Acquired Motives (Dr. Sylvia Strange Book 2)

by Sarah Lovett

  With great care, she tapped the cigarette butt against asphalt, then she pressed the tip together with finger and thumb. She slipped the butt under one of the cinder-block supports beneath the trailer skirt and took a last look at the garden. When she was back inside the trailer, she locked the door.

  Sylvia lit three scented candles. Earlier in the evening, she had craved sex as a frenzied antidote to her anger and frustration. Now, she would gladly accept sleep. But her body and mind refused to relax.

  She dimmed the lights and left the first candle burning in the kitchen, the second in the bedroom, and carried the third to the bathroom. The flame sent shadows scurrying up bathroom walls to escape the confining space. She dropped her clothes in a pile, reached into the shower stall, and opened the cold spigot.

  When she stepped in, the water was frigid and goose bumps instantly dimpled her skin. She gasped and dipped her head under the flow. It hurt. She forced herself to stay under the water even after her head began to throb with pain. Finally, she turned on the hot water, full force. The spurt warmed, became hotter. The bathroom overflowed with steam and the scent of jasmine from the candle. Her body polarized, then centered itself. The heat began to work its magic, and a deep sense of relaxation lulled her senses.

  KILLER HEARD THE message like an internal whisper: You are the wings of vengeance and death, vengeance and death, vengeance and death.

  A three-quarter moon highlighted silky tassels and slender leaves. The earth felt cool and cushioned, and it filled the air with loamy scents.

  Killer skimmed gloved fingers over the white painted surface: siding, vent, drain spout. The exterior of the trailer was home to tiny beetles and spiders; an orb-weaver had spun its complex web in the corner of an air vent beneath a window. The web glistened in the restless night air. A moth struggled in vain to free itself from silken chains. Flickering candlelight escaped through the screened window and danced on the web with the spider.

  Window, siding, door, handle. The dried blood on Killer's hands and arms gleamed dully in the moonlight. The crowbar fit neatly between door and jamb; it took steady pressure—prying the area below the knob—before the lock popped and the door swung open.

  SYLVIA RINSED OFF shampoo suds and reached for soap. The bar was thin and hard—she remembered seeing a bar of Ivory in the sink. If she worked fast, she could reach out and grab the soap and her toothbrush without flooding the floor. She snapped the shower curtain open.

  The Ivory was there, within reach. She gripped the smooth bar in one hand. As she retreated behind the curtain again, a shadow passed the open bathroom door.

  Sylvia's heart stuttered. She caught her fear instantly, held it back, and rationalized: Matt's home.

  She called his name.

  The silence stung. She left the water running but stepped out of the shower. Another shadow across the doorway. This time, candlelight. She allowed herself a full breath. But still she moved quickly. She pulled her T-shirt over her head; it clung to her wet body. Telling herself she was overreacting, she checked the hall and moved into the bedroom. The walls seemed to slant inward; the room appeared smaller than usual. She perched on the edge of the bed and reached across the Pendleton blanket. Matt's off-duty revolver was in the bed holster—loaded. She used a two-handed grip and started back toward the hall. Something caught her eye. The back door had been forced. It hung ajar on its hinges.

  Someone was inside.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SYLVIA FROZE IN her tracks. Her heart was pounding against her chest, her breath caught in her throat. A voice in her brain kept screaming, Get out.

  She shifted the revolver and pivoted to escape through the door. A shadow hovered, disappeared, just as sharp pain raced across her right side. No shadow could deliver such a blow. Heat followed pain. Her eyes filled with tears. She stumbled from the force of the kick, her torso twisted, knees buckled. The air had been knocked out of her lungs. The room swam.

  Candlelight caught the side of her attacker's face, and Sylvia cried out.

  Teeth white against the wide, blackened mouth. Skin coated with a muddy pigment. No eyes, just dark holes the size of fists. Reddish stripes smeared across both cheeks.

  Before Sylvia could react defensively, a gloved hand shoved her against the bed. Metal cleats on a black boot tore through her T-shirt and her skin. The pain was searing.

  The fingers of her left hand closed around the butt of the revolver. She shifted her body, transferred the gun to her right hand and raised it to defend herself. Her attacker was gone.

  She stayed there, numb, unable to move even when she felt the blood ooze across her abdomen.

  MATT CUT THE turn sharp, and the Chevy's bumper scraped the fence that bordered Salazar Elementary. An S.F.P.D. patrol car was parked behind Sylvia's Volvo. Two uniforms were bent toward the Volvo's passenger window. The cops looked tense. One of them tried the door handle.

  It was midnight, but Matt's beeper had gone off thirty minutes earlier when he happened to be trekking an arroyo by moonlight a half mile from his vehicle, in search of a stolen U-haul. To cover the eighteen miles between Budaghers and his trailer, Matt topped one hundred miles an hour up the interstate. Cars in the right lane were buffeted by the wake of the Caprice. Bumpers pulsed red. He only slowed when he exited I-25 at Cerrillos Road.

  Matt parked the Caprice next to the Volvo. One of the uniforms raised a hand in recognition. Manny Ruiz was the shortest law enforcement officer in the state; rumor had it he perched on a telephone directory when he drove. Matt knew him from the academy; Manny had aced Criminal Procedure.

  "She locked herself in the car," Manny said.

  The second uniform was a woman. She pressed both hands to her hips as she spoke. "We got her statement, checked out your trailer. We can dust, but she told us the guy wore leather gloves." She nodded toward the Volvo. "She wouldn't let us in—"

  "Shock," Manny Ruiz explained to the night air.

  "The bleeding slowed down," the female uniform said.

  Matt brushed past the officers. He leaned against the Volvo's flank and pressed his hand to the windshield.

  Sylvia was seated behind the steering wheel. Her eyes flicked upward and focused on his. She unlocked the door. He opened it, bent down. He saw his revolver clutched in her right hand. Blood was smeared on her oversize T-shirt.

  He said, "Slide over."

  He did not try to touch her at first. He signaled Manny Ruiz and friend to take off. In the rearview, Sylvia watched the blue Buick roll out of the school grounds. A moment later she said, "He got in when I was in the shower. I don't think he took anything." Her voice was flat.

  Matt said, "You're bleeding."

  Sylvia shook her head. "I'm all right." Gingerly, she released the revolver and let her fingers trace her rib cage. She flinched in pain. "I bet I have a cracked rib." Matt kept his hands off. He would move at her pace.

  Sylvia sighed. "He kicked me with his boot." Finally, she turned to look directly at Matt. Her eyes stayed on his for seconds; tears welled up. She blinked them back and let her head rest against his chest.

  Her voice was muffled when she said, "Tomorrow, this is going to hurt like hell."

  Matt found a five-milligram Valium in a bathroom drawer. Sylvia swallowed the sedative. He helped her clean the abrasion on her ribs. It was a little more than four inches across, deep in places where boot cleats had penetrated. The skin around the wound had already begun to darken; it was purplish and swollen. Because she refused to go to the emergency room, he smeared the area liberally with antibiotic ointment. Hopefully that would ward off infection.

  He found a way to rig the back door so no one could get in—or out. It would do until tomorrow.

  With the television providing white noise, they both stretched on the couch, their bodies arranged for maximum contact. It took another twenty minutes before Sylvia's breathing became deep and steady.

  Matt hadn't told her that he expected one of his supervisors to show up
within the next thirty minutes—the attack had occurred at the residence of a state police investigator.

  While he waited, he almost fell asleep. But his muscles began to cramp, and he had sharp pains in his shoulders and neck. He knew aspirin and a cold beer would help. He eased Sylvia's body from his, stood cautiously, and walked into the kitchen.

  He put a hand out to open the refrigerator, then stopped. Amid grocery lists, postcards, and a stick-on calendar, a photograph was trapped beneath a magnet. He was about to lift it from the door when he felt breath on his neck. He turned and found himself staring into Sylvia's dilated pupils and deep brown eyes. Without a word, she reached around him and took the photograph. The magnet fell to the floor with a soft sound.

  It was a Polaroid of a man. There was no way to know if he was dead or alive. His nude body was trussed, his face was visible. He had been castrated.

  Anthony Randall.

  Horrified, Sylvia dropped the photo. When Matt reached to retrieve it from the floor, he saw the message scrawled on the back: "Take a good look at the only True Justice. One for the Killers' Doctor."

  "HE WAS TORCHED." Hansi Gausser, head of serology at the Department of Public Safety crime lab, cleared his throat and used his sleeve to wipe grit from his eyes. The outdoor crime scene west of San Antonio Creek was a bear to process: rough terrain, ceaseless wind, and the devastation of the Dark Canyon fire. Gausser sighed; just his luck to be on call the week after July Fourth. Holidays brought out humanity's nasty streak. He smiled vacantly at Sylvia and Matt, then brought himself back to the business at hand: Anthony Randall's corpse.

  Gausser's fingers hovered over burn patterns on the dead man's body. "The forest fire missed him altogether. But he was doused with accelerant. Fortunately, there's enough of his face left to identify him—it looks like your guy."

  "It's Randall." Matt nodded at the serologist. Hansi Gausser was Swiss-born and -educated and a perfectionist. Pronounce the "au" in Gausser like the "ou" in "house" and you were on his good side immediately. Pronounce it like the "a" in "gas"—as almost everyone did—and the Swiss mercenary soldier emerged. In spite of, or perhaps because of, his peculiarities, Gausser was a first-rate criminalist.

  And he was known for his olfactory tolerance.

  Matt tried his best not to breathe. Sylvia kept a bandanna over her mouth and nose. It was too early in the day for anyone but Gausser to brave the stink of burned, decomposing flesh. When the wind gusted from the south, the stench was unbearable.

  Sylvia stood clear of Gausser. It wasn't the smell that kept her outside the perimeter, or fear of contaminating the scene—the techs had already completed a grid search and most of their evidence collection. Her need for distance wasn't physical. She had wished death on Anthony Randall. However irrational the thought, she couldn't shake the nagging sense of complicity in his murder.

  "One for the Killers' Doctor."

  Gausser pointed to a fire trench to the west of a stand of piñon. "Look at the layout: the edge of the burn was thirty feet from here and stretched all the way to Dark Canyon." He turned back to the body. "This tree trunk, and the duff around it, weren't even touched. The fire didn't jump the trench."

  Sylvia forced herself to ask the question: "Was his body burned postmortem?"

  "That's an interesting question," Gausser said evenly. "The autopsy results will tell us the answer."

  She swallowed, but the lump stayed lodged in the back of her throat. "If he was burned alive, how long did it take him to die?"

  Gausser was suddenly more animated. "That depends. A person who is immolated, who inhales corrosive fumes and superheated air—or even a fireball—will lose the tissues that line his airway. That could kill him, but most likely not instantly. Poisoning or air exclusion—a common problem in house fires—could be fast- or slow-acting. Loss of homeostasis—for instance, if you were to fry off all your skin—that's a burn unit issue." Gausser paused, then continued. "In cases of true immolation, like those Vietnamese monks who barbecued themselves to protest the war—it's usually not an immediate death. Seconds, minutes. . . very long minutes." Gausser chewed on his lower lip thoughtfully. "However, I think Anthony Randall got lucky."

  "What?"

  Gausser pointed to an area just behind what remained of Randall's left ear. "Gunshot to the head. Entry wound, exit wound. Notice the angle. The shot was probably too shallow to kill him outright, but it would have stunned him."

  Sylvia leaned forward to get a better view of the darkened area. She said, "A mercy shot?"

  "Whatever it was, lousy aim." Gausser tweezed a charred fragment and placed it carefully in a brand-new paint container. He shrugged. "Matt, I don't think your friend from the F.B.I. believed it was a mercy shot."

  Sylvia caught Matt's look of surprise.

  Gausser continued. "Special Agent Chaney left right before you all arrived."

  Matt took in the information without comment, but he was curious as to why a federal agent based in Las Cruces would show up at this particular crime scene.

  A gust of wind brought with it the stench of burned flesh; Matt groaned.

  Without looking up Gausser said, "Help yourself to my private stock of Charlie. In my back pocket."

  Although Matt had already applied a liberal coat of Vicks VapoRub around his nostrils, he accepted the offer and pulled out a worn plastic bottle. When he unscrewed the top he was overwhelmed by the sweet stink of Charlie cologne. Gausser swore it was the best way to mask the stench of the dead. The criminalist's theory was that somehow the cologne's fragrance chemically bonded with one of the world's most loathsome odors; the result was at least tolerable for inhalation.

  Matt offered the bottle to Sylvia. She shook her head and kept one arm crossed beneath her breasts. Matt wasn't sure she should be here, but she hadn't asked for his opinion. The call had come in somewhere after four-thirty A.M.: a body discovered by a firefighter in the Jemez Mountains. It didn't take a genius to figure out the dead man might be Anthony Randall.

  Inside the scene perimeter, Matt took a breath, stepped close to Gausser, and pointed a gloved hand toward what remained of Randall's right arm.

  "Bindings," Gausser said.

  To Matt's surprise, Sylvia slipped under the perimeter tape and squatted next to Gausser. She lowered the bandanna from her nose. Her eyes were invisible behind dark glasses. She was thinking of the image on the Polaroid. She said, "I'm guessing the castration was premortem."

  Gausser said, "Again, I won't be able to tell you until we get the autopsy report."

  "No. But it looks like this killer—or killers—wanted to inflict pain."

  "Payback for rape." Matt stared down at the swollen torso, the burned thighs.

  "Flora Escudero's family?" Gausser wiped his upper arm across his forehead and gazed down at Randall's corpse. "If he'd raped my daughter, I'd think about doing something like this."

  Silently, Matt agreed. When you made a career of law enforcement, you faced the fact early on that the bad guys got away with murder . . . and rape. If someone you loved was a victim, it could be easy to take the next step, make your own justice.

  Criminal Agent Terry Osuna was the D.P.S. investigating officer on this one—she'd been out at the scene earlier, working with the special agent from the U.S. Forest Service. When Osuna questioned Flora Escudero's family later today, Matt would make it a point to be there.

  Gausser said, "How are your tomatoes doing, Matt?"

  "My first Cherokee Purple is about ready to pick."

  "You promised me a basketful."

  "They'll produce until October first. You'll get your fill of tomatoes."

  "You ought to get Sylvia to put them up for you." Gausser winked.

  "Right." Matt looked down at Sylvia, who wasn't taking her eyes from Randall's body. He tried to picture her in an apron slaving over 180-degree water and a canning kettle.

  Matt let his gaze slide slowly over the damaged corpse. His detachment and curiosity never manag
ed to block out quite enough. People who died of unnatural causes often wore the same disappointed expression, as if they had known their last moment was imminent, felt the injustice, but were too weary to protest. But Randall's corpse had the face of a macabre jester: his lips had burned back to reveal a grotesque smile, his skin was pulp, his eye sockets blackened and empty.

  Matt turned away from the body and listened to the distant throb of helicopter rotors above the noise of the wind. The fire crew was dumping water and retardants on the last of the burn just a mile west of the scene.

  Sylvia stood and closed her eyes. Matt reached out a protective arm. She stiffened, then moved out of reach. It took him a moment to realize that he'd grazed the wound on her rib cage. He felt clumsy and inept.

  His frustration transformed into desire for action. He wanted to nail her attacker, tear him apart, make him hurt. At this instant, Matt didn't pretend to be broken up by Randall's death—he could almost believe that somebody had done law enforcement a favor—but he hated the idea that Sylvia was involved in this mess, that she'd been hurt. And, ultimately, it sickened him that another killer was loose.

  On the other side of the piñon grove, between Gausser's state vehicle and Matt's Caprice, a van from the Office of the Medical Investigator pulled up. The deputy M.I. picked his way through the trees. It was his job to make the official pronouncement of death—as if without it Anthony Randall might surprise them all and suddenly walk away—and then to transport the remains to the O.M.I. in Albuquerque. The deputy M.I. walked up to the crime scene perimeter and ducked under the yellow tape.

  He said, "Got lost and couldn't find you guys. They gave me directions up at the staging area." He peered closely at the corpse. "That is one sorry crispy critter."

  Sylvia stared through the stubby, potbellied man; her thoughts were far away. She envisioned the fire raging up the canyon, and then she tried to imagine Anthony Randall's last few hours of life. Why drive him all the way into the Jemez to kill him? It wasn't likely the killer—or killers—had expected the body to be destroyed in the forest fire. Clearly, they wanted to make a public statement. And they wanted to make sure the "Killers' Doctor" was included in that statement. So much so that they risked a trip to Matt's trailer after the murder.