Page 34 of Remember Her Name

She knew they were nearing the house when LED lanterns appeared on either side of the driveway, lighting the rest of the way. The house rose in the distance, looking as though a giant hand had spilled it from the sky. It was flat but tiered, each level getting smaller and smaller as it rose toward the trees overhead. The first floor was almost entirely glass. Inside, soft lights glowed. White couches that Josie remembered from having visited Peter Rowland here nearly eight years ago still sat in the living room. She wondered if Kim had ever set foot inside. The house seemed trapped in time.

“Car,” said one of the officers behind them.

Immediately, Josie’s gaze was drawn to the right where an older model Toyota Camry was parked beside a sculpture of several rabbits running across a log. Josie and Gretchen kept watch all around them while the two uniformed officers approached, shining their flashlights inside the car.

“Empty,” said one of them.

“Radio to the units on the road,” Josie instructed. “Give them the tag number so they can look up the owner.”

Once he had done so, they carried on, drawing closer to the house. The glow of LED lights from the driveway and along the front walk to the house was trapped by the canopy of foliage overhead, giving the entire area an otherworldly feel. Goosebumps erupted over Josie’s bare arms.

“There,” said Gretchen, swinging her flashlight and pistol to the left, toward the small helipad that sat near the front of the house.

This time there was no helicopter parked there. Beams from the recessed lights stretched upward into the darkness. Overhead, a break in the trees revealed hundreds of sparklingstars, breathtaking beauty shining down on a scene of horror. A figure sprawled across the asphalt. Josie’s heart sank. She’d known what they were walking into, but again, just like at the Cleo Tate scene, her heart filled with sadness at the loss of life and the knowledge that another family was about to be shattered.

While Josie, Gretchen, and two other officers approached the helipad, the rest of them surged toward the house to clear in and around it. Kim had had the property management company text them a code to get into the house. The four of them remaining out front trod carefully so as not to disturb any potential evidence. The smell of decomposition hit Josie like a slap in the face, far stronger than it had been at Cold Heart Creek. It was a sickening combination of rotting meat, rotting fish, excrement, rotten eggs and oddly, a hint of mothballs. Josie was used to it. One of the uniformed officers behind her gagged. The young one, probably. This might be his first dead body—or at least the first one in which the body had entered the second stage of decomposition. The odor was unmistakable. As the victim came fully into view, the gagging intensified.

From what Josie could tell, the victim was a woman. She lay on her stomach, head turned to the side, long blonde hair fanned out across the blacktop. Either she had been killed shortly after Cleo Tate’s murder, or the high heat and humidity of the July weather had significantly sped up the decomp process because her body was bloated. Immediately after death, autolysis occurred. The body’s own enzymes destroyed its cells. The bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract began to digest the intestines. Eventually, intestinal bacteria found their way into the rest of the body, causing a buildup of gases and organic compounds: methane, hydrogen sulfide, cadaverine, putrescine, skatole and indole. The gases filled the internal cavities, causing the body to swell, sometimes to twice its size.

Shouts of “Clear!” came from the direction of the house, again and again, until every last inch of the place was deemed safe.

Josie swept her flashlight along the body. Blood congealed around the woman’s torso, blending in with the asphalt. Drops of dried blood were scattered across her marbled cheeks. Her tongue bulged through her parted lips and her eyes protruded from their sockets—the gases building inside her body forcing them outward. Insects teemed in and around her body. They were more plentiful and active than they’d been at the Cleo Tate scene, which meant this woman had been left out in the elements longer.

The young officer behind her dry-heaved. “I’m gonna be sick.”

“Not at my crime scene, you’re not,” Josie told him. “Get out of here.”

He didn’t hesitate. The next thing Josie heard were his footfalls as he ran back down the driveway. Then, retching. The other officer said, “Fucking rookies.”

Gretchen sighed. “Let’s not get any closer. I’ll radio Hummel and call Dr. Feist.”

As she stepped away, Josie continued to sweep her flashlight up and down the body. While the recessed lights along the perimeter of the helipad gave off a dim glow, it wasn’t enough to make out details. Clad in a pair of jeans, one of the woman’s legs was straight while the other bent at the knee. One of her hands pressed into the asphalt beside her cheek while the other reached over her head, touching the grass that surrounded the helipad. It looked like she had tried to crawl away.

Widening her scan to the area around the body, Josie’s torch caught on an object near the woman’s feet. A knife. It was similar to the knife found near Cleo Tate’s body. The killer had left themurder weapon behind again. Once might have been a mistake born of carelessness and adrenaline. Twice was intentional.

What was he trying to say?

Josie’s radio squawked, a unit from outside the perimeter responding. “Car belongs to Stella Townsend, twenty-four, Denton resident.”

“Copy,” Josie replied.

A glance at her phone told her it was late but not too late to send someone to Stella Townsend’s house for a welfare check. Her Camry hadn’t been on the list of recently stolen vehicles. Josie radioed her request and units were dispatched. Again, she used her torch to take in the scene until her gaze caught on the next piece in this twisted killer’s game.

Gretchen returned. “ERT are on their way. Dr. Feist will be here in a half hour.” She pointed her flashlight toward the helipad. “I hope this guy didn’t put the next polaroid under her body ’cause it will be destroyed.”

“He didn’t.” Josie focused her light on one of the pockets in the back of the woman’s jeans. A square of white peeked out. “It’s right there.”

“Shit,” said Gretchen.

Hours later, after the ERT had meticulously processed most of the scene, Hummel removed the photo from the victim’s pocket. He let Josie and Gretchen see it and take pictures of it before putting it into an evidence collection bag.

Another outdoor scene. Another fragmented view of something. Blue sky filled the upper left corner of the polaroid. The rest of it was blurred but looked like the edge of a building, maybe, with white siding. Over the top of it was a darker, distorted shape that cut across the white. The eave of a roof, perhaps.

Whatever it was—wherever it was—Josie was certain it was the place where the killer’s next victim had already drawn her last breath.

TWENTY-THREE

A tingle went up Josie’s spine where Noah rested his hand on her lower back as he ushered her out of the stairwell and into the basement of Denton Memorial Hospital. They were on their way to the city morgue. Their footsteps echoed along the empty hall. This area of the hospital was always deserted. Besides the suite of rooms presided over by Dr. Anya Feist, all the other rooms were unused. The entire floor was windowless and looked like something out of a horror movie with its grimy yellowed floor tiles and drab white walls, dingy from age and dirt. As they got closer to the exam room, the combined smells of human decomposition and cleaning chemicals filled the air.

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