Faces of Evil [4] Rage Read online

  “Do you know Lieutenant Grayson?” His name sounded familiar but Jess couldn’t recall meeting him. She’d been introduced to so many of Birmingham’s finest since her arrival scarcely three weeks ago that she couldn’t say for sure whether she’d met him or not.

  “I’ve seen him around but I don’t really know him.” Lori powered down her window and showed her badge to the uniform controlling access to the block. When he’d waved her through, she went on, “Grayson is with Field Operations, South Precinct.”

  Still didn’t click for Jess.

  “What kind of reputation does he have?” As wrong as it seemed, close family members were always the prime suspects in a case like this until evidence and alibis proved otherwise. Lawrence, aka Larry, Grayson was a cop, so the fundamental steps in a homicide investigation would be no surprise to him.

  “A good one as far as I know. I’ve heard his name a few times when accommodations were handed out.” She glanced at Jess. “If you’re asking me if he would kill his wife, I don’t know him that well, Chief.”

  “I guess that’s something we’ll need to learn.” They were on duty now. Jess was the deputy chief of SPU, Special Problems Unit, and Lori Wells was one of her detectives. Their ability to be friends and step back from those roles as needed fascinated Jess. After nearly two decades doing investigative work, this was her first time to have friends, in the true sense of the word, on the job. She’d certainly never been the houseguest of a coworker.

  Maybe an old dog could learn a new trick.

  The houses along Shady Creek were modest Brady Bunch –style ranches and split-levels, circa the seventies; it was a typical blue-collar neighborhood. Good folks who were forever stuck on the low end of middle class while being overworked and underpaid.

  Crime scene tape circled the yard, using trees and shrubs for support and announcing that bad things had happened to those who called this address home. Outside that gruesome yellow line a host of cops had surrounded an emotionally distraught man and were struggling to get him into the passenger seat of a sedan.

  “That must be him.” He looked vaguely familiar, but Jess still couldn’t say for sure if she’d met him.

  “Yeah. Damn.” Lori shook her head. “Looks like he’s lost it.”

  Jess grimaced at the emotionally charged scene. “Who wouldn’t?” She steeled herself in preparation for what was to come. No matter how experienced the investigator, when murder hit this close to home—a fellow cop—it was difficult to take in stride.

  “You see any sign of the coroner’s wagon?” Between the cruisers and all the other vehicles crowding the street, not to mention what looked like a brigade of cops and no shortage of neighbors, it was difficult to see beyond the driveway.

  Lori guided her Mustang as far to one side as possible considering the middle of the street was about all that was left in the way of unoccupied pavement and shut off the engine. “It’s the van right behind that Camry riding my bumper.”

  Jess craned her neck to see. There appeared to be a male passenger but, with the sun glinting on the other side of the windshield, she couldn’t see the driver. Opting to jerk to a stop in the middle of the street, whoever was at the wheel of the van didn’t seem to care if more of a bottleneck was created.

  Jess climbed out of the low-slung Mustang. Instantly the heat crushed around her. The humid air was as thick as molasses. Last night’s storm had ensured a sweltering morning and that little or no viable evidence would be found outside the home.

  With one more glance behind her, she checked to see if the ME had climbed out of the van yet. She probably wouldn’t be lucky enough to get Schrader again. For all she knew Dr. Harlan Schrader could be on his way to the job offer at the Mayo Clinic by now. They’d worked a case together last week and not having to go through that awkward first time business again so soon would be nice.

  The driver’s side door of the van opened and a female emerged. Shoulder-length brown hair, pale complexion. No one Jess had met so far, that she recalled anyway. The woman wore a lavender wrap dress with matching strappy stilettoes. Her sophisticated—scratch that—arrogant body language confirmed they had not met. Jess was one hundred percent certain she would remember that cocky stride, not to mention the haughty tilt of the woman’s chin.

  “This should be interesting,” Lori murmured as she moved up to the front of the Mustang, where Jess waited.

  “What’s that?” At the scene perimeter, Jess showed her badge to the uniform.

  “That’s the associate coroner, Dr. Sylvia Baron. She’s the lieutenant’s ex-wife.” Lori ducked under the crime scene tape and Jess followed. “She’s a little pushy. No one likes getting stuck on a case with her.”

  Pushy or not, sounded like a conflict of interest to Jess.

  An older man had gotten out on the passenger side of the van and joined the woman’s purposeful movement toward the house as Jess and Lori made their way up the sidewalk. He looked vaguely familiar. Sixty maybe. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Blond and tanned. All he needed was a diamond stud in one ear and he’d have the whole Harrison Ford thing going on.

  At the front door she and Lori stopped long enough to drag on shoe covers and gloves. “Who’s the man with her?”

  “That’s Dr. Leeds.”

  That was Martin Leeds, the Jefferson County chief coroner? Jess really had to find some time to get to know the various chains of command in Birmingham. She was woefully uninformed. In her own defense, she’d held the position for only two weeks and she’d been embroiled in murder and mayhem all fourteen or so of those days. Well, maybe she’d had a small break here and there. The unbidden memory of steamy, stolen hours spent between the sheets with Daniel Burnett the weekend before last had butterflies taking flight in her belly.

  Those frantic and breathless minutes in his fancy Mercedes just last night wouldn’t exactly be dismissed any time soon either. Particularly since he was her boss.

  “I don’t want that bitch anywhere near my wife!”

  Jess’s attention snapped back to the street as Lieutenant Grayson’s angrily shouted words reverberated in the impossibly thick air. Those closest to Grayson were trying to calm him, but he was having no part of it.

  Jess decided that an introduction to Leeds and the former Mrs. Grayson could wait until they were inside and had surveyed the crime scene. The situation outside was a ticking bomb and it wasn’t going to get any calmer until Lieutenant Grayson had been removed from the scene. The man’s wife had been murdered. The ability to think clearly or to reason was long gone.

  Inside the house the atmosphere was somber and cold. Jess shivered. It was a sweltering dog day in August here in Alabama but she was wishing she had a sweater just now. Her nose twitched. Even the frosty temperature couldn’t completely conceal the distinct odor of coagulated blood hanging in the air as if she’d stepped into a meat locker rather than a home where a family lived.

  Techs were already on-site documenting the scene and gathering evidence. Jess’s first step and top priority was to find the motive, in part based on what she observed here this morning. Had the wife been murdered during the commission of a robbery? Were drugs, money, or both the reason she was dead? There was always a slim chance the killing was a random act of violence. Slim because this was the home of a cop and the neighborhood was not exactly a prime target location for thieves. These weren’t rich folks with a treasure trove of readily sellable goods for the taking.

  In Jess’s experience, when a cop or a cop’s family was the target the motive was often vengeance. There was always jealousy, of course, if one or the other had a problem with fidelity. Whatever evidence Jess discovered here, final assessments and conclusions could not be reached until all witnesses or persons with knowledge were found and interviewed. Every hour that passed before all those steps happened lessened the likelihood of success in solving the case.

  Harper spotted their arrival and made his way through the main living area and into the foyer. “Chief, t
he body’s this way.”

  “Detective Wells”—Jess hesitated before following Harper—“why don’t you find the officers whose duty it is to protect the scene and explain how that concept works.” She surveyed the number of warm bodies milling around inside the house and shook her head. “I want anyone who’s not a witness or who doesn’t belong to the Crime Scene Unit or the coroner’s office out of here now.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Lori headed in the opposite direction as Harper led Jess through the kitchen and down a few steps to a large room at the rear of the house. Jess stalled in the entryway of the room and gave herself a few moments to absorb the details of the scene.

  There was so much blood.

  Words were scrawled in blood around the walls.

  Pig. Whore. Kill the bitch. Kill the pigs. One by one.

  The chilly air seemed to freeze in Jess’s lungs as she stared at the other word written in large, sweeping strokes.

  Rage.

  She blinked away the images from her motel room that attempted to transpose themselves over those currently burning her retinas. Shaking off the eerie sensation of déjà vu, she visually inventoried the rest of the room.

  A massive flat panel television hung over the stacked-stone fireplace. A local morning talk show filled the screen but the sound had been muted. Beefy, well-worn leather sofas stood like sentinels on either side of the fireplace waiting for the family to gather. Windows, blinds tightly closed, spanned the walls. The only natural light breaching the space was from the broken sliding door, its two panels of glass lying in pieces on the tile floor. Beyond the broken door, a wood privacy fence surrounded the backyard and swimming pool.

  Jess shivered again. “What’s going on with the air-conditioning, Sergeant?”

  “The thermostat was adjusted as low as it would go,” he explained. “It’s about sixty-two degrees in here.”

  “Seems our killer took the time to think things through before taking his leave.” And he or she obviously knew a little something about skewing attempts at determining time of death. Just another reason to hate all those CSI shows.

  “I believe the murder was carried out right here,” Harper said as they moved across the room. “The child, a six-month-old boy, was left in his crib in a bedroom. Nothing in the house, as far as we can tell, was disturbed beyond the damaged patio doors. The standard grab-and-run items like laptops and jewelry are still here.”

  “Where’s the child now?” Jess hoped he wasn’t out there amid the chaos on the street. Grayson was in no condition to care for himself, much less a child.

  “The lieutenant’s partner, Sergeant Jack Riley, called his wife and she took the baby home with her as soon as a paramedic confirmed the child was unharmed.”

  After fishing for her glasses, Jess shoved them into place and moved closer to study the placement of the body. Dressed in a yellow spaghetti-strapped nightgown, the victim lay supine on the tile floor, a pool of coagulated blood around her, her head severed from her body but left right next to the stump of her neck. Tissue was torn in a jagged manner as if the perp had had a hard time getting started with a sawtooth-type tool. Multiple stab wounds along the torso had dotted the pale yellow gown with ugly rusty spots. Her arms were outstretched at her sides, crucifixion style. Legs were straight and together.

  Across the victim’s forehead, written in what appeared to be her own blood, were the words PIG WHORE.

  Jess stepped nearer and eased into a crouch. She pointed to the victim’s upper arms. “Looks like our killer had a good grip on her at some point.” There was bruising on the chest, just above her breasts. Jess passed a gloved hand over the area. “He held her down while he committed this final atrocity. Judging by the bruise pattern I’d say he was right-handed.”

  Harper nodded. “I counted ten stabs to her torso. All postmortem, like the beheading. Didn’t see any indication she had been sexually assaulted.”

  “I agree, Sergeant.” The coroner’s office would check for sexual assault, that was SOP. As for the rest, there wasn’t nearly enough blood for the visible damage to have been inflicted while her heart was still beating. No arterial spray from the decapitation. A little castoff from the saw, but that was about it, other than the blood that gravity drained out of the body. In fact, seemed as if the killer waited until livor mortis was well under way before bothering to play psycho surgeon.

  Harper pointed to the victim’s hands. “No defensive wounds on her hands or forearms to indicate she fought her attacker. No ligature marks to indicate she was restrained.”

  Very strange. Lividity indicated she had been in this position since her death or very quickly thereafter. But why here and like this? Had the victim been watching television when her attacker crashed into the room? Had she fallen asleep on the sofa? Or did she hear the breaking glass and come to check it out? How had he disabled her?

  “Could be damage to the back of the head,” Jess suggested. There didn’t appear to be any to the temple areas or the forehead.

  “I don’t see any blood matted in her hair close to the skull.” Harper pointed to the long hair fanned around her head.

  That was true. Jess rubbed at the wrinkle furrowing her brow with the back of a gloved hand. “Once he’d killed her, what distracted him for so long before he did the rest?” She glanced around the room. Had someone come to the door and interrupted his work? Had the baby started crying and thrown him off balance? The latter wasn’t likely, since the baby was still alive.

  “Reminds me of the Manson murders,” Harper said. “I watched a documentary the other night. The anniversary is coming up this weekend.”

  Jess had noted that similarity, too, but she wasn’t about to say it out loud. Not with so many ears around. All they needed was the media bringing that kind of connection into this. She scrutinized the tile floor around the victim. Not a single footprint. The perp had been exceptionally careful. “No blood anywhere else in the house?”

  “Nothing we’ve found so far. Looks like someone showered recently in the hall bath. The shower floor is damp and so’s the rug in front of it. There’s a faint smell of shampoo, gardenias.”

  Surprised, Jess said, “The shampoo should be logged into evidence. We need to be sure the techs check the drain as well. What about a towel?”

  Harper grunted a negative sound. “Not in the bathroom or laundry room. If the perp was the one who took the shower, he took the towel with him. Already took care of the rest.”

  Jess lifted the victim’s arm. “We have full rigor. She’s been dead nine or ten hours anyway. Maybe longer.”

  The manner of the decapitation was primitive. As if the perpetrator hadn’t been able to get the job done on his first attempt, he’d started over a couple of times, mutilating tissue and making one heck of a mess. “No murder or mutilation weapon lying around?”

  “No, ma’am. Whatever the perp used, he took that with him as well.”

  With no weapon and no ready signs the perp had been careless, the odds of nailing him were stacked against them. “Who discovered the body?”

  “Johnny Trenton,” Harper said. “The pool guy.”

  Jess made a face. “They have a pool guy?” She’d noticed the pool out back, but this wasn’t exactly the kind of neighborhood where one expected to encounter a cabana boy.

  “He arrived at six this morning, as scheduled, to clean the pool. He has a key to the garage and the door that leads out of the garage into the backyard.” Harper gestured to the patio and sparkling pool beyond the broken sliding door. “He made the nine-one-one call. Says he didn’t come inside for fear of stepping in the blood or otherwise damaging the scene. Since it was obvious Mrs. Grayson was dead, he figured there was nothing he could do anyway.”

  “He didn’t come in the house to check on the child or the husband?” If he knew the family, he had to know there was a kid and a husband.

  “He says the place was as quiet as a tomb when he arrived, so he assumed anyone else
in the house was dead, too.”

  More likely he hadn’t wanted to risk suspicion by entering the scene and leaving behind a footprint or fingerprint. “Where is this pool guy?”

  “In the dining room. I didn’t see any blood on him and his hair definitely doesn’t smell like gardenias.”

  “Well, that certainly rules him out,” Jess mused.

  Harper cast a somber look at the victim and shook his head. “I don’t think he did this, Chief. This involved some serious rage and a good chunk of time. Trenton doesn’t seem like the type to invest that much emotion, if you know what I mean.”

  “Have him transported downtown. I’d like to question him in a more formal setting.” Being driven downtown in the back of a police cruiser should have him eager to cooperate if he knew anything at all. And Jess did understand what Harper meant. Like a crop of choking crabgrass the I-don’t-care-about-my-neighbors attitude had taken root among Southern folks, too. No one wanted to get involved anymore.

  She pushed to her feet and walked to the now useless slider and stared across the yard. The lawn was thick and lush. No sign of mud, which meant no footprints out here either. Only the tops of neighboring homes were visible above the fence but one, at the farthest end of the yard, was a two-story like the Grayson home. A pair of side-by-side windows overlooked the Grayson’s backyard.

  “Have the neighbors been canvassed?” Jess strained to see any movement beyond the windows across the way. Anyone looking out those windows at just the right time would have had a clear view of the murder.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Harper pointed to the house with the windows that had captured Jess’s attention. “We checked that one first. Looks abandoned. Yard’s all grown up. The utility meter has been pulled. No answer and no vehicle in the drive.”