J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

Aguilar stands on one side of the red door, hand on the butt of his pistol, and I take the other. My second knock goes unanswered, so I try the bell. The chime sounds inside. I listen for movement, my ear close to the door.

“Police,” I say, pounding a third time.

The house is on Sheridan a block off of W. Holcombe, the opposite side of Kirby from where Dr. Hill lives. Quaint single-family homes, mostly postwar construction evoking classic styles, with the occasional duplex conversion. Agnieszka Oliszewski’s name is on the lease for the bottom unit of the two-story duplex, with the top unit still for rent. The original brick is clotted with recent white paint, the fake shutters black as oil. In the yard, a Realtor’s clear plastic display box contains a few damp flyers with interior photos and a monthly rent that suggests Oliszewski’s financial situation improved after she left Hill’s house.

I bend down, conscious of a twinge in my leg, and take a peek through the brass mail slot. Some bills and a couple of red Netflix envelopes lie in a pile on the carpet.

“Maybe she’s not home,” I say.

We exchange a look.

We take the stairs up to the vacant unit and give the door a try, despite the key box hanging from the knob. This time Aguilar stoops down, pushing the mail slot open with his finger. He shakes his head.

“Empty,” he says. “No furniture or nothing.”

“Let’s go around back.”

Before we left downtown, Aguilar looked up the address online, pulling up a Google satellite map of the property. Scouting the lay of the land. Some kind of outbuilding-a shed, a one-car garage-screened the yard on one side, leaving just a sliver of green grass before the neighbor’s fence encroached. We follow the driveway around, a melting glacier of concrete chips overrun by a sea of grass and weeds. The outbuilding, a wood-framed single stall garage, leans slightly with a mold-black line of water damage reaching about a foot high. I peer through the grimy glass window and see nothing but grease stains on the slab and a jumble of rusted rakes and shovels in one corner.

“Check this out,” Aguilar says.

Just inside the fence that separates the driveway and the yard, a pale blue Vespa scooter rests on its kickstand, the tan leather seat speckled with flecks of dried mud. Pinned under the front tire, a blue tarp meant to protect the machine from weather twists gently across the grass.

I reach over the fence to unlatch the gate.

“What’s that sound?” I ask.

A low, rumbling murmur, like a distant engine or maybe a washing machine cycle.

Following the noise, we move over the lawn toward a screened porch where the second level overhangs the rear entrance. A flimsy old structure of wood frame and wire mesh. The screen door springs squeak softly as I pull. Inside, situated against the exterior wall of the house, there’s a teak-slatted octagonal hot tub. The cover rests slightly askew. I can hear the water bubbling like a slow boil.

Without a word we step to either side of the tub. On my signal, Aguilar dons a pair of gloves and draws the cover open another foot or two.

I get my first hint of the smell. The wet heat on my face.

The water churns dark and polluted, and a body bobs toward me, the skin veiny and translucent but pinkish purple, a lock of yellow-white hair swirling from the head.

A freckled shoulder, the spinal ridge, and the same half-crescent punctures I remember from Simone Walker’s corpse.

I step back as the body rolls in the water.

Her mouth is set in a snarl of pain, the glassy blue eyes glistening. Between her breasts, the sawing, twisting gouge where the bowie knife entered.

Portable lights illuminate the yard as the Crime Scene Unit conducts its grim inventory, a fingertip search of the surrounding area, a catalog of every inch from the birdbath near the back fence to the sun-faded gnome lying facedown in one of the flower beds. The investigators from the ME’S office have given the okay for Agnieszka Oliszewski’s body to be removed, leaving the stretcher team to figure out how best to do it. Meanwhile two fatigue-clad techs from the HPD crime lab prepare for the task of draining the hot tub. Every ounce of water must be sifted for evidence and the tub’s inner walls scrubbed. A still photographer is on hand to snap pictures as needed. A separate videographer gets everything on tape.

With no local politics to distract him, Hedges arrives on scene for a briefing. I lead him down the driveway to the back fence for a look at the scene, then around to the red door in front for a walk through the apartment.

“The lack of blood around the hot tub suggests she wasn’t killed there,” I say.

The floorboards creak under our weight. We pause at the threshold of Oliszewski’s bedroom just as the lights are being switched off. A technician with a black light moves carefully around the bed, revealing a freshly glowing cast-off pattern with every wave of the hand.

“He butchered her,” Hedges says under his breath.

“When we checked in here, the mattress had bloodstains on it, but the sheets had been stripped off and he washed down the walls. I think he used the sheets to carry her body out back, dumped her in the hot tub, then pulled them out.”

“Have you found them?”

I shake my head. “He cleaned up after himself at the Walker scene, too.”

“Any signs of forced entry?”

“He used her key. When she arrived home, she pulled her scooter through the gate but never got a chance to put the tarp over it. I think he approached her then. There are marks on her neck that look like some kind of cord or wire. If he came up behind her and choked her out, he could’ve dragged to the door and let himself inside.”

“Did anyone see anything?”

“I canvassed the block myself, and Aguilar went a block over to check the residents with backyards fronting the property. Nobody saw the attack, but one of the neighbors across the street remembers her leaving the house around noon yesterday. We don’t know when she came back, so that’s a window of about twenty-nine hours from the last sighting to the time we discovered her. She was in the water for at least twelve hours, probably longer-though I can’t get anyone to confirm that at this point-so my guess is, he attacked her early yesterday evening and was out of here by midnight.”

“Midnight,” he repeats.

“He broke into my place at four thirty in the morning, and I doubt he took that chance without scouting around first.”

“Here’s what I don’t understand,” he says, leading me back down the hall into Oliszewski’s tastefully decorated living room. “This should have satisfied him, right? He gets his thrill from murdering the girl. So when he’s finished, why go to your place at all? What would prompt him to do something like that? Did something go wrong here to set him off?”

“That’s a good question,” I say. “I don’t know.”

“See if you can find out.” He pats me on the shoulder. “I take it Charlotte’s doing all right? I feel bad keeping you on this when you should be with your wife.”

“She might feel safer if I catch the guy.”

“Sure,” he says, heading for the exit.

For a moment there, the captain seemed like himself again. At the door, though, he pauses to straighten his tie, and I can see the lights of news cameras out on the street. Hedges makes a beeline for them.

Still, he raised a valid point. Why wasn’t killing one woman enough? What drove him to kick down my door just a few hours later?

Bascombe comes through the entrance, glancing over his shoulder in the captain’s direction. He frowns at the furniture, symmetrically arranged around the perimeter of an ivory rug, then draws close to me with a conspiratorial nod.