Page 10 of Girl, Undone
‘Not yet.We won’t know any more until we get the body to the slab.The good news, I guess, is that the cold has preserved the body pretty well.It’s helped maintain the conditions of the scene, so you folks might be able to catch something the perp didn’t plan on.’
Ella thought that, for a small town cop, Sheriff Bartram knew the ins and outs of homicide investigations quite robustly.‘You get many cases like this out here, sheriff?’
‘God no.Never anything like this.’
She inspected the frozen ground.It was solid, dusted with a thin layer of frost.However, two parallel lines cut through the white sheen.The ruts of a vehicle.
Ella went over to it, inspected it, then called out, ‘Sheriff, are these tracks from one of your vehicles?’
‘No.We came from the main road.What have you got?’
‘Tracks.Heavyset, non-commercial.’
Ripley came over and touched them.‘Did it rain here last night?’
‘Yeah.Sometime in the early hours.’
'Then these must have been made last night, and the cold has flash-froze them.Looks like a van or SUV to me.Sheriff, order a mold on these.If we can narrow down the make and model of the vehicle, it'll give us a good starting point.'
Sheriff Bartram tipped his woolen hat.‘Shall do.You ready to head inside?Just be warned.Try not to throw up, because what’s in that cabin, I ain’t never seen before.’
Ella prepped herself, ready to face the unknown.
But even from twenty feet away, she could already smell death through the old wood.
***
The door scraped open on a sound of stone against rust.Ella stepped in after Sheriff Bartram, and there, in the heart of this old cabin, lay a woman bound to an old, scarred wooden table that had clearly been repurposed for this display.A circle of light beamed through the cabin’s single dusty window, highlighting the gaping wound in the bound woman’s stomach.The victim was still fully clothed – jeans, black boots, white top – except everything around the stomach area had been eviscerated.The woman's head was turned to the side, and her long brown hair was matted to the wood.Her eyes were open, staring at the wall.
‘Christ in heaven,’ Ripley said.‘A heads-up would have been nice on this one, Vernon, you prick.’
In this case, Ella had to agree.‘She’s been disemboweled.’
‘Sure looks like it.’
Ella moved across the dust-covered floor toward the body.The air was thick and rotten, but the sour tang of blood was nowhere to be found.Ella stood five feet from the victim and embraced the wave of sympathy that came with proximity to the dead.This woman had been a daughter, perhaps a mother, or a sister.Her life, with all its complexities and joys, had been cruelly snuffed out, leaving behind a defiled shell of a human being.
‘Female, thirties, clothed,’ Ripley said.‘No signs of sexual assault.’
‘No wounds on the face or neck.Nothing on the shoulders.No rips to any of her clothing except around the abdomen.’
‘So our unsub captured this woman, loaded her up in his vehicle, and brought her here.This is a high level of planning.'
'Yes, it is.He brought her here for absolute privacy.Even if this poor woman screamed, I doubt anyone would have heard her.This is our killer's torture chamber.'
‘But there’s no blood anywhere.I can’t even smell any blood, just decomposition.That and animal crap.’
Ella pointed to some scattered animal droppings in the corner of the shack, probably mice.‘So he killed her without needing to penetrate the skin.Poison?Strangulation?’
Ripley inspected the neck.‘No marks around the neck, so definitely not strangulation.Poison is a possibility.’
‘But that’s at odds with what a sadist would do.He must have sadistic tendencies to go to these lengths.’
‘Maybe.’Ripley inspected the gaping hole in the vic’s stomach.‘Jesus, he dug in deep.’
Ella scrutinized the victim's identifiable features and etched everything from the contour of her cheekbones to the color of her fingernails into her memory.It was crucial not to see this victim merely as evidence, but as a person who had lived and breathed, who had a story that was brutally and abruptly ended.The face would haunt her, as did the faces of all the victims, but it was a burden Ella bore willingly.After taking in as much detail as she could, Ella turned to the centerpiece: the wound in the woman’s abdomen.
It was much more than a simple incision.It was an excavation that went right into her abdominal cavity.‘He’s torn through everything.Muscle wall, intestines, spleen, liver.He’s nearly reached the spine.’
