Allison Brennan - Silenced

“We’re nearly done, Detective,” one of the men said.

“Has the coroner been here?” Noah asked.

“Come and gone,” Genie said. “Good thing because it still reeks of death and the vic was hauled away thirty minutes ago.”

They stepped into the room, just the three of them, as the last of the crime scene unit left. Torn wallpaper, the dresser missing one leg, water stains on the sagging ceiling-the room was uninhabitable even before the murder. Lucy couldn’t picture anyone willingly staying here.

Desperate people.

What had led the victim to this room last night? How desperate was she? Did she know her killer? Invite him in?

Noah raised his voice over an ineffective, but loud, air-conditioning unit. “What are we looking at here?”

Genie kicked the dented wall appliance. “It doesn’t do anything to cool this place down, but every time I turn it off someone turns it back on.” She turned the old, chipped black knob from hi to off. The unit rumbled and clanked as it shut down.

She continued in a normal voice. “Victim was a twenty-year-old hooker named Nicole Bellows. One of the uniforms recognized her, she’d been busted over a year ago. I ran her sheet, she’s been clean since. Looked healthy-other than having her throat slit so deep it severed her vocal chords-no obvious drug use, no needle marks. Maybe she had a sugar daddy who got tired of her, or a pimp who thought she wasn’t pulling her weight. Or, maybe, a john who can only get his rocks off when he kills.”

Lucy’s chest tightened at the image.

A john who can only get off when he kills.

All the people who’d stared at her outside fueled her panic. The bystanders. The cops. Watching, waiting for her to crack.

Did they know?

They don’t know anything about you. They can’t see you anymore. They’re outside, you’re inside. They aren’t watching.

A flash of memory wiped out everything in her vision.

She didn’t see the bed, the blood, the filth, the flies. She heard Genie and Noah talking from far away. Her blood rushed to her ears, swirling, pounding. Her knees buckled, but she willed them to work.

Focus, Lucy, get it under control.

She leaned against the wall when her knees refused her command. The memories hit her, one right after the other, in a rapid series of snapshots.

The mattress. The knife. The ropes. The camera’s evil eye, watching. Always watching.

focus focus focus

Lucy shifted her body, the urge to run so great she leaned out the door. The sharp edge of splintered wood jolted her back to reality. The colors around her turned vibrant and she closed her eyes.

You are in control. Breathe in. Breathe out.

The mantra was working. Voices brought her back to the present.

Genie was explaining what they’d found in the room, how the body had been positioned. Lucy focused on the detective’s crisp cadence.

Noah was looking at her, his face expressionless, but she saw his eyes questioning her. Or was he questioning his own judgment in bringing her here? God, what must he think? It was only a few seconds, had her panic been that obvious?

She forced an I’m-just-fine smile on her face and waved away flies. She didn’t know if Noah bought her act.

It’s not an act. You’re fine. You’re in control.

“Except,” Genie was saying, “the coroner said no external sign of sexual assault. But that really doesn’t matter, because there’s something bigger here than a prostitute getting whacked.”

“What do you mean?” Noah asked.

Lucy bit her lip to keep from adding a comment about how the detective denigrated the victim. That physical pain helped assuage her panic. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. She knew, from being raised in a household full of cops and working at the morgue, that cops often needed to compartmentalize. They couldn’t look at the victim as a person, lest rage and defeat cloud their judgment. But she still looked at victims as people, and while she didn’t condone the prostitution lifestyle, she empathized with the circumstances that put many of these young girls on the streets.

“You need to see it for yourself. Don’t think we’re going to get much here-too many guests, too little cleaning-but I have my best cops canvassing. Called in the night manager, because the day manager swears he never saw the girl.”

“You believe him?”

Genie shrugged. “Eh. We’ll see. Don’t know that anyone here is going to tell the truth, they don’t like cops, don’t want to get involved, don’t want to squeal.” She glanced out the door at the crowd, bitterness sharpening her crisp tone. “Don’t matter the crime, they clam up.”

Genie handed them sterile gloves from a box on the dresser. Lucy put hers on, the routine familiar and calming. She looked around more carefully now, focusing on what Noah had probably already taken in while she quietly panicked in the doorway, which had nothing to do with the crime scene itself.

The blood-soaked mattress had been grimy even before the murder. “She died here?” Noah asked.

“Found on the floor.” Genie indicated a numbered card on the floor next to the bed. “Partly wrapped in a sheet.”

Lucy said, “With this much blood, she bled out on the bed.”

“Like I said, he cut her so deep he nearly decapitated her.”

Genie gestured to the blood spatter on the wall behind the bed, the castoff to the left. “The killer was left-handed, our CSU said. From the trajectory, we deduced they were both standing. He probably killed her, dropped her to the bed, she bled out. The manager who came in and found her swears she was on the floor when he got here and that he didn’t touch anything, but who the fuck knows?”

Without comment, she pulled out her coin purse and moved another quarter.

“Why?” Lucy asked rhetorically. She surveyed the room. There were no suitcases or anything personal. “Was there luggage? Toiletries?”

“No suitcase, no purse. Several travel-sized bottles of shampoo, lotion, soap, toothpaste, things like that were in the bathroom. We bagged and tagged them. But no clothing. Just the T-shirt she wore and sandals next to the bed.”

“That’s odd,” Noah said. “She didn’t walk in here wearing a T-shirt and nothing else.”

“I’ve seen stranger things,” Genie said.

“The killer may have walked off with her belongings.” Noah made a note. “But why? Did she have something valuable? Why take her clothes?”

“I’ve been a cop for twenty-nine years and all I can say is that most killers are stupid,” Genie said. “Who knows why they do what they do?”

The motive of the killer and victimology were equally important psychological clues to solve crimes. “If it were rage, I’d expect to see more brutality,” Lucy said. “Multiple stab wounds. Blood everywhere. Evidence of struggle. This scene looks too…” she scrambled for the right word.

“Efficient,” Noah said.

“Exactly.”

“When the victim was arrested last year, did she have a pimp?” Noah asked. “Do you have the file on her?”

“Never admitted to having a pimp, but she was probably lying. She wasn’t a regular-said she came from Jersey. Cops there have nothing on her, either. Probably lied about that, too.”

“Do you have a current address?”

“I’ll shoot the file over to you as soon as we’re done here, if you want the case.”

“You want to give the FBI this case?” Noah asked, unable to hide the surprise from his voice.

“Well, not hand it over lock, stock, and barrel, but I’ll give you lead if you keep me on board. I have twenty-three active cases I’m working right now, and Lord knows how many inactive files. While I don’t like you feds swooping in and taking over whenever you want, I know when I can use help.”