What Hurts the Most: An engrossing, heart-stopping thriller (7th Street Crew Book 1)

by Willow Rose

  She was determined to forget everything.

  And she had succeeded. After the bruises were gone, no one ever asked questions or wondered what had happened. Except Julia…and Annie simply kept avoiding her. She missed her friendship like crazy, but she had to cut her off. That was the only way she could forget, the only way she could avoid having to talk about that night, that dreadful night when Tim had taken her to the lake.

  But, as the fall came, something started to happen to Annie’s body. It was like it had gotten a life of its own, like she had no control over it anymore.

  She could wake up at night and suddenly be so hungry it felt like she was about to die if she didn’t eat. She would keep crackers and candy under her pillow, so her roommate wouldn’t wake up when she ate at night. She had a jar of pickles that she ate greedily. And then there was the extra weight. The nightly eating made her gain a lot of weight. And some nights her stomach would hurt. She even started throwing up in the mornings, and wondered if that was due to her strange hours of eating.

  Finally, she went to the doctor and was examined. Her mother took her. She had come for a visit, and when Annie had thrown up for the third time while she was there, she suspected something was wrong.

  “She’s gaining weight rapidly,” her mother told the doctor.

  “Well, that’s not too odd, given her circumstances,” he said with a smile. “Congratulations.”

  Annie’s mother shrieked. She went completely pale, then hid her face between her hands. “I feared it might be something like this,” she said with a trembling voice.

  On the way back to the campus, her mother didn’t speak while driving. Not until she parked in front of the dorm. Annie felt sick to her stomach and a thousand thoughts went through her mind.

  Was it Tim’s? There were others that night. Could it be from one of them?

  Her mother turned her head and looked at her. “Listen to me. I don’t know who got you into this trouble,” she said hissing. “But either you get married, or you have an abortion. You hear me? Or you’ll never be able to set foot in our house again. You won’t be our daughter anymore.”

  “But…but…”

  Her mother turned her head away. “Fix this,” she said. “Or don’t come back home.”

  And just like that, Annie’s life was changed forever. Standing in the parking lot, looking after her mother driving away, she knew nothing would ever be the same again. Her plan of becoming a teacher and going back to Windermere to teach at her old school, then marrying a nice guy and having a family was completely broken. Destroyed in a matter of seconds. She had no idea what to do, but she did know one thing. There was no way she was getting rid of the baby. She had heard stories of women not being able to conceive again. She was no killer. She could never kill a child. Born or unborn.

  No way.

  Chapter Sixteen

  January 2015

  The next morning, I watched the sun rise while sitting on my board. Emily had her own car that I had bought for her, and she took care of herself in the morning, so I took just the twins with me to my parents’ place to eat breakfast. Meanwhile, I decided to start the day my favorite way, in the ocean. My mother had told me she would take the kids to the school bus, which stopped right outside the motel.

  It was one of those unbelievably gorgeous mornings, where the sun was allowed to rise on a cloud free sky. The water was cold at this time of year, the coldest it got in Florida. I know people in other parts of the country would laugh at me thinking sixty-nine degree water was chilly, but to me it was. You get used to it being in the eighties for most parts of the year. So, I had put on my wetsuit and was waiting for the next wave, while wondering about Laura Bennett. I couldn’t stop thinking about her and hadn’t slept much all night. I kept going back to the way the killer had arranged the fingers after he had separated them from her body. They had all been in a neat row and so carefully cut off, like he didn’t want to ruin them any more than necessary.

  The waves rolled in in nice straight lines. They weren’t big today, but the wind was off-shore, and they were glassy and smooth as I rode them on my longboard. The wind blew the top of the waves off as they broke, and created rainbows in the rays from the sun. I drew in a deep breath and enjoyed every moment of it. To make it perfect, I spotted two dolphins not too far from me. They were chasing fish and making big splashes in the water. I could have stayed like this all day, just surfing and watching nature, but unfortunately, I had to get out and get to work before nine.

  I caught one last wave and rode it to the beach, feeling the wind in my face and the thrill of the ride. I usually rode shorter boards, but on small-wave days like this, I enjoyed longboarding. I practiced my cross-steps and made it almost to the tip of the board before I reached the beach. As I came out of the water, I grabbed my board, then turned around and took one last glance at the beautiful scenery, as if to greet the ocean and say thanks before I ran back up and into the shower.

  Surfing always made me feel cheerful, and I was still singing when I arrived at the station. A note on my desk told me the medical examiner’s office was done with the initial autopsy. I peeked into Weasel’s office and let her know where I was going, then grabbed one of the department’s cars and drove to Rockledge on the mainland.

  The county had recently gotten a new District Medical Examiner, appointed by the Governor, and I hadn’t had a chance to meet him yet. It was very rare we needed their help. It was mostly when tourists committed suicide by jumping off cruise ships and ended washed up on our beaches. Or after bar fights when someone was stabbed. I had liked the former District Medical Examiner, Dr. Parker, but unfortunately, he had retired three months ago and they had to appoint a new one.

  I parked in front of the office and walked up. I had put on a hoodie. The temperature today would stay in the high sixties, and I found it to be quite chilly. The sun would probably warm up during the day and make it nice, but for now, it felt good wearing a sweater. In January, you never knew what you’d get. It could go from the low sixties and windy out of the North to the low to mid-eighties in a day or two.

  “Jack Ryder. I’m here to see Dr. Díez,” I said to the secretary behind the counter, while reading the last name from my note.

  The secretary smiled. “One moment, please.”

  I sat down and found my phone. I started going through my emails and answering as many as possible before a door finally opened and someone stepped out.

  “Mr. Ryder?” a voice said.

  I stood up. In front of me stood a woman in her mid-forties wearing a white coat. Her thick dark brown hair was gathered in a bun on the back of her head. She was short and slightly overweight. Her brown eyes stared at me.

  “Mr. Ryder?” she repeated, and reached out her hand. I grabbed it. “I’m Dr. Díez, District Medical Examiner. Shall we take a look?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  January 2015

  We walked down a flight of stairs and entered the autopsy suite.

  “So, I guess a welcome is in order, Dr. Díez,” I said.

  She turned her head and smiled “Thank you, Officer. And you can call me Yamilla.”

  “Yamilla? That sounds Spanish?”

  She walked to a table and put on plastic gloves and a mask. I did the same.

  “Cuban,” she said. “But I was born in Tampa. My father escaped as a child, just before it was too late.”

  “So, your mother is American?” I asked, as we walked towards the steel table where the covered body was.

  Yamilla grabbed the white blanket and lifted it. “Yes and no. She was born on American soil, but has Cuban roots too. Both her parents are Cuban. We have a way of finding each other. Only she’s second generation, and like me, she has never been to Cuba.” She paused and glanced down. Then she pulled the blanket off.

  I swallowed hard at the sight of Laura Bennett once again. Next to her, on another table, lay the cut off parts. Yamilla took in a deep breath.

  “
We don’t see many of these kinds around here.”

  “We sure don’t,” I said, and looked closely at the body. “So, what can you tell me about her?”

  “She was strangled to death. But not with his hands or anything tied around her neck. You see, there are no marks on her throat. “The Petechiae under her eyelids is a sign of strangulation. He didn’t use his hands.”

  “He’s a gentle killer,” I said. I looked at the mouth. “There is no sign of aggression. No anger. Any marks under her upper lips?”

  Yamilla smiled. “Someone has seen this before,” she said. She grabbed the upper lip and lifted it. “As you can see, she has marks here. Her lip was pressed against her teeth, leaving the marks. But there is nothing on the outside to indicate anything was pressed against her lips.”

  “A pillow,” I said. “Leaves no marks.”

  “Exactly. The killer went to great lengths to not leave any trace.”

  I leaned in over Laura Bennett’s face and studied it closer. “Or, maybe he didn’t want to bruise her. He cares about her body, not about her.”

  “That could be a theory,” Yamilla said.

  “Anything else? A time of death?” I asked.

  Yamilla looked at me from above her mask. “Between one-thirty and two in the morning.”

  I wrote it on my notepad, thinking that eliminated Travis Connor, who had been seen at the Beach Shack from ten-twenty till it closed at two. The bartender told me he was positive the guy had stayed there till two, since he had trouble getting him to leave.

  “Anything else?”

  Yamilla paused. There was something.

  “She was washed.”

  “Yes. We determined on the scene that she had been in the shower,” I said. “There were still water drops and dirt on the sides of the bathtub. We figured she had been in the shower when the killer surprised her. That’s why I’m quite surprised at the time of death. I was certain it had been in the morning hours. I was sure she had gotten out of bed, then was taking a shower when the killer came in.”

  “No,” Yamilla said. “She was washed after death occurred. She was washed with bleach. There is nothing on her body. It’s completely clean. No fingerprints. No DNA. Not even a drop of sweat, which there would be if she struggled for her life during strangulation. Her body would have released noradrenaline, a hormone closely related to adrenaline. Yet, I find no trace of anything on her. It has all been washed away.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  January 2015

  I said goodbye to Dr. Yamilla Díez and hit the road again. Across the first bridge that took me to Merritt Island, the island between my beloved Cocoa Beach and the mainland, I couldn’t help thinking about this new information. The killer had washed Laura Bennett’s body after he strangled her. Who did that? Who washed her with bleach just before starting to cut her up? Was it some kind of weird ritual? Was it to get rid of DNA? Bleach was known to get rid of DNA. Bleach contained sodium hypochlorite, an extremely corrosive chemical that could break the hydrogen bonds between DNA base pairs and degrade a DNA sample. In fact, bleach was so effective that crime labs used it to clean workspaces so that old samples didn’t contaminate fresh evidence.

  A picture of the killer had started to shape in my mind. The picture of a guy who took his time with his victim. A killer who enjoyed what he did and wanted the moment to last. He was also very controlled. He made no mistakes. This was no ordinary guy. On top of it, he was gentle with the victim’s body.

  I passed the second bridge and drove into Cocoa Beach shortly after. Tourists and snowbirds were on the roads everywhere, not knowing where to go, cruising down A1A, slowing the traffic down.

  At a meeting at the station, I told everyone what I had learned at the medical examiner’s office. They didn’t seem to buy into my idea of him being a gentle killer much, especially not Weasel, who looked skeptically at me from her seat at the end of the table.

  “I still say we take a closer look at the husband. He’s the one with the best motive. It was the wife’s money. He’s getting everything. She was about to leave him. They lost a child, and he blames her for it. Lots of reasons to finish her off in an angry tantrum while drunk, then pretend to pass out.”

  “But he doesn’t remember anything,” Joel Hall said. “When we got to the house and talked to him, he was completely out of it. Hardly knew who he was, let alone what had happened the night before.”

  “How is the guy doing?” Weasel asked. “Can we interrogate him soon?”

  “I was with him last night, Marty took the morning shift,” Jim Moore said. “I left the hospital at four in the morning, then slept till nine. Brandon Bennett was completely knocked out all the time I was there. But I can go call Marty and see if there is any news.”

  “Do that,” I said.

  Jim left the table with his phone in hand. I looked at the others.

  “We have to think about who else might have a motive besides the husband,” I said. “He might be telling the truth.”

  The Weasel snorted. “It’s him. I just know it is. I can smell it. He’s bad news. Besides, there’s no sign of breaking and entering on the house. Whoever did this knew Laura Bennett.”

  “Being bad news doesn’t make you a killer,” I said.

  “True,” Weasel said. But she didn’t mean it.

  “We need to look in other directions as well,” I said. “I’ve ruled out the neighbor who lives down the street, Travis Connor, since he has an alibi, and as far as we know, he was the only one who visited the house on the night of the killing. But there might have been others. He left pretty early. There could have been someone else. Joel, have the other neighbors said anything useful?”

  Joel shook his head with a sigh. “Not really. I mean, Mrs. Jeffries told us she saw Mrs. Bennett smoking on the porch at eleven, but that’s about it. No one has seen anyone else on the street. But, I’m not done. I still have a couple of houses left on the street that I haven’t talked to, since they weren’t home.”

  “You’ll continue that today. There might be someone sitting on important information that they don’t think is useful,” Weasel said.

  Joel Hall shrugged. “Sure. But it is a fairly quiet street, and on a Sunday night, most of the people were in bed early.”

  Weasel smacked her hand on the table. “Come on. This can’t be it, people. Someone must have seen something. At least they must have heard her scream. Ask if anyone heard any screams between one and two in the morning.”

  “There was loud music coming from the Bennett’s house,” Joel Hall said. “It could have drowned out any screams. Besides, people are so used to hearing them quarrel.”

  “Plus, she was strangled by a pillow,” I said. “She probably couldn’t scream.”

  Weasel growled and leaned back in her chair with a mommy isn’t happy look on her face.

  “I’ll ask around anyway,” Joel Hall said, to smooth things out.

  At the same time, the door opened, and Jim Moore stepped in. “He’s awake,” he said. “Brandon Bennett is awake.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  January 2015

  “I don’t remember anything. I swear. I really don’t.”

  Brandon Bennett was sitting up in his bed at Cape Canaveral Hospital. Marty had taken his son, Ben, and the dog to the cafeteria to get a hot cocoa at my suggestion, while I spoke to the dad. The dog had been allowed to stay overnight, given the circumstances. Everyone felt bad for Ben and wanted him to feel safe. I talked to the doctor before entering the room, and he confirmed that Brandon Bennett had been drugged with Rohypnol, or a Roofie, as it was also called. The date-rape drug. That was why he had been so out of it and why he had been slipping in and out of consciousness for the past twenty-four hours. I had called Yamilla at the medical examiner’s office and she told me they had already checked Laura Bennett’s blood, and there were no signs of any drugs. Lots of alcohol, but no other drugs. In other words, it was only Brandon Bennett who had been drugged. Tha
t told me the killer just wanted to get rid of Brandon, and that Laura had been his real target. That was my theory.

  I got up and walked to the window of the third floor. The hospital was situated on a small peninsula and had water on three sides of it. Brandon Bennett’s room had views over the Banana River, with Cape Canaveral’s huge cruise ships on the horizon waiting to take off later in the day.

  “You gotta help me out a little, here, Brandon,” I said. “Your wife turns up killed in your bedroom after a night you and she had been drinking heavily. We learn from neighbors and friends that you often fight loudly and violently, especially since the death of your child. People tell me you blame her for it. With her death, you’re going to inherit a lot of money. You like to gamble. Convince me that you didn’t kill her.”

  I turned and looked at his face. He was pale and looked ill. He threw out his hands. “I…I don’t know what else to say.”

  I rubbed my forehead, then stared at him, scrutinizing him. Was he a brilliant liar? Or was he telling the truth? He didn’t seem to be that bad guy everyone else was so busy making him out to be.

  “Did you do it?” I asked. Mostly because I had to. I knew what answer he would give me.

  Brandon Bennett looked appalled. “Of course not. Are you kidding me? I loved Laura. I adored her. If she was here, she could tell you. I gave her flowers every week. Ask the local florist. Every freaking Wednesday I had her send my wife flowers. I loved everything about her. I know I was never the model husband or father. I have a problem. I’ll admit to that. I drink and I gamble. And I hate myself for that. Believe me. It is destroying me and my marriage.”

  His voice cracked as he spoke. It made him sound sincere. I cursed it. I really wanted him to be guilty. I wanted him to be the bad news Gabrielle Phillips had talked about. But when I looked at him, that wasn’t what I saw. Tears were piling up in his eyes now as he looked at me. His body was shaking from the restraint of holding them back.