Damaged (6 page)

Why hadn’t she called Child Protection sooner? Hadn’t she learned from her own past? Why had she waited?

She’d been persuaded by Marian MacAdam’s insistence that she had no real proof of Lisa hurting herself. But that was just scratching the surface. There were other reasons. Ones she hadn’t wanted to examine but couldn’t help drag out from under the cracked rock of her conscience.

They flailed her with their whiplike truths.
You were scared you’d hurt your client’s case for no good reason if you called Child Protection; that you’d destroy the limited faith your client had in you; and
—this one made her heart curl in shame—
destroy whatever shred of confidence Randall Barrett had in your judgment.
She’d wanted to impress Randall Barrett with her smarts, not embarrass LMB with an unfounded call to Child Protection, bringing down the wrath of a client assigned by no less than the managing partner.

Tuesday, May 1, 11:00 a.m.

T
he granary hummed with tightly controlled energy. City workers had been let in to erect a tent over the nucleus of the crime scene. Between the rain and the reporter who had been caught hanging off a nearby apartment balcony with a telephoto lens, it was clear that the scene needed tighter protection.

And it would need even more if what Kate told Ethan was true. Cold sweat mingled with the rain on his skin. He knocked briefly on the door of the command bus and pulled it open.

Ferguson straightened. She’d been hovering over Walker’s shoulder, both of them examining a digital photo of the victim’s neck.

“Got anything?” Ferguson asked. A middle-aged woman of medium height, she looked like a big-boned Scottish milkmaid except for her eyes. She missed nothing and would put up with nothing.

Ethan exhaled slowly. “We’ve got a lead on the girl.”

Walker swiveled his chair away from the computer and looked at him.

Ferguson’s eyes narrowed. “And?”

“Pretty sure she’s Judge Carson’s daughter.”

“Jesus,” Walker said softly.

“Tell me about it.”

“Who gave you the lead?”

Ethan’s eyes met Ferguson’s. “Kate Lange.”

Walker’s eyes widened. Without another word, he swiveled his chair back to the computer.

“How is she involved in this?” Ferguson asked sharply.

“She says her client’s granddaughter went missing yesterday. Gave me a description. It sounds like the girl.” He jerked his head in the direction of the crime scene.

“So her client is Judge Carson’s mother?” Ferguson asked.

Ethan shifted. He’d been so stunned to hear Kate’s voice on his cell—he hadn’t spoken to her on the phone for months—and then even more stunned by what she told him, that he hadn’t even thought of asking the exact relationship of her client to the victim.

A flush burned under his collar. Ferguson, he was sure, wouldn’t miss it. “I don’t know. She could be her mother-in-law, I guess.”

“Why was she consulting Kate Lange?”

Ethan sighed. Man, he was an idiot. “I don’t know. But I’ll find out.”

Ferguson threw him a pitying glance. “Contact Judge Carson. Find out if she’s missing her daughter.”

It was just after noon. Ferguson had called a quick debriefing for the team. Ethan walked into the war room at the station.

The tension was palpable. As he looked around the table at the detectives’ faces, he knew they were all asking the
same question: Was their naked, dismembered victim Judge Carson’s daughter?

“Heard anything yet?” Ferguson stood at the front by the diagram of the crime scene.

Ethan shook his head. “I left an urgent message. But she was in court.”

“You’d think if she was worried about it she’d just adjourn and call,” Lamond muttered.

Ethan shrugged. “She never lets anyone off the hook.” He took stock of his team. It was a good team. They had each other’s backs. “Anyone else find anything?”

One by one, the detectives gave their status reports. No sign yet of the missing limbs. “Probably in the killer’s closet,” Lamond muttered.

“What about missing persons? Did you get a match on the victim’s description?” Ferguson asked.

“We came up empty,” Walker said. “No matches.” He paused. “Maybe we should call Vicky. She never forgets a face.”

Ethan threw him a sharp glance. Was that a dig?

Walker returned it with a “Sorry, but it needed to be said” look. Ethan forced himself to relax. The guy was just trying to do his job. It was well known at the station that Vicky had an uncanny knack of recalling people’s names. They’d be negligent to not involve her.

“Okay, call her if the victim isn’t Judge Carson’s daughter,” Ethan said.

“And,” Redding interjected, “I did find a witness named—” he checked his notes “—Shonda Bryant, who said that she’d seen the victim down on Gottingen Street. At approximately 2200 last night.”

“What was she doing?”

“The girl was buying E, but she ran out of money and was going home.”

“So the killer could have lured the girl into the car and offered her more ecstasy…” Lamond murmured.

“She took it, and then got so high it would be easy to strangle her.”

“So she was strangled?” Redding asked.

Ethan nodded. “She’s got petechiae all over her face.” They all knew the significance of that. Petechiae were little blood hemorrhages caused by lack of oxygen—a classic sign of strangulation.

“Sounds like a good theory,” Ferguson said briskly. “Let’s go with that until we know what the autopsy findings are.” She turned to Redding. “Did this Shonda Bryant know the girl?”

“Said she didn’t know her name. She was lying, but I couldn’t get her to tell me any more.”

“Who was selling the drugs?”

Redding shrugged with the loose-limbed ease of a former basketball star. “She says it was some guy named Darrell, but my sources tell me she’s the dealer.”

“Let’s pick her up. Maybe that’ll convince her to ID the girl. Also, check out the other kids on Agricola Street. Give them the heads-up. Tell them to keep an eye—”

The phone rang. Normally, the meeting would continue while someone took the call. But not today. Everyone fell silent.

Ethan sprinted to the desk at the back of the room. He dug under the crime scene photos scattered on top to find a notepad. Grabbing a pen, he jotted down the date and time. The phone rang for a third time. He snatched it off the cradle. “Detective Drake, Major Crime Unit.”

“This is Judge Carson. You left a message.”

Ethan inhaled sharply. “Yes, Your Honor. We are investigating a homicide of a young girl—”

“Is it Lisa?” she asked abruptly.

“We don’t know. The victim has no ID.”

“Then why do you think your victim may be my daughter?”

“We received a tip that your daughter had been missing.”

Silence reverberated like an aftershock on the phone line.

In a choked voice, she asked, “Who called you?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t tell you that.” He cleared his throat. “Can you describe her?” He prayed Kate was wrong, that Judge Carson’s daughter was fat and blond, not thin and dark.

“Fifteen years of age, five foot four, black hair.” There was a pause. “With a ridicul—with a blond stripe down the middle. And she had a scar on her left forearm.”

They couldn’t verify the scar, but the rest of the description was an exact match. His eyes met Lamond’s. Ethan gave a slight nod. Lamond closed his eyes and crossed himself.

“Your Honor.” He was dismayed to hear the hoarseness in his voice, but, Jesus Christ, it’d been one of the more disturbing sights in his career. “I regret to inform you that the initial description matches that of our victim. I need you to come to the morgue to identify the body—”

“How was she killed?”

“It appears to be a deliberate homicide.”

“I don’t want generalities, Detective. I want the facts. I want you to tell me how she was killed. Right now.” Her voice was harsh and staccato in its delivery. It was a technique that she used to great effect on the bench.

He fought to regain control of the conversation. “Until we confirm her identity, I am unable to provide you with any specifics.”

There was a sharp inhale on the phone. But Ethan knew she, of all people, would understand the need for holdback evidence. The specifics around the M.O. was the one card the police held. They could use that information to bait a suspect.

“Fine,” she ground out. “I’ll be at the morgue in twenty-five minutes.”

Ethan knew the body—what was left of it—had already been removed from the scene. “We’ll meet you there.”

The phone went dead in his ear. He’d never been so glad for someone to hang up on him. He exhaled a deep breath.

“Man, that was tough,” Lamond said. “How’d she seem?”

Ethan shook his head. “I don’t know.” No one ever knew with Judge Carson. She never let you. But one thing he knew for sure: she’d hang them by the balls if they screwed up.

Everyone in the war room knew it, too. The tension in the room rose a notch.

“Brown, start working on the warrant for searching the premises,” Ferguson said. “Make sure every
t
is crossed. We don’t want to get caught on a technicality with Judge Carson.”

“Already working on it,” Brown said. She flipped her portfolio closed with a sharp thud and strode with measured briskness out of the war room to her desk in the bull pen. Ethan knew without looking that Walker’s eyes would be following her long, lean figure.

“Let me know when it’s ready, Brown,” Redding called after her.

“Give me twenty minutes,” she said over her shoulder.

“Come on, Lamond,” Ethan said. “We can’t keep Judge Carson waiting.” They filled out the paperwork for the key to the morgue’s secure stall, impatience shivering through Ethan’s muscles as he waited for the Ident detective to
sign it out. The key in his pocket, Ethan hurried across the road with Lamond to the parking lot holding the police vehicles, jumped into an unmarked car and drove to the morgue. They made it in eleven minutes. Good. Ethan wanted to be first to arrive. He and Lamond had just reached the main doors when Judge Carson pulled into the parking lot.

“I came straight from my office,” she said, striding across the wet asphalt toward him. She wore a stylish off-white trench coat, loosely belted at her trim waist. The rain began to make a darker pattern of wet across her shoulders. Her hair swung in a dark, sleek bob, threaded with silver and glistening with water. From a distance, she looked younger than her years. But her purposeful stride couldn’t disguise the toll the past few minutes had taken on her. Her skin was pale and crepey. Hard grooves carved a path from her nose to her mouth.

Ethan ushered her into the foyer, out of the rain. Lamond stood next to him. Ferguson had assigned him the role of family liaison on this case, but Ethan knew he couldn’t let Lamond deal with Judge Carson on his own. They couldn’t afford any mistakes. No matter how much he liked the guy, he just didn’t have the experience in homicide yet. New to plainclothes, he’d moved to homicide from sexual assault.

“Your Honor,” Ethan said, “this is Detective Constable Lamond. He is the family liaison for this case.”

Lamond stepped forward, sympathy in his eyes. “I am very sorry—”

She held up a warning hand, barely looking at him. “Let’s get this over with.”

Lamond stepped back. In silence, they signed themselves in with the commissionaire, then headed down to the
path lab. Judge Carson’s heels cracked sharply on the floor. She said nothing, her mouth clamped into a tight line, her gaze straight ahead. Tension vibrated from her body.

Ethan was sweating by the time they got to the double steel doors. He needed to prepare her for what she was about to see. He wasn’t looking forward to it. The morgue attendant signed them in, then took them over to the viewing room.

He turned to Judge Carson. She was staring through the glass at the empty room on the other side. “Your Honor, there is something you need to know…”

She stiffened but continued to stare through the glass. He wished she would look at him. He could feel Lamond’s gaze on his face.

He cleared his throat. “I am afraid that the victim’s limbs were removed.”

Her face paled, became clammy. He readied himself to catch her.

“Before or after the death occurred?” she finally said, her voice tight.

“We won’t know until the autopsy has been conducted,” Ethan said gently. “It’s scheduled to begin in several hours.”

She blinked. “How do you think she was killed?”

He’d refused to answer the question when he was talking to her on the phone at the station. But now, about to view the victim, he realized there was no point refusing to answer this question on the grounds of holdback evidence. Judge Carson would recognize the significance of petechiae. “We believe it was strangulation, Your Honor.” He turned before she could ask him any more questions. “If you could please wait here, I have to unlock the stall.”

“I’ll come with you,” she said. Both Lamond and Judge
Carson turned to follow him, Lamond bumping into Judge Carson’s back. It was almost funny. But not quite.

“I’m sorry, Your Honor. But you must do the identification through the glass. Detective Lamond will wait with you.” He glanced in Lamond’s direction. Lamond stood by the door. A subtle reminder she was not to leave. Ethan pointed to the window. “We will roll the gurney up.”

Judge Carson’s lips pressed together in a thin line.

“It is part of homicide procedure to conduct the identification this way, Your Honor. It helps prevent any trace evidence contaminating the victim…”

“I know.” She turned away. “Do your job.”

He closed the door and went to the secure stall that held the homicide victims. He quickly located the girl’s body, unlocking the tray. The morgue attendant placed the body on the gurney and rolled it up to the window.

How many times had he gone through this routine? Thirty, forty? He’d had to usher in the families of men with their faces shot off, women raped and stabbed, children beaten to death. It was all horrible. Some of it unthinkable.

Happened almost every day, if not in Halifax, then somewhere else.

And he had at least twenty more years of this to look forward to.

Judge Carson hadn’t moved. She stared at the body bag through the glass, her eyes tracing the lines of the plastic shroud. Lingering over how it rose and then dipped abruptly just past the middle.

Her fingers curled into her palms.

He said loudly, “Are you ready, Your Honor?”

Judge Carson squared her shoulders and stepped closer to the window. She threw a warning glance over her
shoulder at Lamond. He remained by the door. She gave a brusque nod. “Do it.”

Ethan nodded to the morgue attendant. She unzipped the bag over the girl’s face.

There was a split second of silence. Judge Carson’s eyes swept the girl’s discolored features. “It’s her.”

“You are sure?”

“Yes.” She turned away.

That was that. No sobs of grief, no cries of distress over the bruising on Lisa’s neck. No demands to see below her collarbone.