by Trisha Wolfe
I have half the department keeping an eye on her at the crime scene, but that does little to ease my nerves. If she wants to go off alone, she’ll find a way. I shove a toiletry bag with her toothbrush and other necessities into the case, forcing myself to stay calm. The less she has to worry over, the easier it will be for her to accept. She has to be with someone at all times until this is over.
And putting her up at my place will ensure no one will get to her. What I can’t control is her own damn lab. For that, I’ll have to trust Sadie. As uneasy as it makes me, I know she’s the only one who I can count on to keep Avery covered.
Once I’ve made a thorough mess, having lost my patience and strewn clothes around the room, I huff a defeated breath and place her suitcase next to the door. I’ll clean up later. But first, I need to find her laptop.
The interface is easy enough to navigate. I click my way through logging in and locating her contacts. I do a quick search for any screen names or pseudonyms that might be associated with Maddox. It’s a slim chance, I know, but I’ve still got it bad for that lawyer. I’m not sure how dirty he is—whether or not his services to his clients extend to acquiring rare drug ingredients such as ambergris—but I know he isn’t squeaky clean.
Proving it will be the difficult part. With a firm like Lark and Gannet backing him, and his campaign running for the Commonwealth, Maddox has built a solid wall around himself.
If I discover he had even the slightest role in Avery’s abduction, he’ll need a hell of a lot more than that to protect him. Finding no red flags around Maddox, I end the search and pull up her last correspondence. It’s basic. A simple order and scheduled drop, where Avery would pick up the ambergris.
I push back in the chair, my gaze glossing over the details. I should be at the crime scene with Avery and my team. Every second and every bit of evidence is sensitive, and needs to be analyzed on site. I look at my phone and open the last received message.
Avery: Just meeting up with Carson now. Nothing to report yet—I’ll keep you posted.
Dragging my hands down my face, I stare at the laptop screen. Fuck it. I’m not on duty. I have no one to answer to. I type out a message to FalconStar10, Avery’s ambergris hookup, and hit Send. Then I take the laptop with me as I head to the door.
Before I leave, I grab the one picture frame on the mantel. It’s been turned facedown. I noticed it the first night I was here, when I was searching for any trace of Avery’s family, people she could turn to. I open the back of the frame and take out the picture of Avery.
Her brown eyes stare at me, her lips creased in an easy smile. It must’ve been taken when she first moved here; her first day as the new lead medical examiner. I pocket the picture in my jacket inseam and head out.
The drop is a small coffee shop on the corner of Wilson and Barton. It’s an intimate setting, unlike the big coffee franchises, and the perfect place to organize a meet. Avery did good. She’s smart, picking a public place, but not too busy where a person might overlook a meet gone bad.
I’ve been parked in front of Bean Friends for ten minutes, waiting for Mister Falconstar. Since Avery already knows what he looks like, I couldn’t ask that he sport a red baseball cap. I have to go on instincts.
I recline back in the driver-seat, prop my hands on the steering wheel. I had just enough time to drop Avery’s stuff at my apartment and grab a shower and change clothes before making the meet.
With a huff, I reach down and unclip my phone. I read over Avery’s last update, again trying to decipher her state of mind, and anything that could clue me in on what’s happening.
Avery: All evidence points to the same offender. No ID on the vic yet. I’ll have more once the vic is taken to the lab and processed.
My detective Spidey senses are tingling. The vagueness of her report has me damn near forgetting this whole meet and heading straight to Wexler and demanding to be put back on the case. Especially since the two perps we arrested yesterday have their bond hearing in a couple of hours. If Maddox gets his clients out on bond and they walk for now…
Anger spikes my blood at the thought. That won’t happen. Captain won’t let that happen. But I should be the one to take the first crack at questioning those fuckers.
The past two days feel like an eternity; no down time to think. And now, as I sit in the silence of my car, my brain won’t stop thinking—thinking about what those fucks had planned for Avery after injecting her with the drug.
I grip the wheel hard, my knuckles breaking the newly healed skin.
Avery was out of her mind with lust. Suffering, in agony, the only way to relieve her torment was to achieve sexual release. If a synthetic drug like that hits the streets, if that’s what the intent is behind all this, the world will become a rapist’s playground.
My stomach roils with my mounting fury, and I know that no matter what, we have to stop that from happening.
Before my thoughts can swallow me, plunging me to the pit of my own plagued mind, I spot a guy with a dark backpack making his way toward the coffee shop. He doesn’t go in. He looks around a few times before settling at one of the outside tables.
That’s my guy.
I leisurely get out of my car and cross the street, keeping him in my peripheral as I head toward the front doors. I’m not even a foot away when the guy makes me. He bounds out of the chair and he’s off.
Dammit. I really didn’t feel like chasing him down. I pick up my pace and then break into a run once I round the corner of the building. He just reaches the middle of the alley when I catch up to him.
“Stop! Police!” I go to reach for my badge and curse as I feel inside my empty pocket. No gun, either. Why the fuck did I even strap on my holster? With a growl, I push forward, legs pumping, and snatch the collar of his shirt, taking him down to the pavement.
“I said police, dipshit.” My breath is ragged as I pull his arms behind his back and secure a pair of cuffs to his wrists. At least I have those.
“Where’s your badge?” he fires back.
Looks like he’s no first-time offender; he knows the deal. I roll him over and stare down. “It’s in my other pants.”
“Fuck,” he hisses. “You a nark?”
Catching my breath, I rest my hands on my thighs. My age is showing. Hell. “Why the fuck would a nark try to make a collar?” He obviously isn’t that smart. “What’s in the bag?”
He clams up, refusing to answer any questions.
All right. I yank his pack to the side of his shoulder and unzip the top. I pull out a baggie of pot and shake it in front of his face. “What’s this?” Then I tug out a large foil-wrapped rock. I assume that’s Avery’s package. “And looks like you got a rock here, too.”
“Hey, man. That’s not the kind of rock you’re thinking.”
I peel back a section of the foil and give it a whiff. “Actually, it’s exactly what I think. Ambergris.”
He squints at me, a deep furrow between his dark brows. “You FDA?”
“I’m your worst fucking nightmare if you don’t tell me everything.” I yank him up by his shirt into a sitting position. “Talk.”
Shit-for-brains can’t possibly be in collusion with Maddox and the masked men who took Avery. Those men are career criminals, and this guy looks like he’d piss himself if they so much as whistled his way for a dime bag. “This the biggest score you got?” I ask.
His embarrassment is evident on his youthful face. “Yeah, man. The dope’s mine. Personal use. I got a prescription for my migraines.”
“Sure. All right. I’ll let you off the hook with that.” I kneel down and push the ambergris in his face and tug out the photo of Avery. “Now tell me everything about this shit here and this woman.”
“I just got the hookup for that chick, is all. My cousin’s in the Navy.” He shrugs, wincing at the movement. “He sends me the rocks, and I get them to her. I saw her posting on a forum trying to score some. And I actually knew what she was looking for.” He gr
ins wide. “I remembered my cousin talking about how that shit could go for a lot to the right person.” He shrugs again. “It was fate.”
I let him talk. Most people will tell you what you want to know without even asking if you let them talk long enough. And he’s a talker.
“Anyone else on that forum trying to locate it?” I ask.
“Naw, man. Just the hot chick.” His smile stretches, revealing gold dental plates. “I was actually going to try to hook up with her today. Bitch has a fine fucking ass.”
My jaw sets. I thump the back of his head. “Focus, shithead. Anyone else ever approach you, inquiring about ambergris or this woman?”
“Damn, man. That’s police brutality.” He shakes his head. “I said no. Just her.”
I mutter a curse and move behind him to unlock the cuffs. If I was on duty, I’d bring him in, put him in the hotbox for proper questioning. Sweat all the details out. But I have a feeling he’d only waste time and resources. Time and resources we don’t have.
The kind of scores he gets through his cousin doesn’t seem big enough to tempt the real players in this game. According to Avery, the men who took her had a whole lab set up—with enough illegal pure drugs to dope the entire city.
They have their own connections—but they still needed a talented scientist.
“Oh, wait though,” he says, rubbing his wrist. “There was this one dude, kind of sketchy. He asked her a question on the forum. Something about the compounds and aphrodisiacs. It got all technical between them.”
I toss his backpack to him once I’m done searching it. “You’re just now remembering this?” He scratches at his head, shrugs. “And what stood out about that to you?”
“I don’t know. I guess because it was a drug forum. People looking to get innovative ways to get high. You know, for SWIM.” He nods a couple of times, looking proud of himself for using the right slang. This twerp doesn’t have a clue what he’s fucking around with.
“What – your mommy bought you the darknet for Christmas?” I wave him on, impatient. “And?”
“And it just didn’t fit. I mean, the girl sure. I could tell she was legit and just looking for some hard-to-get shit. But him? It was like he was looking for her. You know what I’m saying?”
I do. Even a moron like this kid can read between the lines.
“You don’t start a convo with a chick about aphrodisiacs without having an ulterior motive,” he finishes with a shit-eating grin.
I’m impressed he strung that sentence together.
And Avery, even the brainy scientist she is, didn’t pick up on that. She doesn’t think like a criminal. Or hell, like a man.
“What’s this guy’s screen name?”
He stands and dusts off his backside. “I get a reward for this or some shit?”
I step up to him and glare down, letting our sizable difference speak for itself.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “All right, just don’t give my name over to any of your nark buddies or cops, and I’ll tell you. It was King.”
I raise my eyebrows. “King?”
“Yeah, I’m trying to think. It was A. King or something.” He holds up his hands. “But I can get it for you for sure when I get back to my house.”
“I know you will, Laurence,” I say, handing him the driver’s license I snaked from his pack. “You’ll send it to this number here”—I give him my card—“or else I’ll bring my cop buddies to your house and have us a fun search party.”
“Man.” He shakes his head, exasperated. “I’ll send it, yo.”
“Send it within the hour.”
When I’m back at my car, I text Avery, inquiring about this King contact she might recall. I wait a few minutes, my restlessness mounting when she doesn’t respond. Frustration laces my nerves tight as I crank the engine and head toward my apartment. That just happens to be near the crime scene.
5
Affliction
Avery
I’ve lost it. My ability to cope, to reason, to breathe. Bile coats my throat, my stomach roils with a sick tumble, and pain lances my chest. The bright day burns through my eyelids, too bright, too vivid. White circles flicker at the edges of my vision as I squeeze my eyes closed.
“Avery?”
I bend at the waist, gasp for air, dragging searing breaths into my constricted lungs. “I’m fine. Just give me a minute,” I tell Carson.
“Quinn’s going to have my ass if I don’t report this…”
I hold up a hand. “Not yet.” I manage to right myself and clear my thoughts of the victim. She’s behind me now, being photographed. Becoming a grotesque work of crime scene art.
“I’m processing this victim,” I say, overly determined, as if giving myself a pep talk. “It’s just exhaustion catching up. I’ll get a second wind soon. Quinn doesn’t need to know.” I find Carson’s gaze, and he nods reluctantly. Quinn will do something completely caveman—like storm the scene and throw me over his shoulder. Hell, he’s done it before.
Carson offers me my coffee, but I shake my head. “I think the caffeine had an adverse effect.” Thankfully, he accepts the lame attempt to excuse my sudden attack.
We both know the truth. The sight and smell of the vic hit too hard. Not right at first; shock might’ve staved it off. But once I was there beside her, visualizing and feeling her last moments…the panic took hold. Gripping me like death grips her now.
“I could call Bonds over here,” Carson says, worry creasing his eyes. “She could give us some insight into the offender, maybe, and—” And hold my hand, I surmise for him.
As if everyone here isn’t already thinking about how damaged I am and questioning whether I can do this. Whether I should do this. I don’t need a profiler here to add weight to their concerns.
I’m my own boss, and I’m a responsible one. I did get clearance from my department psychologist on the way here. She wanted me to come in, but after I explained the importance of this case, she reluctantly cleared me. This case is my priority.
“No. It’s fine.” I roll my shoulders back and flick my bangs out of my eyes. Suck down another crisp, fall-laced breath that doesn’t reek of the vic.
Though having Sadie here would benefit the case—there are areas where she excels beyond Carson, and even Quinn—it’s better if she’s not. I’ve become too dependent even on Sadie. Besides, her being at Lark and Gannet, asking the tough questions, means no one else has to.
I have to push through. If I give in now, if I let fear drive me, then I’m doing exactly what those bastards want.
That was their intent when they dressed the vic in my lab coat.
“Instruct the unis away from the vic,” I tell Carson, grateful he’s the on-scene detective in Quinn’s absence. He listens well without questioning or reading too much into my every statement.
As he clears CSU and the uniforms away from the scene, I bring out my recorder and steady my voice as I recite the date and time. “Victim is a Caucasian female between the age of twenty and twenty-five.” I pause the device and scrutinize her hips to be more certain. They’re narrow and from what I can see, hold no definitive proof to whether she’s given birth in her lifetime.
The age is an educated guess based on that fact, but with what I have to work with…it’s the best I can do until I can examine her further.
“Cause of death appears to be—” Torture. Extreme, sadistic torture. “Maltreatment. Varying depths of lacerations to the outer longitudinal layer indicate the offender used a blade, possibly four-to-six inches, to remove the dermis from the victim’s body. Significant perimortem blood loss suggests the victim was still alive during the removal of her skin.”
I hit Pause and wipe my forehead with the sleeve of my jacket. Carson sends me a concerned glance, then adjusts his coat, flipping the collar up against the wind.
I clear my throat and kneel next to the victim. This is about how close I got before the attack took my breath. I haven’t needed camphor ointment since
I was in training, and I feel pathetic as I dig through my kit to find an old tub of Vics VapoRub that I keep around for the interns. I remove a glove and dab a bit of the cool, minty salve beneath my nose.
With my gloved hand, I peel back the white lab coat—the coat I was wearing yesterday when I was taken from my lab. I know it’s mine before I even check the inseam, because there’s a chocolate stain on the pocket from where I brushed my hand.
“I don’t want to freak you out,” Carson says, pulling my attention away from the vic. “But she kind of looks like you, Avery. I mean, in general. Blond hair. Close to your height and similar in build. And she’s wearing the same kind of coat you do. Did she work in the crime lab…or do you think it could be a message?”
This is not a message. It’s a threat.
The sight beneath the coat makes Carson curse, and I can only stare. Unsure of what I’m feeling. Numb, edgy, nauseated. Definitely nauseated. I’ve examined countless bodies, some in worse states than this. But not many. As a doctor, I have little sympathy; only aware I need to find the evidence to uncover her death. As a human being—the part of me I lock away so it’s not touched by this kind of horror—is absolutely horrified.
“I’m not sure yet,” I answer. “I don’t think she was employed in the lab or the building. But I can’t say that positively. Only that I’ve never laid eyes on her before.”
And I have tried to place her. I remember that woman being hauled into the dank, greenly fluorescent-lit room by the masked man with a gun. Her knotted dark hair and sullen eyes. Her tearstained makeup smeared across her face. Was this victim—this woman—in the next room? Was she one of the women being doped and experimented on? Now that the masked man—if he was in fact the boss—has the perfected drug, did he do away with his test subjects since he no longer needs them?
My stomach bottoms out. I thought I was being brave when I tried to save that woman from being injected. When I took her place and was injected with the serum, instead. I didn’t think; I reacted. And it never occurred to me that by correcting the drug, I was issuing a death sentence to others…
