The White Lily

by Susanne Matthews

  “Halliday and Munroe,” Rob said identifying both of them. “What have we got?”

  “Two dead. Lindsay and Bryan Winchester. At five thirty-seven, a woman came running out of the house screaming, and the neighbor called 9-1-1. She’s the one in the red swimsuit over there.”

  He pointed to the woman who’d tried to stop her from following Rob.

  Figures.

  “We were closest to the scene, so we got the call,” the officer continued.

  “Were they shot, execution style, in the back of the head?” she asked, thinking of the Richardsons. If it was a child-trafficking ring working the East Coast, it was possible.

  “No, Detective, that would’ve been a blessing. I’ve been on the force for ten years, and I’ve never seen anything like this. My partner’s in the car. She got sick next to the first body, contaminating the scene. Hell, I barely made it outside to toss my cookies. Our backup checked upstairs and found the second body. That’s when we realized there were kids missing. We checked the house and the yard for more bodies, and thankfully we didn’t find any.”

  “It’s Special Agent. I’m with the FBI. Where are the officers now?” she asked.

  “One of them’s in the kitchen with the paramedics and the woman who discovered the bodies. We think she might be someone’s mother. She’s in some of the pictures on the mantel. The paramedic says she’s in shock—hasn’t made a sound since she stopped screaming. The other guy’s on crowd control, trying to keep the vultures away.”

  “Is the coroner up or down?” Rob asked.

  “Down.”

  “And you say there are two children missing?” Lilith had taken out an electronic notebook.

  “There are two cribs in the room, so that’s our guess. We haven’t talked to the neighbors yet. When you give the go-ahead, we’ll start questioning them, but I doubt they’ll know much. Judging by the number of unpacked boxes, the family moved in a short time ago. Don’t get me wrong, but why’d they send you guys? I expected someone from my precinct, not big guns from downtown.”

  “This may be related to another case I’m working on,” Lilith said.

  The officer nodded. “I don’t know who did this, but he’s one sick son of a bitch.”

  She stared at her notes and frowned. The Richardsons had recently moved, too.

  “Thanks,” Rob said, handing the officer one of his cards. “Make sure we get copies of all the reports. Come on.”

  Lilith followed him into the house. The copper scent of blood, vomit, and decomposition was strong, underlined by the nauseating aroma of lilies, flowers she always associated with funeral homes. She was convinced the only reason they were used in those situations was to cover the unmistakable odor of embalming fluid and decay. She closed the door behind her, shutting out the heat. Inside, the AC cranked out cold air; the place would smell a hell of a lot worse without it. The living room was on the left. Rob turned that way, and so did she.

  Lilith recognized Amos Flynn, Boston’s crusty, old medical examiner, from the meet and greet Trevor had hosted at a downtown pub last week. He knelt by the corpse, and between him and Rob’s position, she couldn’t see the body.

  “Halliday, you make a better door than you do a window. Move over.”

  “Agent Munroe,” Amos spoke quickly. “You don’t need to see this.”

  She shook her head. What was it about men these days? Did they really still think women fainted at the sight of blood?

  “It’s okay, Doc. I’ve seen a body before.” Well, maybe only in pictures or at the morgue, but how much worse could a fresh corpse be? She shoved Rob out of the way and gasped. “Holy shit!”

  The man’s torso was covered in blood, his hands and fingers at his throat almost severed by the wire around his neck. Blowflies buzzed around and crawled over the body, and she was sure she could see something moving on the corpse. Maggots. Her stomach clenched. She might have seen bodies before, but never anything like this.

  “What the hell is that?” Rob asked, gaping at the device around the cadaver’s neck.

  “It’s a homemade, self-tightening garrote collar, affectionately known as a bolo,” Amos answered. “The killer must be a movie buff. I saw something like it used in that Brad Pitt movie a couple of years ago—not his best flick. It was called The Counselor. The damn thing slips over the head and starts tightening until it slits the neck and severs the carotid artery. Takes only a couple of minutes. The poor bastard never stood a chance.” He shook his head. “And the Spanish considered this a civilized form of execution.”

  Lilith swallowed, praying she wouldn’t humiliate herself by adding to the vomit on the scene. “Is the body upstairs the same?”

  “No, manual strangulation followed by a severed spinal cord. He snapped her neck at the C2 vertebra. She’s in the nursery.”

  “Time of death?” Rob asked.

  “At least thirty-six hours ago, but it could be more. Rigor’s gone. Liver temp matches the ambient temperature of the room. It looks like he cranked the AC up as high as it would go before leaving, so I can’t give you a better estimate until I get them back to the lab.”

  Rob nodded. The door opened to admit the forensic technicians.

  “Hi, Jeff,” Rob greeted one of the techs. “Not a pretty one. Get pictures of everything and check every surface. It’s a murder-kidnapping, and we’re at least a day and a half late getting started. Hopefully the bastard left us something to work with.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  Rob turned to her. “Let’s have a look upstairs.”

  Lilith nodded and reluctantly followed him up. She’d never get that image out of her head.

  “How do you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Just ignore what we saw in there and go on as if nothing happened?”

  “I don’t ignore it, Lilith, but I don’t dwell on it. I let it make me angry, and that fury motivates me to do everything I can to find the bastard who did it. If you can’t push it away, you won’t be able to function, and I need your help here, because I sure as hell can’t solve this on my own.”

  She nodded, swiping at the tears trickling down her cheek. “Why would he kill so barbarically?”

  “Two reasons I can think of. The first, he was alone and he had to subdue two adults. The husband was a pretty big guy—two-fifty at least. If he wanted him out of commission quickly, that would do the trick.”

  “And they call me the ice queen,” she mumbled. Louder, she said, “If he wanted fast, why not just shoot him?”

  “A man that size could’ve rushed him. Guns make noise, and he probably didn’t want to alert the neighbors. The bastard’s a sadist, but that might be too mild a term for him, which is the second reason he killed the way he did. He enjoyed it.”

  Lilith followed Rob through the doorway and moved carefully around the body. Again, the blowflies buzzed around the corpse.

  “Christ,” Rob said. “It smells worse in here than it did downstairs.”

  She pinched her nose. “It’s not as cold in here. They probably kept it warmer for the kids, and there aren’t any flowers to mask the scent. It’s hard to tell, but it looks like she might’ve taken a beating before she was killed.”

  The walls of the room were painted a pale green and a beautiful mural of Noah’s Ark decorated one wall. Lilith scowled. Usually when people had twins, they bought matching furniture. In here, one crib matched the white dressers and change table, but the other was oak, its mattress lower than the one in the white crib, suggesting an older child slept in it. But the only pictures she’d seen in the living room were those of infant girls. She glanced at the change table again. Where were the diapers and other supplies?

  Lilith opened the drawer in the dresser closest to her—empty. Her sense of déjà vu increased. She had a bad feeling about this.

  “Rob,” she said softly after checking the rest of the drawers and the closet, “if it isn’t the same man who murdered the Richardsons, it�
�s got to be someone working with him. He left the furniture but took the time to pack all the children’s clean clothes, diapers, and blankets.” She pointed to the empty diaper pail. “He took the garbage with him. The method of execution may be different, but my gut says it’s the same crew.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Let me check the bathroom,” she said stepping back into the hall.

  “Lilith, where’d you go?” Rob called.

  “Second door on the left.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Bath toys, vitamins, baby wash, nursing pads ... the kind of things you find in a mother’s medicine cabinet. Whoever this guy is, he planned this operation, gave himself lots of time to do what he had to do, which was get those kids. There won’t be a ransom demand no matter how rich the family is.” She shut the cabinet. “The house has been cleaned out the same way as the one in Baltimore.”

  “Not quite. They left the furniture and all kinds of pictures in the living room.”

  “Yes, but two kids were taken, not just one.”

  “Maybe they’re twins, and what we see as one kid is really two.”

  “No way. Look at the cribs,” she said, leading him back into the bedroom. “The child in the wooden crib is older than the baby in the white one. As the child ages, you lower the mattress for safety. If the little girl is three or four months old, based on the pictures downstairs, then the older child is more than a year old. Takes nine months, right? This may be a baby-trafficking ring after all, and since both families had recently moved, it’s possible that’s how they select their victims. Can I go down and see if we can talk to the mother?”

  “Knock yourself out. You’re the profiler.”

  Turning on her heel, Lilith headed down the stairs, stopping on the third step from the bottom to watch as the coroner’s technicians wheeled the black body bag out of the house. She’d seen floaters recovered, accident victims so badly mangled as to be unrecognizable, but only in pictures or in the morgue where someone had touched them up. She imagined the victim trying to stop the wire from slicing through his throat as it did his fingers. The pain would’ve been excruciating; the fear and panic of knowing he’d be dead soon and couldn’t help his wife and children would have made it even worse.

  She shuddered. The killer might even have forced the wife to watch her husband die before beating her to a pulp and dragging her upstairs. Only a sociopath would be capable of such cruelty. He probably became aroused watching them suffer.

  Flashes from her time in the torture chamber gripped her, and she grabbed the banister to keep from falling. Her tormentor would have enjoyed this. Her hand covered her abdomen, and tears slipped down her cheeks once more. Rob was right. She had to let the anger out, because if she didn’t, she’d turn into that scared little girl who’d begged for death. Her demon was still out there somewhere, and when she found Kelly Kirk, she’d find him, but until then, she’d dedicate every waking moment to ridding the world of this monster.

  Chapter Five

  Lilith took a deep breath, hoping to calm herself before confronting the witness in the kitchen, and gagged on the sickly sweet smell of the large bouquet on the hall table.

  Damn lilies.

  Where had they come from? No man in his right mind would buy flowers like these for his wife. She glanced around the foyer and checked for a card in the bouquet, but there was nothing.

  I’ve seen something like it recently, but I don’t remember the scent being so overpowering.

  The last funeral she’d attended had been two years ago, so that wasn’t it.

  A movie?

  She shook her head, hoping to clear the emotional cobwebs weighing her down.

  Focus, Munroe, focus. Something about those damn flowers is important ... Were there flowers in the Richardson crime scene photos? Not in the foyer—there wasn’t one—but on a table somewhere?

  Closing her eyes, she visualized the photographs from the crime scene. The living room had still been full of boxes. The kitchen had no table, just an island with stools. The dining room ... that was it! There’d been a long, mahogany table with eight chairs around it, and in the center of the table sat a bouquet like this one.

  Was that how their perp gained entry into the house? There’d been no signs of forced entry at the Richardsons, and the officer would’ve mentioned it if there had been here. She’d run this by Rob as soon as she talked to the woman in the kitchen.

  Turning to her right, she crossed the dining room, walked past packed boxes that would never be opened, and entered the kitchen. The paramedics stood next to a rolling stretcher on which they'd placed the unconscious woman. They’d wrapped her in a blanket, and an oxygen mask attached to a portable tank covered her face. Her complexion was waxy, and even though she had no medical training, Lilith knew the woman was in trouble.

  “FBI Special Agent Lilith Munroe,” she said, showing her credentials. “What have you got?”

  “Woman in her early sixties. One of the neighbors identified her as Maggie Winchester, the victim’s mother. She was rocking and keening when we found her outside, but now she’s unresponsive. Blood pressure’s low, pulse is weak, and her heartbeat’s irregular. We’re giving her something to try to raise her blood pressure and stabilize her, but ... We need to get her to the hospital. She can’t answer any questions in the shape she’s in. If that were my son, I’d never recover from seeing him like that.” The paramedic shook her head.

  “They’ve moved him,” Lilith said, “and since it doesn’t look as if there’s any more you can do here, you can go anytime. Where will you take her?”

  “Mass General.”

  Lilith nodded. As soon as the paramedics were out of the room, she opened the fridge. No formula, milk, or juice. She searched each of the cupboards—not a single item to indicate a child had lived here, not even any baby bottles. Even if the woman were breastfeeding, she’d need to have a couple of those on hand.

  Opening the garbage can, Lilith saw it was empty. Going back into the living room, she scrutinized the baby pictures. They were all of the same child, from birth to about four months. Not one picture of the second child. Why leave these and take the others? Because the child would be recognized, just like Savannah Richardson. She’d bet a month’s salary on that.

  Returning to the kitchen, she glanced at the four empty ice cube trays in the sink. The bastard had packed up everything and taken it with him. How long did he stay in the house to do all that? An accomplice made sense, and with two infants, that person had helped this time.

  Opening the door to the two-car garage, Lilith stepped inside. An older model tan van sat in the space closest to the house, its sliding doors open. The children’s car seats were missing.

  “Lilith?” Rob called from the kitchen.

  “In here.”

  “What did you find?” he asked, coming to stand beside her.

  “What I expected to find. Damn it. It’s definitely the same gang. They packed up all the baby food, took the clothes and diapers and whatever else they needed, including the car seats, and the garbage. Rob, whoever did this is meticulous. I’m sure the techs won’t find anything, and despite the fact we have four bodies now and three missing children, we aren’t any closer to catching the bastards than we were in Baltimore.”

  Rob’s cell phone rang. He looked at the display and answered the call.

  “Hey, Trevor, we’re just finishing up here. What’s up? ... Lilith thinks it might be the same crew who killed the Richardsons ... Jesus H. Christ! You’ve got to be frigging kidding me ... We’re on our way.”

  “What is it?” she asked and, registering the fury on his face, prayed it wasn’t another murder-kidnapping.

  “It seems your theory about Savannah Richardson might have merit.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Trevor had me double-check with CPS about all of the kids. I’m not happy with the lack of cooperation I’m getting from them. So this morning
, I tried contacting the individual families directly, and when I didn’t reach anyone, I left messages to contact BPD as soon as they could. Trevor got a call from the Volts right after we left. In a nutshell, three months ago, shortly after Faith moved in with them, they had a change of heart and decided they couldn’t cope with a toddler. They put Faith up for private adoption through the church, and went to do a couple of months’ worth of missionary work in Central America. Trevor just got off the phone with the lawyer. The child went to a Chicago couple.”

  “Let me guess ... Lola and Lyle Richardson.” Damn! She’d found the connection and hadn’t recognized it.

  “You’ve got good instincts, Munroe. Stick to your guns, and don’t ever give up. We’ve got to get back to headquarters. Give me a minute to call Faye and tell her not to keep supper waiting. I’ll meet you at the car.”

  “Do you think the Harvester is collecting his children?”

  “I don’t know what I’m thinking,” Rob said, pressing speed dial on his phone, “but it’s scaring the bejesus out of me. Hey, honey ...”

  Lilith left Rob to speak to his wife alone, took another quick tour of the house, and then went outside to wait in the car. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  “Detective!”

  She turned at the title to see the woman in the red bathing suit hurrying toward her.

  “It’s Agent,” she said, stopping to wait for the woman to catch up. “I’m with the FBI.”

  “Is it true? Are Lindsay and Bryan dead? What about Ethan and Cassie?”

  “Are those the names of the children?”

  “Yes. Cassie’s their daughter. She’s four months old. Ethan is Lindsay’s nephew. He’s sixteen months, just starting to walk. His mother died last year, so Lindsay and Bryan took him in. They’ve had him less than two months.”

  Shit. Another child who didn’t belong to the couple who had him. “I’m sorry, Mrs. ...?”

  “Mona Chesterton. I live next door. I was going to babysit when Lindsay went back to work in September. She’s a teacher.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Lilith said. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss the case with you right now. A uniformed officer will be around shortly to take your information, and I’ll contact you if I need any more details. By the way, have you been home all day?”