Chapter Seven
Braddock guided his SUV onto the shoulder of the road. The strip of Triana Boulevard that ran between Johnson Road and Redstone Arsenal was deserted except for the white forensics van.
He sat there, his hands braced on the steering wheel, his gaze focused on the woods. Images from another wooded area . . . the river . . . another murder flashed one after the other through his mind. Female . . . only seventeen years old.
His fingers tightened on the wheel and his palms started to sweat.
No one messes with me.
He closed his eyes, exiled the painful visions.
Don’t look back . . . focus on the case. His jaw tightened. Shelley deserved his undivided attention. He had to do this right for her and for CJ—no matter that she hated him now.
With one last glance at the street, he emerged from his vehicle. Don’t let emotions get in the way.
All he needed was one piece of evidence to connect this homicide to the bastard he wanted to nail more than he wanted to wake up tomorrow.
He wasn’t stopping until he nailed that lowlife son of a bitch.
Where the hell was Cooper? He didn’t see her truck. Lines of frustration furrowed on his brow. His partner was supposed to be here with the techs performing the third sweep.
“Braddock!”
Speak of the devil.
Cooper materialized from the trees where the warning signs and yellow tape marked the area as officially off-limits to pedestrian traffic. She tramped from the underbrush and double-timed it across the ditch to meet him.
A tight-fitting blue tee was tucked into her equally tight jeans. She didn’t look a whole lot like a cop, much less a homicide detective. With long blond hair tucked into one of those ponytails that poked through the back of her baseball cap, she looked like a teenager who’d been up to no good.
Adeline Cooper liked to brag that she could shoot a flea off a dog’s ass from a hundred yards. Braddock couldn’t say she was quite that good, but she was tough as nails and never even flinched while cutting a perp off at the knees . . . or busting his balls.
He was going to need her to get through this.
Would she have made the same decisions as he?
He’d kept way too much to himself for far too long.
If he’d been smart, hadn’t been so damned focused on his own selfish need for vengeance, he would have allowed his partner in all the way.
Now things had gone to shit, and she wasn’t going to be happy that he’d kept her in the dark to some degree.
“You find something?” If she had, Braddock would gladly wash her big-ass truck for the rest of the summer.
His partner drove a vintage Ford Bronco, four-by-four, lifts and seriously large tires included.
She washed it once a week, by hand. She swore it was the closest thing to a baby she would ever have.
She’d hit thirty this year. He was beginning to believe her.
“Damn straight I found something.” She jerked her head toward the woods. “Follow me, Little Red Riding Hood, and I’ll show you to Grandma’s house and why I’m a detective and those dudes back there are just evidence techs.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear.” Anticipation lit, searing away some of the anxiety ripping through his gut as he slogged through the overgrown path behind his partner.
The uniform posted to protect the immediate scene gave Braddock a nod.
The central search area was under guard and cordoned off until this final sweep was completed.
Before crossing that cautionary yellow line, Cooper stopped and turned back to him.
She liked setting the stage for her reveals.
Over the past two-plus years, he’d gotten used to her need to dramatize her revelations.
“Since it hadn’t rained in forever before Saturday evening,” she began, “we didn’t find any tire tracks on the roadside.
We couldn’t determine what route had been used by our perp when he brought the victim to this location or when he split.
” She rolled her eyes. “In part because those kids and their friends trampled the area like a herd of elephants before the uniforms got here.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he reminded her, “I know that part.”
“Anyway,” Cooper said with a pointed look, “so we have no tire impressions. No shoe imprints, not even the vic’s.
Except,” she qualified, “for the sneaker treads of adolescent boys. The perp left no trace evidence behind—at least, nothing we’ve found so far.
” She gave a little shrug. “To the less experienced, less dogged detective, it might seem that this investigation is a wash.”
He motioned for her to get on with it. “You are aware that I was here for the first and second evidence sweeps. Or did you sleep through those?”
“Just bear with me, partner.” A twinkle of you’ll-see in her eyes, she turned to the yellow tape boundary. “But what our killer did leave was all the needles and crap we understand was relevant to the vic in some way. As if he was showing us a snapshot of how she lived her life.”
Braddock’s fingers tightened into fists as those snapshots flashed across his retinas, one stark view at a time.
Shelley Patterson with dozens of hypodermic syringes dangling from her skin.
And that wasn’t the worst of it. The idea of just how far the piece of shit had gone with his this-is-your-life theme made Braddock’s gut clench even now.
Self-disgust expanded in his chest.
That young woman was dead because of him.
Cutting himself some slack, that was true only in part. Shelley Patterson was dead, he reminded himself, because of her association with a total scumbag.
That scumbag was going to pay . . . for at least two of his crimes. Braddock wouldn’t stop until he’d gotten the job done.
“He was staging,” Cooper offered, her whole face gleaming with that I-think-I’m-onto-something glow.
“Staging, huh?” Braddock surveyed the scene.
The two techs were almost finished with the third sweep.
It wasn’t routine, but he’d pushed for this, called in a number of markers.
An initial sweep had been done when the body was discovered.
A second one early this morning just to make sure they hadn’t missed anything in the rain.
Now, a third and final recheck by different techs for a fresh perspective.
Braddock turned to his partner. He’d been thinking along the same lines about the perp’s heinous presentation. “To send a message?” He knew all about the messages this bastard liked to send. Sounded like his partner was on the same track.
Cooper nodded, her pleased-with-herself smile stretching into a full-fledged grin. “He even signed his work.”
“Are you serious?” How had the techs missed something like that? His partner had to be speaking in figurative terms.
Cooper shoved a pair of shoe covers and gloves at him. “Hurry, I can’t wait for you to see.”
Protective wear in place, he lifted the tape for his partner, then ducked under it himself.
The nylon rope that had been secured to a limb more than ten feet off the ground had been removed and taken to the lab with the body.
The perp had apparently used lower limbs to climb high enough to hoist up the vic, then secured the rope, since there were no markings to indicate a ladder had been used.
Shelley Patterson wouldn’t have been able to climb into that tree without a ladder, even if Braddock had had any notions of labeling this a suicide.
The plastic garbage can placed on its side a few inches from where her feet had dangled wouldn’t have provided the needed height.
It was just another part of the staging.
Then again, the ground had been hard as a rock after the long weeks without rain. A ladder might not have left indentations. That was a hell of a lot of gear to haul to a scene. Had the bastard been completely unafraid of being caught?
Of course he had. He owned this territory.
For now.
Even more remarkably, Shelley’s wrists and ankles showed no ligature marks. Had she stood by and allowed her killer to prepare the noose for her own neck?
The tox screen had revealed no drugs in her system.
The other choice was that she’d been dead already. Braddock leaned toward that scenario. The bastard had killed her and then he’d staged this scene to send the cops—to send Braddock—a message.
Until the autopsy was completed, they wouldn’t know which one of the two was the most viable possibility. But considering the details he’d opted not to release to Shelley’s sister, Braddock hoped like hell the vic had been dead when this sick bastard did his dirty work.
Her death was already on Braddock’s conscience. The idea that she may have endured immeasurable suffering . . . Well, he hoped that wasn’t the case.
Focus, pal. “Let’s see this amazing find,” he said to his partner.
She motioned for him to come closer to the tree. “Right up there.” Cooper adapted a Vanna White pose, directing his attention to the tree.
Braddock removed his sunglasses and tried to see what the hell she was talking about. It was the perfect hanging tree, that was true. Lots of nice, sturdy branches accessed reasonably easily from the ground without the aid of a ladder by someone tall enough and with enough upper-body strength.
“You can’t see it like that,” Cooper huffed. “You have to climb up there.”
Braddock shot her a look. “You climbed up there?”
She made an impatient sound. “Absolutely. I needed to see what the killer saw while he worked. You know, touch all the places he touched.”
That was another thing about his partner. She was a freak. “Okay, okay. I gotcha.”
He tossed his sunglasses to Cooper, grabbed a branch, and prepared to propel his body up onto the lowest limb.
“Don’t wrinkle those khakis.”
He didn’t appreciate the humor in her comment, but apparently both techs did.
“All the way up to the branch he used to secure the rope,” she prompted.
Since he wasn’t vertically challenged like his partner, it wasn’t necessary for him to climb onto that final branch. He could see what she’d discovered by standing on the one just below it.
Letters had been carved into the bark. He frowned, considered what the combination spelled. “How do you know this hasn’t been here for weeks or months?” Anyone, some kid or whatever, could have done this.
“Arborist.”
Braddock sent his partner a look. “An arborist? You had an arborist out here? Today?”
She nodded. “He says the work is fresh. The last forty-eight hours for sure.”
Braddock didn’t even want to know how she’d gotten an arborist out here on such short notice. On Sunday at that.
“Remember the guy I told you about with the shoe fetish?”
Jesus Christ. “I remember.” He definitely didn’t need to hear that story again. “Enough said.”
“He was more than happy to come take a look,” Cooper said with a wicked smile.
“It’s nice to have friends,” Braddock commented, distracted now by the carefully shaped letters. Whoever had done this hadn’t rushed. The work was too meticulous. Perfectly straight. Precisely spaced. Took major balls to spend this much time at the scene of a crime, before or after.
The bastard thought he was untouchable.
The idea that he or one of his minions might have staged the scene first and then come back with the body was gaining ground in Braddock’s opinion.
“I checked with information,” Cooper advised. “There are six listings with that last name. But none whose first name begins with an E.”
Interesting. He doubted it would be a name. A clue to puzzle over, probably. The killer wanted to show Braddock who was boss. This was a game to him. Didn’t matter about the collateral damage.
“Could be something.” Braddock moved down one branch, then jumped to the ground. Could be nothing. He dusted off his khakis. “Whatever it is, you know it won’t be this easy.”
“It never is.” She cocked her head, narrowed her gaze thoughtfully. “I figure it’s an anagram.”
“That makes the most sense.” He reached for his Wayfarers, then slid them into place.
“But you’ll have to knock on doors just the same.
” They’d spent most of the morning tracking down and interviewing everyone close to Shelley.
They still hadn’t located Banks, the ex-boyfriend.
But Braddock had a plan in place for that hurdle.
They’d have him before this day was over.
He wanted Ricky Banks. Though he didn’t believe for a second Banks was the killer, with the right incentive Banks just might decide he was far more afraid of losing his freedom than he was of the repercussions of seeking immunity.
“Yep,” she agreed. “Gotta follow all leads, no matter how unlikely.” Stripping off her gloves, Cooper started back in the direction of the street. “Thanks, guys,” she called to the techs as she ducked under the tape. “Gimme a ring when you finish up here.”
Once beyond the tape, Braddock shed his gloves and shoe covers.
“So, what’d the sister have to say?”
Braddock trailed after his partner, ducked to avoid a limb that went right over her head. “Not much.”
“You think she knows anything that might be useful? Maybe she heard from the vic recently.”
“She doesn’t know anything,” he assured Cooper.
“I’ve got Jenkins watching her just in case she makes contact with Banks.
” If he knew CJ, she would be pounding the pavement looking for the scumbag.
Having Jenkins keep an eye on her was as much for her own protection as it was to observe any contact.
“Good idea. About the other . . . did you tell her?”
“No.”
“That’s going to come back to bite you in the ass, partner. She already doesn’t like you. She finds out you’re keeping something like that from her, she’s going to be out for blood.”
Yeah, well, he was used to CJ going for his jugular. That was his fault too. Just something else to regret.
He paused at the street. “I’ll just have to deal with whatever she tosses my way.
” He glanced around even though he knew Cooper’s truck wasn’t here.
It wasn’t like it could be overlooked. “Where’s the monster?
” She didn’t like that he called her vehicle that, but she’d given up trying to win him over to the joys of owning something fully capable of climbing over small buildings.
“I was running a little behind after lunch.” She hunched her shoulders in one of those careless shrugs she was famous for. “I got dropped off.”
“Uh-huh.” Which meant lunch wasn’t about dining.
“About the carving.” She paused before opening the door of his SUV. “Could be the first move in a game.”
Braddock opened the driver’s side door. “Could be an invitation to play.”
“Or a riddle.” She dropped into the passenger seat and propped a sneakered foot on the dash. Braddock grimaced.
“It might”—he started the engine and pulled out onto the street—“be a reference to a place or an event.”
“True,” she agreed. “I’ll run it through the system and make some calls.”
As unnecessary as he knew it would prove, ruling out E. Noon as a name was step one.