One
Her death had not been easy.
Homicide detective Carina Kincaid stared at the dead, naked corpse of the young woman, avoiding the wide-eyed terror etched on her face. Her mouth was gagged, but what drew Carina’s eye was the word slut scrawled in thick black marker across her chest. A small red rose was tattooed on her left breast.
The victim lay in a disjointed fetal position, dried blood on her legs and vicious red welts on her breasts, indicating that her murder had followed a sexual assault. In California, that made the killer eligible for the death penalty. One small step toward justice, but it didn’t satisfy Carina. This Jane Doe would still be dead.
She glanced away from the body, just for a moment, and watched the waves roll up the beach. Back and forth, calming. Her cheeks stung from the early-morning salt air, but in just a few hours she’d be tugging off her windbreaker as the sun peaked over San Diego.
When she first arrived on the scene with Jim Gage, supervisor of the Forensic Field Services Unit of the San Diego Police Department, they immediately documented that the evidence had been contaminated. Three layers of heavy-duty green garbage bags had been cut away from the body. The park ranger hadn’t been able to lift what he thought was trash, so he sliced it open. What had he been thinking?
“I didn’t think there was a body inside,” he’d said when Carina questioned him.
By the tension in Jim’s jaw, it was obvious that he was pissed. But true to form he didn’t say anything. He never said anything, which had been the primary reason Carina had broken up with him last year. She could handle his moodiness—she had four brothers, she could put up with almost anything—but his refusal to talk about what bugged him, on the job and off, was a relationship breaker.
Or maybe they hadn’t loved each other enough to make it work.
Carina glanced behind them when she heard a car approach. The coroner’s van pulled into the empty parking lot and a short, trim, well-dressed Asian man exited the vehicle. Assistant Coroner Ted Chen, the perfectionist. Carina liked it when he pulled one of her cases, even if he made her a bit self-conscious. She triple-checked her reports when he was the responding coroner, afraid to appear the novice despite her nearly eleven years on the job.
“Doctor Chen is here,” she told Jim.
“Hmm.” Jim finished photographing the body and surrounding area, glancing up as Doctor Chen crossed the sand to where the body lay. “Hello, Ted.”
“Gage. Detective.” Chen nodded toward the victim. “Was the body found in this condition?”
“The bag had been intact. The park ranger opened it.”
“Why on earth would he do that?”
Jim removed his wire-rim glasses and rubbed his eyes with his forearm. “Thought it was filled with garbage and planned on taking multiple trips to dispose of the contents.”
Chen shook his head in disgust, his thin lips a tight line. He knelt in the sand, careful to prevent further granules from rolling into the plastic. “She suffocated,” he said quietly.
“You mean she was put into the bag alive?” Carina asked for clarification.
“It would appear so, but the crime lab will need to go over the bag to confirm it,” Chen said. “See her discoloration?” The victim appeared bluish, almost purple. “No oxygen. No sign of strangulation, and no blood in her eyes or ears to indicate it, either. I can give you a better answer at the autopsy.” He glanced at his watch. “I have three autopsies scheduled this morning, but I’ll postpone the afternoon schedule to fit her in.”
“Thanks, Doctor Chen. I appreciate it.”
“I’ll have her on the table at two.”
Carina nodded, caught Jim staring at her, his face unreadable. “You going to join us?” she asked.
“We’ll see how far my team can get with the bag. We’re backlogged as it is.”
No surprise. Contrary to popular television, most evidence wasn’t processed until a suspect was apprehended and a court date set. The wheels of justice also turned the cogs of the laboratory.
Carina forced herself to stare at the victim’s face while Chen and Jim prepared her for transportation to the morgue. She looked so young. Eighteen, maybe. Was she a college student? There were two universities within spitting distance of the beach. Maybe she was still in high school.
She thought about her baby sister. Well, Lucy wasn’t a baby anymore. She was a high school senior and smart enough to go to just about any college she wanted. Their parents wanted her to stay close to home; Lucy desperately wanted to move away. But college campuses were dangerous, and Carina found herself siding with her parents on this one.
Fourteen years ago she wanted the exact same thing as Lucy—to get out from under her parents’ thumb. But that was before she’d decided to become a cop. Before she realized how truly dangerous the city could be. Before she realized that justice wasn’t always swift, and that the system didn’t always work.
That some murders would never be solved.
She turned away from the death scene and stared again at the Pacific Ocean, unconsciously wrapping her arms around her waist. It would be temperate today, as virtually every day was in San Diego. Here on the coast, the cool morning breeze loosed a few strands of dark hair from the French braid Carina wore when on the job. The tide was receding, the waves small and playful, pulling back. The shells and rocks reflected the sunrise behind her, the ocean still dark and mysterious. A pair of early-morning joggers, a man and woman, ran on the packed sand.
Had the girl been murdered here on this quiet, clean beach? Or had Jane Doe been dumped?
Carina voted for dumped, but asked the experts.
“Dumped is my guess,” Jim said. “There’s no sign of struggle, but of course the scene’s been contaminated.” He visually scanned the area to confirm his hypothesis.
Carina followed his gaze to the parking lot adjacent to this stretch of beach. The highway on the other side was beginning to bustle with morning commuter traffic. Dozens of small, outrageously expensive homes lined the opposite side of the road. A few hundred yards north was a beachside shopping area with several popular restaurants and a bar that catered to the college crowd, which, even on a Sunday night, wouldn’t have closed down until the state-mandated two a.m.
That didn’t mean the body hadn’t been dumped before two, but from Carina’s college days as well as her years on patrol, she knew this beach saw heavy traffic until the wee hours of the morning. Before two a.m. it was more than likely someone would have seen a body-size bag being tossed onto the beach.
Usually, body dumps were done when no one was around, to minimize the killer’s chances of being caught.
Though Carina couldn’t absolutely rule out the possibility that the girl had been left earlier, logic suggested that she’d been dumped between three and five in the morning. Commuters hit the road early, and by five-thirty traffic steadily passed only a hundred feet away. Sunrise had hit about thirty minutes ago.
“Do you know when she died?” she asked Chen.
He glanced up at Carina from his position next to the body. “Lividity isn’t fixed, and it’s obvious she’s been moved. Her body temperature is 86.3 degrees. But I’m not sure how being wrapped in the garbage bags would affect the loss of heat.” He glanced at Jim.
“I’ll do some research on that,” Jim said. “I’m thinking it would slow it down, but not by much.”
Chen nodded. “That would mean she died four to twelve hours ago, but I’d put it closer to four to eight hours because rigor mortis hasn’t completely set in. There’s still some movement in her larger muscles.”
Carina made notes. Ten p.m. to two a.m. Sunday night. He killed the girl somewhere else—in a car? The woods? Someone’s house? A secluded stretch of beach? She dismissed the last idea: there were no secluded areas on this part of the coastline, and the police routinely patrolled the area because of the nearby college.
Someone kills her, puts her in their vehicle, and transports her here, to a public beach, where her body would most certainly be found sooner rather than later.
“Arrogant,” she muttered.
“Excuse me?” Jim asked.
“The killer. Arrogant. Dumped her body where we’d quickly find it. Convinced he won’t be caught, thinks he’s smart.”
“Dusting off your psych degree, Carina?” Jim teased.
She rolled her eyes and smiled. Jim knew she’d taken all of one psychology class and had never graduated from college.
She walked over to the uniformed officers and instructed them to canvas the area. “Start with the houses across the street. See if someone noticed anything unusual after ten last night up until five this morning. A suspicious car, strange noise. People on the beach. Then hit the shops up the street when they open, focusing on those open past eight p.m., clubs and bars in particular.”
As she walked back to Jim and Chen she heard a car turn into the gravel parking lot. Her partner, Will Hooper, jumped out and strode across the sand toward them.
Jim shook his head. “Asshole,” he muttered.
“Give it a rest, Jim,” she said.
“Sorry, Kincaid.” Will approached with a guilty grin. “I didn’t hear my beeper go off.”
“...
--This text refers to the
Mass Market Paperback
edition.
