Linda Castillo - Pray for Silence

Gently, he places his hand against the girl’s lower abdomen, between the pubis bone and the navel. With a long, cotton-tipped swab, he indicates the jagged mouth of a hideous wound. Something pink and watery peeking out. Using a wad of gauze, he wipes away some of the blood, and I discern the dark smudge of bruising around the wound.

“The clean lines here indicate the wound was probably made by a knife or some other very sharp instrument,” the doc says.

“She was stabbed in the same area multiple times?” I ask.

“Not stabbed. I believe he opened her abdominal cavity.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I can’t imagine.” He shakes his head. “Who knows what goes on inside the mind of a man capable of this kind of brutality.”

“Can you tell me what killed her?”

“I can’t be sure until I perform the autopsy, but judging from the amount of blood from this wound, it appears as if this is the fatal wound. She probably bled to death.”

“She was alive when he did this?”

“Her heart was still beating. She may have been unconscious due to shock and blood loss. She could have been drugged, so I’ll run a tox.” He motions to her face. “She isn’t gagged; believe me, she would have screamed.”

I imagine I can hear those screams now. “Why?” is all I can manage.

“I don’t know. Perhaps he was trying to retrieve a bullet,” the doctor suggests.

“Maybe.” But the theory doesn’t ring true. It takes a special kind of cold-blooded to cut open a human body. “Seems like it would have been easier to dispose of the body.”

He heaves the sigh of a heavily burdened man. “I don’t know if it’s significant, but this wound is very close to her uterus.”

A shudder runs the length of my body. Unwanted images scroll through my brain. “I wonder if that’s somehow symbolic.”

“Could be.”

“Or maybe he’s a sadist and hates women.”

The doc shrugs. “That’s your area of expertise, not mine.”

I motion toward the second victim. “What about the other girl?”

The doc moves to the second victim. Annie Plank. She was sixteen years old. Slightly heavier. Not as pretty as her sister. It breaks my heart to see these two young lives cut short.

With the same gentle deference he used with the sibling, the doc sets his gloved hand against her abdomen. The area has been wiped clean, and I spot the stab wounds immediately. These wounds are higher, just below her rib cage.

“She was stabbed. Three times, it looks like. I’m guessing, but I would venture to say at least two of those penetrated the stomach.”

“Same weapon?”

“That would be my guess.” He grimaces. “But I’m not convinced that’s what killed her.”

“What do you mean?”

Reaching up with a gloved hand, he gently rolls back an eyelid. It goes against every primal instinct I possess, but I force myself to look. The eyeball is milky and sticky-looking. The outside corner is bloodred. My perspective is not clinical, but one of outrage, sadness and disbelief that something this unspeakable could happen in my town, a place where people should be safe. I can feel my emotions knocking at the gate. My heart beating in my face. Sweat breaks out on the back of my neck, but I’m cold to the bone.

“The red area on the conjunctival surface is called petechial hemorrhages,” the doctor explains.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard that term. “She was strangled?”

He shakes his head. “There are no visible ligature marks on her neck. No bruising.” He indicates a thin white line just to the right of her mouth, across her nose and on her left cheek. “I’m guessing here, Kate, but I would say this is some type of adhesive.”

“They taped her mouth?”

“And nose, evidently.”

“They smothered her?”

“I can’t say that definitively at this point, but asphyxiation would be my best guess.”

“They tied her up. They stabbed her multiple times. And then smothered her to death.” The words are so twisted, so ugly, it hurts me to say them. All too easily, I can put myself in this young woman’s place. I can imagine her terror and panic with a clarity that scares me. All I can think is, How could somebody do this to another human being? The part of my mind that clings to some semblance of innocence poses the question. Another side of my brain that will never be innocent again knows the answer. There are monsters living among us. People who look no different than you and me. But they lack a fundamental component of the human species: a conscience.

“Did you get a temp, Doc?” I ask.

“I did.” To prevent biohazard contamination of his notebook, he snaps off a glove and tugs the small pad from an inside pocket. “Ninety-four point six degrees.”

I do the math. “These two girls were the last to die.”

“An hour, maybe two, after he killed the people inside the house.” He sighs. “It’s possible the younger girl may have lingered a while, Kate. Particularly if the COD is exsanguination. She would have fallen unconscious.” He shrugs.

I try to look at this through the eyes of a killer, but the perspective makes me feel dirty and guilty and decayed. “Why did he kill these two girls differently than the others?” I say, thinking aloud.

The doc arches a brow as if to say, Don’t ask me.

Glock comes up beside me. “Maybe this guy’s a sexual sadist. Came here for the girls, killed the rest of the family because they were potential witnesses or they were in the way.”

I look at Doc Coblentz. “Were the girls raped?”

The doc nods. “There’s some chafing visible, but the lighting is too bad for me to draw any kind of definitive conclusion. I really don’t want to rule on that until I get them to the morgue.”

I study the two dead girls. “There’s a definite sexual element to this,” I say. “But I think there’s something else. Something obscure we’re missing.”

“Like what?” Glock asks.

“I’m not sure. There’s something about way the bodies are displayed. The fact that they’re nude. The torture aspect.” I’m thinking aloud now. Brainstorming. Throwing out theories and ideas. “It’s visual. Almost a theatrical element to it.”

Glock is good at this and we play off of each other. “Was this premeditated?” he asks.

“If he stalked them, he would have known the rest of the family would be here,” I say. “He would have known he’d have to kill them, too.”

“Maybe his compulsion is so strong, collateral damage didn’t matter.”

Doc Coblentz cuts in. “This killer spent a good deal of time torturing these two young women.” He tugs a fresh glove from his crime scene kit and works his fingers into it. “Look at this.”

Glock and I follow him back to Mary Plank’s body. Using a fresh swab, the doctor indicates a series of bright red abrasion-like marks on her buttocks, thighs and breasts. “Those are burns.”

“From a cigarette?” My mind is already jumping ahead to the possibility of DNA on a butt.

“Propane torch.”

“Sick motherfucker,” Glock mutters.

Nodding grimly, the doc directs my attention to several stripe-like bruises about the buttocks and back. “I believe these bruises were caused by that small bat.”

“He burned them. He beat them. Raped them.” I feel that quivery sensation again, as if my stomach is slowly climbing into my throat. “And then he killed them.”

For a moment the only sound comes from the chug, chug, chug of the generator.

Turning away from the girls, I address Glock. “Bag all of those tools and courier them to BCI. I want it there by the time the lab opens for business.”

Glock is already reaching for the crime scene kit where the bags and labels are stored. “I’m on it.”