Sheriff Holt met them at the door.
“What’ve we got?” Mitch asked, placing his hands on his hips.
“Rebecca Carson. Twenty-nine years old. Lives alone,” he told them. “Found by her friend, Loretta Sine, who came to collect her for some shopping. She was found in the sunroom out back. That looks to be where she was attacked.”
Mitch gave a nod, grabbed a coverall off the officer standing by the door, slid it on, then made his way carefully into the house, snapping on some gloves. Salvi followed suit and they engaged the recording device on their badges. She took in the neat, comfortable home, her eyes catching on a picture of Mary and baby Jesus on the wall of the living room as she passed.
They stepped into the sunroom and fanned out around the sprawled body, covered in a sheet. Mitch reached out a gloved hand to lift the sheet and view the vic. Salvi moved to his side to join him.
The woman, of African-American descent, lay on her stomach, with her head turned to the side. Her face was beaten, and she was naked from the waist down.
“Partially dressed. Looks like it was quick,” Salvi said standing back up and looking around. “Not prolonged.”
“Cause of death looks like a broken neck,” Mitch said, studying the woman.
“Most likely, I’d say, the angle it’s sitting,” Holt agreed.
“How do we know this one’s linked to the first vic?” Mitch asked.
Salvi watched as Holt, also gloved, bent down and pulled the side of the vic’s body up to show them a pool of blood underneath and the word ‘pure’ carved into her belly.
“Yeah, OK,” Mitch said, standing back up again as Holt lowered the body back to the floor.
“How did you know that was there?” Salvi asked. “You moved the body already?”
Holt nodded. “I needed to know if we had a serial on our hands.”
“No, you needed to not touch the body until we got here,” Salvi said.
He stared back at her. “Well if I hadn’t, you’d still be elsewhere unaware we had a second vic.”
“They still would’ve called us in,” Mitch said firmly. “No one else touches her until our ME arrives.”
Holt turned and walked away. Salvi moved over to the door of the sunroom and examined the lock. She felt Mitch come to stand beside her. “It’s been tampered with,” she said. “He broke in.”
“Maybe he didn’t know this one,” Mitch said.
Salvi turned to look at the vic again. “He’s left her like he did Sharon. On their stomachs, faces turned, arms up around their heads.”
Mitch nodded. “Like they’re holding their arms up in surrender.”
“Or he doesn’t want to look them in the eye,” she said.
Mitch nodded again, then headed back into the house.
Swaggert arrived, camera dangling around his neck. “Another one, huh?” he said.
“Yeah,” she replied, then moved past him. “Make sure you get the lock. Back door.”
“Gee, thank you, Detective,” he said sarcastically. “I wouldn’t have thought to look there.”
Salvi shot him a blank look, then walked into the house again. She found Mitch in the woman’s bedroom, looking into the drawer of the bedside cabinet. He glanced back at her, then kept riffling. Salvi stood in the doorway studying the woman’s room. It was clean and neat with a pale beige quilt cover and handmade furniture. Her eyes fell onto a wooden cross on her dressing table, opposite the bed. She moved over to it, picked it up and examined it. She looked up into the mirror and caught Mitch watching her curiously. He held up a pamphlet of some kind.
“Our vic attended Vowker’s church,” he said. “This is from the mass last Sunday.”
Salvi put the cross down and turned to him as he placed the pamphlet on the bed and closed the drawer again.
“Why so different?” Salvi asked.
Mitch looked at her.
“This attack is very different from the one on Sharon Gleamer,” she said.
Mitch shrugged. “They both had ‘pure’ cut into them. He left them face down.”
“Yeah but Sharon was raped more than once. This woman looks like a hit and run attack.” She folded her arms. “Sharon was blonde, white, eighteen years old. This one is almost thirty and dark-skinned. Our perp doesn’t have a type. That worries me.”
“Yeah, he does,” Mitch said standing up from the bed and making his way for the door. “He likes good, pure, church-going women.”
They examined the scene, spoke to the friend Loretta Sine, watched as the evidence was bagged and Swaggert did his thing capturing 3D images of the scene. Salvi and Mitch looked around the back garden but found nothing unusual. The perp could’ve easily walked around the back of the house. The folks in Bountiful didn’t care much for fences.
Again, Salvi felt a strange sense of agoraphobia from all the open space, the vic’s backyard was so big. No wonder it was easy for someone to break into houses here. They had too much room to move, too many access points and not enough witnesses. She looked up into the sky wishing Bountiful had the same drone surveillance that the city had. The folks here had pulled away from technology, but right now it was the lack of technology that was allowing this killer to get away with his crimes.
“Oh, Detectives!” Swaggert called in a sing-song voice from the doorway, waving them forward.
Salvi and Mitch headed back inside to see Dr Weston leaning over the victim. She looked around at them.
“Look what I found,” she said, holding an electromagnifier over the body.
There, in the middle of the vic’s back, were faint traces of BioLume.
Salvi and Mitch exchanged a look.
“It’s only faint,” Weston said, “But I see slight drag marks. It looks as though he stomped on her with his boot, perhaps trying to stop her getting away. Her movement has caused his boot to drag a little along her skin and it’s left a minute trace of BioLume.”
“How long does BioLume last in the wild?” Salvi asked.
“Don’t know. We’ll have to check with the producers.”
“Our killer keeps walking in it,” Mitch said, eyeing the body then turning a dark stare to Salvi. He moved past her and headed inside once more.
Weston carefully watched him leave, then shot her a sympathetic look. “I’ll send you the report as soon as I have it.”
Salvi gave a nod of thanks, then followed Mitch through the door.
As she walked out the front door she saw Mitch standing by the Raider, looking down the street. She followed his eyes and saw a sleek white van from the Solme Complex parked down near the intersection. Levan Bander stood by the open door with three Serenes and one Subjugate. The Subjugate was Edward Moses. Bander and Moses both paused and stared down the street at her.
“Salvi!” Mitch called in a warning voice, motioning behind her.
She turned around to see Fontan Pragge standing behind her. Close behind her. She took a step backward.
“You,” he said, lips moist with saliva.
Salvi stared at him, his weak blue eyes, his curved thick nose, his white woolly hair. “You,” he said again, lifting his finger to point at her.
“Subjugate-12,” she said evenly, remembering to refer to him by his official name.
“You, go. Don’t stay. You go,” he said, shaking his head, his voice partially slurred, as a line of drool began to seep out the side of his mouth.
“And why’s that, Subjugate-12?”
He shook his head, then waved both hands like a baseball umpire declaring a runner safe. “No girls,” he said. “Bad. No girls. No.”
“SUBJUGATE-12!” Bander yelled from down the street. “GET BACK HERE NOW!”
Salvi watched as Pragge visibly cowered at the sound of Bander’s voice. His frightened, childlike eyes looked at her and he shook his head.
“Bad man. Get punished,” Pragge muttered to himself. “Bad man. Get punished. No girls. No.”
“But you’re not a bad man any more, are yo
u?” Salvi said.
“SUBJUGATE-12!” Bander yelled again, stalking toward them, tapping his baton loudly into his hand.
Pragge scurried around the Raider and toward the other side of the street to avoid the caretaker, who stopped and gave him a death stare as he passed. Pragge avoided eye contact, eyes lowered to the ground, as he moved back toward the van.
“Sorry about that,” Bander called to her. “He gets attached to faces he recognizes. Can’t seem to beat it out of him.” He smiled, then turned and headed back for the van.
Salvi watched as Bander walked away, but her eyes soon moved past him to fall on Edward Moses again.
Subjugate-52 stood still and calm beside the van, eyes fixed upon her in return.
Salvi and Mitch arrived back at the hub late afternoon. Mitch disappeared to get coffee, while she moved to her desk to tidy up the interview notes that Riverton had transcribed for them, along with their commentary from the second crime scene.
Someone leaned their butt down on the side of her desk, and she glanced up to see Hernandez looking down at her, his arms folded across his chest.
“Where’s Grenville?” he asked, darting his eyes over his shoulder.
“On a coffee run,” she said.
“I heard you got another vic,” he asked, his police eyes trying to read something on her face.
“Yeah,” she said. “Looks like the same perp but it was a slightly different attack.”
“How’s he taking it?” Hernandez asked, glancing over his shoulder again.
Salvi eyed the door, wondering why Hernandez was acting strange. Then she realized he was worried that Mitch might walk in and catch him being nosy.
“He’s fine,” she said.
“Yeah? You sure about that?” he asked, like some concerned uncle or something.
“Yes,” she repeated, staring at him. “Why?”
Hernandez shrugged. “Just curious. This case… I just thought he might be taking it hard, is all. Taking it personally.”
“No more than any other case,” Salvi said. Although she wasn’t sure that was exactly true.
Hernandez nodded. “Just keep an eye on him,” he said. “You think he’s not handling it, you let someone know, alright?”
Salvi stared at him, offended that he thought she couldn’t handle herself and would need to go running to someone else for help.
“Mitch is fine,” she said firmly, “and if he wasn’t, I’d handle it.”
Hernandez stared at her for a moment, then shrugged again and waved his hands in the air indifferently. “Whatever you say.”
She watched as he moved back over to his desk and sat down. Bronte glanced at both of them, but it looked like he was happy to stay out of it.
Mitch came back after a while, but his hands were empty.
“What happened to the coffee?” Salvi asked.
He sighed. “I changed my mind. I need a real drink instead.”
“Really?” she asked.
“I told you, I only had a few drinks last night.”
Beggs happened to be walking past at that moment and laughed at what he heard. “See! You are his mother!”
Salvi ignored him.
“I’m up for a drink,” Beggs said to Mitch, glancing at his iPort. “Give us a few minutes.”
Mitch gave him a nod then moved to sit at his desk. Salvi stared at him the whole time.
“What?” he asked. “Believe it or not, it helps me think. Loosens me up.”
“So where did you go when you weren’t getting my coffee?”
“I made a call,” he said. “Locked in a new time to interview Edward Moses.”
“Which is?”
“Day after tomorrow. Apparently the whole town is going to Sharon Gleamer’s funeral tomorrow. Attis wants his Serenes and Subjugates to be there and of service to the Bountiful community.”
“Yeah? Or is he just trying to put a little distance between us and his precious Subjugate-52?” Salvi said.
“Could be,” he said, tapping at his console and eyeing his screen. “I checked who was in town yesterday around the time our second vic was murdered. Subjugates 46 and 52. Dolles and Moses.”
Salvi stared at him.
“And we know they were both in town the day of Sharon’s murder too,” he said.
“You said you didn’t really like Dolles for it.”
He shrugged. “That was before I knew he was in town both days the murders took place.”
“With Subjugate-52…” she said, thinking aloud. “Something about him sends a shiver down my spine.”
“Moses? He’s a big guy.”
She nodded. “And his previous crimes are–”
“Much like our victims now,” he finished her sentence.
Salvi considered his words. “Were they the only two in town both days?”
Mitch eyed his screen. “No. Looks like Subjugate-12 and Serene-41 are always there.”
“Pragge,” Salvi thought aloud. “The bad man…” She locked eyes with Mitch. “The brain-damaged ex-serial rapist.”
Mitch nodded. “But he only raped before. He never murdered.”
Salvi shrugged. “What if his treatment has made things worse? What if there’s pent-up rage from his torture?”
Beggs came back over and slapped Mitch on the back. He stood. “You coming for a drink?” he asked her.
She stared at him. “Someone’s gotta finalize the report on what we saw today.”
Beggs smiled and slapped Mitch’s shoulder again. “And that’s exactly what the junior detective should do!” He looked over at Caine. “Ain't that right, Lewie?”
Caine didn’t bother looking up from his display, he just raised his hand and flipped Beggs the bird.
“We’ll see you down there when you kids are done!” Beggs gave a raucous laugh and pulled Mitch out the door. As soon as they left Caine eyed the doorway then looked across the room at her. “Assholes,” he muttered. Then went back to work.
Salvi walked into the calming tones of her apartment, closing the door behind her. As the chime of the coded lock sounded, she pulled off her black boots and dumped her gun and her gear in her bedroom, then walked back out to the living room, straight over to the windows. She looked out over the city, at the twinkling lights and the black of night that surrounded them. And the police drones buzzing about. The Golden Gate was lit up but covered in a thick fog, giving it an eerie look. It reminded her hauntingly of the case. She had pieces of evidence but not yet the whole picture.
She pulled a chair over to the window and sat down, ate her pre-packaged meal while staring blankly out at the view. Her mind swam in a sea of a thousand thoughts. She pondered the second vic, Rebecca Carson, and how she was different to the first. The only connection being that she attended Vowker’s church and had “pure” carved into her belly. And of course, the BioLume smear. She thought of Fontan Pragge approaching her outside Carson’s house, telling her he was a “bad man” and would get punished. She thought of Attis Solme’s passion for his facility, how he was adamant that his Serenes and Subjugates could not be responsible. She thought about Garner Town and asked Riverton to submit a background check on the place to their case file. She thought about what she’d witnessed in the Complex’s bathroom, of Levan Bander meting out a brutal punishment to a Subjugate. She thought of Tobias crying over his Christian guilt. Thought of the preacher lecturing her and Mitch on forgiveness.
And sure enough, her thoughts turned to Faith.
She turned away from the window, put her dishes in the washer and moved to the bathroom. As she undressed, she stared at herself in the mirror, noticing the resemblance to Faith within her. The dark hair, dark eyes. Especially the eyes. She turned away from the mirror and moved to the shower, catching a glimpse of the scorpion on her hip. Black and menacing, it sat perched ready to strike. Ready to defend.
She looked away from it to the shower controls. She was tired and wanted to relax so she selected the spa mode. A section
of the shower wall raised up and a platform emerged. Once it was fully extended, she lay down on it and set the shower on. Hundreds of streams of firm spray fell down upon her, massaging her entire body. She closed her eyes and focused on the sensation.
Anything to wash the day away. Anything to make her forget about Faith.
And it worked. She did stop thinking about Faith. But instead, as she lay naked being gently pummeled and massaged by her shower spray, her mind turned once more to Mitch.
And Hernandez’s concern.
And Mitch’s behavior of late.
And once more to the killer out there with two victims to his name.
She sighed, annoyed, and turned up the intensity of shower spray, wanting to forget them all.
Salvi awoke to the sound of her iPort ringing on her bedside table. She swatted the pink and purple jellyfish swimming around her and looked at the clock. It was 1.23am. She checked the caller’s number. She didn’t recognize it. She pressed “answer” and a hologram projected from the iPort.
“Hello?” she answered, squinting her eyes at the pierced guy with a blue mohawk.
“Yeah, is this Detective Brentt?” he asked, loud music pumping in the background.
“Yeah.”
“I was told to contact you and tell you to come and collect your partner.”
“My partner?”
“Yeah, Mitch Grenville. You know him?”
“Yeah. Where is he? Who are you?”
“He’s down at McClusky’s bar. I’m the barman. So if you don’t come pick him up, I’ll find some other cops who will. But they may not take him home, you know what I’m saying?”
“Shit.” She rubbed her eyes. “What’d he do?”
“Just come and get him, alright?” With that the hologram vanished.
Salvi sighed heavily, threw her sheets back and got out of bed.
McClusky’s bar was even more schizophrenic than she remembered it. She’d only been here a handful of times over the past three years. Half rock-and-roll dive bar, half electronica club flashing with bright neon LEDs, she walked through the door and took a moment to orient herself. The few patrons still there at this time of night looked over at her: a couple of old fat guys in factory coveralls sitting on bar stools, a small group of stoned college kids wearing dull monogrammed pantsuits and data-lenses, a young guy at a booth with three consoles around him, and a businessman in a suit, sitting with a young woman who wasn’t wearing very much at all.
The Subjugate Page 17
