Cold Truth

by Mariah Stewart

  Cass nodded. “I’d appreciate it.”

  “By the way, cause of death appears to be manual strangulation,” the tech told Cass. “Looks like she was sexually assaulted, but we’ll have to wait for the ME’s findings to know for sure. We’ll also want to know which came first, the assault or the strangulation.”

  Tasha closed the black bag into which she’d tucked the samples she’d painstakingly collected. “I’ll head on back to the lab now, and try to sort this all out.”

  She smiled at Cass, then added, “Then you get to figure out what it all means.”

  “With luck.”

  “Anyone know who she is?” Tasha hoisted the bag over her shoulder.

  “Not that I’m aware. Helms found her clothes in the marsh, they’ve been bagged for the lab. Jeans, T-shirt, bra, panties, one brown leather sandal, canvas purse,” Cass told her.

  “Guess you weren’t lucky enough to find a wallet with ID in the purse?”

  “No wallet.”

  “Well, I guess that’s your job, right?” Tasha started toward the county van, which was parked up near the road. “To figure out who she was and why this happened to her?”

  “We’ll do our best.” Cass fell in step alongside Tasha.

  “When was the last time you guys in Bowers had a homicide?”

  “Aside from the hit-and-run we had last month, this is it. We’ve had a few domestics over the years, but for the most part, this has been a pretty quiet town. I guess if you had to depend on us to keep you busy, you’d be pretty bored,” Cass said when they reached the van.

  “Please, we have plenty to do without your homicides.” Tasha opened the back of the van and set the bag in. “We cover the entire county. There’s always something going on somewhere. And there’s no shortage of rapes, assaults, burglaries, you name it. Plus, things will start to pick up now, especially when the kids start coming for senior week.”

  Tasha grimaced. “I hate senior week. Then, of course, straight through till Labor Day the entire county is hopping. All these little shore towns with their rentals—families and college kids—and then there’s the daytrippers. Over the past few years, we’ve had a bunch of homicides. I hope this is the only one you’ll have to deal with.”

  Tasha opened the driver’s-side door and hopped in.

  “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can,” she told Cass.

  “Thanks. I appreciate it. I’ll make a set of photos for you and send them over.” Cass stepped back and watched the van pull onto the highway, then scanned the small crowd that gathered around the officer who had found the body, and who was now retelling the story for the newly arrived chief of police.

  Denver stood quietly, occasionally nodding, until the officer concluded his verbal report. Then, without so much as a comment, the chief followed the path to the body, and stood over it, wordlessly watching the ME’s ministrations. Finally he turned and looked up to the crowd at the edge of the roadway. When he met Cass’s eyes, he held them for a very long minute before turning away abruptly and walking back to his car.

  Cass watched Denver’s Crown Vic pull away from the side of the road before motioning to Spencer, who was in deep conversation with one of the EMTs.

  “I’m going to go back to the station and check for missing persons,” she called to him.

  “I think I’ll stick around here for a while longer, grab a ride back with Helms,” Spencer replied.

  “Okay. I’ll see you there.”

  Cass walked back down toward the stream, pausing about ten feet from where the body lay sadly exposed. The limbs, where rigor mortis was beginning to set in, were covered with eager flies seeking an opening. The medical examiner was still conducting her inspection of the body, and Cass found she could not bear to watch this latest invasion of the unnamed woman. She crossed the stream and followed the trail along the other side to the two-lane road where she’d left her car. She got in and turned on the ignition, her movements becoming more and more robotic with each passing moment. She turned the car around and drove, not to the station, but to a lonely stretch of road.

  Six miles down, she took a right on a narrow lane that led toward the bay. Minutes later she reached a rundown house that sat off the side of the road, the sole structure for another quarter mile in either direction. In the overgrown yard sat the shell of an old Boston Whaler, its hull dry-rotted. Cass parked the car behind the boat and walked around to the back of the house, where three rickety steps led to an even more unstable back porch, which once upon a time had been painted white.

  Time and neglect had stripped the wood and weathered it gray. The screen on the back door had long since eroded, and the windows no longer closed tightly. Cass sat on the top step and looked off into the tall cattails that grew from the marsh straight on up to the back of the dilapidated garage. Off to the left was a pond, and from where she sat, she could see a small blue heron wading through the water, head down, cautiously stalking its prey.

  She balled her hands and covered her eyes, but all she could see was the body of that dark-haired young woman sprawled out upon the rock.

  Oblivious to the sweat that covered her face and dampened her light blue T-shirt down to her waist, she sat immobile and tried to control the emotions that churned within her. Of course, she’d seen dead bodies before, but she’d never reacted like this.

  Well, hadn’t her therapist warned her that this might happen someday? That if she persisted in a career in law enforcement, sooner or later she might have to deal with something that might take her back to a place she’d rather not go?

  The ringing of her cell phone jarred her, and she answered it on the second ring.

  “Burke.”

  “Are you on your way in?” Spencer asked, his voice tense.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’ll meet you there. I just heard from Denver.” He paused. “Apparently we have a situation.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.” She hung up and slid the phone back into her jacket pocket.

  She sat for another few moments and watched the heron grab something from the water, throw its head back, and swallow its meal in one quick motion. The wind hissed through the cattails, the hushed sound soothing her as few things could. She remembered countless nights when she lay awake in the room under the eaves, right up there on the second floor, listening to that very same sound as she fell asleep. It had comforted her then and it comforted her now.

  A moment later she was walking toward her car, her hands steady, her pulse almost normal, wondering what, on this day marked by murder, constituted a “situation.”

  Craig Denver sat in the chair the town council had surprised him with as a gift for his twenty-fifth year on the job and simply stared out the window next to his desk. For years, he’d wondered what he’d do if this day ever came, and now it was here, and he was still wondering.

  He spread the piece of paper that had arrived earlier that day in a plain white envelope that bore no address. Phyl had found it on the floor of the lobby, near the front door, when she was on her way into the building after having picked up lunch for herself and the chief. She would have tossed it, except for the fact that it was sealed. Her curiosity piqued, she’d opened it, and having glanced at the message once, took it immediately to the chief’s office.

  The paper itself was undistinguished, everyday computer stock, the kind that could be purchased at any one of a number of chain office-supply stores. It was the message that had caught Phyl’s attention, a message comprised of glued letters cut from newspapers and magazines, much as a child might do for a homework assignment.

  Hey, Denver! Have you found her yet?

  She’d carried it down the hall, holding it between two fingers to avoid getting her prints on it, walked into the chief’s office without knocking—something she rarely did—and dropped it on his desk. He had unfolded it, then stared at it for the longest time.

  Finally, he asked quietly, “Where did this come from?”


  “I found it on the floor in the lobby.”

  “You didn’t see anyone … ?”

  “No one. I’d just picked up lunch from Stillman’s, I wasn’t gone ten minutes. I didn’t see anyone on my way out, or on my way back in.”

  “Okay.” He’d nodded slowly. “Thank you.”

  Most of the force was still out at Wilson’s Creek, so he dusted the envelope and the white sheet of paper for prints. There were none except for the smudged partials that he suspected would prove to be Phyl’s. He’d reached for the phone, and called in Spencer and Burke.

  Denver sat back in his chair and sighed deeply, wanting nothing more than to start this day over and have it turn out differently.

  Coincidence, or copycat?

  Either way, it wasn’t good.

  Either way, shit was going to be stirred up, sure enough, and he wasn’t the only one who was going to have to deal with it.

  He rubbed his eyes wearily and waited for his detectives to arrive.

  Two

  Cass flew into the parking lot and swung into her reserved spot. Once inside the building, she waved absently to the desk sergeant as she walked briskly through the lobby.

  “Spencer here yet?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “He went back about a minute ago,” the sergeant replied.

  Cass followed the hall to the chief’s office, knocking on the door although it stood partially open.

  Denver motioned her in without looking. He sat at his desk, a thick file in front of him.

  “We’ve had an odd development.”

  He slid a piece of white paper across the desk, and both detectives leaned forward to get a closer look. “This was found in the lobby today.”

  Hey, Denver! Have you found her yet?

  “That would refer to the victim we found out in the marsh?” Spencer asked.

  “Yes.”

  The chief tapped his pipe on the edge of the desk. The bowl was empty of tobacco, as it had been every day for the past four years since he’d successfully given up smoking. He still, however, had a need to handle it in times of extreme stress. Like now.

  “So he’s taunting us?” Spencer again.

  “In a way. He’s deliberately trying to remind us of one of our old cases.”

  “How old is old?” Spencer asked. “Two years? Five?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Twenty-six?” Spencer looked from the chief to Cass, then back again. “Twenty-six years?”

  Denver nodded as he slipped on a pair of thin plastic gloves and opened the file. He took out another white envelope and removed a sheet of white lined notebook paper, which he unfolded and held up for both detectives to see. The message had been composed with letters cut from newspapers and magazines.

  Hey, Wainwright! I left something for you on the beach!

  And then a second sheet from a second envelope.

  Hey, Wainwright! Did you find her yet?

  “George Wainwright was the chief of police here in Bowers Inlet for almost thirty-five years,” Denver explained, his voice softening.

  “Well, the notes sure look the same. Did you ever find out who sent those?” Spencer pointed to the letters that lay, one next to the other, across the center of the desk.

  “We know who sent them. We just don’t know his name.”

  “I don’t understand …”

  “The Bayside Strangler mailed those letters to Chief Wainwright,” Denver said.

  “The Bayside Strangler?” Spencer leaned forward in his seat. “Hey, I heard about him. Geez, he must have killed, what, nine, ten women … ?”

  “Thirteen,” the chief told him. “He killed thirteen women, back in the summer of ’79.”

  “All in Bowers Inlet?” Spencer asked.

  “No. Just the two here,” Denver replied. “But over the course of that one summer, he hit several of the other small bay towns as well—hence ‘the Bayside Strangler.’ Killion Point, Tilden, Hasboro, Dewey—he hit all of ’em at least once. Then the killings just stopped.”

  “Just like that? Like, he just left the building?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes,” Denver said dryly.

  “And there was never a suspect?” Spencer frowned.

  “Nothing. No idea who he was or why he started, why he stopped.” Denver shook his head. “No one had ever seen this guy. We had no description, no evidence to help us narrow down the field. And think about how huge that field was. Besides the permanent residents of all these little towns, you have the summer people. The ones who come back every year and own or rent the same house, the ones who used to live here but come back in the summer because their family still owns property here. You have the rentals—Christ, they change every week or two. And then you have the summer help, the kids who come for ten weeks to work at the shore, then leave and go back to wherever they came from. Day-fishers, daytrippers.”

  “So he just moved away …”

  Cass spoke up for the first time. “Most serial killers only stop because they die or go to prison. Moving away doesn’t usually stop them from killing.”

  “I guess if there’d been a serial killer someplace else with the same MO you’d have heard about it.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. If he’d gone on another spree like he did here, it would have made the papers, but we may not have seen those papers out here,” Denver said.

  “Twenty-some years ago, there wasn’t any way to track something like that,” Cassie noted. “No national data banks, no central records.”

  The chief nodded. “You’re right. Chances are, he just moved on. Now, the young woman found in the marsh … do we know who she is?”

  “Not yet. There was no ID, no wallet,” Cass said.

  Denver stared at her.

  “Chief?” She waved her hand in front of his face.

  “No ID at all?” he asked.

  “None. Why?”

  “Just coincidentally, the Bayside Strangler always took his victims’ wallets,” he replied. “Of course, not knowing if this woman had a wallet on her at the time, we don’t want to jump to conclusions.”

  “That’s a pretty odd coincidence,” Spencer pointed out.

  “She might not have carried ID. I can’t tell you how many times my own daughter has gone out and left her purse or her wallet right there on the kitchen counter.”

  “Still—” Spencer began, but Denver cut him off.

  “We’re not going to connect the dots just yet, Detective. Understand?” Denver shrugged. “As tempting as it is. It’s more likely that someone is trying to throw us off.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Let’s focus on our victim, shall we? Start checking the missing persons reports, statewide. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find, in the end, that we’ve got a guy who’s killed his wife or girlfriend and has enough knowledge of the Bayside Strangler to try to muddy the waters. It was no secret that the Strangler had sent Wainwright taunting notes. Anyone could have remembered that. And the fact that the victims’ IDs were stolen, well, maybe this guy figures if he takes the wallet, he sends the letter, everyone will assume there’s a copycat Strangler out there and take the heat off him. Let’s not automatically buy in to that, all right? I wanted you to be aware of what we dealt with before, but let’s not assume. Let’s start by finding out who our victim is.

  “Put your focus on her,” Denver repeated, “so that we can find her killer.”

  “But we can compare the evidence, right?” Spencer asked as he stood. “The old to whatever new forensics comes up with?”

  “Back then, fingerprints were the best you could hope for, and unfortunately, this guy didn’t leave any. None that we found, anyway. Thank God, investigative techniques have come a long way since then, but we don’t have anything to compare.”

  Spencer scratched behind his right ear. “All those crime scenes and no evidence? Hard to believe.”

  “Today, a good CSI can get prints off a victim’s skin. Scrapings from
under the nails. Fibers and hair. They can test trace found at the scene. Dirt found on carpets, all sorts of things. Back then, the techniques were not quite as sophisticated. DNA was just a glimmer in the eyes of a few scientists twenty-six years ago.” Denver seemed distracted for a moment, then said, “I was a rookie here in 1979. I worked that case. I have to admit, seeing that body this morning took me right back. It’s uncanny …”

  “Then, you remember those cases firsthand,” Spencer said.

  “Like it was yesterday. The first victim here in Bowers Inlet was a thirty-four-year-old woman named Alicia Coors. She disappeared from her home and was found the next morning on one of the dunes down past Thirty-sixth Street. And that was just the beginning. Every few days, there’d be another, somewhere in the area. All women about the same age—late-twenties to mid-thirties. All were sexually assaulted and found dumped in one of the marshes. Cause of death in each case, manual strangulation. All left posed in the same manner.”

  “How were they left?” Spencer asked.

  “Pretty much the way that woman was left this morning.”

  “Why would he do that?” Spencer scratched behind his ear.

  “That’s a question a profiler might be able to answer. Unfortunately, back then, there were no profilers.” The chief shrugged. “I don’t know what motivated him then, and I don’t know what’s motivating someone now. And I don’t want to jump to conclusions. So let’s just follow the evidence and hope it leads to the truth.”

  He stood up, a clear indication that the meeting had concluded.

  “Spencer, I want you checking missing persons immediately.”

  “On my way.” Spencer got up and headed out the door.

  “Anything in particular for me?” Cass asked.

  “Yes. I’d like a word with you.” He pointed to the door and said, “Close it.”

  Cass did as she was told, then turned to face the chief.

  “Are you going to be all right with this?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Seriously, Cass, if it’s going to be a problem for you …”