Torn (11 page)

Wade didn't think this was any kind of joke. “You run this path often?”

“Three times a week.” Matthew put his hands on his hips and rocked forward again, his body seemingly filled with nervous energy. “I try to get in the runs before my classes start at Worthington.”

And they were right back to the university.

Wade slanted a quick glance toward Dace. The detective nodded.

“You work at Worthington?” Wade asked him carefully.

“Yeah, yeah. I teach computer programming.” He rose onto his toes, seemingly trying to look over Wade's shoulders. “Who was that woman with you? And what's she doing with the body?”

Wade didn't answer.

Matthew's gaze slowly slid back to him. He must have read the suspicion on Wade's face because he swallowed nervously and gave a little laugh. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Did you see anyone else when you found the remains?” Wade asked him.

“No. The place was deserted. The bag was just waiting . . .”

Waiting to be found. In just the perfect spot.

Wade glanced back toward the path once more. He saw Victoria walking toward him. Her face was pale, her eyes so solemn.

He wanted to rush to her. To take her pain away, because he could all but feel that pain surrounding her. But—­Victoria might not want that. Not while they were on a case. Working as a team. So he locked his muscles. He waited for her to come to him.

And when she was close, he caught the light scent of lavender.

“You're the one who found her?” Victoria asked, staring at Matthew.

He nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I'm Matthew Walker.” He offered his hand to her.

Victoria looked down and seemed to realize that she was still wearing her gloves.

Matthew dropped his hand quickly.

“I'm Victoria Palmer.”

“You're a cop.”

“She's a doctor,” Dace cut in. “She's consulting on this case.”

Matthew looked confused. And still a little green.

Her gaze darted to Wade. “We're LOST.”

“LOST? What the hell is that?” Matthew wanted to know.

She turned to look back down Jupiter Trail. “It means we were her last option. Only we didn't find her soon enough.”

H
ER WRISTS WERE
bleeding. So were her ankles. And she'd gone hoarse from screaming.

Melissa had screamed for hours and hours, but no one had come to help her. She'd heard no sounds at all.

Just her own broken voice. Then she was no longer able to speak.

Her throat was burning. She was so thirsty and she . . . needed a bathroom. Desperately. Shame had filled her the first time she lost control of her body. She'd vowed not to do it again but . . .

I'm trapped. Helpless.

How many hours had passed? What was happening? Why was she just being left there?

Locked away. Forgotten. I could starve to death in here. Is that what will happen? Is that going to be my end?

She remembered being at Vintage. Being with Jim. Then . . . nothing. Darkness. A big blank in her mind. She didn't know how she'd gotten here.
Wherever the hell here is.
She didn't know who'd brought her to this place.

Not Jim. She wouldn't believe that. Jim wouldn't do this to her. Jim loved her. Sure, his life had been hard. She knew about the abuse he'd suffered, but Jim hadn't let that get to him. He'd been stronger than the pain in his past, just as she had been stronger. He
wouldn't
do this.

Tears were drying on her cheeks. She tried to cry out again but only managed a weak rasp.

Screams weren't working. She had to get loose. Get out.

Her bloody wrists scraped against the rough rope once more. More tears slid down her cheeks at the pain but she kept pulling. Kept twisting her wrists as she tried to slide out of the rope. She
would
get out.

She had a life waiting.

“I
HEARD ABOUT
your work on the Lady Killer case,” Eleanor said as Victoria made her way around the M.E.'s office. The remains had carefully been transported just an hour ago, and Victoria had traveled in with Eleanor to complete the exam. “I can't imagine what it was like, finding all those bodies buried in the sand.”

The image of the dead flashed in Victoria's mind. For just an instant she could smell the salt air of the ocean and she was back on Dauphin Island.
The Lady Killer.
One of the darkest cases that LOST had handled . . . and one that brought closure to many families. “I'm just glad we were able to stop the man who'd hurt them all.”
For so long.

She had her gloves on as she headed toward the remains. There had been hair on the skeleton at the scene, and she stopped now to examine it. At this point of decomposition, the hair was no longer attached to the skull. Actually, there was very little left other than the bones and the teeth.

But the hair was still there, long, heavy locks that had been tucked behind the skull. The wind had taken those locks and seemingly blown them off the skull.

Blond locks.
Only Kennedy Lane didn't have blond hair.

Carefully, she picked up the hair and put it in an evidence bag. She was aware of the weight of Eleanor's eyes. Victoria glanced over at her. “This is your city,” she said carefully. “You can be lead on this—­”

Eleanor held up her hands. “I know who you are and what you can do with the dead. I want to watch you and learn.” She motioned toward the bones. “So, please, go right ahead.”

Victoria nodded. “Fair enough.” Then she said what she'd suspected from the moment she saw the skeleton. “That hair . . . it belongs to someone else.” Bright blond hair. Clean hair—­not dirty like the rest of the skeleton.
Staged.

“Someone else?”

Yes, and all of the coincidences were adding up to a sickening total in Victoria's mind. “I think it would be a good idea to compare that hair to . . . to samples that belong to Melissa Hastings.”

Eleanor just looked confused. “Who's Melissa Hastings?”

His new victim.

Eleanor took the evidence bag.

Victoria turned back to the remains. The body was obviously that of a female. “You're a woman,” she said, dropping into her old habit of speaking directly to the victim. She knew it was creepy to others, but since Eleanor worked with the dead, maybe she'd understand.

Maybe not.

But when Victoria worked, she couldn't distance herself. She couldn't just see
the dead.
She saw the victim instead. “Your pelvis and your head tell me you were a woman. Probably a very pretty one.” Her gloved hands hovered over the skeleton's face. “Rounded chin bone, less developed brow ridges, small mastoid process . . .” She pointed behind the ear area and cleared her throat as she said to Eleanor, “All signs say she's female.”
Of course, Eleanor would know that.
Her gaze strayed to the victim's mouth. “We'll need to pull in dental records for Kennedy Lane. Because I can tell you already, this victim was Kennedy's height.” They were dealing with a completely intact skeleton. Care had obviously been taken with her.

He buried you. Kept your remains together. Safe.

That hadn't been the way Victoria's father had worked. He'd known how risky it would be to keep a victim's body close by.

No body, no crime.

So he'd made her vanish. But Victoria had known and she'd—­

“Dr. Palmer?” Eleanor's voice sharpened. “Dr. Palmer, is everything all right?”

Victoria shook her head, sending those memories right back to the darkness of her mind. She wasn't going to deal with them. Not then. “Let's get the dental records. And let's figure out . . .” Her gaze was on the skeleton. At the sightless sockets where eyes had been. “Let's figure out what was done to you.”

She leaned in closer. She could see dirt on the remains. Dirt and . . .

Spanish moss? Yes, yes, that was some Spanish moss, attached to the rib bones.

“Where were you?” Victoria whispered. “Where did he take you?”

What did he do?

Soon enough she would have answers.

Victoria took a deep, bracing breath. For an instant her gaze slid toward the black bag that the remains had been discovered in.

She remembered . . .
A body bag. Being inside. Fear. No, terror. Pain. Can't breathe. Can't—­

“How can I assist?” Eleanor asked.

And the horrible memory vanished. Victoria's heart was beating too fast. Her fingers held the faintest tremble. She clenched her gloved hands. She was
not
going to let her fear take over. That last case she'd worked in Louisiana—­it had gone to hell. But she'd survived. She hadn't broken then and she wouldn't fall apart now.

Just a bag. That's all it is. Just a bag.

“Come over here,” Victoria said, and her voice—­amazingly—­came out sounding cool. Calm. “Let's get a better look at these small indentions I can see on the bones . . .”

T
HERE WERE SHADOWS
beneath Victoria's green eyes. Her skin seemed paler than before and faint lines bracketed her mouth.

Wade rose when he saw her approaching. He'd been about to head into the M.E.'s office with Dace—­they'd spent hours combing over Jupiter Trail and one hell of a lot of time talking with the people who'd been on the scene.

One look at Victoria's face and he could see the sadness that touched her. She was always like that after working with the dead. Every encounter seemed to take a new toll on her, and he hated that.

“It's her,” Victoria said. “The victim discovered this morning is Kennedy Lane. He took her, and then, five years later, he . . . brought her back to the same spot.”

Fuck.

The M.E.'s office door opened behind Victoria. Dr. Eleanor Chambers hurried out, moving to Victoria's side. She nodded quickly at him and Dace, then gave them both case files. “She works fast,” Eleanor said, admiration in her tone. “And her hunches are dead on.”

Wade didn't look down at the file. He couldn't take his gaze off Victoria's face. There was something going on . . .

“We've got samples of the soil that were found with the body,” she said. “Soil and Spanish moss. I think she was . . . buried for the last two years. Based on the rate of decay and the condition of the bones, she's been in the ground and—­”

“The last two years?” Dace said, frowning as he asked the question. “Where the hell was she before that?”

Victoria's lips pressed together and her gaze strayed to the report in his hand. “There were numerous signs of broken bones. Her scaphoid showed repeated ­fractures—­”

Dace shook his head. “Okay, I'm gonna need a translation there.”

“Her wrist was fractured,” Eleanor supplied. “Both wrists, actually. It can be a fairly common break, right where the wrist bends . . .” Her words trailed away as she glanced back at Victoria.

“I suspect the injuries to her wrists occurred because she was restrained.” Victoria's voice was soft and sad. “If she were tied up or—­or handcuffed and she tried to get away, the fractures could have easily resulted.”

Wade's back teeth clenched. “You're saying she was ready to break her own wrist if it meant she could get away.”

“I'm saying she
did
exactly that.”

Fuck.

Victoria cleared her throat. “Based on her other injuries, I believe she was tortured, rather extensively. There were nicks on her bones—­very consistent with knife injuries. I counted . . .” She blew out a hard breath. “Over fifty-­seven nicks on her bones. All in places where they would not cause fatal harm.”

“Holy hell.” Now Dace was looking a little green. “You're saying some whack job tortured that woman by stabbing her fifty-­seven times?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “That's exactly what I'm saying, and like I told you before, her name is Kennedy Lane. The dental records were a match. We know the victim on the table in there . . . is Kennedy.” Her stare focused on Wade. “I guess LOST can consider this another found victim.” But for an instant, anger—­no, disgust?—­entered her voice.

“How did she die?” Dace wanted to know. “Was it because of the knife wounds?”

Eleanor shook her head. “None of those wounds were designed to kill.”

“Just to inflict maximum pain,” Victoria said. “And I think the killer wanted us to know that—­why else would he deliver the complete skeleton to us? He wanted us to see exactly what he'd done to her. All of the knife marks. All of the broken bones. Everything. He wanted us to know just what she endured . . . before he bashed in her head.”

Dace swore.

“Sorry,” Victoria said. Now her voice was going brittle. “That wasn't the clinical term. My apologies. The victim suffered a severe contusion to her head. A fatal blow. I doubt she died instantly from it, though. There would have been substantial brain swelling, as evidenced by the faint fractures in the skull itself. A fairly slow death, and one that could have been quite painful.” Her lips thinned. “But maybe not. Maybe after that blow, she stopped feeling anything at all. I can't say for sure on that. Only Kennedy would know how those last few moments actually felt.”

Victoria was too pale now. Too fragile. Wade wanted to pull her close. To shield her from what was hurting her.
The case. The case is doing this.
“Kennedy would have known,” he said, his words a rumbling growl. “And so would the SOB who killed her.”

Victoria's lashes fluttered. “Yes, yes, he would know.” Then she squared her shoulders. “I think my timeline is accurate. You'll find the breakdown of decay listed in the file, but based on my findings . . . I would say that Kennedy died approximately twenty-­four months ago.”