by Gregg Olsen
Celesta Delgado.
Skye Hornbeck.
“If we ever doubted before, we have a serial,” Kendall said. “Don’t we?”
Dr. Waterman nodded as she worked her light over the dead woman’s torso.
“The question,” she said softly, “at least for now, is just who this is?”
Kendall nodded. “If she’s local and reported missing, we might be able to pinpoint who she is.”
Even without a head.
“Midnight Cassava,” Josh said. “She’s been missing since the second week in April. Or thereabouts. Hard to tell with her comings and goings. Hooker, you know.”
“Marissa,” Kendall corrected, ignoring the hooker remark.
The pathologist looked over her glasses at Josh and Kendall. “Did she have any children?” she asked
Kendall nodded. Suddenly she no longer smelled the decomposition of the body. “Yes, a little girl. She’s living with her grandmother now.”
“This woman has had at least one baby. See the stretch marks? Internal exam of the uterus will verify it. Her name wouldn’t happen to be Tasha, would it?” Birdy asked.
The beam of the light illuminated a wrist tattoo of letters spelling out T-a-s-h-a, each character separated by a tiny daisy.
Kendall thought of the little girl. Her mother was a prostitute and had died the kind of unspeakable death that no one, no matter how she lived her life, deserved.
Striations around the wrist were visible. Like the others, likely made by wire bindings.
“Was she restrained? Like Skye?”
“I can’t be sure,” Dr. Waterman said. “There’s some obvious freezer burn here. See that dark patch of skin along the arms?”
The pallid limbs of the victim had broad markings that ran from the shoulders to the hands. The right hand was missing the index finger.
“Why cut off just one finger?” Josh said. “I mean, if you’re going to lop off someone’s head for fun, why bother with a single digit?”
The pathologist shrugged. “My guess is that he didn’t mess with cutting off her finger. Those damn gulls did. Look at this cut. More of a tear, really. Not like the head.”
Indeed, the neck was the most obvious and shocking injury Kendall had seen. It was a blood-clotted stump. Tissue and vertebrae pushed upward like a mushroom from the remarkably clean cut that had severed the head from the body.
“Look at how precise this is,” Dr. Waterman said. “This was no hacking but a careful—and I’d say skilled—decapitation.”
Josh popped an Altoid mint into his mouth, as if the fresh taste of the candy would mitigate the stench of the room. “Who has that kind of—as you put it—skill? A taxidermist? A French Revolution reenactor?”
Birdy let a slight smile break across her usually serious face.
“That’ll be your job to figure out,” she said. “I’m just calling it like I see it, Josh.”
Next, scalpel gleaming, she made her Y-incision, slicing the skin shoulder to shoulder, then down the sternum.
“I suspected this,” she said.
Kendall bent closer. “What’s that?”
“See the crystals here?” She pointed to the edge of her scalpel next to the heart. Thin wafers of ice glistened like tiny diamonds on deep-red velvet.
Kendall indicated she did.
“This lady’s been kept in a freezer.”
Josh Anderson’s cell phone sounded, but he let it go to voice mail.
A beat later, Kendall’s buzzed. Thinking it might be something about Cody at school, she snapped off her glove and reached for her phone. It wasn’t the school. It was the number for Serenity Hutchins. She ignored it.
“Your reporter girlfriend is certainly quick on the story,” she said to Josh, who seemed to shrug it off. Birdy regarded the two detectives and spoke up.
“Now that you mention Ms. Hutchins,” Birdy said, “I was wondering how she was able to write such an incisive story on victim two.”
Josh looked a little embarrassed, his face darkening. He stepped away from the autopsy table and put his hands out as if to push back.
“I didn’t tell her about the cuts,” he said.
“Of course you didn’t,” Kendall said. “You’d never kiss and tell.”
“But I didn’t,” he said. He looked intently at both women. “Not this time.”
Chapter Thirty-three
October 15, noon
Bremerton
The hospital chapel had seen ten thousand tears. Maybe a million. It was a dour little room with four pewlike benches upholstered in dusty olive and facing a simple brass and wood cross. Very modern, or at least it was modern in the 1970s, when having a hospital chapel was part and parcel of dealing with dead patients.
Donna Solomon said nothing at first. She simply buckled over, hugging herself, as Kendall Stark told her the news.
“I’m sorry,” Kendall said. “This is such sad, sad information to take in.”
Donna found the strength to draw in a deep breath. Her eyes were flooded by then, and tears started to pour down her cheeks, collecting in the corner of her mouth.
“It is, it is…” she finally said.
“No one should ever have to go through this. Few people have.”
“Thank you for telling me before the papers put something out there.”
Kendall put her arms around Mrs. Solomon. Her daughter had been missing since mid-April. She’d thought, hoped, that Marissa had gone somewhere to be with a boyfriend.
“I always thought she’d come back. She did love her baby, just as I loved her.”
“I know.”
“Can I see her?”
Kendall shook her head. “That wouldn’t be a good idea. Her body isn’t completely intact. I’m sorry.”
Donna Solomon dabbed at her eyes with a tissue from a dispenser on a table.
“What do you mean, intact?”
“The body was in bad shape, I’m afraid.”
Kendall didn’t want to tell her the details just then. She studied Donna’s reaction, and she seemed to be satisfied.
Devastated. Resigned. Satisfied.
Kendall Stark could have cried when she saw the headline in the Lighthouse the next morning. It was beyond anything she could have imagined.
HEADLESS IN SOUTH KITSAP:
THE CUTTER STRIKES AGAIN!
Despite the fact that Kendall was suspicious that Josh had tipped off the young woman, there was the distinct possibility that Serenity had gotten the information from the jogger or others at the scene. Even so, she poked her head into Josh’s office to give him a piece of her mind. He was gone. Next on her list was Charlie Keller.
She wouldn’t even bother with Serenity.
She dialed his number, and the editor got on the line.
“Big happenings in Port Orchard, Detective.”
“Look, Charlie, I like you. I like the paper. I don’t even mind it when you get things wrong. But don’t you have any kind of decency over there?”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“How did you get that information? Couldn’t it have waited a day before you blasted it to everyone that the victim had been decapitated?”
“The news doesn’t wait.”
Kendall sighed. Of course he was right.
“No offense, Charlie, but the Lighthouse is hardly CNN. It could have waited.”
“Ouch,” he said.
“Don’t you care about the victim’s family? They’d barely been notified.”
“That’s your job.”
There was no point in the call, and Kendall Stark knew it. She’d dialed the Lighthouse editor to give him a piece of her mind about ethics, dignity, and concern.
All of that was lost on that bunch.
Serenity watched her boss turn off his office speakerphone. Despite Charlie Keller’s bravado during the call with Kitsap County detective Kendall Stark, he didn’t look happy. In front of him was a stack of messages from national
media outlets ranging from Fox News to CNN. Kitsap was making the news in the way that forgotten little burgs gain overnight notoriety when evil presents itself.
“She was pretty hot, wasn’t she?” she asked.
Charlie Keller fanned the messages on the desk in front of him.
“Yeah, she was. Too bad. I like her. She does good work, and we don’t advance a story very often without the help of the police. No offense to you.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at, Boss.”
He shook his head, not looking up at her. His eyes still riveted on the messages. “You know. And I’m not saying that you’re not doing a great job. But really, it won’t look good for the paper if some blogger points out that our reporter is getting her info from her cop boyfriend.”
Serenity looked surprised. She hadn’t said a word about seeing Josh Anderson.
“Well, for your information, Josh didn’t tell me this info. Not this time. I have more than one.”
“I’m sure you do,” he said. “But let’s watch this, okay? These things have a way of biting people in the ass. And you don’t want your ass chewed, believe me.”
Serenity nodded. “You’re right. I don’t.”
Jamie Lyndon was petite, but she had nerves of pure carbide. If she hadn’t been too slight in her build to take on all the physical requirements of the qualification exam, she would have been happy to be a corrections officer at the Kitsap County jail. At a breath under five feet and not quite a hundred pounds soaked to the skin, she eventually found her niche with a headset firmly in place as a 911 operator working at Kitsap County’s central communication center, CENCOM. Less risky. Less fun, to be sure. But her cool demeanor always served her well in a job that demanded calmness on the rocks with a splash of humor.
“Must be a full moon,” she said to her coworker, Sal, as they fielded call after call. “Werewolves and teenagers, if you can tell either apart on a night like this.”
“Yup, the board’s on fire tonight, for sure,” returned Sal, a part-time communications officer, part-time student, and full-time single dad. “That’s what we live for around here. Love it when we’re busy.”
“Me too—” Jamie began to answer before swiveling around to face her console and another call.
“9-1-1. What are you reporting?”
“Hello?”
The voice on the other end of the line was female, soft-spoken. So much so that Jamie couldn’t quite make out what she was saying.
“Can you please speak up?”
“Okay. I just don’t want anyone to hear me.”
“Is this an emergency?”
“Yes. It is. I think it qualifies. It’s about a murder.”
“All right. Can you be more specific?”
“The dead lady at Anderson Point. I know the guy who did it.”
“Who is this? Where are you calling from?”
“I’m not saying. And don’t try to catch me. This phone’s about out of minutes, and I’ll just get another from the gas station.”
“All right. Who are you talking about?”
“The dead lady.”
“Yes, I know that. I mean, who is the guy you’ve alluded to?”
“I’m not saying.” The woman paused, as if she hadn’t contemplated that she’d be asked such a simple question. “I can’t. But I want you to know that he’s not a monster.”
Jamie knew enough from the newspaper and the Sheriff’s Office scuttlebutt that the caller was wrong. The man who had murdered and dumped Jane Doe in the frigid waters of Puget Sound was nothing less than a monster.
“You need to talk to someone, provided you really do know something.”
“I do. I do.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. You called for a reason.”
“I was feeling sorry for the dead woman. She didn’t deserve to die. Not in the way she did.”
Jamie pressed the caller. She had a way of pulling up just a touch of sarcasm to make someone spit out what they had to say.
What she needed them to say.
“Is that so? Tell me something we don’t know.”
There was a silence for a second, and Jamie wondered if she’d pushed the caller too hard. “The dead girl has a small crescent-shaped scar above her right knee.”
In case the information was accurate, Jamie pushed a little harder. “Where is he?”
“I’ve already said too much.”
“You’ve just got started. You don’t make a call like this and then just drop it. Who is he? This man who did this?”
“I’m not saying.”
“Who is he to you?”
“This call isn’t about me.”
Jamie took a breath. She wanted this woman to do the right thing. It was, after all, the reason she called in. Or was it? They had their share of crazies phoning 911. One man called at least once a week with the tale that he was sure a young girl was being tortured in the apartment above his. The police were routinely dispatched for the sole reason of making sure they were not at risk in any potential lawsuit—in case there really was a girl being tortured on the third floor of the Marina Apartments.
“How do we find him?” Jamie asked.
A slight hesitation, some kind of a tapping sound. “You won’t.”
“How do you know? Do you know him?”
“I love him, and I serve him.”
Jamie felt the air suck out of the room.
“Please hold the line, will you? I think you’ll want to talk to one of the sheriff’s detectives. Hang on. Okay?”
There was no answer. She heard a door slam and some muffled sounds.
“Are you there?”
Still nothing.
A man’s voice cut on to the line. “My bitch is done talking to you.” The voice was deep, cold, unforgettable.
Sal looked up from a computer screen, where he had just logged in the basics of his latest call. “What was that?”
“Some woman, first. Some man at the end. Says she knows who killed the woman out on Anderson Point. It sounded like she knew something. The man shut her up.”
“Get the number? Location?”
“Disposable cell phone, she says.”
“God, we hate those.”
Jamie sighed. “Yeah, we do.”
“Think she was for real?”
“I’ll forward it to the Sheriff’s Office. That’s their job. Ours is to answer the calls.” She turned her attention to the call light flashing from her console. “God, here comes another.”
Jamie pushed the button on her handset.
“9-1-1. How can I help you?”
The caller was inquiring about the neighborhood block watch program. Jamie politely reminded him that those types of inquiries were not an emergency.
“Try back tomorrow. Use the help line. This is for emergencies only,” she said.
She rolled her eyes in Sal’s direction, and he, too, was handling a call.
Jamie wrote up a brief note on what the caller had said about the corpse on the shore at Anderson Point and forwarded it to her floor supervisor. She’d noted the call log accession number, which would allow investigators the ability to pull the recording of the call so they could listen to what was said—and how it was said.
Jamie Lyndon had a pretty good feeling that this particular call would lure some ears sooner than later. And she was right.
The next morning, Kendall Stark looked at the CENCOM report about the nighttime caller and the chilling message that she’d relayed to the operator. It was only two paragraphs long, but it provided a crucial piece of information.
She looked up at Josh as he strode into his office, coffee in hand and a smile on his face as if he was going to tell a joke.
“What’s with you?” he said. “It’s too early for this to be a crappy day already.”
She indicated the report with a tap of her finger. She had also downloaded an audio file of the call.
“One of our operators took a call la
st night. If it’s genuine, and I have no reason to believe it is…” She let her words trail off.
“Yeah?” he said, sliding into a chair.
“This is a theory,” she said, “and I’d like to tell you, but…”
“But what?” He looked impatiently at her and took a swig from his dirty mug.
“I don’t want to read about this in the paper. Okay?”
“I thought we were beyond that, Kendall.”
“I hope so,” she said. “And because I need you on this case, I’m willing to give you my trust just one more time.”
Josh didn’t offer up a quick retort; instead, he just nodded.
“The so-called Kitsap Cutter isn’t acting alone,” she said.
“You mean like Bianchi and Buono?”
He was referring to the Hillside Stranglers, who’d raped and murdered ten women in California in the 1970s. The crimes were notorious for many reasons, one of which dealt with how the two acted in tandem. They shared a psychopathology that entwined them in such a way that enabled them to act out on their fantasies together, each stoking the sick desires of the other.
“Not exactly.”
She played the recording.
“I love him, and I serve him.”
Josh stared at Kendall as the audio concluded.
“More like Bianchi and Betty,” she said.
“The Cutter’s accomplice is a female?”
Kendall nodded. “It fits the evidence. The cleaned-up victims, the hesitation in some of the cuts, the way he’s been able to lure victims without tipping them off.”
“They weren’t afraid,” Josh said.
“That’s right. Because she,” Kendall indicated the report once more, “the caller, was there too.”
Chapter Thirty-four
October 16, 9 a.m.
Port Orchard
Kitsap County Sheriff Jim McCray, a stern presence who rose up through the ranks when he won a neck-and-neck election two years prior, called Kendall and Josh into his office. It was just after 9 A.M., and the day felt like trouble already. Jim McCray was a hulking figure at six-foot-five and two hundred and fifty pounds. He had deep-set brown eyes, which seemed to penetrate more than stare.
