Prologue #4
Man, she wished Chris was here. Her idea of a good time wasn’t feeling up some dead person’s organs.
Trust and believe.
“Do you have any gloves?” she asked, glancing over at the sheriff.
Instantly, he looked horrified.
Yeah, tell her about it.
“You’re not touching it, are you?” he asked. “Like opening it and…”
Oh, she had bad news. She wasn’t just opening it. She was going spelunking in it.
She glanced over.
“I don’t see a coroner here, and I need to know what he’s telling me. I have no choice. If you’re going to be disgusted, or throw up, do it outside. Techs hate playing ‘who owns this vomit’. It pisses them off.”
Uriel had been on a few scenes, and he could already tell where the stuff had come from.
The women.
“Their bodies are mutilated pretty badly, Elizabeth. Stomach areas.”
Well, that narrowed it down.
What organs were in the stomach area?
Stomach.
Reproductive organs.
She was betting on the latter because Devon was a sicko who liked sexually assaulting corpses.
As he handed her the gloves, she snapped them on and picked up the jar.
It sloshed and looked to be about one gallon in size. It said a lot about his mental status if he was giving her a uterus in a jar as a little gift.
Why?
She didn’t have one.
When she opened it, there was a vapor lock, and it released all of the smells you’d expect for someone’s removed uterus that had been sitting in a closed gas station for a day in the heat.
Yeah, this had been percolating in there for a good twenty-four hours.
At the smell, the man jumped back.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Billy said, putting his arm over his nose. “That’s fucking nasty.”
Yeah, she was aware.
Someone clearly wasn’t used to shit like this, and he was probably fortunate for that.
Her on the other hand…
This was her normal day.
Seeing a counter with nothing on it, it appeared it was getting a little goo smeared on it.
Tipping the jar over, Elizabeth dumped it out. The blob of red goo slid out, slapping onto the white counter with a splash, and oozing across it like a creature.
And she knew.
Yeah, it wasn’t a stomach.
That was for damn sure.
“It’s a uterus,” she said. “He cut it out of one of the women,” she added.
Billy was horrified.
“How did you know that?”
Oh, well, maybe because she had one, or did once before, and also because she rode shotgun with Christopher Leonard for years. This, sadly, wasn’t the first one she’d seen.
And it probably wouldn’t be the last.
“I know body parts. It’s kind of my hobby,” she admitted. “You know…since I chase the cuckoos through the grossness. I’ve seen them all raw and cooked.”
He was appalled by that.
Maybe she should be, too, but those were the facts. People did some crazy shit to each other.
“Your job sucks.”
Yeah, tell her something she didn’t know.
“I’m well aware.”
But this was her curse, apparently.
Touching the mass of goo that had once been a woman’s organ, she saw it.
And she’d been right.
Devon left her something in the nastiness. When she picked up the necklace, it was a bloody mess, but she recognized it immediately.
A rosary.
But Jesus had been violently ripped off of it. Was he really going to make this a religious thing?
Well, she’d love to see him take corpse-fucking down the religious route.
That would be new for her.
It was crystal clear that someone was going off the fucking rails. Devon was acting a fool and running amok, all while trying to tell her something.
Well, now, it was time to catch him.
“What are their names?” she asked. “Did you fingerprint them with a scanner?”
He nodded.
“We have Sister Mary Cramer, Debbie Lewston, and Tammy Bisset. One was a nun, and the other two were local prostitutes.”
Okay, that was nothing new. She’d seen more dead hookers than anyone should in their life. As for dead nuns, yeah, she’d seen a few of those, too.
Still, she was curious.
“Uriel, which one did you say was scooped out?” she asked.
He pointed at the closer one. As he did, Billy shared what they knew.
“That’s the nun.”
Why wasn’t she shocked?
That was the most predictable thing on this scene. The woman of God, who swore abstinence, was missing her uterus?
She had news for Devon.
It had been done before. If he wanted to shock her, he was going to have to up his game.
A LOT.
Elizabeth took a look at the other women. This time, not looking for clues, but at the damage he’d inflicted on them.
“He took their eyes, and he just played in the other ones,” she admitted, as Raphael headed their way. “The other women have their uteruses intact.”
Her security cleared his throat, and when she glanced up at him, he gave her the news.
“They’re going to be here in thirty,” he said. “They are en route. Doctor Franklin Monroe is on his way with the techs. He works for the city. The FBI doesn’t have any free MEs lying around.”
Oh, she didn’t doubt that Devon picked this location because of that. He’d want her to lean into what she knew by using her own ME.
Yeah, no.
Chris was NOT coming here.
That was never happening.
“What do you know about Doctor Monroe?” she asked the sheriff.
He took off his hat to mop at the sweat on his brow.
“He’s a good ME. He helps the FBI out a lot. We don’t get a lot of shit like this down here. He does double duty. He’s beyond capable.”
That worked for her.
Because the gold standard of MEs was NOT helping here with this mess, but he would go over the information when it came in.
Bet.
On.
It.
Already, Raphael was giving her the look like he double-dog dared her to even suggest bringing Chris here.
Well, she wasn’t cuckoo.
Not yet.
“Sheriff, I need you to keep this scene intact until the FBI techs and the city ME can get here. I’m claiming it as an FBI scene,” she admitted.
He was curious.
“And their families?”
Elizabeth went there.
“We’re going to notify them once we get it handled. I’ll task Doctor Monroe to do that for us. As for the crimes, we’ve got this. I’ll take that letter he sent you, and I’ll be in contact. I have your number.”
That’s when he lifted a brow.
It was clear he hadn’t been expecting a quick exit.
“Just like that? You’re not staying to work it? Doctor Monroe isn’t here yet. Are we all in danger?”
She was aware and was to the point.
“No, you’re all safe. Like I said, I know who this is, and he’s already moved on. He left me enough to know that.”
He looked confused.
In fact, her security guys did too, so she tried to explain what she’d seen in there that told her that.
“There are two clocks in here. One is set to six in the morning, and one is set to three in the afternoon. There are smudges on them of dried blood. He’s heading east.”
The man stared.
“What? How did you figure that out?”
She walked to the wall of license plates. On it, there were all different states. One of them was a plate from DC.
Where she was originally from.
It was splattered with blood, but it was the ONLY one with any blood on it. You couldn’t spray blood and only hit one target on a wall packed in plates unless it was intentional. Blood splatter didn’t work like that.
The man just blinked.
“And the clocks?” he asked.
“The six is a hand pointing down at this location, and the three is a hand pointing directionally. What is in that direction, Raphael?” she asked for confirmation.
He looked at his watch with the compass built into it.
“It’s East.”
And DC was East.
Of course, he’d take her back to the city she desperately wished to be in—her home.
The sheriff just shook his head.
“None of this makes sense. A uterus, a cross with no Jesus, a DC plate, two clocks, and because of that, you know where to go?”
Yes.
Because she played games for a living, and he was likely testing her to see if she was up to his caliber of cuckoo.
“It doesn’t need to make sense to you, Sheriff. This is a love letter to me. I know who I’m up against. So, we’ve got to go,” she said. “Hold the scene.”
With that, she walked out, Raphael and Uriel behind her.
“Was that in and out fast enough for you?” she asked, pulling off the gloves to dump them in the trash on her way out the door?”
He laughed.
“I mean, I expected at least an hour. You speed ran that bitch.”
That she did.
Why?
Because it was crystal clear what he was saying.
“I need you to get me back to the plane. I need to do some research because he’s telling us something, and I need to listen before it bites us in the ass.”
The last thing they wanted was to need a rabies shot from some cuckoo rearing up and getting them.
So, neither man questioned it.
Instead, they loaded her back up and headed back to the tarmac, where the jet sat. This had to be the quickest crime scene any of them had seen her handle, and they didn’t exactly hate it, either.
En route, they were safe. Who was going to get her inside a moving car?
As they drove, and the crime scene was in the rearview mirror, she was on her tablet.
“MATE, give me ANYTHING that’s tied to the word Corpus Christi in DC.”
As she said her name, MATE appeared beside her to work up close and personal with Elizabeth.
She was wearing a black pantsuit, her hair was pinned up, and she looked like an assistant. That was tame for her, and Elizabeth knew it.
Screw it.
She could do it nude if she wanted. All Elizabeth wanted was to stay ahead of Slater.
Lives depended on it.
Hers.
And the family’s.
“Running,” MATE stated.
Elizabeth was doing some research too. Something triggered in her head as she walked that scene. Most of it was how he’d picked a city where the FBI was short an ME.
That was bothering her.
“I want you to call Ivan,” she said to Uriel. “I need him to lock down Chris. He’s not to leave their sight, and if he even has to piss, he gets company.”
Uriel would do that, but he was hella curious.
“What pointed you at him?” he asked. “Because all I saw was a dead nun and slaughtered women. Chris isn’t Catholic, so the cross…”
She touched her stomach.
“I don’t have my uterus anymore. I lost it when I went into labor and nearly bled out. Chris barely saved my life, and we named our child after him and Tony.”
They knew the child.