Pretty Dead

by Anne Frasier

  Same with crime-scene images.

  She shuffled through the shots, taking a few notes as she went, stopping when she came to an eight-by-ten of a handprint on Hoffman’s thigh. She stared at it a moment, got out of bed, went through the briefcase she’d left on a chair near the television, and dug out the file on the mayor’s daughter. She riffled through the photos to find the one she was looking for. A handprint bruise. Carrying it back to the bed, she placed the image next to the one taken of Hoffman.

  As she compared the photos, Elise sank back down on the mattress, tucking a leg under her and reaching for the phone to call John Casper.

  “Yeah.” His voice was thick and groggy.

  Elise checked the clock on the dresser. Just after midnight. “John, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was so late.”

  He pulled in a deep breath, the kind that went along with trying to wake up. “That’s okay.” She imagined him rubbing his face. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m comparing crime-scene photos of the Hoffman and Chesterfield cases, and both victims have a similar hand bruise.”

  “I thought it was decided that the two cases have nothing to do with each other.”

  “It was, but these photos . . .”

  “All the DNA collected will go into the database, so if there’s a match, we’ll know about it regardless.”

  “But that’s just DNA.”

  “Right. I’m not following.”

  “I’d like you to compare the images. Tell me what you think.”

  “I can tell you right now. It won’t matter. Bruising is in no way specific, unlike a bite mark. Even if the images looked identical, it would mean nothing. Well, unless you had more evidence. A lot more evidence.”

  Elise sighed. “I’m grasping.”

  “Go to bed. Get some sleep. Let’s talk in the morning.”

  “Good night. Sorry to wake you.”

  “No problem.”

  She disconnected.

  John Casper dropped his iPhone on the mattress, closed his eyes, and tried to fall back to sleep.

  Wasn’t going to happen.

  He finally tossed the covers aside, slipped into a pair of jeans, grabbed his phone and keys, and headed for the morgue. During high traffic, it could take more than a half hour to get there. Tonight he made it in ten minutes.

  He parked in the lot, punched in the code for the back door, and stepped inside, hitting switches. Fluorescent lights buzzed and sequenced on, starting at the door and moving down the hallway into the deeper recesses of the building.

  In a single drawer of their massive filing system, John dug out the images Elise had referenced on the phone. And, just as he’d thought, they were nothing that would be admissible in court. Yes, the prints were in the same location, but there the similarity ended.

  He sat there awhile, thinking about making coffee, when he had another idea. Using his passkey, he gained access to the evidence room.

  The length of time they kept evidence varied, but recent homicides could still be found on the shelves. He located the boxes he was looking for and carried them, one at a time, back to the lab.

  Elise’s smartphone rang. She groped blindly across the mattress, located the ringing device, picked it up, and produced a sluggish hello.

  “Casper here.”

  Elise looked at the clock: 1:28 a.m.

  “I couldn’t get back to sleep after you called, so I hit the morgue and compared the images you were talking about. Like I thought, they aren’t anything. But”—his voice rose—“I decided to compare some of the evidence.”

  Elise pushed herself to a sitting position. “Yes?” She was wide-awake now.

  For once, John got straight to the point. “I examined black fibers found at both scenes and found a match.”

  “My God. Are you sure? How close is the match?”

  “I’m no expert, but I’m guessing one hundred percent. This is a lot better than a handprint.”

  “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  “It’s highly likely that whoever killed Hoffman also killed the Chesterfield girl.”

  More important, it meant David either committed both murders or he was innocent.

  “Get those samples to our fiber expert in Atlanta,” Elise said. “Hopefully he can tell us where they came from. With any luck it won’t be something mass-produced.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Savannah had a reputation for being weird. In fact, the city embraced it, just like it embraced ghost tours and all the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil rah-rah. It was great for the economy. But Bud had lived in the city five years, and so far he hadn’t seen anything any weirder than stuff he’d witnessed in Atlanta before his retirement.

  A little after 3:00 a.m., Bud stepped from his row house on Alice Street to take out his black Lab, Sadie. She was getting old, and her bladder was weak, so their middle-of-the-night walks up and down the block were a common event.

  Bud heard the noise before he saw anything. It came from maybe two blocks away, the intensity increasing by the second.

  Screaming. Hysterical screaming.

  “Come on, Sadie.”

  He pulled the dog back toward his house. She balked and squatted in the grass while the sound increased. Bud didn’t make it far before he spotted someone running down the middle of the street, arms flailing, head back, screaming and babbling incoherently.

  Bud tugged at the leash again. Instead of following, Sadie began to bark, deep and threatening, even though Sadie wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  The person in the street heard her and changed course, heading straight for them. Now Bud could see that the man was naked as a plucked chicken. Probably high on meth or something. He thought all of this while Sadie lunged, her barks becoming more frantic as the guy zeroed in on them.

  Bud tugged Sadie, harder this time. She reluctantly gave up some ground, but not without a fight as Bud continued to bring her around to his way of thinking—which was to get the hell out of there.

  If she’d been some little dog, Bud would have scooped her up and run into the house and called the cops. But she was big and overweight, and there was no way he could lift her, not with his bad back.

  Lights appeared in some of the neighboring houses, and a few doors opened. Hopefully somebody else would call the cops. Hopefully the guy didn’t have a weapon.

  The naked man barreled down on Bud and gripped him by the arms. The force of the rapidly moving body caused Bud to stagger, then catch himself while the dog continued to bark.

  “Help me!” the man said.

  Under the lamplight, Bud saw that the man had curly hair and was maybe in his early forties. To add to the oddness of the scene, Bud noted that he had writing on him. On his face, his arms, his stomach.

  “Help me,” the man repeated.

  Along with the writing, the man’s face was bleeding, and he had cuts across his stomach. He threw his arms around Bud and hung on.

  Bud didn’t touch him. He just stood there with the leash in one hand, the other hovering over the man’s shoulder, unable to decide whether he should give him a reassuring pat or push him away. At least he could be pretty sure his new friend didn’t have a weapon.

  The man sobbed and babbled incoherently, clearly terrified.

  Sadie’s barking was drowned out by the sound of sirens. Thank God. Now that help was on the way, Bud gave the man a gingerly pat. The guy flinched, but didn’t let go.

  Two cop cars arrived, one after the other. Sirens were cut, doors slammed, flashlight beams moved across the sidewalk to illuminate the man’s face.

  Decipio.

  The same word, written over and over.

  Bud felt a chill travel up the back of his neck. The prostitute killer wrote words on the girls he killed. Bud had heard about it on the news. And if he remembered correctly, the killer used a black marker. But the other victims had been young women in their twenties, two of them hookers, which was why Bud hadn’t been worried and wh
y he was on the sidewalk in front of his house at 3:00 a.m.

  “What seems to be the problem here?” a big barrel of a man asked, his flashlight blinding.

  “Lovers’ quarrel?” another cop added with amusement. Apparently cops thought naked people were funny.

  The naked man was still hanging on. The cops think we’re lovers. Bud tried to extricate himself, but his new friend wouldn’t let go. “I’ve never seen this guy before in my life,” Bud shouted over the sobs. “He just came running down the street.”

  “Hey.” The cop put a hand on the hysterical man’s back. Another cop appeared with a blanket and spread it over his shoulders. “Why you wandering around with no clothes on?”

  The man loosened his grip on Bud. He straightened and grabbed at the edges of the blanket, tugging the fabric around him. “Somebody tried to kill me,” he said breathlessly, his voice shaking.

  “Let’s get a better look at you. Why don’t you step back.”

  The man staggered and straightened, squinting at the flashlight beam. After a long second, the cop addressed his partner. “You seeing this?”

  “Yep.”

  “Who are you?” the cop asked.

  “I work for the New York Times. I’m a reporter.”

  “And I work for the Wall Street Journal,” the smaller cop said. Both cops laughed.

  Annoyed by their behavior, Bud asked, “What’s your name, son?”

  “Jay Thomas Paul.”

  “Why don’t you tell us everything that happened,” the cop who seemed to be in charge said. “Were you at a party?”

  “You need to call Detective Elise Sandburg,” Jay Thomas Paul told him. “She’ll vouch for me.”

  The cop shifted on his feet while continuing to eyeball Jay Thomas Paul. “How do you know Detective Sandburg?”

  “I’m a reporter. I work for the New York Times,” he repeated. “I’ve been shadowing her and Detective Gould for an article. You need to call her. Let me talk to her. I need to talk to her.”

  “You.” The cop pointed at Bud. “Stay where you are.”

  Bud wanted nothing more than to go home, go to bed, and forget this ever happened.

  The cop looked over his shoulder at his partner. “These are probably the rantings of a lunatic, but we’d better get Detective Sandburg on the line.”

  The other officer pulled out his phone and made the call.

  CHAPTER 43

  I got a naked guy here. Says he knows you.”

  An hour and a half after John Casper’s fiber discovery, Elise scooted up in bed with the receiver pressed firmly to her ear. Sleep was beginning to seem like something reserved for other people.

  “Can you repeat that?” Elise asked. She must have heard incorrectly.

  “Give me the phone,” someone near the calling officer said. “Give me the phone!”

  A shuffling noise, then another voice began babbling incoherently.

  “Who is this?” Elise demanded.

  “Jay.”

  “Who?”

  “Jay Thomas. The guy with three names. Listen, Detective. I was almost killed tonight. This guy tied me up and had a knife, but when he fell asleep, I managed to get away.”

  “Are you okay?” Elise asked with concern. He might annoy her, but she’d hate to see anything happen to him.

  “I have some cuts, but I don’t think any of them are deep. But that’s not important. I have to tell you something, Detective . . . He wrote on me.”

  Elise’s blood ran cold. “Wrote on you?”

  “Yeah. In black ink.”

  She released a breath. “Where are you?”

  “On a corner near Pulaski Square.” That was followed by the names of the intersecting streets.

  “Be right there.” She disconnected, shed her pajamas, tugged on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, grabbed her badge and gun, and headed down the hall to Audrey’s room.

  She shook her daughter’s arm. “Honey, I have to leave.”

  Sleepy, Audrey blinked and shaded her eyes against the light pouring in from the hallway. “Is it a body?”

  “Not this time.” What a thing for your child to have to ask.

  “What then?”

  “Something to do with Jay Thomas Paul. I’ll lock the door and set the alarm.” Elise never thought she’d say it, but David had been right about having Sweet living with them. She didn’t worry as much about leaving Audrey alone.

  “Is Jay Thomas okay?” Audrey asked.

  “He’s fine. I just talked to him. Go to sleep. I’ll be back in time to take you to school.”

  “M-kay.”

  Audrey turned away and pulled the covers over her shoulder. The sleep of the young.

  Downstairs, Elise knocked lightly on Sweet’s open door.

  His voice, when it came out of the darkness, was alert.

  “I’m leaving the house,” she said.

  He switched on the lamp. “Another body?” A popular question, it seemed. Covers were tossed aside as he reached for a pair of ratty jeans. He’d recovered from the negative effects of chemotherapy, but another round was just a few days away.

  “You need to stay here. With Audrey.”

  His hand dropped the pants. “Oh. Right.” He didn’t yet get this responsibility thing, but he was catching on. Despite her resentment of him—resentment that might or might not fade—she’d become oddly used to his presence in her house.

  At the back door, she set the alarm and locked up as she exited.

  Savannah was never quiet, not even at 3:00 a.m. Deliveries were being made, and parties were taking place. Add to that the weirdly comforting sound of the street sweeper. Just the idea that entire streets could be swept and cleaned while people slept seemed a magical thing. And waking up to a shiny new world always left her with a sense of peace.

  Silly of her.

  As if the street sweepers could wash away death.

  When Elise arrived at the scene, officers were wrapping up their interview with an older gentleman holding a black Lab on a leash.

  “Jay Thomas Paul is in the patrol car,” said the officer in charge, a man who looked and acted like a bouncer.

  “Officer Dunn, right?” They’d had some dealings in the past. Decent guy, if a little abrasive. Typical cop.

  “Over there,” he told her, pointing.

  Elise slid into the backseat of the patrol car, and her breath caught when she saw the ink and blood on Jay Thomas’s face. The word written on every spare inch of skin was decipio. Latin? Another enigmatic clue? Or just some sicko messing with Jay Thomas’s head?

  “Do you need medical attention?” she asked.

  “He cut me, but not deep. I think it can wait.”

  Relief. “What happened, Jay?” she asked softly.

  Haltingly, he told her about a man he’d met in a bar a couple of weeks earlier. “He called me tonight. Asked me to come to his room.”

  “Hotel room?”

  “Yeah, I can tell you where it is.”

  “How about the man’s name?”

  “Chuck. That’s all I know. Well, he said his name was Charlie Brown, but I’m pretty sure that was a joke. I don’t even know if Chuck is his real name.” He paused in embarrassment. “He tied me up. I—I asked him to. I thought it would be exciting, but once I was strapped to the bed, he began cutting me.”

  “How did you manage to get away?”

  “He was drunk, really drunk, and he passed out. I was able to work the rope loose from one hand, then undo the rest. Once I was free, I ran. I didn’t even stop to grab my clothes or phone or anything. I just ran.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  He nodded and wiped at his nose with the back of his hand.

  “I’m going to have someone take you in so the crime-scene team can process you,” Elise said. “They’re going to need to get samples.”

  “Do you think this might be him? The Savannah Killer?”

  “I don’t know, but we have to make sure we don�
�t miss anything.”

  “He was always asking about you and the case.” He let out a groan and put a hand to his forehead. “Probably pumping me for information.” His mouth trembled. “I’m so sorry.”

  “This word . . . decipio. Are you familiar with it?”

  “It’s Latin. It means trapped or deceived. Beguiled. Guess he had that right.”

  She pulled out her phone and called the head of the local crime-scene team, a man named Abe Chilton. “I’ve got an assault victim who needs to be processed right away,” Elise told him.

  “Sexual assault? Rape kit? Have her go to the hospital. You don’t need me for that.”

  “This is a little more involved. The victim is male, and it’s possible the assailant was the Savannah Killer. We’re going to need skin and nail samples. You’ll have to treat his body as if it’s been involved in a homicide.”

  “Be right down.”

  Elise exited the backseat. The encounter, the writing on Jay’s face, could have been a sick mind having some twisted fun. It was no secret that the Savannah Killer left words on his victims.

  This time Elise called Lamont. He answered with a gruff and groggy voice three rings later. She related the fiber discovery, filled him in on Jay Thomas, and gave him the location of the hotel where the journalist had been victimized. “Meet me in the parking lot.”

  “Are you getting a warrant?” Lamont asked.

  Judge Abernathy didn’t appreciate the seriousness of off-hour calls, and Elise was afraid they might already be too late. The man who’d assaulted Jay Thomas might have run. “We’ve got enough justification to go in warrantless, but I’ll contact the judge anyway.” Worth a try.

  “Good call.”

  His agreement surprised her. Who’d given him happy pills?

  “Meet us in the side lot, and we’ll go in together.”

  “Be there in fifteen minutes.”

  At the three-story hotel in a run-down area of town, Elise pulled out her badge and introduced herself to the big blond woman behind the desk. “We had a report of a possible assault taking place in room 234, and we need to speak to the guest. Can you give me his name?”