Gregg Olsen - Fear Collector

She typed the details of the call into the report and added: Caller was almost inaudible. Not sure if male or female. When I asked for an ID, which he/she refused, there was a long pause. During that pause I heard the sound of someone else talking. Maybe the radio. Not sure. That’s all.

The tip from the informant or witness had yielded a grisly discovery as a team of CSIs, Pierce County Sheriff ’s Department officers, and two homicide detectives from Tacoma gathered around the edge of the lazy Puyallup River, just east of Tacoma’s gritty downtown. Three-foot-tall grass and a noxious weed called tansy ragwort had drawn a partial curtain around where the body had been put to rest. As a cacophony of crows hurled their calls through the air, the group of men and women went about their tasks. Some took photos. Some ran the length of a tape measure. Others merely secured the scene. There was no question when Grace Alexander laid eyes on the figure that they were looking at the remains of Lisa Lancaster.

Or rather, most of Lisa.

While the sum of her body parts had been laid out in a hellish repose, they were in pieces. Lisa was all there, but she’d been butchered with the kind of hideous brutality that could only be the work of a madman.

And not a very skillful one at that.

Grace kneeled down next the victim. Her eyes carefully tracing the tentative cuts that had severed her right arm.

“Look,” she said, “he hesitated a little.”

“Yeah, I see that.” It was Paul Bateman, who had joined her while the medical examiner pushed everyone else away from the scene.

“Found some cigarette butts. Bagged and tagged.”

“Saw it,” she said. “Did you get the fishing bait bag?”

“Yeah, but I doubt anyone would kill someone here and go on fishing.”

Grace’s eyes stayed on the body. “Probably not. But maybe this is a favorite place. A good place he thought to hide her. I mean, it is a good place in a way. It isn’t that far off River Road. Anyone could just go by and miss her.”

It was true. More than a thousand cars passed that spot per hour, as people commuted to jobs in Tacoma or the Puyallup Valley. The only thing that brought any solace to the tragic scene was the fact that, however long Lisa had lain there, she had not been alive. She had not been one of those victims who were stashed alongside the road trying to summon the strength to call for help. Grace thought of the case of the California woman who’d crawled to the roadside after being left for dead-her arms severed from her body, but her will indomitable. Lisa Lancaster hadn’t had that chance.

Lisa had never said a word. Her final words, her final screams, had likely been given in a place where no one could see her, hear her. There was very little blood around the body. It was obvious that she’d bled out somewhere else.

Grace could feel the bile in her stomach rise. A sick person like the one who’d done this had probably savored her last breath as though it was something to enjoy. To revel in. What lay in pieces in the tangle of weeds just above the muddy riverbank had been brought there and reassembled.

“Hey!” a Pierce County deputy called from a tangle of brambles. “Got something over here.”

Grace stayed with the body, while Paul went in the direction of the deputy. He was a young officer, a total newbie. It was easy to spot those. They still allowed the excitement of finding a piece of evidence come to their faces.

“Plastic garbage bag,” the kid said. “Looks like blood on it.”

Paul nodded. “Good work. Now, please step back.”

It was a black Hefty bag, the heavy-duty kind that Paul had used when his ex, Lynnette, threw him out and told him to get his stuff out of the house. He shook his head. He hated how thoughts of Lynnette infiltrated his mind all the time. Having to see her every day at work was bad enough, but having even the most common objects recall some incident with her was beyond cruel.

The black bag had been carried out into the water and tossed into the brambles about twenty-five yards from where the killer had deposited Lisa, bit by bit. It was hard to tell in the flat light among the Himalayan blackberries if there was blood on the bag, but from where Paul Bateman stood it appeared that there could be. If so, the bag was a monumental discovery and a major mistake by the perpetrator. Plastic bags held latent prints. Trace evidence from the killer’s vehicle could easily adhere to the sticky, bloody plastic. If this was the bag he’d brought ninety-five-pound Lisa Lancaster in to reassemble on the riverbank then it also had topped its manufacture’s promise of holding “up to seventy-five pounds without tearing.”

Grace joined Paul by the thorny vines.

“They’re transporting her now,” she said.

Paul pointed to the bag. “Techs will process this and the cigarette butts. Are you sure it’s Lisa?” he asked, his eyes unblinking.

“Sure enough that we better get over to Ms. Lancaster’s before the press does.”

It was almost dark when the detectives arrived at the Lancaster house. Grace scanned the street for any of the usual suspects-the press, that is. Thankfully, there weren’t any. One vehicle did catch her eye. Marty Keillor’s souped-up Honda Accord was parked behind Ms. Lancaster’s car.

“Marty’s here,” Paul said. “Hope we don’t wake ’em up.”

“Enough of that,” Grace said, though she’d thought the same thing.

“Just saying,” he said.

Catherine Lancaster opened the door. She was wearing a white cotton blouse and jeans. It didn’t escape Grace’s eyes that the second button from the bottom was unfastened.

“Is it true?” she asked, her voice trying to find a breath. Her eyes were ablaze with a curious mix of anger and fear.

While both detectives knew to what she was referring, they didn’t give any indication. A rookie would blurt out that they’d found a body when the mother might only have asked if it was true that they’d eaten at the local Sonic. Never, ever give up any information first. Always, both knew, wait and see what the subject is really talking about.

“What?” Paul asked.

“I heard that someone found a body,” she said.

Marty Keillor appeared behind her.

“Is it Lisa?” he asked.

“May we come inside?” Grace asked, and Lisa’s mother opened the door wide to allow them entrance into the living room. She stopped them with a cry.

“I knew she was dead!” she said. “I knew it in my bones. My girl’s gone. My only baby! Gone!”

“Ms. Lancaster,” Paul said, trying to calm her.

“Are you going to tell me everything is going to be okay? Maybe you’d know how I feel if this had ever happened to you. Lisa is gone.” She glanced at Marty. “Except for Marty, I’m alone.”

The remark was strange. Why acknowledge Marty as her boyfriend now? If that was, in fact, what she was doing?

“We aren’t sure it is her,” Grace said. “The medical examiner will be analyzing”-she stopped herself short of saying the body or body parts, which sounded as horrific as it really indeed was-“analyzing the, uh, evidence.”

By then Ms. Lancaster was inconsolable. Marty Keillor slumped silently into the sofa where Lisa’s mother had sunk in a sobbing heap. On the coffee table adjacent to the sofa were an ashtray and a stack of laser prints with images of beaches and tropical flowers, printouts from a travel website.

As the detectives left the house, Paul leaned close to Grace’s ear.

“Looks like Ms. Lancaster and Marty were planning a vacation.”

“Saw that,” she said, walking down the driveway a few yards before stopping. She started for the pair of galvanized garbage cans that sat next to the curb.