Kaiser takes a moment to scan the handful of people who are still milling around. All appear to be residents of the neighborhood, coffee cups or dog leashes in hand; more than a few are still in their pajamas. Civilians are always drawn to the excitement of a crime scene.
A second later, his eyes fix on a face. Not a face in the crowd. A face behind glass. Someone is home in the house with the blue door. Kaiser walks toward it, and a few seconds later his finger is poised above the doorbell. The door opens before he can press it.
Walter Shaw stands there, an inch shorter than Kaiser’s own six feet two inch height. His short hair is grayer, and there are more lines around his eyes and mouth than were there the last time Kaiser saw him, five years ago. Other than that, Georgina’s father looks more or less the same.
“You really still live here?” Kaiser asks, more a statement than a question. “I thought you would have sold the house. After the … after the trial.”
“Hello to you, too.” Walter doesn’t appear happy to see him at all. “Market was way down, and I wasn’t going to sell it for pennies on the dollar. Besides that, nobody wanted it. Too much bad press, thanks to you.”
“Is Georgina coming back here when she gets out?”
“This is my home, which makes it her home.” The older man crosses his arms. “And where the hell else would she go?”
Kaiser stares at Walter Shaw, the father of his best friend from high school, the father of the woman he arrested. He’d sat at Walt’s table, had eaten Walt’s beef stew, had drunk Walt’s beer when he wasn’t home, had been in love with Walt’s daughter.
Georgina’s father stares back. It feels like a face-off of sorts, neither man wanting to back down, but neither knowing what to say next, either.
Kaiser speaks first. “Walt, I care about your daughter. I’ve always cared. I hope you know I was just doing my job.” It’s not exactly an apology, but it’s the best he can do.
After a moment, Walter nods. It’s not exactly an acceptance, but it’s the best he can do. He jerks his head toward the activity in the cul-de-sac. “So what the hell’s going on over there, anyway?”
“We’re still figuring it out,” Kaiser says. “By the way, has Georgina ever said anything to you about where Calvin James might be?”
The older man frowns. He doesn’t like the question. Before Kaiser can rephrase it, the door slams shut in his face.
8
The dead child has been identified as Henry Bowen, age twenty-two months. His parents, Amelia and Tyson Bowen of Redmond, filed a report first thing that morning, and as far as they know, their young son is still missing. Kaiser will do the official death notification when they arrive.
At the very least, it’s two mysteries solved. They know the child’s name, and they’ve confirmed that their Jane Doe isn’t the child’s mother. Though it might have been easier, from an investigative standpoint, if she had been.
Thanks to the wonders of modern technology—also known as the smartphone—the photo Amelia Bowen used in her child’s missing-person report was taken at bedtime the night before. Kaiser has no doubt it’s their boy. He has the same hair, the same front teeth, the same Spider-Man pajamas. Whatever happened to Henry occurred sometime between 11:30 P.M., when his mother checked the video monitor before falling asleep, and 8:30 A.M., when she woke up and checked it again.
“What do we know about the parents?” he asks Kim. They’re in the small break room of the morgue, where Kim tracked him down.
She pulls out her little black notebook. Though she’s a whiz at technology, Kaiser’s partner is old school when it comes to note taking, preferring to jot notes by hand rather than type into her phone, as most cops did nowadays. She even uses pencil, so she can erase mistakes if necessary. She says the act of handwriting helps her concentrate.
“They both work for Microsoft; he’s a software engineer, she’s in marketing. They live in a nice house; Zillow values it at just under a million. She drives a Lexus, he drives a BMW. Henry was in daycare at a place called Rainbow Jungle not far from the Microsoft campus.”
“Rich,” Kaiser says.
Kim makes a face. “That’s not rich. That’s slightly upper middle class—for Redmond, anyway.”
He doesn’t argue. He grew up in an apartment in Seattle with a single mother and ate Kraft macaroni and cheese three nights out of every week. His grandparents scraped together the money to pay for his Catholic education. Kim grew up near Bill Gates’s neighborhood on the Eastside and went to private school. Their definition of “rich” differed, to say the least.
“What else? How did they sound on the phone?”
“I didn’t speak to them, I spoke to the officer who’s bringing them here.” Kim is fixing herself a coffee. It’s common knowledge within Seattle PD that the morgue has the best coffee, for reasons nobody can explain. “The mother said he normally wakes up around seven and hollers, but neither of them heard anything this morning so they stayed in bed. She went to check on him around eight-thirty. Found the window wide open and the little boy gone. She woke her husband and called 911 immediately because he’s not yet able to climb out of the crib on his own.”
“Do they have a nanny or a babysitter?” Kaiser asks, thinking about the dismembered woman.
“His only caregivers are the ones at the daycare, and the teenage girl who lives next door, who babysits for date nights. The teenage girl is fine, I checked her Instagram and she’s already posted three selfies this morning.” Kim tugs at her ponytail. “None of the four caregivers at the daycare fit our Jane Doe. Two are too old, and the younger ones are both Jamaican. Our best bet is to ask the Bowens if they recognize her.”
Kaiser looks up at her. “And how are we supposed to do that? Take a picture of just the nose and mouth?”
“Shit, that’s right, the eyes are missing. I forgot.”
Kaiser suppresses a sigh. Kim’s a smart woman when it comes to certain things. Organized, meticulous with her notes and reports, very thorough. But every once in a while, her mind slips on an obvious detail, for no fucking reason. It drives Kaiser batshit, but he bites his tongue.
“When are the parents getting here?” he asks.
“There’s traffic. Seahawks game. Might be an hour, maybe more.”
“I’m going to go talk to Peebles.” Kaiser stands up and stretches. The vertebrae in his spine crack in gratitude. “Call me when they get here.”
He knocks before entering the room, though he doubts Greg Peebles hears anything when he’s in the zone, working. The bodies have been placed on examining tables a few feet apart, and the ME is leaning over the boy. The child is covered with a sheet from the waist down, the heart drawn on his chest stark and unfaded.
SEE ME.
What the fuck does that mean? Donning a pair of latex-free gloves, Kaiser touches the heart gently with a gloved hand. It doesn’t smudge.
The woman has been—for lack of a better expression—pieced back together, and from a distance it might appear that she’s intact. But she’s not. Under the harsh lights of the overhead lamp, the half-inch gap separating her head, legs, feet, arms, and hands from her torso is glaringly evident.
“I hate that you brought me a kid,” Greg Peebles says to Kaiser in his slow drawl. No matter what’s going on, the medical examiner never sounds like he’s in a hurry, never sounds rushed or stressed. It’s a great quality to never be unnerved, but it can be a pain in the ass for Kaiser when he’s under pressure to find answers. Like right now. “This is my least favorite part of the job.”
“But a dismembered woman is okay?”
Peebles shrugs. “I wasn’t trying to be political, Kai. But an adult dead body shows up, part of you can’t help but think, even just for a split second, ‘What could that person have done to deserve that? What situation did they put themselves in?’ But a dead kid shows up, and nobody thinks that, ever. Children are innocent. They’re small. They can’t defend themselves against predators. They’ve done no
thing to warrant any violence against them. Bad things aren’t supposed to happen to kids. It goes against everything we as a civilized society think is acceptable. Your protective instincts kick in.” He pauses, then looks up, the light from his head lamp hitting Kaiser square in the eyes. “Okay, perhaps that was a bit political.”
“Can you turn that off?” Kaiser asks, putting a hand up over his face to shield himself.
“Sorry.” Peebles reaches up and switches the head lamp off. “So. The bodies are clean.”
“Come on, Greg.” Kaiser stares at the child in front of him. He doesn’t disagree with Peebles; there is something incredibly wrong with seeing a person that small on an autopsy table. He’s a homicide cop and trained to be objective, but a dead child goes straight to the heart of what makes him human. But so does a dismembered woman, and he hopes he never loses that empathy. “Don’t fucking tell me that. Give me something. Start with the child.”
“He’s almost two years old, based on his teeth. But you already know that.” Peebles switches his head lamp back on, his voice morphing back into that professional-but-mellow tone he always uses when describing his findings. “Well nourished, no signs of sexual trauma or physical abuse. No traces of bodily fluids on his clothing other than a copious amount of dried saliva on his hoodie. Probably his own; he had molars coming in.”
“Nothing under the fingernails?”
“Bits of dirt and sand, but that’s consistent with being a kid. He’s been bathed recently. You can still smell the shampoo if you lean in close.” Peebles leans over the body and inhales. If it were anyone else, it would be creepy. “Burt’s Bees, same stuff my kids used when they were little. Supposed to be all-natural. He wasn’t neglected. His parents loved him.” His head snaps up, blinding Kaiser again with his head lamp. “Wait. The parents aren’t the doers, are they?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Kaiser says, squinting. “Cause of death?”
“All signs point to asphyxiation. Pressure marks on the neck indicate someone used his or her hands. I’m guessing it was a male because the marks looks like larger fingers, but don’t take that to the bank. After my divorce, I dated this woman who had extremely large hands. It was rather disturbing. They made everything she touched seem small.”
Despite the gravity of the situation, Kaiser snickers. Peebles blinks, not sure what he said that was so funny. They move over to the next table.
“Now for our Jane Doe. Rohypnol and alcohol in her system, small traces of THC. She smoked marijuana sometime in the past two days,” Peebles says. “She also engaged in sexual activity—traces of condom lube and spermicide are present—and while there are some indications the sex was rough, I can’t confirm she was raped. Traces of skin under the fingernails. At least some of it’s her own, but I’ll test it. She was dismembered with a saw, definitely postmortem.”
“How postmortem?”
“Immediately after. It would have been messy. The unevenness of the cutting patterns suggests that the killer did it by hand. So, not a chainsaw. No tattoos, a small birthmark on her upper right thigh. Hair brown, but dyed an even darker brown. Nice manicure. She was probably around five-five, one-twenty. I’d put her age around twenty-one, maybe twenty-two years old. But don’t take that to the bank.”
“And her eyes?” Kaiser asks.
“Removed with something dull. My first thought was spoon, but now I’m thinking butter knife because there’s minute tearing consistent with that.” Peebles straightens up and removes his head lamp. It leaves an indent in his graying hair. “Fairly certain she was strangled with a foreign object, something stiffer that was placed around her neck.”
“Bungee cord?”
“Belt would be my guess. There are scratches on the side of her jaw where she would have clawed at it to get it off. There’s bruising on her back, as if someone held her down with a knee and choked her from behind. Want me to demonstrate?”
“No need,” Kaiser says. He can picture it.
“Remind you of anything?” Peebles asks. His raised eyebrow tells Kaiser he’s thinking the same thing. “Or anyone?”
“Calvin James.” He lets out a long breath, thinking of the three women the Sweetbay Strangler murdered after Angela Wong. All three were killed in a similar manner, right down to the knee in the back, but he doesn’t say anything further, and Peebles doesn’t push. Greg’s the medical examiner, Kaiser’s the detective. They don’t do each other’s jobs.
“I thought I read something about him being spotted in Brazil,” Peebles says. “Passing for a local, looking tanned and healthy. Or was it Argentina? This might have been a couple years ago now.”
Kaiser doesn’t answer. He’d read the same thing, but no police in any country had ever gotten a strong enough whiff of Calvin James to track him down. And that included the U.S.
“I’ll give you some time with them.” The ME peels off his gloves. They’ve been working together a long time, and if anyone knows what the detective’s process is during this stage of a homicide investigation, it’s Greg Peebles.
The door closes, and Kaiser pulls up a stool between the two tables. He focuses on the child. Only the night before, this little boy had been alive. Laughing, splashing in the tub, playing with his toys. One or both of his parents shampooed his hair with the Burt’s Bees stuff lovingly, believing—as was absolutely their right—that there would be ten thousand more baths, ten thousand more laughs, ten thousand more bedtimes.
They’re about to receive the worst news of their lives. There’ll be crying, shouting, and hysteria, interspersed with denial and disbelief. They’ll weep over the child, then turn on each other, one accusing the other of leaving the window unlocked, one blaming the other for not checking on Henry first thing in the morning. Whether they can get through it, only time will tell, but the divorce rate for parents who’ve lost a child to kidnapping or foul play is exorbitantly high. They’re each other’s best reminder of the worst thing that’s ever happened to them.
And the woman. She was somebody’s daughter, granddaughter, friend. People are missing her, too. She wasn’t a transient. Her teeth are white. She colored her hair. Her fingernails are covered in gel overlay, something you had a pay a manicurist to do. Homeless women did not spend money on manicures. And yet somebody had desecrated her, cutting her into pieces like she was a cardboard box ready for disposal.
It was something only a monster could do. Kaiser had met a monster like that once, had been introduced to him through his old friend Georgina.
And what does she know about this? She might be in prison, but has she been in touch somehow with Calvin James, in a way that doesn’t show up on those monthly reports? Is she aware that two dead bodies have been found in the woods behind her house just days before she’s due to come home, killed in a similar manner to her old boyfriend’s signature style?
Kaiser reins himself in. It’s extremely dangerous to assume this is the work of the Sweetbay Strangler. He has to stay objective or he’ll miss something. Besides, it would be incredibly reckless, and stupid, for Calvin James to come back here. Not that psychopaths operate using the same logic as regular people.
Kaiser touches the heart on the boy’s chest again. The dark-red lipstick really does resemble blood. With any luck, they might be able to find out what brand it is, and if it turns out to be something exotic or hard to get, it might provide a lead. A long shot, but they had nothing else to go on.
“I don’t know how you can sit in here by yourself,” Kim’s voice behind him says, and he jumps. She’s back, a sheet of paper in her hand. “I know this is how you work, but it’s strange.”
Kaiser stifles his annoyance, both at her comment and at being interrupted. “What’s up?”
“The parents are here.”
“That was fast.” Alarmed, Kaiser stands up. “The body isn’t ready. The boy needs to be washed before they can see him.”
“I thought it would be longer, but traffic opened up. You have to go talk t
o them, at least. They’re going out of their minds.”
“Fuck.” Kaiser thinks fast. “Okay. Call Counseling Services. Get a grief counselor here, pronto. And then go find me a mask.”
Kim blinks, confused. “What kind of mask?”
“Some kind of mask,” Kaiser says, impatient. He hates having to explain things to anyone. As much as he likes Kim, he’s irritated that after a year of working and sleeping together, she still can’t read his damn mind. “Not a costume mask. Something plain, like a sleeping mask, so I can cover the woman’s empty eye sockets and take a picture. Hopefully they can tell us who she is.”
“No need for a mask. There’s an app for that.”
“Huh?”
Kim reaches over and plucks his iPhone out of his jacket pocket. She taps at the screen for a few seconds, then hands the phone back.
“It’s called a censor-bar app,” she says. “You take the picture, then add a black bar anywhere you want.” Seeing the look on his face—Kaiser is the first to admit he’s not great when it comes to new technology—she takes the phone from him again. “Allow me.”
She positions herself above the table where Jane Doe is and snaps a photo. She then taps the phone again a few times before handing it back to Kaiser. The whole thing takes less than a minute. “Done. Saved in your camera roll. I even filtered it a little to make her skin look like it has some color. Just be sure not to accidentally show them the original.”
He checks the photo and has to admit he’s impressed. From the neck up, with the black bar across the eyes, the woman in the photo still looks dead, but not as dead. Thanks to the filter Kim used, the grayish skin appears pinker. “This actually works. Thanks.”
She puts a hand on his arm. “This is bugging you more than usual, isn’t it, Kai? You think this is Calvin James?”