The Drowned Woman: An absolutely unputdownable mystery and suspense thriller (Jericho and Wright Thrillers Book 2)

by CJ Lyons

  It was hard to believe that a sky this vibrant and blue could also be sheltering a wanton killer, he thought as he turned his face to the sun, allowing the warmth to sink deep into his skin. When he looked down again, he noticed the secret gardener’s bedraggled attempt at inviting color into the drab surroundings. His mind racing, shifting through the various permutations of the case, he grabbed the small folding shovel he kept in the toolbox in his truck bed and carefully sifted through the debris covering the flowers. Hard work was the best way to declutter a busy mind, his gran used to tell him before setting him to work at Jericho Fields. He could almost smell the sweet-vinegary perfume of apples in the cider press even now.

  The tiny flowers emerged, a few stems broken, but most of them simply bowed beneath the weight of the debris from the overflowing roof gutters. Again, that sensation of being distanced from the physical world threatened to overwhelm Luka. If Dom died… No, he couldn’t think like that. He’d done everything in his power to save the man.

  But had he? Chaos obviously thought either Luka or Risa should be clever enough to unravel the riddle in his text. Maybe it wasn’t about something in their past, but something in the present? He crouched and finished with his fingers, lifting each bloom and leaf above the mud, then using the dead leaves to support the flowers. The whole job only took a few minutes, but by the time he finished it almost looked like a proper flower bed.

  He returned the shovel to his truck and was walking back to the building when a glint of sunlight bouncing off a vehicle mirror caught his eye. A reflection, misdirection. What had Leah said last night? About control?

  Chaos was controlling, manipulating them all now. Directing—no, misdirecting—them to look where he wanted them to look. Welcome to the endgame, his message said. As if this was a game of chess, with people’s lives sacrificed like pawns. Luka opened the door back into the building, and missed the warmth of the sun instantly.

  Pawns. A game. Chess. Energy surged through him as he jogged down the steps to the cyber squad’s office. “Sanchez, pull up that image of the area around Pier Four again.” Where Luka’s career had really started.

  “ERT checked the wharf out—all of it,” Krichek argued, a phone in each hand, but apparently on hold on both. “There’s no one there.”

  “Just do it,” Luka ordered Sanchez. A moment later the image appeared. “Zoom in over here and pan slowly. Across the river, opposite from the pier.” Warped reflections, truths contained in lies, and lies wrapped in the truth—these were Chaos’ real weapons, Luka realized.

  “Boss, there’s nothing there.” Krichek joined Luka at the large screen. “Just the road. The mountain cuts too close to the river for any homes or businesses. And up the mountain is forest and abandoned coal mines. No way a Town Car could make it up there.”

  “Stop,” he told Sanchez. Luka leapt forward tapping the screen. “Call McKinley, tell him to get his men over there.”

  “Where exactly is there?” Sanchez asked. He blew up the image. “I don’t see anything but a small picnic area.”

  “See that spit of gravel? It’s an informal boat landing. Called Rook’s Landing. Not enough room for boats on trailers. But canoes and kayaks launch there. There’s a dirt road leads to Route 11.” He turned to Sanchez. “Any cameras out there so we can get a live picture?”

  “No, sorry.”

  Krichek had lowered one of his phones to grab another handset on a landline, updating McKinley. Luka was already heading out the door.

  “Call river rescue. Tell them I’m on my way,” he called back, hope lighting a fire in his veins. He did a quick mental calculation. The video camera had died eight minutes ago—given the cold water and the chance that an air bubble had been created when the car tipped to the side, Dominic Massimo might still have a chance.

  A few minutes later as Luka drove over the bridge, he spotted the river rescue team streaming toward Rook’s Landing in their boat. By the time he’d steered his truck down the mud-slicked gravel road leading to the landing, the ERT van was also there and the siren from an ambulance sounded from behind Luka.

  Concerned about blocking the paramedics, he pulled the truck off to the side, driving over a patch of dead grass. He hopped out and ran down the graded landing, splashing through puddles, until he reached the water’s edge. The divers had located the car, pushed by the current until it had gotten tangled in trees growing along the bank of the river about ten yards past the landing. The roof of the Town Car was barely visible above the murky water, but Luka was more concerned with the trunk.

  He and the others watched and waited as the rescue divers worked below the surface to pop the trunk and release their victim. They made fast work of it, two divers supporting a man’s body, guiding it through the water to the waiting medics. Together they lifted him onto the medic’s transport cot.

  The divers had cut the man’s bonds and he lay on the cot face up as the medics assessed him. Luka heard McKinley arrive, issuing orders to his men to help the divers winch the car onto dry land so that the CSU team could examine it. The noise and movement created a haze around Luka as he imagined another stretch of river, another car, another team of first responders.

  He quickly shook himself free of the memory and stepped closer to where the medics were working. The man had been beaten, his face and body swollen with bruises. Yes, his scalp had been shaved, but when the medics moved aside to insert a breathing tube down his throat, Luka saw that he wasn’t Dominic Massimo.

  It was Cliff Vogel.

  “How long did you say he’s been down?” one of the medics asked Luka. They’d placed a machine to do chest compressions over Cliff’s sternum.

  “We lost the video feed fourteen minutes ago. He was alive then. But he was in the water at least a half an hour before that.”

  “He’s real cold,” the medic muttered as he used a small handheld drill on Cliff’s leg, hooking up a bag of fluid. “We got no vitals.” His partner finished inserting the breathing tube. “You in?” His partner checked a monitor and nodded. “Let’s load and go, we’ll call Good Sam on the way.”

  One of the ERT guys drove the ambulance so that both medics could remain in the rear and work on their patient. As Luka watched them drive off, McKinley approached. “He gonna live?”

  “They said no vitals.” Luka shrugged.

  “So we’ve been searching for Vogel but really Massimo’s our man?”

  Luka was silent, still trying to put the pieces together. Perhaps Chaos hadn’t liked the idea of Cliff spying on Risa. Leaving McKinley to process the scene, which would take hours, Luka jogged back to his truck and followed the ambulance, desperately hoping Cliff—the one person who might be able to identify the killer—lived.

  Thirty-Four

  Harper escorted Risa to Good Sam while Leah followed in her Subaru and Jack in his company van. Leah had shared Risa’s medical records with Maggie Chen last night, so while she waited for Risa to be signed into the ER, she gave Maggie a call and updated her on Risa’s most recent symptoms.

  “I’m thinking nicotine poisoning,” Leah finished. “But I can’t remember its half-life. Think I can still get a viable sample this long after?”

  “Hang on,” Maggie answered, followed by the sound of computer keys clicking. “Urine is your best bet. But given her other symptoms, I’d also run blood and hair.”

  “Hair?”

  “For heavy metals. When I plotted her symptoms on a timeline, it looks like a rollercoaster, doesn’t fit any single diagnosis. But if someone is dosing her with toxins, then it might not have always been the same one, right?”

  “Which would explain both the erratic timeline and the changing lab results.” A nursing assistant escorted Harper, Jack, and Risa from the registration area to the nursing station where Leah stood.

  “Yeah, but your timeline for last night doesn’t exactly fit either,” Maggie continued.

  Leah waved Risa into the minor care room she’d commandeered but remain
ed outside the door to finish her conversation with Maggie. “How so? Isn’t nicotine biphasic? Minor toxicity fits with the symptoms Risa showed—if it was a major overdose, she’d be in the second phase, getting worse.”

  “But if she ingested the nicotine after dinner last night, she should have shown symptoms a few hours later—not this morning.”

  “Are you sure?” Leah frowned. Maybe she’d misunderstood the timeline Jack and Risa had given her? Maybe Risa had become asymptomatic earlier, but Jack panicked, had still called Leah. No, Leah herself had witnessed the hypersalivation when she arrived at Risa’s apartment. “Could you send me a link to that information? I haven’t dealt with a nicotine OD since residency.”

  “Let me guess, New Year’s.”

  “Yep. Kid woke before his parents, parents went to bed after throwing a party without cleaning up, and—”

  “The kid drank the pretty drinks, not seeing that a cigarette had dissolved in one. Classic. I’ll send you the link. Might stop by myself, if you don’t mind. I’ve a friend who’s a tox fellow in Pittsburgh, maybe he can fast-track your tox screens, so they’ll take days to weeks instead of months to come back.”

  “We’re in the ER now, then will be in the CIC. Thanks, Maggie.” Leah hung up, wondering how to approach the confusing and conflicting history she’d been given this morning. Best way might be to separate Jack and Risa, get each of their stories, then compare the two. Once she had Risa in the CIC for her witness interview, there’d be a chance to do that.

  She was just about to head in to examine Risa and order the tests when her phone rang. Luka. “We found him,” he exclaimed before she could say anything. “But it wasn’t Massimo—it was Vogel. Medics are en route to Good Sam.”

  The trauma alert sounded at the nursing station and Leah straightened. “I’m at Good Sam. The medics are calling in now.”

  “I’ll find you there.” He hung up.

  Leah made it to the nursing station just as the ER attending on duty, Sam Davidson, finished giving instructions via the trauma radio to the medics transporting Cliff.

  “He’s part of a case I’m working on with the CIC,” she told him as she followed him to the trauma bay. “Mind if I assist?”

  “More the merrier.” They both donned masks, gloves, and Tyvek gowns. “What’s the story?”

  “Abducted, held in the trunk of a car that was driven into the river.” She explained about the video. “We lost the live feed at 9:21.”

  He glanced at the clock. “That was almost half an hour ago.”

  “Did he have any vitals when they found him?” She didn’t need to see the grim expression on his face to know it was a long shot.

  “No. Asystole and hypothermia.” They both backed away as the nurses wheeled in the warming equipment. Sam assessed his troops: anesthesia ready to take over the airway, a nurse on each side to work fluids and meds and monitor chest compressions, another nurse to record, an assistant to run labs, and Leah. “Medics drilled him in the field, but we’ll need a central line.”

  “Got it,” Leah told him. The intraosseous was a needle drilled directly into bone, a quick and dirty way to give fluids and medications, but only temporary, while a central line would allow them access to the larger blood vessels leading directly to the heart.

  “They’re here,” a nurse called even as the team’s radios went off.

  “Sure you’re up for this?” Sam asked Leah as she prepped the central line.

  It felt strange and she couldn’t really admit it, not with a dying—or maybe already dead—victim arriving, but Leah felt better than she had in weeks. More than adrenaline, it was the sense of belonging, that she was home again. No second-guessing or worry about office politics; here in the trauma bay she knew every step of the choreography, as did the rest of her team.

  Before she could say anything, the medics burst through the door. They’d intubated Cliff in the field and were bagging oxygen into his lungs while a mechanical chest compressor performed CPR. “Two rounds of epi.” The medic at the head of the gurney called out his report. “No response. Bagging with a hundred percent O2.”

  They quickly transferred Cliff over to the ER’s bed, the nurses swarming over him, switching monitor leads, checking the lines. As they worked, Sam and the anesthesiologist listened to his lungs. “Breath sounds equal and bilateral,” the anesthesiologist said as he took over bagging. “Needs pressure, though.” Maintaining adequate ventilation was always a tightrope with drowning victims: force the air in too hard and they’d blow a lung, not enough pressure and their damaged lungs wouldn’t absorb the oxygen.

  Leah wedged herself between the CPR machine and the anesthesiologist, then she prepped a sterile area over Cliff’s right clavicle to place the central line. She palpated her landmarks, and within a few seconds had the subclavian line ready. “I’m in.”

  She hooked up the warmed IV fluids while beside her a nurse was placing a nasogastric tube that would also have heated fluids running through it in the hopes of warming Cliff. In the ER you were never dead until you were warm and dead. “What’s his core temp?”

  “Up to thirty-two,” Sam said. “Time for another epi then clear for X-ray to check line and tube placement. Keep that warming blanket and the lights on him.”

  While the X-ray tech took her shots, Leah joined Sam. “Thirty-two isn’t all that cold. Should we try vasopressin?”

  Sam nodded. “We’ll see what the labs come back, but—”

  “It might be too late,” Leah finished for him.

  The X-ray tech left to process her films. Sam and Leah returned to Cliff’s side. “Stop compressions, check his rhythm,” Sam told the nurses.

  “Asystole on two leads.” Asystole or flat line meant there was very little they could do to get the heart beating again.

  “Resume compressions. Vasopressin, forty units.”

  The nurse gave the meds while Leah and Sam watched and waited. Then the assistant ran back in. “I’ve got the blood gas and electrolytes.” She handed Sam a slip of paper. Leah peered over his shoulder.

  “Potassium 8.2, severe acidosis,” she read. She blew her breath out, glanced at the clock. It’d been eighteen minutes since the medics began CPR.

  “Let’s treat the hyperkalemia and repeat the gas and lytes in ten. We’ll give him the full thirty,” Sam said, but the faces of the nurses and the rest of the team had all gone blank. They all knew that Cliff was gone.

  And twelve minutes later, after exhausting every option, Sam pronounced him dead. “I’ll call the coroner,” Sam said as he left.

  Leah stripped free of her protective clothing and went back to the nursing station. Luka was there along with Harper. Across the hall, Risa and Jack watched from the doorway of the exam room.

  Without Leah saying anything, Risa made a small sob and turned to Jack, who bundled her in his arms and pulled her back into the exam room. Harper merely sighed and slid out her phone. “I’ll let McKinley know.”

  “You did everything you could,” Luka told Leah.

  “I know. Doesn’t make it any better.” She slumped against the counter, watching the nurses do their charting, documenting the resuscitation efforts.

  Luka’s phone rang. He listened, made a noncommittal noise, then said, “Thanks.” After he hung up, he explained, “Krichek. We finally got Vogel’s military records. He was deployed during Cherise’s killing, couldn’t have done it. Guy was a hero, won a bronze star and purple heart. Suffered a traumatic brain injury with cognitive impairment.”

  “He wasn’t Chaos.”

  “Nope. My guess is that Chaos got angry when he learned of Cliff’s own obsession with Risa.”

  “Then it has to be someone who knew Cliff was spying on Risa. But the only people who knew that were your team and the other police officers, Risa, Jack, me, and—”

  “Dominic Massimo. Who’s still missing.”

  “You think he took Cliff as a diversion, to throw you off his scent while he escaped?” D
id that mean Risa was now safe with Dom gone?

  “That’s McKinley’s working theory. I’m not sure.” He leaned against the counter. “What did you learn from Risa?”

  “I was just heading in to examine her when they brought Cliff in.”

  “Krichek’s working on Massimo’s background and checking his alibi for Trudy’s death.”

  “What are you going to do?” Leah asked.

  “I’m sidelined as far as Cherise, of course, but Trudy’s case is still mine.”

  “You said something last night about Trudy’s phone, the pictures she took the day before that the killer tried to erase. Did the techs find anything when they examined them?”

  “Nothing helpful. Which is why I thought I’d start by re-tracing Trudy’s steps in Smithfield where she took them. Figure boots on the ground, I might see something or find someone who saw something.”

  “What about Risa?” Leah glanced at the closed door to the exam room.

  “Finish your exam. McKinley said he’d be over to do the interview with you as soon as he finishes at the crime scene on the river.”

  “He’s letting me do the interview?”

  “Thought Risa would feel more comfortable, might be more forthcoming. Besides, isn’t that what this new program is all about?”

  “Yeah, sure. I’m just surprised McKinley thought of it, is all.”

  “Well, he might have had a bit of help.” He looked past Leah to where Maggie Chen had arrived from the coroner’s office. “Let me give Maggie the details of what I know, and then I’m off for Smithfield.”

  “When will you be back?” Leah asked. “Still want Nate to stay another night? Emily would love it, I’m sure.” As long as Leah remembered to stop at the store and bring home something for dinner, not to mention breakfast tomorrow.

  “I won’t be long and so far I’ve been able to avoid any reporters, but maybe another night at your place isn’t a bad idea.” He grimaced. “I feel bad, leaving him, though.”