Off the Record: An Avery Rich Mystery (Avery Rich Mysteries Book 1)

by Sara Gauldin

  “He didn’t seem to know mine when he was murdering Douglas White. I found it encouraging.”

  I pressed my lips together as I considered the facts. “I think it's safe to assume he must have found out. Whoever had our names was trying to remember them. Somebody probably gave them to him all at once, and he wrote them down on his own hand.”

  The telephone rang, interrupting my train of thought. I picked up the receiver.

  “Detective Avery Rich.”

  “Detective Rich, this is Dr. Cleary. I wanted to let you know that the testing will take some time.” The doctor’s voice sounded more stoic than it had in the forest.

  “Of course, I understand. Would it be easier if I just met you at your lab?”

  “Yes, at the lab,” he repeated.

  “Is it too late to stop by today?”

  “No, not at all.” His tone was curt.

  “I'm on my way now,” I said. The line went dead.

  “I'm going to check in with Dr. Cleary. I think he has some new information for me.”

  “He’s not sending over anything?” Kain asked.

  “No, he really seemed to want me to come to the lab. At least I can take a look at the remains. If one of the dead men is Jim Maple, I'm sure I can recognize him.”

  “If it's all right with you, I’d like to get away from your desk for a while. You said the cases are related.”

  “Yes, you can come along.” I laughed at Kain’s obvious hint. “In fact, would you mind driving me? My car is out of commission for a while, and I'm still waiting for Calbert to issue me a vehicle.”

  “No trouble. What happened to your car?” Kain asked.

  I carefully stood up from the dysfunctional chair, which popped loudly in protest. “Let’s just say that it's a city car and not an off-road vehicle.”

  The M.E.’s office was only a mile from the station. We climbed into Kain’s black Mazda 6. The last time I rode with Kain was during our chase on the highway. He pulled away from the curb and into traffic smoothly. It was a nice change in pace.

  “You said the bodies had all been dismembered?” Kain asked.

  “Yes, the doctor seemed to think it was to encourage animals to carry off the remains.”

  “That may be, but I have to wonder--”

  “About what? Someone would have to be pretty sick to do that to another human being.”

  Kain’s eyes were on the road, but something about his expression made me think his mind was far away. “Yeah, but I'm willing to bet that the person who did the cutting was not new to the practice.”

  “We could look up offenders known to chop up their victims when we get back to the station,” I said.

  “It seems to me that we already know of one other victim,” Kain said.

  I put together Kain’s implication. “Of course! Calbert’s daughter’s finger was removed when she was kidnapped.”

  “I bet that's this person’s signature move, only this time things went much further.”

  I remembered the bloodied bits of remains. “I would say so.” An involuntary shiver went through me. “I thought of the finger as more of a torture move.”

  Kain turned into the parking lot and chose a space. “The perp probably did, too. If a person's already deranged, it's easy to escalate, especially if they're under stress.”

  “Hmm…I wonder what kind of stress,” I said.

  We walked to the Medical Examiner’s building in silence. The exposed parking lot was a risky place to share any of our thoughts about the case. We entered the receptionist’s area. There was no waiting area for guests, just her office space.

  I greeted the older woman at the desk. “Hi, I'm Detective Rich. This is my associate, Ryan Kain. Dr. Cleary is expecting us.”

  “More police? All right, I guess, go ahead back.”

  “More Police?” I asked. My voice was quiet. “Who else has come in?”

  “There was another lady officer. She wore a uniform.”

  “A lady?” I asked. “There aren't many women in my division, but it could be someone from another station.”

  “Today's been busy. We don’t usually have many visitors,” the receptionist said.

  “Oh?”

  " Most people tend to avoid the morgue. Usually, most people would rather have the reports sent over. Today, you're the second ones to come in person."

  My stomach churned. Something seemed off. I took a deep breath and stood up as straight as I could. “I'm glad to meet with Dr. Cleary, can we go back?”

  “Sure, his office is the only one, straight down the hall.”

  “Thanks.” I turned to head down the hall when I felt Kain’s hand on my arm.

  “Avery,” Kain warned. He looked at the gun strapped at the edge of my jacket.

  I nodded my understanding. Kain was being paranoid. I knew that I shouldn't be surprised that Dr. Cleary would have had other police visitors. Somehow Kain’s reaction triggered my memory of Calbert mentioning corrupt police. I sighed in exasperation, but kept my hand close to my weapon as we walked toward the doctor’s office, outside of the morgue.

  I got goose bumps as I walked down the cold hallway. I couldn’t help thinking of the bodies being refrigerated only yards away. We reached the office space, but Dr. Cleary was nowhere in sight.

  “Dr. Cleary?” I called.

  “She said he was here,” Kain said softly.

  “I’m sure he is. I bet he's just working.” I pointed toward the door.

  Kain nodded, but his forehead was wrinkled. I couldn’t wait around for Kain to work out his internal concerns. I opened the heavy door and walked into the industrial room. I had been to a morgue before, but part of me always expected some childhood memory of Frankenstein’s laboratory instead of a modern medical facility. The state-of-the-art equipment humming quietly in the pristine work space was a nice contrast with the long-held mental image.

  We made our way along the row of equipment. Dr. Cleary was nowhere in sight. “Dr. Cleary?” I called again.

  Finally, I heard him. “I’m back here!”

  We followed his voice to the back of the space, to where he stored and examined the bodies of the dead. It was like a surgical suite, but Dr. Cleary’s patients never survived.

  “You must have some information for us already. That was quick,” I said.

  “I do, but I also have some concerns. Earlier, I had a surprise visit from one of your fellow officers.”

  “That's strange. Was it anybody I would know?”

  “I think so. It was Officer Johnson. She wanted to take the evidence reports and the bullet you found back to the station, personally. I recognized her from the crime scene, and I almost agreed to it, but it's just not the way things are handled, so it felt wrong. When I called you to come here, she left in a hurry.”

  “She brought me to town this afternoon when my car got stuck, but she said she was going back to the cabin to wait on a search warrant.”

  “What time did she drop you off?” Kain asked.

  “After lunch time. I showered and changed before I came back to the station.”

  “Then there's some time missing," Kain said. "It's possible Officer Johnson went back to the cabin, but still couldn’t perform the search.”

  “That wouldn’t explain why she came here asking for evidence,” I said.

  “No, we're missing something,” Kain said.

  “I'm going to find out what.” I took my phone out of my pocket and dialed the number for the station.

  The phone rang twice before the clerk answered.

  “This is Detective Avery Rich. I need the contact information for Officer Lou Johnson, a cell number would be best.”

  Chapter24

  I called Lou Johnson’s cell phone number from the telephone in the morgue. It rang four times before going to her voice mail.

  “No luck,” I said.

  Kain’s eyebrows went up. “Well, we know that wherever she is, she couldn’t take the call.”
<
br />   “We know she didn’t answer,” I corrected.

  “You called from the M.E.’s office that she went out of her way to visit earlier in the day. She'd want to hear from Dr. Cleary.”

  Dr. Cleary nodded. “Officer Johnson asked me to call if there were any new developments.”

  “And are there?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, I'm sorry about the delay. I've learned a few things about my guests already.”

  I shivered. “Guests?”

  He shrugged. “I try to keep things light around here. The job will weigh you down if you let it.”

  “I can imagine. We'd like to see your…um...guests.”

  “Certainly,” Cleary said.

  We followed Dr. Cleary back into his exam area. He opened the refrigerated bays, and pulled out the tray containing each of the remains. The sheet covering the bodies would normally have reflected some hint of a human shape, but this time the sheets covered nothing more than collections of broken pieces.

  “Are you sure you want to see the remains? I can give you a summary report without the gory visuals.”

  “I need to see them,” I said. “I may be able to identify at least one of the victims.”

  “I bet I know which one,” Dr. Cleary said. He went to the middle tray and pulled back the sheet.

  Kain and I walked to either side of the tray and looked at the splayed portions of human parts. The head was lying where it should have been if the body had been able to take on true anatomical form. The face was discolored and contorted as though he was still in pain, but I recognized him immediately. “Jim Maple,” I said.

  Kain nodded his agreement. “There's no doubt in my mind.”

  “Since his wife owned the property and he was reported missing, he was the easiest to identify. Officer Johnson seemed sure he was among the dead as well.”

  “Look at his hands, Avery,” Kain said.

  I looked at Maple's hands, only to realize that there was a mutilated stub where each of his fingers had once been. I swallowed hard, choking down the repulsion I felt. “All of his fingers were cut off,” I croaked.

  “Yes, it's noteworthy that all the victims but one had lost all of their fingers,” Dr. Cleary said.

  I shook my head, reeling at the gruesome appearance of the remains. “All but one--that's strange. Which victim’s fingers weren't removed?”

  “I don’t have a positive identification for that victim just yet, but the only hands that still have fingers belong to the victim who had your names written on his hand.”

  “Dr. Cleary, were all the fingers removed before or after the victims died?” Kain asked.

  A mental image of each of the men being tortured like Myra Shultz made me shiver.

  Dr. Cleary noticed my goose bumps. "Sorry, we keep it pretty cold in here for obvious reasons." He uncovered the other two bodies. “At first I thought that all the victims had been dismembered after their deaths, but upon closer examination, the fingers and several of the other parts of two of the victims had been removed while they were still very much alive.”

  “And the third?” Kain asked.

  “The victim who managed to keep his fingers was also the only one to be fully dismembered after his death. The same weapon or tool was used to break the bodies apart, but whoever killed this guy,” he pointed to the stretcher at the end, “was a different person. The cuts were shallower, and appear to have been made by someone who was left-handed, rather than right, based on the angle of the cuts.”

  “So we're looking for two killers,” I said. This case seemed to go in too many directions at once.

  Dr. Cleary smiled. “There were two killers, but I don’t think you'll have to look far. From what I can tell, these two fingerless folks died slowly from blood loss, while this one,” he indicated the end stretcher, "died from a single gunshot wound to the back of his head. I’m waiting for a few tests to come back from the lab, but I think forensics will support the idea that this victim at the end killed Maple and John Doe number one here, before somebody killed him.”

  Kain whistled long and low. “So someone got rid of the grunt that did the dirty work, once the job was done. Talk about poor job security.”

  I nodded my agreement. “No kidding. So we know that whoever killed the hit-man here must have been worried that he could tie them to the crimes, so he got rid of him.”

  “I think that makes the most sense,” Kain agreed.

  “Thank you for calling us in, Dr. Cleary. Please let us know if you find anything new, or if you're able to identify those two bodies.”

  “I’ll do that,” Dr. Cleary said.

  “Oh, and if it's all right, I'm going to send a sketch artist over to draw the two John Does. That way I can try to identify them as well.” I hated to put Myra through any more pain, but only she would know the face of her attacker.

  “No problem. I’ll send over the fingerprints from the fingers we recovered,” Dr. Cleary said.

  I admired the man’s ability to sound encouraging about missing body parts—I assumed it was a learned skill in his profession. “Oh, one more thing: do you have the results back from the blood trail we found on the pathway?” I asked.

  “As we suspected, those blood samples didn’t match any of the victims. There were traces of the same blood on the one who may have killed the first two, but not on either of the fingerless dead.”

  “But there's no DNA match to any in the records?” Kain asked.

  “Not so far, but the computer is still searching. The blood samples in this case are going to take a while longer to sort out. Victim three had his own blood, the first two victims’ blood, and the mystery person’s blood on him. Between that and all the splatter samples, the lab work is quite an undertaking.”

  “I can imagine. Thank you, again. Just keep me up to date. And Dr. Cleary, please call me directly as information comes in. No other officers would need that information first.” I wrote my cell phone number on my card and handed it to him.

  “No problem,” he said.

  ***

  As soon as we closed the car doors I turned to Kain. “Things are coming together.” I smiled as I indulged the endorphin high I'd been left with after the chase.

  “I think you’re right,” Kain said. His expression was stern.

  My brow crinkled as I tried to read Kain’s sudden mood change. “You don’t seem too glad to see more pieces of the puzzle fitting together.”

  Kain slid the gear shift into drive and turned up the air conditioner. “I really should have never involved myself in any of this. I have to admit that I let down my guard. The temptation to slip back into that underbelly of corruption is always there. You offered me the bait that Calbert gave you, and just as he predicted, I took it.”

  “I don’t understand, Kain. We're about to solve the case. I don’t see the downside.”

  “The downside is that this is the type of corruption you cannot outrun.” Kain’s knuckles where white as they gripped the steering wheel. “It finds a way to spread and cover its own tracks. Just look at what was left of those men lying on the tables in there. They lost everything because they decided to participate in some scheme where they weren’t the biggest fish in the pond, and they lost the bet. We couldn’t solve the case and implicate the real perpetrator fast enough, and now the witnesses and underlings are dead on a slab. They won’t be able to tell anyone their stories.”

  I took a deep breath in a useless attempt to calm myself. This was the whole point of my job--how could Kain not see that? “You can’t put their deaths on us. We didn’t kill them. Solving the case faster wouldn’t have changed the fact that they chose to involve themselves in something dangerous. They knew that already. As for their testimony, forensics and evidence can speak for the dead and tell us their story. Some secrets cannot be silenced with a bullet, or even a dismembered corpse.”

  Kain glanced at me. “Avery, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean--”

  “I don’t want your apology. I
want you to shake off your guilt and help me fill in these last few blanks so I can put whoever is at the root of this thing away for good.”

  Kain nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I hear you loud and clear.” He turned on the radio. A classics station droned timeless melodies for the rest of the drive back to the station. I couldn’t say what songs were playing, because my mind was racing on the hunt to solve this collage of clues and come up with a cohesive case once and for all.

  I called ahead to the station to arrange for the sketch artist and an officer to bring the drawing to Myra Shultz to see if she recognized her attacker.

  Chapter 25

  As soon as Kain and I returned to the station, things seemed to speed up. We were greeted by a rookie officer who looked ready for dress-up day at middle school in his father's oversized uniform.

  “Detective Rich?” he asked.

  “Yes, Officer…” I glanced at his name badge. “Henry?”

  “I was told to report to you about anything I found out about the car with the license plate number…” He shuffled the papers in his hands to find the number he was looking for. “TDW- 4532.”

  I nodded and tried to give him an encouraging smile. “Oh, good, what have you found out?”

  He grinned back and shuffled the papers some more, causing several of them to fall to the floor. “Oh, no. I’m sorry, Detective. I'll get them,” he stammered, and he chased the scattered papers. His face flushed bright red.

  “It’s all right,” I said. Kain and I knelt down to help Officer Henry collect the pages he'd dropped. We handed him the stack after it was all collected. “You were saying?” I prompted him to continue.

  “The plates were issued to a car rental company for a black SUV,” Officer Henry said proudly.

  I resisted the urge to insult the rookie’s cursory summary. “Yes, and?”

  “Oh, and I visited the car rental company, and they were really cooperative. I have a copy of the contract, and it has a signature on it.”

  “Did you also get a warrant to search the vehicle, like I asked?”

  He nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, it's right here. The SUV is being towed to the impound lot as we speak.”