C A U S E T O S A V E
(AN AVERY BLACK MYSTERY—BOOK 5)
B L A K E P I E R C E
Blake Pierce
Blake Pierce is author of the bestselling RILEY PAGE mystery series, which includes ten books (and counting). Blake Pierce is also the author of the MACKENZIE WHITE mystery series, comprising six books (and counting); of the AVERY BLACK mystery series, comprising five books; and of the new KERI LOCKE mystery series, comprising four books (and counting).
An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Blake loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.blakepierceauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.
Copyright © 2017 by Blake Pierce. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Adam Machovsky, used under license from shutterstock.com.
BOOKS BY BLAKE PIERCE
RILEY PAIGE MYSTERY SERIES
ONCE GONE (Book #1)
ONCE TAKEN (Book #2)
ONCE CRAVED (Book #3)
ONCE LURED (Book #4)
ONCE HUNTED (Book #5)
ONCE PINED (Book #6)
ONCE FORSAKEN (Book #7)
ONCE COLD (Book #8)
ONCE STALKED (Book #9)
ONCE LOST (Book #10)
MACKENZIE WHITE MYSTERY SERIES
BEFORE HE KILLS (Book #1)
BEFORE HE SEES (Book #2)
BEFORE HE COVETS (Book #3)
BEFORE HE TAKES (Book #4)
BEFORE HE NEEDS (Book #5)
BEFORE HE FEELS (Book #6)
AVERY BLACK MYSTERY SERIES
CAUSE TO KILL (Book #1)
CAUSE TO RUN (Book #2)
CAUSE TO HIDE (Book #3)
CAUSE TO FEAR (Book #4)
CAUSE TO SAVE (Book #5)
KERI LOCKE MYSTERY SERIES
A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)
A TRACE OF MUDER (Book #2)
A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)
A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
Kirsten braced herself against the Boston cold, adjusted her scarf around her neck, and readied herself for the four-block walk ahead of her, into the black night. She passed all the closed bars, realized it was too late to be walking, and had a pang of sudden fear. She glanced back to the door of the apartment complex she had just stepped out of, and thought of changing her mind. Maybe she should have stayed over at her friend’s place.
Amy had insisted that she stay—that it was too late and miserably cold outside. And while both of those things were true, Amy had said them with her face nuzzled into the neck of a guy she’d met at the bar. And while her face had been there, the guy’s hands had been elsewhere. And honestly, Kirsten did not want to sleep on Amy’s couch while listening to her best friend and some random (but cute) guy going at it in a drunken stupor all night.
Honestly, she also didn’t want be there in the morning, working with Amy to come up with a clever reason to get the guy out, either.
Besides, it was only four blocks. And compared to the blistering cold that had ravaged Boston about a month ago, tonight would seem like a brisk little jaunt in a spring breeze.
It was nearing three in the morning. She and Amy had gone out intending to get hammered, to drink the night away and do whatever their drunken primate brains suggested. After all, here, in their senior year of college, their dreams had come true. Somehow, against all odds, they had both been selected out of their photojournalism class—two of eight candidates—to go on assignment in Spain in the summer. They’d be working for an up-and-coming nature magazine that catered specifically to educational markets…and would be getting paid more for that one assignment than Kirsten’s mother had made all of last year.
And that would shut her up, Kirsten thought. She loved her mother dearly but got really tired of hearing her gripe about how pursuing a career in photography was a pipe dream—a waste of time.
She came to the end of the first block, checked the crosswalk and found it dead, and then headed on. The cold was beginning to nip at her. She could feel it on her nose like an actual presence, starting to pinch.
She idly wondered if Amy and her random dude were naked yet. She wondered if the guy was any good or if he’d be hindered by the copious amounts of liquor they’d had.
Well, not that she had enjoyed much. She’d eaten a small dinner at the very bar they had holed up in for the night. She wasn’t sure if it had been the nachos they’d shared as a table or if it had been something in the pizza, but her stomach had not been happy. After four beers, she knew her night was over—that she’d be doing nothing more than keeping Amy company as she annihilated herself shot by shot.
She figured she’d get all the lurid details tomorrow. And thinking of those lurid details as well as how much they’d enjoy their summer in Spain, Kirsten at first barely even noticed the sound she heard behind her. Footsteps.
The hair stood on the back of her neck, but she dared not look back.
She increased her pace. Two blocks behind her, two blocks to go. And now the cold really was nipping at her.
Suddenly, the steps were right behind her, and a man came stumbling up right next to her. He appeared to be drunk and when Kirsten jumped back in fright, he snickered to himself, clearly amused.
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I was just…well, can you help me? Drinking with some friends and…supposed to meet them somewhere after the bar but I don’t remember where. I’m from New York…never been to Boston before. No idea where I am.”
Kirsten couldn’t bring herself to look at him as she shook her head. It was more than being uncomfortable around a strange drunk man this late at night. It was knowing that she was this close to being home and just wanted the night to be over.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said.
“Seriously?!” the man said.
All of a sudden, he didn’t seem so drunk. Funny enough, he sounded amused that someone would be so defensive over something as innocent as helping a lost guy in a city he wasn’t familiar with. That struck her as odd as she started to turn away, intending to quicken her pace.
But then the slightest motion caught her eye and made her hesitate.
The man was holding his stomach, as if he might puke. It had been there the whole time but Kirsten was fairly certain this was not the case. He reached into his jacket and that’s when she saw that he was suddenly holding something.
A gun, her panicked mind thought. And while it did look like a gun, that wasn’t quite right.
Her muscles demanded that she run. She looked to his face for the first time and saw that something was off. He had been pretending. This wasn’t a lost drunk man at all. He looked too sober in the eyes—sober and, now that she was starting to panic, a little demented, too.
The thing that looked sort of like a gun came up quickly. She opened her mouth to yell for help as she also turned away to run.
But then she felt something strike her from behind. It hit her in the side of the head, just below the ear—sharp and immediate. She stumbled and then fell. She tasted blood in her mouth and then felt hands on her. There was another of those sharp sensations in her head, small but somehow thunderous at the same time.
The pain was immense but she was not able to experience the full extent of it before the night seemed to swell around her. The street faded, as did the man’s face, and then everything went black.
Her final thought was that this life of hers had turned out to be quite short—and that the trip that was set to change it all was never going to happen.
Avery felt like she had been in some strange isolation chamber for the last two weeks. She had stepped into it of her own accord because, quite frankly, there was no place else that appealed to her—only the sterile walls of the hospital room in which Ramirez still barely clung to the edge of life.
From time to time, her phone would buzz as a call or text came through—but she rarely checked them. Her solitude was only ever broken by nurses, doctors, and Rose. Avery knew that she was probably scaring her daughter. Truth be told, she was starting to scare herself, too. She’d been depressed before—during her teenage years and after her divorce—but this was something new. This went beyond depression and into a realm of wondering if the life she was living was really even hers anymore.
Two weeks ago—thirteen days, to be exact—was when it had happened. It was when Ramirez had taken a turn for the worst after a surgery to repair damage done from a bullet wound that had come less than half an inch from piercing his heart. That turn for the worst had never corrected its course. The doctors said he’d gone into heart failure. He was touch and go; he could come to and fully recuperate at any time or he could slip away just as easily. There was just no way to tell for sure. He’d lost a lot of blood in the shooting—he’d technically died for forty-two seconds following the heart failure—and things just weren’t looking good.
All of that had been compacted by the other terrible news she’d received just twenty minutes after speaking to the doctor.
News that Howard Randall had somehow escaped from prison. And now, two weeks later, he had still not been caught. And if she needed a reminder of that terrible fact (which she really didn’t), she could see it on the television whenever she deigned to turn it on. She’d sit there like a zombie in Ramirez’s room, watching the news. Even when Howard’s escape wasn’t the headline story, it was still there in the scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen.
Howard Randall still MIA. Authorities have no answers.
The entire town of Boston was nervous. It was like being on the verge of war with some other nameless country and just waiting for the bombs to start dropping. Finley had tried calling her several times and O’Malley had even poked his head into the room on two occasions. Even Connelly seemed to be concerned about her well-being, expressing it in a simple text that she still looked at in a muted sort of appreciation.
Take your time. Call if you need anything.
They were leaving her to grieve. She knew that and it felt a little silly, seeing as how Ramirez wasn’t dead yet. But it was also to allow her to process the trauma of what had happened to her on the last case. She still felt cold thinking about it, recalling the feeling of nearly freezing to death on two separate occasions—inside of an industrial freezer and by falling into frigid waters.
But under all of it was the fact that Howard Randall was on the loose. He had escaped somehow, furthering his already enigmatic image. She’d seen on the news where less than reputable folks on social media were praising Howard for his Houdini-like skills in escaping from prison and leaving no trace behind.
Avery thought about all of this while sitting in one of the recliners that a kind nurse had moved in for her last week, realizing that she was not going anywhere anytime soon. Her thoughts were interrupted by a ding from her phone. It was the only sound she was allowing these days, a sign that Rose was reaching out.
Avery checked her phone and saw that her daughter had left a text message. Just me checking on you, it read. You still planted in the hospital? Stop it. Come out and have a drink with your daughter.
Out of duty more than anything else, Avery responded back. You aren’t 21.
The reply came right away, reading: Oh mom, that’s cute. There’s a lot you don’t know about me. And you could learn some of these secrets if you’d come out with me. Just one night. He’ll be okay without you there…
Avery set her phone aside. She knew Rose was right, although she could not help but be haunted by the possibility that Ramirez might decide to finally come to while she was away. And no one would be there to welcome him, to take his hand and let him know what had happened.
She got out of the recliner and walked over to him. She had gotten over the fact that he looked weak, hooked to machines and with a thin tube snaking down his throat. When she remembered why he was here—that he had taken a shot that could easily have been intended for her—then he looked stronger than ever. She ran her hands through his hair and kissed his forehead.
She then took his hand in hers and sat on the edge of the bed. While she would never tell anyone, she had spoken to him several times, hoping he could hear her. She did it now, feeling a little dumb about it at first, like usual, but falling into the habit naturally.
“So here’s the thing,” she told him. “I haven’t left the hospital in nearly three days. I need a shower. I’d like a decent meal and a proper cup of coffee. I’m going to step out for a bit, okay?”
She squeezed his hand, her heart breaking a little when she realized that she was naively waiting for him to squeeze back. She gave him a pleading look, sighed, and then picked up her phone. Before she stepped out of the room, she glanced up at the TV. She grabbed the remote to turn it off and was greeted with a face that she had tried so hard to put out of her mind for the last two weeks.
Howard Randall stared down at her, his mug shot featured on half of the screen while a serious-looking news anchor read something from a teleprompter. Avery clicked the television off in disgust and made her way out of the room quickly, as if Howard’s image on the screen had been a ghost, now reaching for her.
***
Knowing that Ramirez had been set to move in with her (and, according to the ring that had been discovered in his pocket after he’d been shot, ask her to marry him) made returning to her apartment a morose experience. When she walked into the place, she looked around absently. The place felt dead. It felt like no one had lived there in ages, a place that was waiting to be stripped, repainted, and rented out to someone else.
She thought about calling Rose. They could hang out and have a pizza. But she knew Rose would want to talk about what was going on and Avery was not ready for that yet. She usually processed things pretty quickly, but this was different. Ramirez being in such jeopardy and Howard Randall escaping…it was all too much.
Still…while the place really no longer felt like home, she yearned to stretch out on that sofa. And her bed was calling her name.
Of course this is still home, she thought. Just because Ramirez may not make it and end up here with you, it’s still your home. Don’t be so damned dramatic.
And there it was, as plain as day. She’d so far managed to guard her thoughts against that reality but now that it had been dumped into thought form, it was a bit more staggering than she’d assumed.
With slumped shoulders, she made her way into the bathroom. She stripped down, stepped in the tub and drew the curtain, and turned the water to hot. She stood there for several minutes before bothering with soap or shampoo, letting the water loosen her muscles. When she was done cleaning herself, she killed the shower, pushed the stopper down, and ran hot water into the tub. She sat down as it filled, allowing herself to relax.
When the water was at the brim, nearly slopping over the side of the tub, she turned the water off with her toe. She closed her eyes and soaked.
The only sound in the apartment was the slow and rhythmic drip drip of excess water from the faucet into the water, and her own breathing.
And shortly after, a third sound: Avery’s weeping.
She had kept it in check for the most part, not wanting to show that side of herself in the hospital and not wanting Ramirez to hear it, if he could hear her at all. She’d slipped into the bathroom of his room a few times and cried for a bit but she had never let it come out so freely.
She wept in the tub and, like the thought of Ramirez possibly not making it finally blooming in her head, the crying was also a bit more staggering than she had anticipated.
She let it all out and didn’t get out of the tub until the water went tepid and her feet and hands had started to wrinkle. When she finally climbed out, smelling like a normal human again and having soaked in some steam, she felt much better.
After she got dressed, she even took the time to put on a little bit of makeup and made her hair look at least somewhat presentable. She then ventured out into the kitchen, poured herself a bowl of cereal as a form of a late lunch, and checked her phone, which she had left on the kitchen counter.
Apparently, she’d been quite popular while she’d been in the bathroom.
She had three voice mails and eight text messages. All of them were from numbers she knew. Two were landlines at the precinct. The others were from Finley and O’Malley. One of the texts was from Connelly. It was the last one that had come in—seven minutes ago—and he was not vague about his purpose. The text read: Avery, you’d best answer your fucking phone if you value your job!
She knew it was a bluff, but the fact that Connelly of all people had texted her meant that something was up. Connelly rarely texted. Something big had to be going down.
She didn’t bother checking the voice messages. Instead, she called O’Malley. She didn’t want to speak to Finley because he pussyfooted around awkward things. And there was no way in hell she wanted to speak to Connelly when he was in a miserable mood.
O’Malley answered on the second ring. “Avery. Jesus…where the hell have you been?”
“In the bathtub.”
“Are you at your apartment?”
“I am. Is that some sort of a problem? I saw that Connelly texted. He texted. What’s wrong down there?”
“Look…we might have something pretty huge down here and if you’re up for it, we’d like for you to come in. Actually…even if you’re not up for it, Connelly wants you here.”
“Why?” she asked, intrigued. “What is it?”
“Just…just get down here, will you?”
She sighed, realizing that the thought of returning to work actually appealed to her. Maybe it would give her some energy. Maybe it would get her out of this pitiful funk she’d been in for the last two weeks.
“What’s so damned important?” she asked.
“We’ve got a murder,” O’Malley said. “And we’re pretty sure it was Howard Randall.”
Avery’s dread spiked when she reached the precinct. There were news vans everywhere, complete with scrambling news anchors jockeying for position. There was so much commotion in the parking lot and on the lawn that there were uniformed officers at the front doors, keeping them at bay. Avery drove around back to the other entrance, away from the street, and saw that there were a few vans parked there as well.
Among the few officers at the back of the building keeping the peace, she saw Finley. When he saw her car, he stepped out of the crowd and waved at her, telling her to come to him. Apparently, Connelly had sent him out to serve as a guard of sorts to make sure she was able to make it inside through the throng of craziness.
She parked her car and walked as quickly as she could to the back entrance. Finley drew up next to her at once. Because of her history as an attorney as well as the high-profile cases she’d tackled as a detective, Avery knew she had a face that some local new crews might recognize. Fortunately, thanks to Finley, no one got a good look at her until she was being ushered in through the back door.
“What the hell is going on? We have Randall?” Avery asked.
“I’d love to tell you what happened,” Finley said. “But Connelly told me to say nothing at all. He wants to be the first to speak with you.”
“Fair enough, I guess.”
“How are you, Avery?” Finley asked as they walked quickly to the conference room near the back of the A1 headquarters. “I mean, with everything going on with Ramirez?”
She shrugged it off as best as she could. “I’m okay. Dealing with it.”
Finley sensed her cue and dropped it. They walked the rest of the way to the conference room in silence.
She was expecting the conference room to be just as packed as the parking lot. She’d thought something involving Howard Randall would have every available officer in the room. Instead, when she stepped inside with Finley, she saw only Connelly and O’Malley sitting at the conference table. The two men already in the room gave her expressions that were somehow polar opposites of one another; O’Malley’s look was one of pure concern while Connelly’s expression seemed to say What the hell am I supposed to do with you now?
When she took a seat, she almost felt like a kid who had been sent to the principal’s office.
“Thanks for coming in so quickly,” Connelly said. “I know you’ve been through hell. And trust me…I only wanted you here because I thought you’d want to be involved in what’s going on.”
“Howard really killed someone?” she asked. “How do you know? Did you catch him?”
The three men shared an uncomfortable glance around the table. “No, not exactly,” Finley said.
“It happened last night,” Connelly said.
Avery sighed. She’d actually been expecting to hear something like this on the news or through a text from the A1. Still…the man she had come to know from across a table in prison as she sought his advice and counsel did not seem capable of murder. It was strange…she knew him well from her past as an attorney and knew he was capable of murder. He’d done it numerous times; there were eleven murders that were attached to his file when he went to prison and there was speculation that there were many more that could be attributed to him with just a bit more evidence. But still, something about the news shocked her despite it sounding completely normal.
“We’re sure it’s him?” she asked.
Connelly got instantly uncomfortable. He let out a sigh and stood up from his chair, starting to pace.
“We don’t have hard evidence. But it was a college girl and the murder was gruesome enough to make us think it’s Randall.”
“Is there a file yet?” she asked.
“It’s being put together now and—”
“Can I see it?”
Again, Connelly and O’Malley shared an uncertain look. “We don’t need you very deep in this,” Connelly said. “We called you in because you know this psycho better than anyone. This isn’t an invitation to jump into the case. You’re dealing with far too much right now.”
“I appreciate the sentiment. Are there crime scene photos I can see?”
“There are,” O’Malley said. “But they’re pretty gruesome.”
Avery said nothing. She was already a little pissed that they had called her in with such urgency but were approaching her with kid gloves.
“Finley, could you run to my office and grab the material we have?” Connelly asked.
Finley got up, as obedient as ever. Watching him go, Avery realized that the two weeks she’d spent in a state of uncertain mourning seemed much longer than just two weeks. She loved her job and she had missed the hell out of this place. Just being around the well-oiled machine was boosting her spirits, even if it was only to be something of a resource for O’Malley and Connelly.
“How’s Ramirez?” Connelly asked. “The last update I got was two days ago and that update was still the same.”
“Still the same,” she said with a tired smile. “No bad news, no good news.”
She nearly told them about the ring the nurses had found in his pocket—the engagement ring Ramirez had been prepared to offer her. Maybe that would help them understand why she was so close to his injury and had elected to stay by his side the entire time.
Before the conversation could go any further, Finley came back into the room with a file folder that did not contain much. He placed it in front of her, getting a nod of approval from Connelly.
Avery opened up the pictures and looked them over. There were seven in all, and O’Malley had not been exaggerating. The pictures were quite alarming.
There was blood everywhere. The girl had been dragged into an alley and stripped to her underwear. Her right arm looked to have been broken. Her hair was blonde, though most of it was matted with blood. Avery looked for gunshot wounds or stab marks but saw none. It wasn’t until she reached the fifth picture that a close-up of the girl’s face revealed the method of killing.
“Nails?” she asked.
“Yeah,” O’Malley said. “And from what we can tell, they were put in with such precision and force that it had to be one of those pneumatic nail guns. We’ve got forensics working on it, so we can only speculate the order of it all for now. We think the first shot was one that took her just behind the left ear. It must have been shot from a distance because it didn’t pierce all the way through. It punctured the skull but that’s all we know for now.”
“And if that one wasn’t the one that killed her,” Connelly said, “the one that went in under the jaw, at an angle, sure as hell did. It tore through the bottom of her mouth, slanted in through the roof of her mouth, and tore into her nasal passage and into her brain.”
The violence involved does sound like Howard Randall, Avery thought. There’s no denying that.
Still, there were other things in the picture that didn’t line up with what she knew about Howard Randall. She studied the images, finding that despite all of the cases she had seen, these pictures were among the bloodiest and most disturbing.
“So what, exactly, do you need from me?”
“Like I said…you know this guy pretty well. Based on what you know, I want to know where he might be staying. I think it’s safe to say he stayed here in the city based on this murder.”
“Isn’t it dangerous to just assume this is the work of Howard Randall?”
“Two weeks after he escaped prison?” Connelly asked. “No. I’d say it lines up pretty well and screams Howard Randall. Do you need to go back and review the photos from the murder scenes from his cases?”
“No,” Avery said with a bit of venom. “I’m good.”
“So what can you tell us? We’ve been looking for two weeks now and we’re coming up with nothing.”
“I thought you said you didn’t want me on this yet.”
“I need your advice and assistance,” Connelly said.
Something about it was almost insulting to her but she didn’t see the point in arguing. Besides, it would give her mind something to focus on other than Ramirez’s state.
“Every time I spoke with him, he would never just give me a straight answer. It was always a riddle of some sort. He did it to mess with me—to make me work for the answer. He also did it just to have some fun on his end. I think, honestly, he viewed me as some sort of acquaintance. Not a friend, really. But someone he could go back and forth with on an intellectual level.”
“And he never resented you for all of that drama back when you were an attorney?”
“Why would he resent me?” she asked. “I got him off…a free man. Remember, he essentially turned himself in afterwards. He killed again just to show how incompetent I was.”
“But these little visits you’ve paid him in prison…he welcomed those?”
“Yes. And honestly, I never understood it. I think it was a respect thing. And as stupid as it might sound, I think there’s a part of him that always regretted that last kill—of making me look bad in the process.”
“And did he ever talk about trying to escape during any of your visits?” O’Malley asked.
“No. If anything, he was comfortable there. No one messed with him. Everyone had this weird sort of respect for him. Fear, maybe. But he was basically king of that place.”
“Then why would he break out?” Connelly asked.
Avery knew where he was going with it, what he was trying to get her to say. And the hell of it was that it made sense. Howard would only break out if he had something to do on the outside. Some unfinished business. Or maybe he was just bored.
“He’s a smart man,” Avery said. “Scary smart. Maybe he wanted to be challenged again.”
“Or to kill again,” Connelly said with disgust, pointing to the pictures.
“Possibly,” she conceded. She then looked at the pictures. “When was she found?”
“Three hours ago.”
“Her body still there?”
“Yeah, we just came back from the scene. The coroner is due in about fifteen minutes. Forensics is there with the body until they arrive.”
“Call them and tell them to wait. Don’t touch the body. I want to see the scene.”
“I said you’re not on this,” Connelly said.
“You did. But if you want me to tell you what sort of frame of mind Howard Randall is in—if he did commit this murder—then looking at pictures isn’t going to do it. And at the risk of sounding cocky, you know I’m the best crime scene investigator you have.”
Connelly gave a quick curse under his breath. Without saying anything else, he turned away from her and pulled out his cell phone. He pushed a number through and, a few seconds later, got someone on the other end.
“It’s Connelly,” he said. “Look. Hold off on moving the body. Avery Black is on her way.”
Oddly enough, Connelly tasked Finley with heading down to the crime scene with her. Finley didn’t talk much on the way and instead looked out the window thoughtfully most of the time. She knew Finley had never really gotten deep into the weeds of any high-profile cases. If this was to be his first, she sort of pitied him.
I guess they’re preparing for the worst—someone needs to step up if Ramirez doesn’t make it through. Finley is just as good as anyone. Better, maybe.
When they arrived at the crime scene, it was clear that the forensics and crime scene investigators were done with their duties. They were milling around, most of them by the crime scene tape looped around the entrance to the alleyway. One of them had coffee in his hand, making Avery realize that it was morning. She checked her watch and saw that it was only 8:45.
God, she thought. I seriously lost all concept of time over the last few days. I could have sworn it was at least nine when I got to my apartment.
This thought made her feel tired all in one moment. But she waved it off as she and Finley approached the gathered investigators. She absently waved her badge as Finley nodded politely from her side.
“You sure you’re up for this?” Finley asked.
She only nodded as they entered the alleyway, ducking under the crime scene tape. They walked down the alley for several feet and then took a left where the alleyway emptied into small area filled with dust, debris, and graffiti. A few old city garbage bins sat in the corner, neglected. Not too far away from them was the woman Avery had seen in the crime scene photos. Those images had not fully prepared her for seeing it in real life.
The blood, for one, was somehow much worse now. Without the glossy finish of the photos, it was muted and deadly looking. The startling nature of the murder snapped her back to reality quickly, pulling her mind and thoughts almost entirely out of Ramirez’s hospital room.
She stepped as closely as she could without stepping in blood and let her mind do its thing.
The bra and underwear aren’t sultry or provocative at all, she thought. This was not a girl heading out in search of a good time. If the underwear looks like this, chances are good her outfit wasn’t very revealing, either.
She slowly circled the body, her mind taking in the small details more than the gore now. She saw the puncture wound where the nail had driven in through the bottom of her jaw. But then she also saw several other wounds, all exactly the same—all inflicted with a nail gun. One between her eyes. One just above her left ear. One in each knee, one in the base of the chest, one through the jaw, and one at the back of the head. The flow of the blood and the brief description Connelly had given her suggested that there were similar wounds on the back of the girl’s body, which was currently pressed against the far brick wall like a rag doll.
It was brutal, excessive, and violent.
The icing on the cake was the fact that her left hand was missing. The still-bleeding stump suggested that it had been cut off no more than six hours ago.
She called over her shoulder to the handful of gathered investigators. “Any preliminary signs of rape?”
“Nothing visible,” one of them called back. “Won’t know for sure until we get her out of here.”
’