Where the Blame Lies(5)
Dolores’s bright blue eyes met his and she shook her head, her red curls dancing. “Nothing obvious. Cathlyn will have to determine this one. But my guess?” She paused, her voice lowering with her next words. “She starved to death.” She pointed to her ribcage. “A good amount of decomposition already and rats have gotten to her, but you can tell her ribs were very pronounced even before that.”
Zach felt his lips go thin as he took in the ravaged body under the harsh LED lights the team had strung up. Rats. Fuck. They’d been here after death, which meant they’d been here before too. Had she been left in the dark in this underground space? Had she heard them skittering around, her hands tied, trapped as they brushed past her feet? The horror of what she’d gone through pressed on his chest once more, a ten-ton brick that made his lungs ache. Death was rarely pretty, but this level of suffering, this level of depravity, made his blood run cold.
He’d have to wait to hear Cathlyn’s determination on cause of death, but some sick fuck had chained this woman up in the rat-infested basement of an abandoned house and done God knew what to her. Then he’d possibly left her to starve to death. What terrors had she survived before her heart had ceased beating? And why?
It was his job to provide motivation for the crimes he investigated, but deep down, there wasn’t any good answer. No reason that would help make any sense of this.
“Sexual assault?” he asked Dolores, his tone harsher than he’d intended.
Dolores glanced up, tweezers suspended in midair for a moment. Her eyes met his. “The body’s too decomposed for me to make a guess.”
He moved to the side of the girl’s body and looked more closely at the chain that had bound her hands, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. This felt familiar, and for a moment he was a twenty-five-year-old rookie, standing outside a hospital room, voices drifting to him from inside—
“Detective Copeland?” He looked over his shoulder and stood. It was the cop who’d arrived first on scene after the anonymous tip that had called this in. He looked slightly shaken but was managing to hold it together well. Zach was impressed. The city saw plenty of shootings—mostly related to drug crimes—the occasional home invasion, lots of family trouble, but a murder like this was a rare occurrence. Then again, he suspected you could see something of this nature once a week and still never be desensitized to it. And he had to believe that was a good thing.
“Dr. Harvey’s here.”
He nodded, though he couldn’t remember the last time Dr. Harvey showed up at a scene—she usually waited for the body to be delivered to her—but Zach understood why she was there. Again, highly unusual crime scene. Highly disturbing. Slow footsteps sounded on the wood stairs and a few seconds later Hamilton County’s coroner entered the room, dressed in a black cocktail dress, with a red wrap draped over her shoulders. Her heels were covered in disposable booties. She’d obviously just left a social event. He walked toward her. “Doctor.”
Her eyes moved past him to the victim momentarily. Dr. Harvey was an attractive older woman who carried an air of class. He’d seen her at a few city functions and knew it was especially true when she was in a dress and heels. But it was also the case when she was wearing her usual workday scrubs. “Detective Copeland.” She gave him a small smile that disappeared as quickly as it’d arrived. “Anonymous tip called this in?”
He nodded as she moved past him to where the body lay. “Burner phone apparently. No way to trace it. The call came in earlier tonight, and Officers Burke and Alexander came to check it out.”
“Identity?”
“Not yet.” There had been nothing at the scene to provide an identity. No purse or identification. He’d start working on that right away, check missing persons reports as soon as he got back to the office. He’d find out her name. He made a silent promise to the unknown woman. It was something he could return to her when everything else had been stolen.
Dr. Harvey greeted Dolores who was packing up her supplies and then leaned around the body, looking at it from every angle. She shook her head. “This girl experienced hell on earth,” she murmured and then emitted a quiet sigh. “I’d like to get her exam underway tonight. She’s waited long enough.” She leaned closer behind the girl, getting a look at her hands still wrapped in shackles. “You’re not alone anymore,” she said quietly, before she straightened, spearing Zach with her direct stare. He saw anger there, empathy. They were the eyes of a woman who had seen too much death where death did not belong. Too much suffering when there was no comfort to be given. “Come see me in the morning. I’ll have some answers for you.”
**********
Rain drummed on his windshield as he drove back to the Criminal Investigative Section (CIS) building where the city’s homicide detectives worked, the streets of Cincinnati rushing by in blurred shades of silvery gray. His mind rewound again to his very first week riding on his own after he’d been cut loose by his field training officer. He’d been assigned to guard the hospital room of a girl who’d escaped being chained in an abandoned warehouse for almost a year. Zach realized he was holding the steering wheel in a death grip and loosened his hands, taking one off the wheel and rolling his wrist, stretching his fingers. A fucking year she’d been held there, after suffering things so unthinkable that Zach still wondered how she’d survived with her sanity intact. He still thought about her sometimes at the oddest moments, and he wasn’t sure why, other than that it was the first time he’d truly understood what evil was and it had shocked him. Shocked him clear to his fucking soul. Her voice—shaking, yet clear—the trauma and . . . fierceness in her eyes. Yes, he’d seen it and been humbled by it. It had hit him straight in his gut. She’d looked like a warrior, being wheeled into that hospital. Half dead. Still fighting. Josie. Josie Stratton. Her eyes had been large and dark. Haunted. He wondered if they still were. How could they not be?