Chapter 20
TWENTY
Durham, New Hampshire
Thursday, October 10
9:02 a.m.
Tamra Hopkins wasn’t missing.
She was dead.
Leigh jerked Ava away as the body came into sight. Left right there in the middle of the second-floor corridor of lower administration offices. A scream-like gasp escaped the fifteen-year-old’s throat as reality crashed down around them. She twisted around to push Ava toward the stairs, but the damage had already been done. “Don’t look. Don’t look.”
They couldn’t disturb the crime scene.
But Ava wasn’t in her right mind. None of them were. A sick color of green infiltrated Ava’s face a split second before she slapped her hand over her mouth. “I’m going to be sick.”
Leigh grabbed for the nearest garbage can and passed it to her, holding Ava’s hair back as she emptied all those coveted calories into the bin. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
Ford’s frame maneuvered past them. He closed in on the body and gently tested the victim’s neck for a pulse. Raising his gaze to Leigh, he shook his head. Dead. He shoved to stand, his gaze searching around the scene intently.
The two campus police officers she’d noted downstairs rushed up the stairs. Then slowed in horror.
She could read their thoughts as clearly as if they’d spoken aloud. How had this happened right under their noses? How long had it been since they’d seen Tamra downstairs? An hour? Less? Leigh couldn’t help but run through every interaction, every change in the young woman’s expression, every word out of her mouth over the past twenty-four hours.
“I don’t understand. I just saw her.” Ava tried to breathe through the next round of heaving, but it would take a few minutes to work through the shock. “Who would want to hurt Tamra?”
“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have seen her like this.” Leigh tried to rub small circles into Ava’s back, wishing it would do a damn bit of good for her own furious rush of loss. She hadn’t known Tamra Hopkins more than a day, but the young woman on the floor hadn’t deserved this. Any of this. She couldn’t stop that internal pull to check out the body. This didn’t feel like the meticulous premeditation the unsub had utilized in disposing of Alice Dietz’s remains. This was impulsive. A survival tactic. A mistake. “I’m going to take you back downstairs. Okay? We’ll get you some water, and you can rest until I’m done here.”
Man, she was really failing at this whole work–mom balance. Who the hell brought their child to a crime scene? Ava continued to clutch the garbage can—better to be safe than sorry—and Leigh set her hand at her daughter’s low back.
“No!” Ava twisted out of Leigh’s reach. “You can’t just put me somewhere out of sight and forget about me again. You said you would try harder. So try harder, Leigh.”
The girl certainly knew how to twist the knife poisoned with guilt for the kill. Leigh shifted her hands to Ava’s arms, squeezing all the love she could into that hold. It wasn’t enough. She had the feeling it would never be enough, but neither of them was exactly in a position for more at the moment. She couldn’t do this right now. They had to act fast while the evidence was still preserved.
“Ava, a girl is dead, and I’m responsible for finding out what happened to her and making sure no one else gets hurt. This is what I do, and I can’t do that job if I’m splitting my attention between you and trying to stop the man who hurt her.”
“You’re not even going to try, are you? Everything you said before, it was all a lie. You’re always going to put your job ahead of me.” The vitriol—unlike anything Leigh had witnessed—leaving Ava’s mouth invaded and pooled at the base of her spine. “I’m never going to be enough for you.”
Ava didn’t wait for an answer, ripping free of Leigh’s hold and heading for the stairs. In seconds, the fifteen-year-old was gone. Taking what little of Leigh’s heart was left with her.
“You all right?” Ford had managed to sneak up on her.
She didn’t understand how that was possible considering his size and intensity, but that wasn’t important right now. Her nose burned as she stared after Ava. Where had she gone wrong? Why couldn’t she figure this out? She wouldn’t cry at the utter failure tearing through her. Not here, and sure as hell not now. “I don’t have a choice. We have a body.”
Leigh closed in on the remains.
“I think it’s safe to say Pierce Morrow isn’t our killer,” he said. “He’s been cuffed downstairs for the past hour, but Tamra Hopkins doesn’t exactly fit our victimology.”
“She knew of Alice Dietz’s and Morrow’s affair. Told me she’d accidentally read Alice’s messages when she’d mistaken her roommate’s phone for hers.” Crouching a few inches away from the body, she took in everything. The arrangement of Tamra’s limbs. Not handled with care but as though she’d been dropped. No blood or blunt force trauma from what she could see without turning the body over. Lack of bruising around the wrists and neck. There weren’t any signs of a struggle, but healthy sophomores didn’t just drop dead. “We need to talk to her friends. Find out how long she’s been gone and what she might’ve been doing up here.”
“Can you two handle that?” Ford asked the campus police officers obviously at a loss—in shock—a few feet away. University campus police handled the same types of crimes as every other law enforcement agency. Assaults, rape, theft, robbery, car accidents. But here in pristine Durham, New Hampshire, death had made its violent entrance twice in the past two days.
Neither seemed overly committed to the task, but Leigh had to trust they’d follow through. Every detail mattered. She searched her borrowed sweats for a set of latex gloves. Right, those were in her other pants.
Ford offered a bright blue pair from above. Knowing exactly what she needed. How did he do that? First with the cuffs he’d let her borrow downstairs, then now with the gloves. Just as he’d known not to push her for a date after that kiss and to give her space where Ava was concerned. If she didn’t know any better, she would think he could read her mind. Or maybe she really was that transparent.
She snapped the gloves into place. Protocol dictated no one was to touch or search a body until the medical examiner or coroner had a chance to assess it, but the ME wouldn’t be able to get here until the storm was done tearing Durham apart piece by piece. And Leigh needed answers. She pried Tamra’s right eye open with her index finger and thumb, careful not to jar the body.
Ford’s body heat pressed her right shoulder. “What are you looking for?”
“Teshia Elborne was poisoned with arsenic and cyanide eighteen years ago, but no matter how many times the ME searched for a puncture wound, she couldn’t find it.” Nothing in this eye. Leigh moved on to the left. “It wasn’t until I was reviewing the investigation files with Morrow a few days later and Durham PD had determined Dean Groves had killed her that I noticed something off about one of the victim’s eyes. It was irritated more than the other.”
There. Up under the left eyelid. Out of sight unless you knew right where to look. She leaned back to give Ford room. “See? Same irritation in her left eye.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.” He was right above her. Close enough her breath skimmed his jawline. “The son of a bitch injected the poison into his victims’ eyes?”
“The ME will most likely find the same irritation in Alice Dietz’s eye once he’s able to complete the autopsy.” Leigh withdrew her hand, looking over the body. She’d seen too many in her life. Starting when she’d been seventeen years old. Only a couple years older than Ava was now. She hadn’t stomached it well then either. The guilt was back, trying to get her to choose between her old life and the new. But was there a right answer? She wasn’t sure.
Tamra Hopkins looked as though she’d simply been picked up and dropped in the middle of this floor. No blood or skin beneath her polished fingernails. Almost… ambushed.
“There are no signs of a struggle on her arms. No bruising or blood that says she fought back. The killer would’ve had to have separated her from the herd downstairs. Which meant she trusted whoever wanted to get her alone. She came up here willingly.” Leigh wasn’t sure who she was talking to. Herself or Ford.
“One of the other professors?” Ford asked. “Or a student?”
“They’re not the only ones in the building.” She looked up at him.
Surprise arced into the marshal’s face, and he drew back. Going still all over again. It was one of his patterns. A coping mechanism to handle the overwhelming emotions he either wasn’t comfortable with or didn’t want her to see. “You think one of the campus police officers had something to do with this?”
She tried to superimpose the two officers’ frames over the one she’d faced in the basement. One fit more than the other. A little leaner, more muscular. Someone who took his job seriously and stayed in shape, but the height didn’t match. Neither of the campus police officers was as tall as the man from the basement maze.
She’d made the mistake before of overlooking the fact law enforcement officers were themselves in the perfect position to commit murder, and she’d nearly paid for her oversight with her life. Detailed knowledge of crime scenes and forensics, automatic authority, familiarity with the campus. Maybe even the tunnels below it. It all gave their unsub the advantage in this sick game. Campus police would certainly have access to a key-coded biomedical lab where they’d sourced the arsenic and cyanide used to kill all three victims. Not to mention control of the security surveillance systems.
Leigh tried to memorize every line, every curve of the victim in front of her. They wouldn’t be able to move the body until the medical examiner got here. And who knew when the storm would clear? For now, they could only preserve the scene.
But something was wrong with this picture.
She shoved to stand, unstable. It was a wonder she was still upright after only a few hours of sleep, suffering hypothermia symptoms, running off two candy bars, and riding the emotional upheaval of raising a teenaged terrorist. But she didn’t really have a choice. “If someone was coming at you with a syringe—no matter what you believed was in it—would you hold still to let them stick it in your eye?”
“I think I would do whatever it took to make sure I didn’t get stabbed.” Ford slipped his hands into his slacks pocket, focused on the body. “But I’m one of those graced with a phobia of needles.”
“So why didn’t she fight back?” And why hadn’t she put it together until now? Teshia Elborne. Alice Dietz. It’d been right in front of her for eighteen years. Leigh pointed to the body. “Why didn’t Alice Dietz fight back? Even Teshia Elborne’s body didn’t show any signs of a struggle. Their clothes were intact. There was no indication of pulled hair, DNA in their mouths from a defensive bite, or vaginal trauma. It’s like they?—”
“Were unconscious when he poisoned them.” A brightness she hadn’t witnessed before lit up Ford’s dark eyes. It was the same feeling she experienced when a case took a turn and the pattern became more clear. Addictive and satisfying. As though her whole life had led to that exact moment. Ford turned his attention back to the victim at their feet. “He never even gave them a chance.”
“There are two ways to knock someone unconscious. Either you hit them, which leaves contusions, bruising, and blood. Or you knock them out with a quick-acting compound that can’t be detected during an autopsy.”
“There’s only one chemical I can think of that knocks out its victims without leaving a trace,” he said. “Chloroform.”
“The medical examiner agreed. Except the use of chloroform was never indicated in Teshia Elborne’s autopsy report, which confirms whoever killed her eighteen years ago,” Leigh said, “is killing these women now.”