In order to view the body, Melanie and Dan were required to don the white jumpsuits, shoe covers, and face masks worn by the crime-scene detectives. The suits were constructed from a space-age slippery microfiber that made Melanie feel like she was embarking on a trip to Mars. As Butch Brennan gave them a rundown of the other forensic evidence on their way down into the ravine, and the brutality of the crime became increasingly evident to her, a feeling that she’d stepped into some sick alternate universe took hold of her.
“Assailant attacked the victim on the path up ahead here. He may have used a stun gun to subdue her, based on a small lesion on the side of her neck, three marks in a triangular formation. Then he stabbed her. There’s a shitload of blood. Lucky the rain let up. It didn’t wash away,” he said, unclipping a heavy rubber flashlight from his tool belt and training its beam on a cordoned-off portion of blacktop. Melanie couldn’t see anything but wet black pavement.
“It don’t look like much to the naked eye, but it’s there,” Butch said. “When we sprayed the Luminol, the place lit up like the Fourth of July. We took infrared photos and samples of the victim’s blood. We also got what we believe to be samples of the killer’s DNA.”
“How’d you get that?” Melanie asked.
“The victim was sexually assaulted, and we swabbed. Plus she had long fingernails, and we took scrapings from under ’em. From that, and the defensive wounds on her arms, I’m betting she got her licks in. Our subject’s walking around with some nasty scratches and maybe a few contusions into the bargain.”
“So you’ll submit those DNA samples to the FBI database for comparison?” Melanie asked. As reluctant as she’d been to come out, her brain was kicking in now, working on the puzzle.
“We’ll do that. Not to rain on your parade, but just remember you only get a match if your killer was gentleman enough to provide his DNA profile to the FBI in advance. Otherwise there’s nothing in the CODIS database to match our sample to,” Butch said.
“I understand,” Melanie said. “Now, from the spatters, you think she was actually attacked here in the Ramble? Not attacked elsewhere and dumped here?”
“The attack definitely happened here,” Butch replied.
“Huh,” Melanie said, interested. “What’s a woman doing walking around alone in the Ramble at night?”
“Oh,” Butch said, “you mean because it’s—”
“A major gay cruising location. Suzanne Shepard was a reporter in this town for a long time. You’d think she’d know that. Besides, it was raining. Not a terrific night for a jog in the park.”
“The forensics can’t tell us why she was here,” Butch said. “But maybe they’ll tell us a thing or two about why she was killed. To me, looking at the brutality of the crime, it fits with a PCP or meth killing.”
“PCP’s over, and there’s no meth in New York,” Dan said, shaking his head.
“That’s not true; meth’s everywhere now,” Melanie said. “DEA’s been bringing us a lot of those cases.”
“Whatever drug it was,” Butch said, “I’m thinking maybe a junkie confronted her, tried to rob her, she resisted, and it went south from there. The uniforms who notified next of kin radioed back that the victim was wearing diamond earrings and a gold Rolex when she left home this morning, which she ain’t now.”
“Would a junkie rape her, though?” Melanie asked. “The rape strikes me as more consistent with a random sex crime.”
“I hear you, but on the other hand, would a rapist rob her?” Butch asked. “This scumbag went through her wallet. We found it next to the body with streaks of talcum powder visible on the leather. The cash was gone, and her driver’s license. But the credit cards were still there. That’s a little unusual. Most killers who boost a wallet just grab the fucking thing and run.”
“Talcum-powder marks. What’s that about?” Melanie asked.
“Surgical gloves. They must’ve been wet from the rain, and the residue transferred. We found powder spots on her clothing, too.”
The little hairs on the back of Melanie’s neck stood up. “What kind of junkie wears surgical gloves? That sounds like a psycho-serial-killer move. Maybe even somebody experienced, who’s committed similar acts before,” she said.
“A sexual sadist?” Dan asked. “That would fit with what he carved on her stomach.”
“Either way, it sounds like a random killing. I don’t like that,” Melanie said.
“Random is a lot tougher to crack than something targeted,” Dan agreed.
“What do you think, Butch?” Melanie asked.
“From what I’ve seen, nothing points to the victim knowing her attacker. The stun-gun mark tells me he had a plan to subdue her, so it’s not like he was somebody she trusted, who was counting on getting close before he attacked. As for the writing on her stomach, it’s hard to say. Could go either way—a robbery, a sex slay. Or even somebody who hated her show, though God knows, that don’t narrow it down much,” Butch said with a chuckle.
“I never saw that show,” Dan said. “High Crimes, right?”
“Yeah, what a load of crap,” Butch said. “She was always slinging the muck about famous people, digging around in their dirty laundry. But listen to me. I watched it.”
“You and a lot of other people,” Dan said.
“Hmm, I bet she had a lot of enemies,” Melanie said thoughtfully.
“Anyways, getting back to what I was saying,” Butch said, “after he stabbed her, he dragged her across this patch of dirt. We got a few footprints, so we’re making some casts for you for trial.”
Butch directed the flashlight beam down at a section of ground that was studded with rectangular wood frames containing hardening plaster.
“Then he tossed her over the edge of the ravine like a sack of garbage. Boom. She lands down there. He goes down after her. It’s nice and private down there. We believe the sexual assault took place in the ravine, after the stabbing. And now let’s go take a look at what’s left.”
Melanie nodded, and she and Dan followed Butch wordlessly down into the ravine. The bottom was soft earth covered in ferns and underbrush and bathed in cold white light from the klieg lamps. In the otherworldly glare, Melanie felt like she was sleepwalking. Space-walking was more like it. As Butch led them toward the body, and the gamy smell grew stronger, she felt numb. She’d been through the crime-scene wringer before on other cases. You’d think it would get easier, but far from it. Lately the job only got harder.
They were right upon the victim now, yet the body was barely visible. The ground sloped down toward the lake, and the victim had landed with her head pointing in that same direction. Her head, torso, and upper legs disappeared into the thick underbrush, obscured by low bushes and dripping ferns. Only her lower legs and feet stuck out, twisted oddly inward. The right leg was completely naked and glowed a dead white punctuated by dark clumps of dried blood. The left leg was partly bare and partly twined in a coiled mess of blood-sopped khaki pants and underwear, its foot still clad in a tan moccasin.
“We photographed the area with the leaves covering her, just like this, which is how we found her. Then we held ’em aside and took pictures of the wounds. After the ME bags her and hauls her off, we’ll cut away all the brush and do a final sweep for anything we missed because of the ground cover.”
“Okay, good,” Melanie forced herself to say. Part of her wanted to run, and part of her knew she needed to stay now and bear witness to this horrible crime. God, human beings were evil.
“He taped her hands and mouth. Plain packing tape like you could buy in any hardware or moving-supply store. We can try to print it, but again, he wore gloves, so my guess is we’ll come up empty. I’m gonna show you her face so’s you trust my ID, but I’m warning you, it ain’t pretty. Ready?”
Melanie nodded mutely, and Butch used his probe to sweep aside the wet ferns that obscured the victim’s head.
Suzanne Shepard’s mouth, visible through strips of blood-smeared plastic packing tape, was twisted into a grimace of the starkest horror. Her blue eyes were open and vacant, but wide with shock, and the black blood that had sprayed up to dot her face looked like so many flies swarming. She’d died in agony; you could see it in her expression, and yet the cool, beautiful TV star was still recognizable in the gruesome corpse. Seeing a celebrity in the flesh always felt surreal. Melanie’s occasional close encounters—Mary Tyler Moore buying a sweater at Bendel’s, Kelly Ripa eating ice cream with her kids—had been disorienting just because it was bizarre to realize that television stars existed in real life. But a famous person dead, and brutally, horribly so? Beyond weird.
“It’s definitely her,” Dan said. He took Melanie’s arm to steady her, looking concerned, and she managed a nod to let him know she was okay. Butch was right. She did have a strong stomach. She could handle this, and she liked that about herself. She took a deep breath through her mouth so she could get oxygen without inhaling the stench of blood.
“Here’s what we think is a stun-gun mark,” Butch said, using his pointer to indicate three tiny burn marks arranged in a triangular pattern on the side of Suzanne Shepard’s elegant neck. “Public place, it makes sense he would stun her and gag her to reduce noise.”
“How long would a stun gun knock her out for?” Melanie asked.
“It wouldn’t knock her out at all,” Dan said, shaking his head. “To make somebody lose consciousness, you have to maintain the electrical connection between the stun gun and the skin for several seconds. That’s harder than you’d think. Probably he just shocked her enough to get the jump on her.”
“Now get a load of this,” Butch said. “The main event. This part, I need to be careful, because it’s important. We took pictures, but the ME’ll want it clean for the autopsy.”
Butch knelt down and carefully held aside a low-lying branch that had concealed the woman’s torso, then shined his flashlight beam directly on it.
“Jesus!” Dan exclaimed, recoiling.
Melanie gasped and jerked her eyes away, closing them instinctively to shield herself from the monstrous sight. But it stayed with her anyway, vibrating against her eyelids, so after a moment she opened them again, swallowing hard to fight back the sour taste rising in her throat.
A pink cotton sweater was bunched up near the victim’s underarms, and a lavender brassiere hung loosely down from her right shoulder. She’d been stabbed many times with tremendous force. Her left breast was half-severed. Gaping slash wounds covered the rest of her upper chest, exposing internal organs that looked like nothing so much as meat at the butcher’s counter. But her stomach had been spared, and stood out white and unmarred except for the message the killer had sent. The letters were carved with unexpected precision: BITCH, in boxy capitals that had been formed by joining together straight-edged cuts that oozed smears of blood.
“Look how neat it is,” Butch said. “Like he had all the time in the world. I bet the autopsy’s gonna say the knife he used to write on her was different from the murder weapon. Something small and sharp, a box cutter, maybe, or a scalpel. We recovered the murder weapon, and just eyeballing it, it’s too fat to make those nice, neat cuts.”
Butch let the leaves fall back into place and stood up.
“You got the murder weapon?” Dan asked.
“Yeah,” Butch said. “Guy threw it down toward the lake and we found it lying on a rock. Sloppy. Typical resin-handled hunting knife with a ten-inch steel blade. Nothing unusual enough to trace easy. We’ll print it and all, but we won’t get anything, seeing as he was wearing gloves.”
“What about the stun gun?” Dan asked.
“That might be easier to bring back to an individual purchaser than a knife. A lotta guys hunt, but not too many electric-shock people,” Butch said wryly.
Somebody called to Butch from above.
“Oh, the footprint casts are set. I gotta go pull ’em up. But you two relax. Stay as long as you want,” Butch said, like he was inviting them to sit by the fire.
Dan turned to Melanie, who stood solemn and silent, her eyes glued to Suzanne Shepard’s blood-drenched legs protruding from the leaves. They reminded her of the Wicked Witch’s legs sticking out from under the house in The Wizard of Oz, a sight that had never failed to make her tremble with fear as a child.
“I’m sorry,” Dan said. “This one was worse than I expected. You must hate me for bringing you here.”
It took her a second to pull her eyes away and meet his gaze. “I hate the killer, not you. Anybody who could do this to another person isn’t fit to be called human. I bet it’s some jerk who’s done this to other women, too.”
“That’s why I like what I do for a living,” he said meaningfully. “We make a difference. We can get him off the streets. You can.”
“You’re right,” Melanie said, sighing deeply. “I’m in.”