Where the Blame Lies(44)
Josie gazed back, her entire being filled with relief and gratitude and love like she’d never felt before. She wrapped him in a corner of the quilt and covered his head, scooting up on the mattress so she could gaze into his tiny face.
Caleb.
Her son. Her reason.
He didn’t cry, though he seemed fine, his chest rising and falling as he continued to breathe in the air of the hell he’d been born into. He blinked at her, his tiny lips puckering and her heart constricted so tightly it was a physical pain.
But then another contraction tightened her abdomen. It wasn’t nearly as strong, but she cringed through it. The placenta. She still needed to deliver the placenta. She curled around her newborn as she delivered the organ that had kept her baby alive, filtering the small, rationed meals she’d fed her body. Josie had no tools, nothing sharp, so she brought the umbilical cord to her mouth and used her teeth to bite through it as an animal would, and then pinched it between her fingers until it stopped pulsing.
Josie put her infant to her breast and collapsed back onto the mattress, bringing the quilt around them both with her unshackled hand. She knew she had to do something to stop the bleeding, but what? What could she do? In her overwhelming fatigue, all she managed was to feed her baby. Caleb’s warm mouth suctioned her nipple, and he stared up at her with curiosity, trust. Josie watched the tiny miracle in her arms for a moment, his eyes drifting shut. She felt so powerless . . . small. Forgotten.
She raised her gaze to the window where she could see the stars far, far away. One twinkled brightly and for a moment, Josie almost believed some benevolent force looked down on mother and infant where they lay on a blood-soaked mattress in a bitterly cold cement cell. “We did it,” she whispered to her baby boy. “We did it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Gather around, everyone,” Sergeant Woods instructed as Zach took a seat near the front and the other detectives and officers who had been assigned to the copycat case pulled out chairs around the conference table.
Zach glanced up at the board in the front of the room where pictures of Josie Stratton, Aria Glazer, and Miriam Bellanger hung. Zach’s gaze snagged on Josie’s smiling face for a moment. She looked a little younger, hair blowing in a gentle breeze, and she was smiling brightly as though she didn’t have a care in the world—obviously a snapshot from before the crime. Although, from what Zach knew of Josie’s past, there had never been a time when she’d been completely carefree. His eyes moved to Aria Glazer and then Miriam Bellanger, both pretty, young women with long hair and bright smiles. The copycat was obviously following a pattern as far as physical attributes, along with the other similarities in the crimes. His heart felt heavy as he looked from one woman to the next.
“From here on out, this is the designated incident room for this case,” Sergeant Woods said. “Anything related will go on that board and we’ll meet daily to discuss new leads and information.” He paused, his lips thinning as he glanced around. “I know you’re all already aware of the three women on that board and the details of the case thus far. The victim found yesterday in the abandoned basement has been positively identified as Miriam Bellanger, the UC student who was reported missing a little over six weeks ago.” He looked around. “As I’m sure all of you already know, her father is a member of city council so there will be extra media attention aimed at this case, including political scrutiny.”
There was a small murmur among the group before the sergeant started speaking again. “The Chief has scheduled a news conference for noon today where we plan on updating the public—especially the university—about the link between the original victim, Josie Stratton, and the two copycat killings. All three women attended classes on the campus. Josie Stratton and Miriam Bellanger were full-time students, while Aria Glazer took night classes that she’d dropped months prior to her abduction. Still, there’s a possibility that the killer is targeting UC students, because it’s a similarity to the Stratton case.”
Zach listened as the sergeant went through the results from both autopsies, the starvation, the words carved into each victim’s thigh. Several officers visibly cringed when crime scene photos were passed around the table.
“If you haven’t met Reynard Pickering, he’s a retired detective and profiler who worked in the department for almost thirty years. He’s studied the facts of this case and is prepared to offer his initial thoughts.”
The older man with the glasses and puff of white hair nodded at Sergeant Woods then stood and faced the group. “First, let’s talk about a copycat killer in general, and then I’ll get to what I believe, based on the facts of this case so far, you should look for.” He paused, using two fingers to smooth his mustache. “A copycat killer most often seeks to adopt a persona in order to justify their violent actions. This is called depersonalization. In essence, they become the killer they are mimicking, therefore it is not them committing the crime, not them who must account for what has been done.”
Zach remembered using similar words to describe a general copycat killing to Josie as she stood across from him in her kitchen. He glanced out the window. He wondered what she was doing right now. Jimmy had arrived at her house at ten, along with a locksmith who would change her front door locks so her prick of a cousin couldn’t use his spare key if he had one, and Zach had driven straight to this meeting. Despite that he was itching to dig into this case, he needed at least a few hours of sleep if he was going to function later and be on his toes when he needed to be.