I take a step closer, plugging my nose because the stench of this body is worse than the one we found at the baseball field.
“What is that…a V?” I ask. It’s an indent in the right side of the man’s chest. It looks mostly like a V, but it’s also starting to curve, so I don’t think that whatever was pressed into his skin was completely imprinted.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. You’re the detective. It could be completely unimportant, or it could be connected to the killer somehow.”
“Could the killer have left it there on purpose?” I ask. “Is it some kind of message?”
“No, I think the mark would be more defined if it were left on purpose and it’s more likely it would have been done post-mortem, but from the amount of bruising around it, the mark was made while this guy was still alive.”
“What’s the other thing you found?” I ask.
She indicates for me to follow her to the back of the cross. I expect to find the same eye that had been on Glenn Erwin’s cross, but instead, there’s an envelope with my name written on it nailed to the back. Without a word, she hands me a pair of plastic gloves. I pull the envelope off the cross and flip it open. Inside is a photograph. I pull it out. The photo shows Lauren and me stepping out of my apartment. It had to be taken awhile ago because the streets are wet and it hasn’t rained in over a week.
“Well, that isn’t good.”
Chapter Eight
Lauren
It takes me four and a half hours to get to Indianapolis. It would be nice if I could just talk to Glenn’s wife through video chat, but it’s better if I see her face-to-face because I can read her body language that way. The one lesson that is reinforced while being a detective is: everybody lies.
My cell phone pings as I park in front of Chelsea Franzen’s house, a two-story brick building with a small white porch in front. It’s middle class. Very normal. It’s not the kind of house you would expect to find anything sinister.
I check my phone.
Tobias: Victim (male, mid to late twenties) similar to the others except eaten by wolves and something else that we should talk about. Call me when you can.
Me: Victim is likely someone who had sex before marriage or cheated on his significant other since not committing adultery is the next commandment. I’ll call you when I’m done with the interview.
Tobias: When are you coming back to Detroit?
Me: I don’t know. Got to go.
I throw my phone into my glove compartment, hiding it from any potential thieves, before he can respond. I don’t want my phone to distract me when I’m talking to Chelsea Franzen and I honestly can’t deal with Tobias until I’ve made a decision on what to do with our relationship.
I walk up to the house and knock. The woman at the door isn’t who I expected—she has long, pitch black hair with hazel eyes and an hourglass figure. Glenn wasn’t ugly, but he isn’t someone I would expect to be in a relationship with someone who could be a model.
“Hi, I’m Detective Williams. Are you Chelsea Franzen?” I ask, showing her my badge. She nods.
“I am,” she says. “Is this about my son? Or Glenn? A police officer came to my house yesterday to tell me about Glenn and I haven’t thought of anything else that could help you—”
“Still, I’d like to talk to you a bit about him,” I say. “Can I come in?”
She bites her lip. “All right.”
She steps aside and gestures for me to walk in. As I step inside, I note that the house seems rather barren, but unlike Tobias’s apartment, it feels like it was once filled with decorations and furniture that have now disappeared.
“Are you moving?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No. I just can’t afford to keep as many things as I used to since Glenn and I split up,” she says. “I’m a bartender, so I make good money, but not enough to keep this house and everything else.”
“Right,” I say. She leads me to her living room—only one red loveseat in front of a small, flat screen TV. She sits down on the armrest of the loveseat, indicating for me to sit on the other side of the couch.
Perching on the edge of the couch, I say, “So, well…Glenn was a public defender, right?”
She nods. “He was a very busy man. I know everyone thinks he’s a terrible person because he ran over that girl, but I think he was very tired. Public defenders have to take a lot of cases and they’re barely given enough time to look into them—he would get four or five hours of sleep a night if he was lucky. Everyone thinks he’s terrible because of that, but that’s not what I thought. At least, I didn’t think that until he took my son.”
“You never expected him to do that?”
“Fleeing the scene of a crime was self-preservation,” she says. “Taking my son was an asshole move. How long did he expect to get away with it? He was just piling on more crimes that he would eventually be charged and convicted of.”
“So…you were angry at him?” I ask.
She smirks. “I didn’t kill him, and certainly not on a cross. Neither of us is religious and I was here the whole time he was missing. I was looking for my son. There are at least a hundred people and some TV stations that could show you footage of me, spending all of my time looking for Nathan.”
There’s no indication in her body language that she’s lying—she isn’t touching her face, she isn’t shaking her head, her head isn’t bowed in shame.
“I didn’t really suspect you, Ms. Franzen. I just had to ask to make sure,” I say. “Is there anyone you know that is religious?”
She laughs. “Detective, Christians aren’t exactly a minority here. Of course I know plenty of Christians.”
“I mean, Christians that are more…fanatical or devoted than other Christians you know?”
She shakes her head. “Nope. They’re all casually religious. I can’t even think of anybody who regularly goes to church.”
I rub my temple. “Is there anything you can think of that would make someone target your husband?”
“How about the fact that he was all over the Indianapolis news?” she asks. “It sounds like this crazy killer saw my husband’s story in the news and decided to kill him. I thought that Mary Fitzgerald was the serial killer. Are you sure you have the right person?”
“Yes, we’re sure that she was killing those people, but we think she may have been an accomplice to someone else,” I say. “Did your husband know Mary Fitzgerald in any way?”
“You think I’d be living like this if my husband knew someone famous?” she asks.
I clench my fists on my lap. “Ms. Franzen, I’m just trying to find a serial killer, so if you could just answer the questions and—”
“Mama?” a small voice asks. We both turn to see Nathan. He’s wearing navy blue pajamas with small crescent moons printed all over. “Why are you angry?”
“I’m not, baby.” She opens her arms. “Come over here. Did we wake you up? We didn’t mean to.”
The small boy crawls onto his mother’s lap and she wraps her arms around him. There’s a sharp contrast between Chelsea and Nathan—his blond hair, her black hair, his dark brown eyes, her hazel eyes. Even her skin is a few shades darker than his and it doesn’t have the uneven shade that comes with tanning.
“Your son is very cute,” I say. “Is it okay if I ask him what happened with his father?”
“He already talked to the police,” she snapped. “He woke up in the motel and his father was gone. He left the motel when he became hungry. It’s a miracle that a good kid like Caden White found him in front of his apartment building instead of some….some p-e-r-v-e-r-t. He doesn’t know anything about Glenn’s disappearance and I’d appreciate if people stopped asking him about it.”
“Of course. You must feel so protective of your son after what happened. It’s natural,” I say, standing up. I take my business card out of my bag. “Here’s my number. Please call it if you can think of anything else.”
As I’m about to walk away
, Nathan reaches out his hand to me. I take it, his skin smooth and warm against mine.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” I reply. It’s amazing how someone so young and so small can break a heart, but that’s what it feels like. Because someone like Nathan is what I want in my own life. All Tobias can see is the bad in the world, but I’m certain if I poured enough love into a child, they could be the one that changes the world into something better.
Chapter Nine
Tobias
Through his fingerprints, the body is identified as Philip Herdon. He’s a bartender, thirty-four years old, with a wife and a daughter. His body is also rotting in the morgue, which is how I find myself in the unfortunate circumstance of covering my nose and wishing that all of those air fresheners worked as well as the commercials say they do. I’m fairly certain I’m going to have to burn these clothes once I leave here because the scent is strong enough to permeate any fabric.
“From the decay, it looks like his body has been dead for over a week,” Annette says, flipping through her papers. “I found zero DNA on him that didn’t belong to him and the imprint on his chest was left by something made out of steel.”
“Okay. Now explain to me why you couldn’t have just texted this to me or called me…anything other than having me come down here,” I say.
She shrugs. “I never get to see anybody down here and the relationship between you and Lauren is the most interesting thing happening in your department. It’s the second most interesting thing in the whole police precinct—you should hear what’s happening in internal affairs. Chris Weiss and Anna Hartford were sleeping together, but then he slept with this wildlife officer—who happened to be named Jack Pritchard. It’s a huge scandal. I heard Anna and Chris are both thinking about quitting.”
“I don’t understand what this has to do with me.”
“Well, I expected you to come here with Lauren and have one of your stupid arguments, and then make up because that’s what you two do. I work in a morgue. I don’t get to see many happy endings.”
“Lauren is in Indianapolis, questioning Glenn Erwin’s wife,” I say.
“Don’t you two usually do all of your investigations together?” she asks. “Isn’t that the whole point of being partners?”
“Yeah, but this serial killer is spreading us thin,” I say.
She stares at me. “The PVP Killer also spread the police force pretty thin, but you two didn’t separate,” she says. “Did you offer to go with her to Indianapolis?”
“Of course,” I say. “She said she was fine and we would cover more ground by doing things separately.”
Annette shakes her head. “Boy, you are stupid. No wonder you’re not married yet. Lauren must be mad at you if she wasn’t willing to be here to check out this new victim. Your relationship is coming to an end. First Anna and Chris, and now you two. It must be something about spring time.”
“Our relationship isn’t ending,” I insist. “We simply don’t need to be attached to each other all of the time. We’re two individuals and we both like our independence.”
“You tell yourself that, Tobias,” she says, clapping her hand on my shoulder. “On another note, while I love the two of you together, Anna Hartford is now single and it would be great for you if you were dating someone in internal affairs.”
“Okay, first off, that wouldn’t be a good idea because if we broke up, then I’d have constant issues with internal affairs, and secondly, Lauren and I aren’t breaking up,” I say. “We’re fine.”
“Good,” she says. “Now say it like you mean it.”
I shake my head, heading toward the door. “I’m going. Next time just text me.”
“Nah,” she says. “I love seeing your squirm.”
I kick open the morgue doors and walk out into the hallway. The stink slowly becomes more tolerable, but Annette’s words follow me with every step I take.
* * *
“Hi. You’ve reached Detective Williams’s phone. I can’t pick up right now, but if you leave your name, phone number, and a short message about why you’re calling, I will get back to you as soon as I can. Thank you.”
Beep.
I hang up. She should have been done interviewing Glenn’s ex-wife by now. If she doesn’t get back to me in half an hour, I’ll call the police force down there to check on her. This Commandment Killer doesn’t seem like he would wander outside of Detroit to hurt someone, but I can’t assume anything when I’m dealing with a crazy person.
I get out of my car. The Herdons have a tiny brick house. There's a white aluminum front door with a small round window on each side. Two bushes bracket either side of a tiny cement porch. The yard is meticulous and the bushes are perfectly trimmed. Everything they own might be small, but they take care of it.
I knock on the door. Philip Herdon's wife, Hailey Herdon, reported him missing nine days ago, so, looking on the bright side, she should have some expectation of bad news. On the less-than-bright side, her husband was brutally murdered.
Hopefully, she has an extremely pessimistic view of the world.
The door swings open. Hailey is a slightly chubby woman with golden blond hair that's pulled back into a French braid.
"Hello," she says. "I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in anything that you're selling. And I'm not converting to any religion."
“Oh, I'm not selling anything...or religious," I say. "Mrs. Herdon, I'm Detective Rodriguez. I’m with the Detroit Police and I’m sorry to inform you—”
“Oh, my God, it’s Philip, isn’t it?” she asks, stepping out onto the front porch. “Did you find him?”
I’ve found that worry and sadness can seriously impair people’s comprehension skills, such as understanding that any sentence that starts with I’m sorry to inform you does not end with good news unless you’re on a reality game show and the host wants to traumatize you before he rewards you.
"Uh, maybe it's best if I tell you this inside," I say.
She shakes her head. "Just tell me."
I hesitate. Lauren would know what to do in this situation--do I continue to insist that we talk inside, so she doesn't have a complete meltdown on her porch, or do I acquiesce to what she wants?
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Herdon," I say. "But he was murdered.”
Hailey is silent before her breath catches and tears begin to stream down her face. This is why I really need a partner. I can never sum up the amount of sympathy or empathy that Lauren can. My only defense against crying people is a remarkable amount of sarcasm and cynicism, which I can’t display while talking to someone who just found out that their loved one was murdered.
“W-what happened to him?” she asks. “W-was it painless?”
No, no, it was the most painful death possible. I can’t say that either.
“He was, uh, crucified,” I say.
The sharp inhales and subsequent sobbing stop completely. She stares at me, her eyes full of disbelief.
“What?” she asks. “You mean like those murders in the news that Mary Fitzgerald committed? He was…he was the body found at the baseball field?”
Lauren would know how to handle this.
“Uh, no, he was found on the shore of Lake Erie,” I say. “The baseball field crucifixion murder was someone else.”
There’s a sentence I thought I’d never say.
She shakes her head. “But Mary Fitzgerald is in prison.”
“We think she may have been an accomplice to someone else,” I say.
Her breath returns to sharp intakes of breath and coming out in ragged exhales. It almost looks like she's going to have a heart attack, which would be quite the experience for me to explain to my superiors.
I really need Lauren back.
But as long as I’m ruining this whole compassion part of my job, I might as well keep going.
“Mrs. Herdon, do you know if your husband did anything…immoral?”
“W-what do you mean?” she asks, barely audible through h
er sobs.
“Uh…”
I mean did your husband cheat on you?
“Well…” I stall.
Or did you two have premarital sex? Because as great as it is, there may be a serial killer that isn’t happy you did that.
“Um…I don’t know. Just anything that your husband did recently that didn’t make you too happy,” I say. “Like…stayed at work extra late or maybe flirted too often with a waitress?”
“What?” she asks, her voice getting clearer. “How do his actions…what does that have to do with his k-killer?”
“Um, it’s just a theory that the police are pondering,” I tell her. “It’s…I’m just wondering.”
“What’s this theory?” she asks.
“I think it’s best if I don’t share the theory,” I say. “We could be wrong and I don’t want to concern people unnecessarily.”
Or insinuate that your murdered husband is a cheater.
“I…I don’t know,” she says. “I-I think he was ripping off his customers at the bar.”
“Okay, that’s not really what I was thinking of,” I say rubbing the back of my head. This was a mistake. I should just go over his finances and see if he was staying at hotels for a night or suddenly buying expensive gifts for women.
“You’re thinking of sins, right? Well, Philip…I loved him, but he sometimes, well, he sometimes charged customers for drinks, but never entered it into the register. He earned extra money that we needed that way.”
“Okay, I’m sorry,” I say. “But that doesn’t fit with our theory. I thought he…you know what? Never mind. That’s one of the commandments, isn’t it? Do not steal?”
“The Ten Commandments? I’m pretty sure it is.”
“Okay, did anyone know that he stole from the bar’s owner?”
“No,” she says. “Or, I mean, we have a friend that’s also a banker. He noted that Philip had a sudden increase in cash deposits. He had advised him to simply keep the money and spend it on things that required cash. But he wouldn’t have killed Philip like the Mary Fitzgerald and her accomplice would have…he’s a staunch atheist.”
Violence of the Father (A Trinity of Death Romantic Suspense Series Book 2) Page 5
