Love you to Death Read online

  “Where did it come from?” he asked, working hard to put an edge of clinical detachment in his tone.

  “Some teens found it along the river and brought it to the hospital.”

  Great. They’d probably destroyed the scene, assuming they could even remember where it was.

  “I assume there’s a reason you called me instead of whoever had the pleasure of investigating the kids’ story.”

  “I’ve always loved jigsaw puzzles. How about you?”

  “Not really.”

  “You should give them a try. They’re incredibly relaxing and satisfying.”

  Ed preferred his satisfying relaxation in the form of a cold beer or a hot woman. “Sure. I’ll get right on that. Is there a point here?”

  “I have an eye for matching pieces, which is why I saw the match right away.”

  “What match?”

  “The body you brought in this morning? This hand goes with it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am. The sawed ends of the bones are a perfect fit. A jury might not be convinced without a DNA test, but I’m confident the results would come back positive for a match on tissue samples.”

  Ed trusted her judgment. He’d worked with Dr. Foster before and she’d always been completely competent and professional. For a child.

  “Who was assigned the case?”

  Dr. Foster handed Ed a file folder. He flipped through the pages until he found the report and the cop who’d written it. “Mind if I make copies?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Thanks.” Ed turned to leave, glad to be getting out of there.

  “Wait. I didn’t tell you the cool part.”

  Oh, no. Anything she thought was cool was going to end up making him sick. As it was, he was never going to be able to eat off one of those lunch trays ever again.

  “What?”

  “The hand is less decayed than the body it belongs to.”

  “So, what? The guy kept it in a freezer or something after he dumped the body?”

  “He must have, but there’s something odd. See these marks here?”

  Ed looked because he was paid to, not because he enjoyed it. She pointed at the severed edge to small dots spaced evenly along the skin.

  “It looks like there were sutures here,” she said.

  “The hand was sewn on?”

  “Yeah, only there were no matching marks on the body.”

  “Then what?”

  Dr. Foster shrugged. “I’d only be guessing, but it seems odd to have the stitches here unless the hand was sewn onto someone else. Or something else, I suppose.”

  That pizza was not going to stay down much longer. “Did you see any sign of sutures on the wrists of the other handless Jane Does?”

  “No.”

  “Could you have missed it?”

  “No,” she said with total confidence. “I’m good at what I do, Detective Woodward.”

  “Of course. I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t. I’m just trying to figure things out here.”

  “Besides, the last two bodies were different blood types than this one. If someone had tried to transplant a hand, the tissue would have been rejected immediately.”

  “So, some guy is lopping off women’s hands to sew them onto someone else? Like black-market organ transplants?”

  “If the person who did this was connected to that kind of business, then why didn’t he take the heart, kidneys, and liver? There’s a huge market for those.”

  “I have no idea. I’ll run the prints on the hand and see if our Jane Doe shows up in the system. Maybe that will give me a lead to work.”

  Ed checked the file, saw that Dr. Foster had already taken fingerprints from the severed hand.

  “I’ll ask around online and see if any other MEs have seen anything to help make sense of this.”

  The idea of a bunch of MEs chatting online about dead body parts gave him the creeps. “That would be great. Thanks. Anything else you can tell me about the girl?”

  “I haven’t opened her up yet, but I can tell you that she was young, thin, with very little muscle mass. She might have been starved for a while before her death. The only thing the body was missing—besides the obvious—was a small patch of skin on her back.”

  “How big? Could it have been scraped off by rocks in the water?”

  “Two inches square, and no, it was definitely removed by someone. The cut was too perfect to be accidental.”

  A trophy, maybe? One of the other bodies had also been missing a square of skin, but the others had decomposed too badly to tell if they also had the same missing piece. It was something to look into. He’d go back over the ME’s reports again to be sure he hadn’t missed it.

  “Anything else that might help ID her?” he asked.

  “She had no scars. In the file, there’s a photo of the bird tattoo on her right shoulder. That might get you somewhere.”

  It wasn’t likely, but he’d give it a shot anyway. “Thanks, Doc. Call me if you find anything else.”

  “I always do.”

  Ed left, and instead of going back home, he went to the station. Might as well get to work. Sleep wasn’t coming anytime soon tonight.

  * * *

  Bob Tindle was waiting for them by the time they got back to Ashley’s house. Elise pulled up beside his car, praying he’d managed to get a search warrant for the security footage at Sally’s.

  “This isn’t good,” said Trent.

  He’d been quiet the whole way back, and Elise hadn’t felt much like trying to hold up a one-sided conversation.

  “Why not? He must have already gotten the warrant.”

  “Not this fast, not at this time of night. Something else is up, or he wouldn’t be here in person so late—not after my wake-up call early this morning.”

  “Maybe he’s here to tell us we’re grounded—that he doesn’t want us working on the case anymore.”

  “Maybe,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  Elise turned off the engine and unbuckled her seat belt. “I’m not going to stop, Trent. I don’t care if he wants me to or not.”

  Trent gave her a brief look that verged on pity before he got out of the car and shook Bob’s hand. Bob didn’t smile in greeting.

  She scrambled out of the car as fast as her ridiculous shoes would allow. Her feet hurt like crazy, and she was glad to be almost out of her sister’s half-size-too-small shoes. She teetered around toward where the men were already speaking in low voices. She couldn’t hear what they said, but Officer Bob’s face was grim, and Trent’s jaw tightened. He swallowed and nodded at what Bob had said, then Trent turned his head and caught her gaze. His blue eyes were bleak from whatever Bob had told him, and shining with sympathy. He reached out toward her.

  Elise stopped in her tracks, her body going still with shock.

  “No,” she said.

  Officer Bob’s mouth turned down in grim acceptance and he let out a weary sigh. “We should go inside.”

  So he could tell her that Ashley was dead. That’s why he’d come here. That’s what he’d just told Trent. “No.”

  “It’s not what you think, Elise. We don’t know anything,” said Trent.

  She couldn’t move. She couldn’t take another step. Her worst nightmare was coming true, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. The best she could hope for was to stay suspended in time, here at the moment before her world was shattered. She couldn’t stand to hear the words.

  Trent came to her and tipped her chin up so that she was forced to look at him. “A woman is dead, but we don’t know if it’s Ashley.”

  The officer let out a disapproving grunt. “We don’t know it’s not either. We need to go inside and talk.”

  Talk? About what? How could they not know if it was Ashley?

  Trent wrapped his arm around her and led her toward her sister’s house. He took her purse from her numb fingers and dug in it until he found the painted key. He unlocked the
door and let them all inside. Elise let him do it. She wasn’t really there to stop him. She was hovering above everything, suspended in the agony of impending doom.

  When he eased her down on the puffy purple couch, Elise went. When he pushed a cup of water into her hands, she took it.

  He sat down beside her, close enough that his thigh brushed hers, but she couldn’t feel it. She was numb. Reeling in shock.

  A woman was dead. It might be Ashley.

  “Tell her,” said Trent.

  The officer sat on the edge of the chair. His knees bumped the coffee table Ashley had made out of old vinyl record jackets. She’d glued them together in crooked stacks, arranged in a dizzying shift of bright color. A slab of glass etched with peacock feathers sat on top of the twin stacks.

  Ashley’s sketchbook lay open, a set of pencils close at hand, like she’d come back any minute and pick up where she left off.

  “The body of a young woman was recovered early today. They don’t have an ID on her yet, but she’s about the right height and build. Can you tell me if your sister had any indentifying marks?”

  “Marks?” asked Elise, trying to get her mind to work so she could make sense of his words.

  “Scars, tattoos,” explained Trent.

  Elise went blank. “I… can’t remember.”

  Trent took the cup from her hands and set it on the table. He took her cold, limp fingers and pressed them between his, warming them. “Did she ever have any surgeries?”

  “No. She was always healthy.”

  “What about tattoos? Did she ever tell you about getting a bird tattoo?”

  Elise shook her head. “I don’t think so. She likes change too much for something so permanent.” But Ashley loved peacocks. Maybe she had gotten one, but Elise couldn’t bring herself to ask them what kind of bird. She didn’t want to know.

  “Look at her,” said Bob. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She’s not going to be able to help until she calms down.”

  Anger at the officer’s toss-away attitude helped burn off some of the fog in her brain. “I’ll do whatever I have to to help Ashley.”

  “Then think harder. Did your sister ever get a tattoo?” asked Bob.

  “Not that she told me about.”

  “What about piercings?”

  Elise nodded. “Her left ear was pierced twice. The right once. She said she got her nose pierced for her twenty-first birthday, but I haven’t seen her since then.” Why hadn’t she made more time to visit Ashley? Why had she let her career become a higher priority than her sister?

  The officer rubbed his eyes as if they stung. “Those piercings aren’t going to help us ID her. Sorry.”

  “Why not?”

  “You did great, Elise,” said Trent, cutting off whatever Bob had been about to say. “If you remember anything else, make sure you tell us, okay?” His voice was gentle. His tone careful.

  He was hiding something.

  “Why won’t knowing about her piercings help? If this has something to do with Ashley, I have a right to know.”

  “We don’t know if it is Ashley. There’s no point in putting yourself through this if you don’t have to.”

  “Putting myself through what? I’m already dying inside, not knowing if the woman you found dead is my sister. How much worse can it get?”

  “Plenty,” said Trent.

  Bob shook his head. “I don’t like it either, but she’s going to find out from the news soon anyway. I’d rather her hear it from me.”

  “Hear what?” Elise nearly screamed it.

  “The woman was decapitated. They haven’t yet located the head.”

  Oh, God, no.

  The world slipped out from under Elise, leaving her reeling and stunned. Her vision failed, casting her into blackness. She reached out for something to grasp onto and found herself pressed against something warm and hard.

  A sob of agony tore through her, ripping her apart.

  Sweet, precious Ashley. Headless.

  Elise couldn’t breathe. The force of her grief was too much, too heavy. It was going to crush her. It was going to drive the life right out of her.

  She wished it would hurry the hell up and kill her.

  “Just go.” She heard the deep male rumble of Trent’s voice vibrate against her ear. “You really should get that search warrant before it’s too late.”

  “I will, but first, we should call a doctor. Get her sedated.”

  “No. Everything will still be there when she wakes up. She’s strong. She’ll be better in a minute.”

  Better? Elise was never going to be better again. Her world had come to a screeching halt and nothing else would ever make it spin again.

  Ashley was dead. Elise had let it happen.

  Another jagged sob ripped through her and there was nothing Elise could do to stop it.

  “Leave the file,” said Trent.

  “It’s police property.”

  Trent’s voice lashed out like whip. “Leave the fucking file, Bob. I’ll bring it back to you tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow? Didn’t he know there weren’t going to be any more of those? How could there be if Ashley wasn’t around to see them?

  From a world away, Elise heard the sound of a door shut. A car started, drove away.

  “We don’t know it’s Ashley,” said Trent.

  A sliver of hope speared through her, making her heart start beating again. “We don’t?”

  “No. It could be, but what if it’s not?” He was stroking her hair and over her naked back. She could feel that now, the slow, gentle sweep of his hand.

  Elise opened her eyes and tried to find some sense of reason, some shred of calm. Tears blurred her vision, and all she could see was Trent’s lap wavering through a sheen of tears.

  “How do we know?” she asked.

  “You’d have to look at some pictures. Do you think you could do that?”

  No. She didn’t want to see that lifeless body. She didn’t want to have those images burned into her memory.

  But Ashley needed her to do it. No one else knew her sister as well as she did. She loved Ashley enough to put her own wants aside. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “When you’re ready,” he told her. “No rush.”

  His hand kept moving over her hair and skin, soothing her with the repetitiveness of it—the lazy stroke of warmth over her chilled skin.

  Somewhere in the room, a clock gave off a muted tick, marking the passing seconds.

  Elise managed to get control over her emotions enough to stop the sobs that shook her body.

  Ashley might still be alive. She had to look at those pictures and see for herself. She couldn’t give up hope. What if Ashley was still out there, needing her?

  What if identifying her body was the last thing that Ashley ever needed from her?

  Elise pushed herself away from Trent. The shoulder of his gray shirt was soggy from her tears. Under other circumstances, she would have been embarrassed, but there was no room for that now. She was already dealing with too much. Embarrassment seemed petty and selfish, somehow.

  “Better?” he asked her.

  She couldn’t look him in the eye. She didn’t want to risk seeing sympathy shining there. If she did, she was afraid she’d crack, break down again into a swampy mess of hysteria.

  “Show me.”

  Trent leaned forward and took a file folder from the coffee table. “Let me look first, okay?”

  Elise gave him a shaky nod, willing to put off this horrible task a few seconds longer.

  “I’m going to cover up part of the photo—the part you don’t need to see.”

  She knew exactly which part he was talking about—the place where the head should have been.

  Her stomach twisted and she sucked in a deep breath to steady it. Throwing up now would only make her feel weak, and she couldn’t face this if she was any weaker than she felt right now.

  “Are you ready?”

  “No. Show me
anyway.”

  Trent pulled the photo out of the file, using both hands to cover up parts of the image. Elise focused on the part she could see, doggedly ignoring the rest.

  The woman’s body was the wrong color—too pale. Too blue. Her arms were skinny, her collarbones protruded, but her stomach was distended, stretching her skin. Her legs were long. Her pubic hair was dark blond, trimmed into an unnaturally small patch.

  Did Ashley do that? Elise had no idea. It wasn’t something they’d ever discussed.

  What else hadn’t they discussed? Elise thought her sister told her everything. Apparently, she’d been wrong.

  “I can’t tell,” said Elise.

  Trent pulled the photo away and tucked it back into the file. “That’s okay. It’s hard to tell from a photo. I’ll check to see if we can get a DNA test done.”

  “Won’t that take awhile?”

  “Weeks, likely. You might be able to expedite it if you pay a private lab to do the work yourself. We’d still have to get the okay to take a sample from the body.”

  Elise couldn’t wait that long. She couldn’t stand not knowing. “I want to go see her.”

  “What?”

  “I want to go see the body in person. Maybe I could tell better if I was there.” Standing close enough to touch her, close enough to feel the chill of her dead body.

  “We can do that if that’s what you really want, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “I won’t be able to hold my fingers over the body. You’ll see everything. Do you really want that image in your head?”

  “No, but I have to know.”

  Trent’s jaw tightened, making him look harder. “You didn’t notice, did you?”

  “Notice what?”

  “The fact that I was covering up her hands, too?”

  Elise had been so consumed with not looking where his fingers covered the picture that she hadn’t consciously taken note. “No,” she whispered.

  “Yeah. Her hands were missing, too. If it is Ashley, I don’t want you to see her like that. Do the DNA test. Wait for the results.”

  “I can’t. I have to do this. Now. Tonight.”

  “Damn it, Elise. You’re going to regret this.”

  “I can’t regret anything more than I already do. I should have been living with her, taking care of her. If suffering through some personal trauma is my punishment, then that’s what I’ll do.”