He moved to the side of the girl’s body and looked more closely at the chain that had bound her hands, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. This felt familiar, and for a moment he was a twenty-five-year-old rookie, standing outside a hospital room, voices drifting to him from inside—
“Detective Copeland?” He looked over his shoulder and stood. It was the cop who’d arrived first on scene
after the anonymous tip that had called this in. He looked slightly shaken but was managing to hold it together well. Zach was impressed. The city saw plenty of shootings—mostly related to drug crimes—the occasional home invasion, lots of family trouble, but a murder like this was a rare occurrence. Then again, he suspected you could see something of this nature once a week and still never be desensitized to it. And he had to believe that was a good thing.
“Dr. Harvey’s here.”
He nodded, though he couldn’t remember the last time Dr. Harvey showed up at a scene—she usually waited for the body to be delivered to her—but Zach understood why she was there. Again, highly unusual crime scene. Highly disturbing. Slow footsteps sounded on the wood stairs and a few seconds later Hamilton County’s coroner entered the room, dressed in a black cocktail dress, with a red wrap draped over her shoulders. Her heels were covered in disposable booties. She’d obviously just left a social event. He walked toward her. “Doctor.”
Her eyes moved past him to the victim momentarily. Dr. Harvey was an attractive older woman who carried an air of class. He’d seen her at a few city functions and knew it was especially true when she was in a dress and heels. But it was also the case when she was wearing her usual workday scrubs. “Detective Copeland.” She gave him a small smile that disappeared as quickly as it’d arrived. “Anonymous tip called this in?”
He nodded as she moved past him to where the body lay. “Burner phone apparently. No way to trace it. The call came in earlier tonight, and Officers Burke and Alexander came to check it out.”
“Identity?”
“Not yet.” There had been nothing at the scene to provide an identity. No purse or identification. He’d start working on that right away, check missing persons reports as soon as he got back to the office. He’d find out her name. He made a silent promise to the unknown woman. It was something he could return to her when everything else had been stolen.
Dr. Harvey greeted Dolores who was packing up her supplies and then leaned around the body, looking at it from every angle. She shook her head. “This girl experienced hell on earth,” she murmured and then emitted a quiet sigh. “I’d like to get her exam underway tonight. She’s waited long enough.” She leaned closer behind the girl, getting a look at her hands still wrapped in shackles. “You’re not alone anymore,” she said quietly, before she straightened, spearing Zach with her direct stare. He saw anger there, empathy. They were the eyes of a woman who had seen too much death where death did not belong. Too much suffering when there was no comfort to be given. “Come see me in the morning. I’ll have some answers for you.”
**********
Rain drummed on his windshield as he drove back to the Criminal Investigative Section (CIS) building where the city’s homicide detectives worked, the streets of Cincinnati rushing by in blurred shades of silvery gray. His mind rewound again to his very first week riding on his own after he’d been cut loose by his field training officer. He’d been assigned to guard the hospital room of a girl who’d escaped being chained in an abandoned warehouse for almost a year. Zach realized he was holding the steering wheel in a death grip and loosened his hands, taking one off the wheel and rolling his wrist, stretching his fingers. A fucking year she’d been held there, after suffering things so unthinkable that Zach still wondered how she’d survived with her sanity intact. He still thought about her sometimes at the oddest moments, and he wasn’t sure why, other than that it was the first time he’d truly understood what evil was and it had shocked him. Shocked him clear to his fucking soul. Her voice—shaking, yet clear—the trauma and . . . fierceness in her eyes. Yes, he’d seen it and been humbled by it. It had hit him straight in his gut. She’d looked like a warrior, being wheeled into that hospital. Half dead. Still fighting. Josie. Josie Stratton. Her eyes had been large and dark. Haunted. He wondered if they still were. How could they not be?
Of course, that case had been closed, the perpetrator dead by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Rest in hell, motherfucker. He couldn’t help bringing it to mind though. It was the depravity, he guessed. He’d seen a lot—heard a lot from other officers too—since that day in the UC Medical Center, but nothing like the pure, unadulterated evil that had been perpetrated against Josie Stratton. Not until tonight.
He ran a hand over his short, damp hair as he entered the building, and dried his hand on his jeans as he headed toward his desk. He heard the front door open and close and glanced back to see his partner, Jimmy Keene, lumbering in behind him. “Hey man,” he greeted.
Jimmy took off his wet jacket and tossed it in the direction of his chair. He used a pile of fast food napkins on his desk to wipe the back of his neck and then scrubbed at his face, causing the old pockmarks covering his jowly cheeks to stand out. Sometimes Jimmy reminded him of one of those bulldogs with his drooping face and squat, muscled body. “Sorry it took me so long to get here. I was out on the boat when the call came in.”
Zach nodded, taking his own jacket off and hanging it on the back of his desk chair. Jimmy had recently bought a small houseboat that he was in the process of fixing up. He had it parked about forty-five minutes away on a lake in Aurora, Indiana, and took every opportunity he could to drive out and work on it. It was his dream to live out his retirement on that old boat, wind in his hair, sun on his craggy face. The detective looked slow and sleepy—and that helped in throwing interviewees off sometimes—but in reality, he was as sharp as a tack. Zach respected him and enjoyed his company. He was a good partner and friend. Hell, he was a good human being.
“Give me the lowdown,” Jimmy said as they both took seats.
Zach blew out a breath, describing the scene to Jimmy, what Dolores had guessed at as far as cause of death.
Jimmy whistled, shaking his head as his forehead creased. “Some evil shit.”
“You remember the Stratton case from about eight years ago?”
Jimmy tapped the keys on his computer, logging in, before looking up. “Girl chained in that warehouse, right?”
Zach logged in to his own computer. “Yeah. The scene tonight made me think of that one.” Not that he’d witnessed the actual crime scene back then, just the aftermath in the hospital. Still . . .
Jimmy’s fingers halted in their typing and he looked up again, his brow furrowing. “That crime was closed out. Bad guy caught. Neighbor or something, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, I know. I’m just saying tonight brought that to mind.”
Jimmy nodded, shrugged slightly, his fingers resuming their click clicking on the keyboard. “Another sicko who likes to tie up girls. Remember the one on McMicken Avenue last year?”
Zach did remember that one. A pimp had tied one of his working girls to the bed after smacking her around, because she’d shot that night’s profits into her veins. Sick. Sad. But . . . different. They’d both been screaming and hollering when police had arrived and ultimately, they’d had to charge her with assault too, because it had become obvious that she’d used her stiletto to go after his face before he’d thrown her down on the bed and restrained her with some rope. “Not just tie up. Chain,” Zach murmured, picturing the hooks drilled into the wall. The pre-meditation that would have taken. “Anyway, I thought we’d go back three years with the missing persons reports? Dolores estimated that the girl had been dead at least a month, plus the time it took to starve to death, but there’s no telling how long she was in that basement.” No telling how long she’d been in the clutches of a madman. Zach’s muscles tensed once again, but he cut the beginning of his wandering thoughts short. There was no point to that now. The girl—and her family, those who’d loved her—deserved definitive answers. He had a job to do.
“Let’s split ’em up,” Jimmy said. He got up and put on a new pot of coffee, and they started going through the reports, the rain outside continuing to pound on the roof.
The girl had had blonde hair, but Dolores had noted that it appeared to be dyed, the roots a darker shade of light to medium brown, so th
ey didn’t use hair color to narrow down the list. Wading through missing persons lists always left a feeling of depression in its wake—so many unsolved disappearances, so much heartache. He hoped to God they’d be able to give peace to at least one group of people left without closure. Once they’d finished, they were left with five names that were possibilities—female, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, medium build. It was really all they had to go on for the time being. Three of them were prostitutes, working at the time of their disappearances, one was a twenty-five-year old who worked at a bar in Hyde Park and had never returned home after a shift, and one was a single mom who’d apparently taken her child and left town after an unfavorable custody ruling. Zach put a sixth one aside even though the timing didn’t really work. The UC student had only been reported missing six weeks before, but all the other descriptors fit. He supposed until he received Cathlyn’s official report, they couldn’t be certain about the timing, so he didn’t want to dismiss this girl’s name until he knew more.
Perhaps he’d be able to narrow down the list further after he visited Cathlyn. Or maybe it wasn’t a local missing person at all. Maybe it was a runaway from Idaho who’d made her way to Ohio where she knew someone and stumbled upon some sadistic stranger by chance instead. The job had shown him how often that could be the case. A series of choices—some bad, some good, some seemingly meaningless—could lead you places you’d never set out to go. Because everywhere, all around, other people were making choices too. Paths were crossing, separations were closing, lives were commingling. Sometimes he wondered if there was any order to it at all, or if they were all just helpless victims of happenstance.