and filled him in on the recent domestic abuse situation.

“We have to be careful when we enter. The husband is the kid’s stepfather and he’s a handful. We had him on an illegal weapons charge, but the wife claimed the gun was hers.”

“Like that, huh?”

“Just like that.”

Lundquist said, “I’ll take her to identify the body. Maybe she’ll let her guard down around me.”

Jesse agreed. He went back to the shallow grave with Lundquist and took one more look at Chris Grimm. As far as he was concerned, Grimm was Paradise’s second drug casualty. He may have been the one to supply Heather with the drugs, but Jesse believed not even Patti and Steve Mackey would have wanted the Grimm kid to die the way he had.