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Halifax, October 18
11:37 a.m.
“She’s been mutilated.”
Allan stopped sketching on the graph paper and looked up. From the corner of his eye, he saw Audra suddenly retract her tape measure. She began walking over, the dry leaves crunching under her footsteps.
The comment had come from Dr. Richard Coulter. The medical examiner was crouched next to the body, conducting his scene examination. The assistant ME, Eric Lefevre, stood beside him, taking photos. Jim and Harvey were busy searching the outlying area of the scene in a methodical and systematic fashion.
Allan moved closer. “What’d he do?”
“He severed the distal phalanges from the right hand,” Coulter said. “All of them. Even the thumbs. Precisely at the joints.”
Allan exchanged a small glance with Audra. Coulter came up off his haunches, carefully gauging his own steps as he moved around to the other side of the body. He collected a few bloodstained leaves covering Kate Saint-Pierre’s left hand and called Harvey over to process them.
“Same injuries here too,” Coulter said.
“He left the wedding ring,” Audra noted.
Eric added, “And a nice Garmin watch.”
Allan craned his head, peering over Coulter’s shoulder. The hand, like the right one, was missing the bones at the ends of the fingers. Jaw tight, Allan wondered if Kate Saint-Pierre had fought back; people being strangled usually did. Then biological evidence seemed the likely reason for cutting off the fingertips.
But the suspect hadn’t been overly concerned about leaving evidence behind when he murdered Mary Driscow. He’d been sloppy, amateurish. Was this a sign the man was evolving, getting more careful? Or was he just toying with them?
From those first moments at the scene, Allan told himself things would be different this time. He didn’t want to spend another year wallowing in shame and self-doubt, as he had with the Driscow case. A year wondering just whom or what he had overlooked.
The same man had murdered both women. Allan was 99 percent sure of that. The similarities were just too striking to deny. Location. Victim selection. Use of similar weapons. Same body-disposal scenario. Same signature aspect—Mary Driscow had been displayed with her top pushed up and her pants pulled down. Identical to Kate Saint-Pierre. Then came the date. Mary had been murdered on October 17 of last year, her body found later the same day.
“Looks like they were severed here,” Coulter said. “But I don’t see them.”
Allan figured the suspect had carried the fingertips off. Maybe even ditched them in a garbage barrel or recycling bin somewhere in the park. Those needed to be searched, their contents sifted through.
He looked around, feeling the sheer size of the park, every tree, every bush, the carpet of leaves. A lot of real estate surrounded them, the task of covering it all, enormous.
Additional officers needed to be called in to help with a grid search. Any homeless people squatting in the park needed to be located and questioned. One of them might’ve had a chance meeting with the suspect. Bring in the dogs too. They could detect overlooked items that still retained human scent.
“Did the suspect mutilate Mary Driscow like that?” Audra asked him.
Allan turned to her. “Huh?”
“Mary Driscow. Did he mutilate her like that?”
“No. That’s one difference.”
“Only one?”
“As far as I can see.”
Audra frowned, quiet for a moment. Her eyes went small and distant with memory. She tapped the tape measure against her thigh, the sound like the clop of a horse’s hoof.
“Bits and pieces of that case are coming back to me,” she said. “We have a DNA profile from that one, right?”
“Yeah, from a suction lesion on Mary’s breast.”
“No semen found?”
Allan shook his head. “No.”
“Condom, maybe. We’re seeing that more and more these days.”
“Yeah. But we never found a discarded condom wrapper at the scene or a used condom. Unless he took them with him. Maybe he couldn’t get off. Some men can’t during the act of rape.”
Audra chewed on her lower lip, nodding several times. “Fingernail scrapings didn’t turn up anything?”
“They turned up Mary’s own blood and skin. She left claw marks on her neck as she tried to pull the ligature free.”
Coulter interjected, “This victim has similar injuries, Detective. She was conscious and fighting for her life.”
Allan leaned in for a closer look, the harbor breeze cool on his face as it drifted through the trees with a soft whisper. He could see three scratches curving under the left side of Kate Saint-Pierre’s jaw. Several flashes went off as Eric took photos from different angles.
“The ligature left a parchmented weave pattern in the skin,” Coulter went on. “There’s extensive congestion and petechia above the ligature mark. Two—no, three more curvilinear abrasions on the right side of the neck.”
“What’s the ligature pattern tell you?” Allan asked.
“It’s a spiral weave pattern. Like a rope. The furrow is approximately half an inch wide.”
Allan nodded. Similar, he knew. Maybe even the same one used to strangle Mary Driscow.
“The body is cold and clammy,” Coulter said. “Hypostasis is fixed. Rigor is fully established.”
Audra asked, “What’s your guesstimate?”
“So many variables involved. At this point, I’ll place time of death at eighteen to thirty-six hours. I’ll see if I can narrow it down once I do the post.”
Allan said, “We’ll compare notes later. See what info we can dig up.”
For a moment, he and Audra watched Coulter securing paper bags over each hand of Kate Saint-Pierre. Then Audra held up the tape measure for Allan to see, flicking the steel blade out a few inches and letting it snap back inside.
“Wanna get back to work?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Where were we?”
Allan checked his sketch. With his pencil, he pointed off to a tree at the southwest edge of the crime scene.
“That’s the last one,” he said.
As Audra walked off to get the measurement, there came the sounds of a commotion out by the jogging trail, several voices yelling at once. Everyone froze, all heads turning toward the noise.
Someone’s voice suddenly shot above the cacophony. “Hey! Stop! You’re not allowed to be here. Stop now.”
Just visible through the gnarled branches, Allan saw a man running down the trail, heading straight for their location. A uniformed officer chased him. In lengthening strides, he was closing the distance.
Allan and Audra hurried from the grove to head the man off. As they left the trees, the officer sprang forward, catching the man high in the back and riding him to the ground. With a grunt, the two of them went sliding through the gravel, the officer on top. They stopped a few feet from the barrier tape.
Chugging air in and out of his mouth, the officer wrenched the man’s arm behind his back and reached for his cuffs.
The man arched up under the officer’s weight, dark hair falling in tangles over his forehead. Allan could see the adrenaline fuming in his eyes.
“Is it Kate?” he cried. “Is that my wife in there?”
Allan swallowed. Beside him, he heard Audra mutter, “Jesus.”
The man’s gaze washed over their faces and settled on Allan.
“Did you find her? Kate Saint-Pierre. Please, is it her? Is it?”
Heart heavy, Allan stared down at him, holding the man’s eyes with his own until he saw what Allan had seen, that it was over, that the worst fear had been confirmed.
“I’m sorry,” Allan said. “But you can’t be here.”
Over the years, he had witnessed a gamut of emotional reactions from loved ones. Screaming rampages. Crying hysterically. Fainting. Vomiting. Others just sitting in stunned silence, unable to move or speak. Allan remembered the mother who, after being notified of her daughter’s suicide, began punching him in the chest then collapsing into his arms, sobbing.
Kate Saint-Pierre’s husband squeezed his eyes shut and lowered his face into the gravel. The low guttural moan coming out of him sounded like a wounded animal.
A second officer came down the trail to help the first one pull the man to his feet. Several times as they ushered him back up the trail, his legs gave out and they had to pick him up.
Watching them, Allan shook his head.
“We need to talk to him,” Audra said.
Allan sighed. “Yeah. Not something I’m looking forward to.”
Audra appeared in front of him suddenly. “Hey. You okay?”
Allan looked at her.
“No,” he said. “No, I’m not.”
