by Peg Brantley
The Benavides girl had only been missing a day. This young woman was someone other than Rachelle Benavides. He now had three DBs, all Hispanic. What the hell is going on?
Chapter Ten
The Waters Home
Thursday, September 20
Bond put the finishing touches on the hurry-up dinner so Chase could get back to work. “It’s a lousy time to catch a new case, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Like there’s ever a good time?” Chase grabbed her and pulled her to him, then gently brushed her hair out of her face. When he nuzzled her neck in the way guaranteed to make her knees weak, she pressed against him. In their twenty-plus years, it had never failed to work.
“Funny.” Bond pushed him away and pointed to the kitchen table. “Sit. Eat.” She felt a warmth that stretched beyond her body’s response.
“Girls!” She shouted up the stairs. “Come spend some time with your dad before he has to leave.”
Seconds later Stephanie pounded down the stairs and flew past. Angela caught Bond looking in her direction and immediately slowed to a leisurely amble. Her oldest daughter looked like a younger version of Bond. Tall, long brown hair, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, she exuded all kinds of casual elegance. Stephanie had chopped her still white-blond hair off to a length which, with the right amount of goo, she could shape into spikes. Her personal expression of independence, she’d insisted on styling it all on her own. Clearly, the purple tights, lime green lederhosen, and hot pink and yellow striped blouse weren’t enough. Not for the first time, Bond shuddered when she thought of the teenage years yet to come with this one.
She followed her daughters into the kitchen and wondered at the little-girl infatuation they both had with their dad. Were they ever that way with her? Chase’s job seemed to leave her in the role of a single parent more often than not. Even though they tried to even things out, he got to be the hero while she played taskmaster and disciplinarian. Some days, it got to her more than others.
“Are we gonna do balloons tomorrow, Dad?” Angela asked.
Bond’s throat tightened.
“Yeah, Daddy. Tomorrow is David’s birthday. It’s his party,” Stephanie said.
Tears, rarely bidden except for when she needed release, filled Bond’s eyes. Damn. Not the time. Her husband looked to her for some help, his own eyes pleading.
“Daddy has an important case he’s working on and he might not be able to get away,” Bond tried.
“What’s more important than one of our birthdays?” Stephanie asked.
“Nothing,” Chase said. “You tell me what time and I’ll be here.”
Stephanie’s face clouded. “Daddy, does it matter that David never lived here with us?”
Chase pulled his youngest daughter’s face up to see into her eyes. “We’ve talked about Santa, right? How he always knows where we are?”
He got a nod.
“Well, David knows the same way Santa does. He’s connected to us. Forever.” A catch in Chase’s voice made that last word hard to hear.
“Forever, Daddy?”
Chase and Bond both spoke one word at the same time: “Forever.”
Angela, quiet through this exchange, focused on her family. “Tomorrow would be a big one. Eighteen.” She drilled in on her father. “It’s an important birthday. We’re home from school by three o’clock. Let’s say four-thirty to release the balloons.”
“You’ve got it, honey,” Chase said. “Now I’ve got to head out.”
He kissed Bond goodbye, and she double-checked his wallet to make sure he had enough cash for sustenance while he worked until who knows what time on this case. Chase had already called Butz to ask for the full squad on this and received a grudging okay. Bond wanted to kick ass when Chase told her about how his lieutenant responded to his request. A little bit of help would get him home sooner and maybe not dead on his feet.
Chase told her that Terri Johnson would join him and Daniel first thing tomorrow morning. Their caseload—her husband’s own missing boy case, a bank embezzlement Daniel had all but wrapped up, and a dead-in-the-water attempted assault case of Terri’s—would be handled by a couple of patrol officers who knew what they were doing. The three detectives would continue their involvement on their cases as needed while they focused on the murders and trying to find Rachelle Benavides.
Bond could be in for several evenings on her own. But Chase’s job sure helped her keep her priorities straight. And highlighted the importance of giving her husband a soft place to land. Or crash-land as necessary.
“Tell Jax I said hi,” Bond said as Chase walked to his SUV. “When this case gets settled, we should all get together for dinner.”
Chase called over his shoulder. “When she’s not working I’m not sure she comes up for air, even if Scott’s with her.”
Marriage to a man who’d used her hadn’t soured Jax on love. After Jax’s divorce, she and Scott Ortiz had begun seeing each other. They protected their fresh romance as if it were a soap bubble. After-hours belonged to the two of them.
“Fine,” Bond laughed. “Tell her when this case gets settled, we should have a girlfriend lunch.”
Her husband rewarded her with a chuckle as he swung his lanky frame into the SUV. He flashed the hand sign for “I love you” and drove away.
Bond spent the rest of the evening thinking about David and how badly she wanted to hold him again in her arms.
Chapter Eleven
Office of the Medical Examiner
Thursday, September 20
The Aspen Falls Medical Examiner’s office boasted almost state-of-the-art equipment, especially impressive considering they were a small mountain community. Thankfully, the tax base of Aspen Falls was made up of wealthy residents and major year-round tourism, which allowed them to enjoy a more generous budget than other towns.
Every time Chase Waters walked into the autopsy room, the lack of holding drawers made him do a double-take. Modern ME offices stored their bodies on shelves. It might not be as dignified as one of those huge stainless steel vaults, but it sure utilized available space a lot more efficiently.
A visit he’d made to a morgue in Tucson was locked into his brain. Shelf after shelf filled with the bodies of loved ones who’d been so desperate for a better future they had risked their lives in the Sonoran Desert, and lost. Men, women and children who left mostly on foot to leave the poverty of Mexico behind them. Scores of hopefuls perished in the relentless heat.
He’d learned one more horrible fact on that visit to a Tucson morgue: before a medical examiner can be licensed, he or she must complete a certain number of autopsies. As hard as it would be to do in Aspen Falls, someplace like Tucson would have a lot more opportunity in a macabre kind of way. Offices along the Mexico-U.S. border had waiting lists for hopeful MEs. It was a horrible reflection on current conditions in that part of the country.
The windowless room in the Aspen Falls ME office had three autopsy tables. Each table was surrounded by negative pressure vents that looked like giant cheese graters. These vents were there to suck in smells and anything else that might be released into the air, to protect anyone in proximity from inhaling airborne contaminants. Based on the smell he’d encountered at the burial grounds, Chase figured whoever invented this contraption qualified as a hero to medical examiners and coroners everywhere.
The young body of the newest murder victim had been placed on one of the tables, with the other two empty. Chase didn’t like autopsies but he attended them when he could, for two reasons. First, he wanted to see what the ME saw. There was always the chance they’d find the one ‘thing’ that might become significant later and wrap up the case. Second, as appropriately clinical as autopsies were—and this proved hard for him to explain to other detectives—he attended autopsies as a witness to a life. At least to the way a life ended. He always experienced a profound advocacy link simply by being present.
Chase listened to Jax as she rattled off her findings. The external examination pro
vided no trace evidence that might be useful until the ME picked up her left arm.
“Well, I’ll be. The left upper forearm indicates a recent needle puncture. My guess would be that some liquid agents were administered just prior to her death.”
“Liquid agents?”
“An IV of some kind. We’ll have to wait for the toxicology tests to know what drugs may have been used. All I can tell you is that it appears as if she was injected with something at this site—and probably not for too long.”
Chase checked the other arm, then moved down to examine the skin between her toes. “No signs of extended drug use.”
Jax placed the body on some blocks to make examination easier.
“You ready, Detective?”
“I’m guessing you’re not going to start with the Y-incision?”
“Good guess.” Jax caught his sarcastic reference. “If there’s a problem with the embalming fluid later at the mortuary, let the record show we’re in the clear.”
He’d learned from an ME in Denver that it’s important not to cut too far back on the shoulders when making the Y-incision because there’s likely to be a problem with the embalming fluid: it can leak through the stitches if the incision is over the shoulders. Every step in this process worked to protect the dignity of the deceased.
“So, the skull is all that’s left?” Chase asked.
“Pretty much.”
Jax Taylor made a neat slice, ear-to-ear, over the top of the scalp and behind the ears. Chase waited to make sure there were no surprises with either the skull or the brain, nodded his thanks to Jax, and walked out of the room.
He stripped off his gear and considered what he needed to do next. When he arrived at the front desk he grabbed a phone book, found the number, and punched it into his cell phone. He shoved outside the building into a cool early evening, hoping he could get an appointment soon. The front door swung closed as the call went through.
“This is Chase Waters. I need to see you.”
Chapter Twelve
Aspen Falls Police Department
Thursday, September 20
Back at the station, Chase checked his messages and then logged in to the departmental loop to check on any active cults in the area. This kind of mutilation was often connected with cults—for good reason. Cattle mutilations in Colorado went back for hundreds of years. Usually they were connected to kids practicing some kind of cult activity. Nothing showed up on the LEO site. He wasn’t surprised. Maybe he could find something coming at it sideways. He turned to the internet. Google didn’t exist simply for the idly curious. It had become a tool for law enforcement as well.
When he searched “cult,” he got a whopping fourteen million hits. He revised his search to “cult mutilation.” Twenty minutes later he’d printed out several documents related to cattle mutilation and a couple regarding something he hadn’t thought of earlier. Covens.
Witches? Really? Chase made a call to the college. He learned about a registered coven on the campus, got the contact information, and made an appointment with their representative. What exactly made him think college would be a good option for his daughters to continue their education?
Chase had to admit he got kind of a creepy feeling when the websites he’d pulled up had things like Satan worshippers as part of the FAQs. The normal-looking websites somehow gave credence to the whole concept and made him worry for the sake of the casual searcher. He made a mental note to block these from Angela and Stephanie’s shared computer.
After he felt like he had a rudimentary knowledge, he decided to check the county law enforcement site for anything related to his cases.
He typed in “mutilation” and felt an electrical shock. Two cases popped up from the previous summer. Could this be right? Data errors happened in the best of circumstances—the output was only as accurate as the input—and he needed to confirm this information.
The cases were county, not city. Chase vaguely remembered hearing something about them last year, but he’d been working an exceptionally difficult case where one child had killed another child. At the time, he didn’t have any room for a couple of county cases he couldn’t possibly solve in his brain.
Chase had worked with the county sheriff’s office more than once and he picked up his phone and called Jerry Coble. The sheriff had gone home for the day but the operator remained gracious and said she’d relay his name and contact information. Chase thanked her, reiterated the importance of the call, and assured her he would be available whenever Sheriff Coble had the time.
The autopsy reports from the two earlier DBs were laid open on Chase’s desk. Information from his cult research lay next to them. It didn’t feel right. He went back to the internet.
One posting caught his attention. Mutilated corpses were found in Mexico and determined to be ritualistic sacrifices to invoke blessings for a drug cartel. The religion of Santeria justified the carnage. All of his victims were Hispanic. Could there be a connection between them and a cartel?
The dark corners of the room seemed to grow darker, leeching the color from the rest of the space. Chase had dealt with the manifestation of evil often during his career. He could hope to do something about evil he could see and touch, but this unseen evil crawled up the scale to a hundred times worse. And he had no control over it.
He read a little more, then needed to stop. When he reached for some licorice the bag was empty.
Chase pressed a number on his phone and waited.
Bond’s voice warmed his heart. “Hey, hon. What’s up? You on your way home?”
He inhaled as if he could catch her familiar musky scent nearby. “Just needed to hear your voice. I’m going to be here another hour or so.”
“You want me to let the kids wait up?”
He laughed. His wife knew that "another hour or so" could easily turn in to three or four or seven. “I’ll be home by nine. Promise,” he said. “Love you.”
“I love you too.”
Ready now to deal with more evil, Chase plugged "Santeria" into the search engine. There were a couple of postings associated with animal sacrifice and a lot of innuendo related to musicians and Hollywood celebrities. He clicked out of those sites. Innuendo would never count as evidence. Animal sacrifice did not connect beyond doubt to a mutilated human being.
The Mexican drug cartel angle had some possibilities, except for one thing. It did not match up at all with what he’d learned of Rachelle Benavides. It had been a long time since a civilian had been able to fool Chase. His gut told him that this young girl was not involved in drugs. For the moment at least, he’d give her the benefit of the doubt.
About to log out and head home for the night, his phone rang. What now?
“What the hell are you still doin’ at work, Waters?” Sheriff Jerry Coble’s voice forged a balm to his senses after dealing with cults and human sacrifice.
“Caught a case that’s giving me fits, Sheriff. Not gonna sleep well until it’s off the board.”
He could almost see the man nod. “What do you need from the county?”
“Did you guys have a couple of incidents last summer of murders where the victims were mutilated?”
A brief silence on the line, then Coble cleared his throat. “Yep. We did.”
“Did you solve them?”
“Nope, and my guess is you’re not asking out of idle curiosity.”
“I think we might have some connected cases in Aspen Falls.”
“Some? As in, more than one?”
“Looks that way. What can you remember about them? Yours, I mean.”
“Hell, Waters. I sent your lieutenant all of the particulars.”
Chase decided the prudent course of action would be to avoid any discussion of Lieutenant Butz. “Were the victims Hispanic?”
“Yep. And missing what you might call vital parts.”
“Did Dr. Taylor do the autopsies?” He couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t made a connection.
“No
pe. Jax was off at some continuing ed classes or some conference or something,” the sheriff said. “ME down in Denver took her place for about three weeks or so.”
“Could you get me the paperwork?”
“I’ll have it sent first thing when I get in the office tomorrow.”
“Can you have it sent tonight?”
Chapter Thirteen
Aspen Falls Police Department
Friday, September 21
Chase strode into the meeting room with a half-dozen of The Coffee Pod’s freshest muffins in one hand and three equally fresh coffees in the other. Daniel and Terri were already there.
The three of them worked well as a team. Someone had set up the whiteboards in front of the room, and Daniel stood in front of them, marker in hand. Chase smiled. Of the three detectives, Daniel had the most legible handwriting. Both Chase and Terri wrote so badly their notations were often difficult to read even when they knew what it was supposed to say.
“You look like hell.” Terri leveled her gaze in his direction.
“Hey, I shaved.” Chase peeled off a strip of tissue under his chin.
The notes he’d printed out before he went home last night sat on the table in front of the boards. They’d been read, and Daniel had already put up some column headers: DB #1 COUNTY, DB #2 COUNTY, DB #3 DUMPSTER, DB #4 HIKER, DB #5 BURIAL GROUNDS, MISSING: RACHELLE BENAVIDES, and MOTIVATION.
There were two solid vertical lines separating the missing girl from the others. Cops were among the most hopeful people Chase knew.
“Good job, Daniel,” Chase said. “Except move #4 next to our missing. No mutilation like the others. May or may not be connected.”
Daniel made the change, then began adding the detail from Chase’s notes. Other than dates of discovery and autopsy results, there were precious few known facts. The hiker had the most. No ID, a wallet with seven dollars in cash and a photograph of a young woman. The back of the photograph had the name Maria, and the numbers 7/11. Presumably his wife, since the victim had also been wearing a cheap wedding band.
