Karin Slaughter - The Silent Wife

Sara said, “Vasquez was beaten to the floor. Three left-side molars were cracked at the root, the left jaw and orbital bone were fractured. Prelim suggests left-side rib fractures. You can see the blood splatter on the wall and ceiling has a semi-circle pattern. We’ve got three sets of footprints here, so you’re looking for two assailants, both likely right-handed. My guess is a sock lock was used, so there won’t be any obvious damage to the assailant’s hands.”

A sock lock was pretty much what it sounded like—a combination lock inside of a sock.

Sara continued, “Vasquez somehow ended up barefooted after the initial attack. We haven’t found his shoes or socks anywhere in the cafeteria. His assailants were wearing prison-issued sneakers with identical waffle patterns. We were able to infer quite a lot from the shoe and footprints. The next location they took him to was the kitchen.”

“What about this tattoo?” Amanda was across the room, looking down at the severed hand. “Is it a tiger? A cat?”

Charlie answered, “The tattoo database says a tiger can symbolize hatred for the police or that he’s a cat burglar.”

“A con who hates the police. Remarkable.” Amanda rolled her wrist at Sara. “Let’s skip ahead, Dr. Linton.”

Sara motioned for them to follow her to the front of the cafeteria. Empty trays were on the conveyor belt, so at least some inmates had finished their lunches before the riot started.

She said, “Vasquez was about five eight, one-hundred-forty pounds. Undernourished, but that’s not surprising since he was a heavy IV drug user. Track marks on his left arm, between the toes on his left foot and at his right carotid, so we can assume he was right-handed. There’s a meat cleaver in the kitchen prep area and a lot of blood, indicating the left hand was removed there.”

Amanda asked, “He didn’t chop it off himself?”

Sara shook her head. “Unlikely. Shoe and footprints indicate he was held down.”

Charlie added, “There’s no distinguishing marks on the waffle treads from the sneakers. Like Sara said, they’re standard issue. Every inmate has a pair.”

Sara had reached Vasquez’s final resting place. She squatted down in front of another table. Everyone but Amanda followed suit.

Will’s nostrils flared. The body had been festering in the heat for almost two full days. Decomposition was well on its way. The skin was slipping off the bone. Someone had obviously shoved Vasquez’s body under the table with their foot, kicking him out of the way like dirty clothes under the bed. Streaks of blood and waffled shoeprints showed where at least two men had put him there.

Vasquez’s bare feet were caked in blood. He was on his side, folded at the waist. One hand was reaching out in front of him. The bloody stump where his other hand used to be was tucked inside his belly. Literally. Vasquez’s murderers had stabbed him so many times that his gut had blossomed open like a grotesque flower. The nub of his wrist was jammed inside his body cavity like a stem.

Sara said, “Absent contravening evidence, cause of death is likely exsanguination or shock.”

The guy certainly looked shocked. His eyes were wide open. Lips parted. He had an otherwise ordinary face, if you dismissed the bloating and dark, black crescent where his blood had pooled to the lowest point of his skull. Shaved head. Porn mustache. A cross hung on a thin gold necklace around his neck, legally allowed by the GDOC because it was a religious symbol. The chain was delicate. Maybe a gift from a mother or daughter or girlfriend. It said something to Will that the murderers had taken Vasquez’s shoes and socks but left the necklace.

“Shit. That’s shit.” Faith clamped both hands over her mask as she dry-heaved. Vasquez’s intestines hung out of his abdomen like uncooked sausage. Feces had pooled onto the floor, then dried into a black mass the size of a deflated basketball.

Amanda told Faith, “See if they’ve tossed Vasquez’s cell yet. If they have, I want to know who did it and what they found. If not, you do the honors.”

Faith never had to be told twice to leave a dead body.

“Will.” Amanda was already typing into her phone. “Finish up here, then start the second-round interviews. These men have had enough time to get their stories straight. I want this solved quickly. This isn’t a needle-in-a-haystack situation.”

Will thought it was exactly that kind of situation. There were roughly one thousand suspects, all of them known criminals. “Yes, ma’am.”

Sara nodded for him to follow her into the kitchen. She pulled down her mask. “Faith lasted longer than I thought she would.”

Will pulled down his mask, too. The kitchen was in similar disarray. Trays and food and blood were splattered everywhere. Yellow plastic markers on the butcher’s block indicated where Vasquez’s hand had been chopped off. A meat cleaver was on the floor. Blood had spilled over like a waterfall.

“No fingerprints on the knife,” Sara told him. “They used plastic wrap around the handle, then shoved it down the sink.”

Will saw that the drain under the sink was disconnected. Sara’s father was a plumber. She knew her way around a P-trap.

She said, “Everything I’m finding shows they had the presence of mind to cover their tracks.”

“Why take the hand into the cafeteria?”

“Best guess is they threw it across the room.”

Will tried to gather a working theory of the crime. “When the fight started, Vasquez stayed seated at the table. He didn’t get up because he’s not affiliated.” Inmates had their own form of NATO. An attack on an ally meant you were in the fight. “Only two guys went at him, not a gang.”

“Does that narrow your field of suspects?” Sara asked.

“Inmates tend to self-segregate. Vasquez wouldn’t have openly mixed with inmates outside his race.” The haystack had grown marginally smaller. “This feels like a crime of contingency. If a riot happens, this is how we’ll kill him. ”

“Chaos creates opportunity.”

Will rubbed his jaw as he studied the bloody shoe and footprints across the floor. Vasquez had fought like hell. “He must’ve had information they wanted, right? You don’t chop off somebody’s hand just because. You hold him down, you threaten him, and then when he doesn’t give you what you want, you take a cleaver and chop off his hand.”

“That’s how I’d do it.”

Will smiled.

Sara smiled back.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn’t answer. “Vasquez was known to hide phones on his person. Could that be why they gutted him?”

“I’m not sure they gutted him so much as stabbed him repeatedly. If they were searching for a phone, the sock lock to the ribs would’ve had a sort of Valsalva effect. There’s a reason prison guards make you cough when you bend over. The increased abdominal pressure reduces the constrictive force inside the sphincter. The phone would’ve dropped out with the first blow,” Sara said. “Besides, cutting in through the belly doesn’t make a lot of sense. If I was searching for a phone up your ass, I’d look up your ass.”

Faith had impeccable timing. “Is this a private moment?”

Will took his phone out of his pocket. The missed call had been from Faith. “We think Vasquez’s killers were looking for something. Information. Maybe a stash location.”

Faith said, “Vasquez’s cell was clean. No contraband. Judging by his art collection, he was a fan of half-naked ladies and our Lord Jesus Christ.” She waved goodbye to Sara as she led Will back through the cafeteria. Her hands cupped her nose to block out the smell. “Nick and Rasheed have narrowed down our list of suspects to eighteen possibles. No one with murder on their sheet, but we’ve got two manslaughters and a finger-biter.”