The photo had proven to be accurate. The SWAT team found no one in the house, and the CSIs were now working it over. The unidentified victim was in the basement—the scene beyond any horror the pictures could convey. And nothing was faked. A dismembered woman on display. He could not describe it in any other way: The killer displayed his victim as a message.
Drexel breathed in the last bit of the cigarette, crushed it against the sole of his shoe, and pocketed the butt in his sport coat. He pulled out a fresh pair of purple nitrile gloves from his messenger bag, ensured the tip of his black-and-brown checked tie was secured between the third and fourth buttons of his light-brown shirt, and walked the yard. According to information from the Cook County Treasurer’s office, William and Becky Hillsdale owned the house. They were not home at the moment, but the grass was recently cut. The backyard butted against an alley. Given the scarcity of litter, the alley did not seem much used, but Drexel still marked a can of Coca-Cola, a Chipotle paper bag, and a single gym shoe—Nike, red with black striping. The Chipotle bag had a quote about wanting a perfect world not being naive. He looked over the fence into the alley. The blacktop sprouted grass and weeds through the cracks. The edges had crumbled and were giving way to the encroaching yards. Ninety-six-gallon black trash bins sat at the back of nearly every house. He flipped up the ones for the crime scene house. Empty. For good measure, he checked several of the others. All empty. The trash collectors had already come. He walked to the back door and in and down to the grisly scene.
The medical examiner, Dr. Noelle Lindsey, stood with a clipboard in her hand, writing. Two other CSIs were dusting for fingerprints and photographing the scene. The click of the shutter puncturing the silence and flashes stuttering the light.
Noelle looked up and grimaced. Drexel walked over to her. She had tied her dark brown hair back with a thin black rubberband, forcing the tight spirals she curled her hair into to spring up and backwards oddly. She had put on a light blue head-to-toe protective coverall, the hood hanging down her back. “This is. Well—.”
Drexel nodded.
The victim was as she appeared in the photograph. He could not help thinking that her dismembered body and its placement on the floor reminded him of the early days of video games—where just a few square pixels represented objects that the viewer accepted as a whole. The area around the body and the body itself were untouched. The CSIs were working the perimeter first. The markings on the floor were drawn with chalk. The unfinished basement contained little. Cold, gray concrete floors and walls and bare four-by-four and two-by-four wood framing. Electrical cables and PVC water pipes ran between the joists. A single, rusted drain sat in the north corner, opposite the stairwell and a good five feet from the edge of the outer circle. A gray washer and dryer sat nearby, both coated heavily with fingerprint powder. Beneath the stairwell, a set of shelves, most of which were empty except for four clear five-gallon plastic tubs. They were being dusted now.
Drexel forced himself to look back at the victim. “What do we know?”
Noelle shook her head. “Not much yet. As you can see, she was dismembered and positioned in this way. I assume the Star of David and the chalk circle have some sort of meaning for the killer. I think it’s safe to say the brain is hers.” She pointed with her pen to the Ball jar on the floor, near the victim’s head. “We’ll need DNA to confirm officially, but I can tell from here that the killer removed the top of her skull and placed it back on.” A single dark line not visible on the photograph ran along the front of her forehead. “But I think it was post-mortem. All of it, including the dismemberment. I also think she was frozen, probably after the cutting.”
“We didn’t find any freezers in this house, though, right?”
“We have not.”
“So either the body was transported here and set up in this fashion. Or it was stored here and the freezer was removed.” Drexel rubbed his chin and then swept his hand in the air. “Seems more likely the body was brought here versus taking the freezer away.” He looked at Noelle. “Does any of this mean anything to you?”
“Nothing. I recognize the Star of David, but that’s it. That and those coins. Ouroboros coins. Represents the infinite cycle of life and death. The Greeks used to stuff them in the mouths of the dead to pay Charon. Christians did it to keep the eyes from the death spasms.”
“What else can you tell me now?”
“A female. I’d say eighteen to mid-twenties in age.”
“How do you know the cutting was post-mortem?”
She pointed to the skin around the knee. The edge of the skin and the cross-section of muscle and bone glistened. Small drops of water and blood had fallen to the cement floor. “I’ll know more when I can do the full autopsy, but the way the skin is here.” She jabbed her pen close to the edge of the cut. “It’s smooth. And no blood is appearing along the skin edge here along the top. So the blood drained to the back, where I’m seeing signs of lividity. Then the cutting. If she’d been alive or even if the dismemberment happened close to the time of death, we’d see bruising. No, I’m pretty sure she was dead several hours at least before she was dismembered.”
“Thanks, doc.”
“Yeah, sure. And she’s still frozen pretty much. Just beginning to thaw out really.”
“Any idea how long she’s been here?”
Noelle shook her head. “I can’t say for certain, but the body has been out of the freezer for a few hours at least. I wouldn’t think more than twelve though, tops.”
Drexel stood up and patted Noelle on the shoulder.
She said, “One of the CSIs found a bag of clothes. She gave it to Daniela.”
“Okay. Thanks. I’ll take a look at that.”
He left the ME and the CSIs to finish their work in the basement. He explored the rest of the house. The photo of the victim alive was taken somewhere else or some redecorating had occurred between the time the photo was taken and now. The house was absent any furniture or decoration. He walked out onto the front porch, where a lone terra-cotta pot with dried and withered stalks of unrecognizable plants sat. The unis—uniformed officers to non-police—had stretched crime scene tape around the entire property, and a small crowd had gathered. Daniela stood at the open door of a CSI van. Drexel walked down the sidewalk. She looked at him as he looked into the van and saw its contents, many of which were in assorted paper or plastic bags with evidence tape slapped across the seals.
“Hey, boss.” Her tone was more somber than usual.
“Hey. I hear they found our vic’s clothes?”
Daniela pulled over a paper bag. “They gave it to me, but I didn’t seal it up yet. Thought you’d want to look.”
“Have you?”
She shook her head.
He grabbed the top of a three-gallon plastic container, flipped it upside down, and pulled out six paper bags, which he then laid on the top. He opened up the first bag and saw the bright blue sweater from the photograph. Thinner than he expected. Looking into another bag, he saw a dark blue t-shirt with “University of Chicago” stamped on it along with the university seal. Another bag has a small Ziploc bag containing jewelry. He looked at Daniela.
“It was in the Ziploc.”
“Where were these found?”
“All of them were folded and stacked in the corner of the basement. Jeans on the bottom. Sweater next. T-shirt after that. Socks. Shoes. Jewelry in the shoes. Like you stuff your wallet and watch and crap in your shoes going through the security line at the airport.”
He held the Ziploc bag up, maneuvering its contents with his fingers. Two emerald stud earrings with a decorative diamond edging. Not gaudy, but noticeable. A small ring that looked like twisted gold with three small diamonds on the top. A simple gold-chain necklace with a cross. A rose was engraved on the front of the cross, its vine reaching into the shorter cross arms. He put the jewelry back into the bag.
The socks were tan with a simple ribbed pattern. The jeans were a solid blue showing some signs of wear along the bottom of the legs. A thin dark-brown belt with a gold, minimal buckle was still wrapped through the jeans. He patted the pockets. He felt something in the back right pocket and pulled it out. A University of Chicago student ID. The face on the ID looked like the one in the basement. Brittany Day. He handed it to Daniela.
“That’s her.”
He put the ID back into the pocket and placed the jeans next to the clothes. “Let’s make sure the ME knows we have a probable identification.” He pulled out the shoes. Dark brown Skechers. Size seven and a half. “Make sure this stuff gets to where it needs to go and let’s meet up at the station. I’ll work on getting the neighborhood canvassed.” He started putting the items back into the paper bag.
“Sure thing, boss.” She turned and walked up the sidewalk and back into the house.
Drexel put the evidence tape over the paper bag, signing his name and the date across the seal. He closed the van doors and looked out toward the road, where a couple of the patrol officers stood ready to eject anyone attempting to cross the line without proper identification. Drexel walked down to one officer with her thumbs anchored to her belt. Her name tag said, “L. Misiano.”
“Officer.”
She looked at him. Her black hair was pulled back into high ponytail. “Yes?”
He extended his hand. “Drexel Pierce.”
She looked at his badge dangling from the small ball chain around his neck. “Misiano. Linda.”
“Pleasure to meet you.”
She smiled and nodded.
He asked her to get a few other unis and begin a canvass of the area. He wanted to know if anyone saw anything suspicious at the house in the past week or even month and what they knew of the people who lived there. And he wanted to know if any of them had ever heard of Brittany Day. For himself, Drexel said he would stop by the houses on each side and the two directly across the street, pointing them out to be clear. As he headed to one of the houses, he pointed at the crowd and asked for a couple of unis to ask them as well.
Chapter 3
At the first house—a red-brick, two story affair—when no one answered, Drexel dropped a business card in the mailbox, noting on the back that he would appreciate a call. A knock at the second house’s white door, did get an answer. A young red-headed boy cracked open the door until the top chain tightened. “Hello?” he said. Drexel waved his badge, and the boy took off back into the house shouting “Mommy. Policeman.”
Drexel pulled out his iPhone and looked at the time. The hours had disappeared, and it was now late afternoon, which accounted for the boy’s being home. He heard footsteps across the hardwood floor and then a woman’s face looked out. She looked at Drexel and then at the crowd across the street from her and the crime scene tape. “Can I see your badge?”
He held it up for her. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
She closed the door enough to loosen the chain and then stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind her. “What happened?”
“I’m Detective Drexel Pierce.” He extended his hand.
She took it lightly and shook. She wore dark-blue running pants and a solid white blouse that buttoned up from the midsection. “Alison. Alison Haskert.”
Drexel pulled out his 8-1/2 x 11 notepad from his messenger bag and flipped it open to the page after the notes he took in the house. He wrote her name down.
“I’m sorry to inform you, ma’am, but a body has been found in the basement across the street.”
“Oh my god!”
“We’re beginning our investigation, so we’re in the process of talking to others in the neighborhood.”
“Of course. Of course.” Alison walked to the edge of the porch and sat down on the top step, keeping her eyes on the police activity.
Drexel descended a couple of steps below her, turned around, and leaned against the wrought-iron railing. It gave more than he expected, so he took his weight off it. “Do you know the people who live in the house?”
“Do you think it’s one of them?”
“We don’t know yet.” With the lack of information about who Brittany Day was and where she lived, Drexel could not discount that she had lived there.
Alison bit her lip. “Not really well. No. I mean I talked to Becky when we’d see each other and weren’t off to somewhere else.”
“William?”
“Just saw him come and go. Was it one of them?”
“We don’t think so.”
Alison grimaced. Drexel guessed she was imagining terrible scenarios of hideous mutilation that prevented identification of the body. He decided not to dispel those notions. “The house is pretty much empty. Did they move recently?”
She smiled at the thought of being able to take her mind away to something else. “We think so. My husband, Randy, and me. I work from home and my office is right upstairs.” She pointed upwards. “One afternoon, I saw a U-Haul pull up and then Bill and Becky loading it up with stuff. They were quick about it, and the truck was still pretty empty. But I never saw them after that. Randy joked that they went into witness protection.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Hmmm. Last month, maybe. Or...wait. No, I think it was in February. So a couple of months ago.”
“And they’ve never been back?”
“No. Not that we’ve seen at least.”
“I noticed someone mowed the lawn.”
Alison nodded her head. “Yeah. That’s Paul.” She pointed down the street. “I saw him mowing it last weekend. The grass had gotten tall.” She raised both her hands and bounced them closer and farther apart before settling on a foot or so.
“Does Paul have a last name?”
“I can’t remember it. But he’s,” she counted houses leading west on the same side of the street as the abandoned Hillsdale house, “four houses down. That pristine white-sided house.”
“Got it. Thanks. Have you seen anything suspicious since the Hillsdales left? Becky and Bill?”
“Oh. Um. No. Not really.” She shook her head. “Nothing I can think of.”
He asked for a description of the Hillsdales and in turn described Brittany Day, but Alison said she had not seen anyone like that at the Hillsdale’s house before or after they moved out. “Do you know a person named Brittany Day?”
She did not.
Drexel gave her his card and asked her to call him if she or her husband thought of anything. He left her sitting on the porch. The teenage girl in the house next to Alison’s promised—while chomping her gum loudly—to give his card to her dad, but she would not promise anything beyond that. He left his card in the mailbox of the fourth house. He knocked on Paul’s door, as well, but no one answered, so he left another business card.
* * *
Back in the basement, Noelle had begun the task of removing the victim. Each severed part was wrapped in clear plastic to preserve any possible trace evidence and not contaminate it with other parts. She did her best in treating the victim’s remains with respect, placing the entire body into a single body bag.
After the CSIs removed Brittany’s remains, they left the basement, carrying with them the tools and utensils of evidence gathering. Only Drexel and the chalk drawing remained, with small pools of blood where the body had begun to thaw and the blood oozed out. He stared at the circle and the star. The entire scene had been disturbing, and now without the body, it had become haunting, as if the message were missing important segments. The entirety of the body and the drawings had meaning, came to a satisfactory conclusion like Beethoven’s fate motif at the opening of the Fifth Symphony—without the body against the drawings or vice versa, it is as if Beethoven had stopped at the third note, leaving the chord incomplete and the listener waiting for that fourth note. This
must have been what the killer thought as well. He had presented a complete scene and beckoned an audience. Drexel thought back to the note and its religious tone, citing a verse he had never heard—though Drexel was no expert on the Bible. Simon, the killer had called himself. Drexel dug deep into his memory in an effort to recall any Simon in Bible school. One of the apostles? Something Old Testament?
He bent down and sat like a catcher, looking at the space, trying to take it in, trying to see what might lead him to find this killer. He walked over to the drain and looked at it. No moisture around the edge. It had been dry for some time. The killer had not murdered Brittany here. He had killed her somewhere else and brought her here and staged the scene, his message. Drexel imagined the killer arranging the body, tweaking the placement of one foot so it matched his ideal placement. This had a purpose. A design. The feel of a choreographed unveiling. Drexel’s arms and back tingled in horror.
Whatever this killer’s motive, he was not done. No, this killer had more to do. He had a message, but what that message was, remained a mystery. No, this was just the beginning.
* * *
Victor brought in three coffees to the conference room in the station. Daniela shook her head and raised her large can of Monster. The energy drink and her sandy blond, spiked hair gave her an appearance counter to her demeanor. Despite the hour of the day and the amount of time she had observed Brittany Day’s mutilated corpse, she smiled—not a full, bright smile, but a reassuring smile, one that communicated the grimness of what she had just seen but also let others know she would be okay. Victor, on the other hand, was haggard. For a man proud of his Marine days and his piece of the action on Grenada, order and control dictated his appearance. He had loosened his tie, which now hung to the right just below the collar. His nearly bald head was red from rubbing his hand back and forth across it. Drexel knew he looked like hell, but then everyone expected that of him.
Kill Them All (Drexel Pierce Book 2) Page 2
