Vulnerable (Morgans of Nashville) (11 page)

“Hopefully, she marked him up good,” Rick said.

“Be interesting to know if our killer is in a DNA database.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice.” DNA in a database wasn’t a given. If this guy had never been arrested, it was very possible law enforcement possessed no record of him.

Jake studied the facial features discolored with decomposition. She’d not been a beautiful woman, but remembering the pictures in her room she had a spark in her eyes and a dimple in her cheek. She was someone’s child. “I hope she gouged the hell out of this guy.”

Dr. Heller carefully closed the fingers and laid the hand gently down. She didn’t hide the satisfaction when she said, “I’d say she put up a good fight.”

“She was found in a remote part of Percy Warner Park,” Jake said. “Did he grab her and take her there?”

“I don’t think so. I think she went willingly. I found lubricant in the front pocket of her skirt.”

“Lubricant?” Jake tapped his finger. “So she follows him to the park thinking it’ll be fun and games and then he, what? Strangles her. She panics. Scratches him. Takes off running until he finally catches her and, really pissed at this point, drags her back to the cave to torture her.”

“At some point she was penetrated,” Dr. Heller said. “Judging by the vaginal bruising, my guess, it was not consensual. However, no traces of semen.”

“The killer likely used a condom,” Rick said.

“Or,” Dr. Heller said, “he used something else to penetrate her other than himself.”

Jake muttered a curse.

“If he knew about the cave, he was familiar with the park,” Rick said. “Fact, I’d say he knows it intimately.”

“Makes sense,” Jake said.

“How was she found?” Dr. Heller asked.

“Guy walking his dog. The dog was running free and found the cave. But judging by the smell, it was a matter of time before someone found her.” He rubbed his forehead. “Anything else you can tell us about her?”

Rick shifted as he did when his hip bothered him. “Dr. H., anything you can tell us about the bones of the other two victims?”

“I’ve an assistant arranging the bones so they can be photographed. As Georgia suggested, one body is female and the other male. Judging by the length of the femur bone, I’d say the female stood about five foot five and the male at six feet.”

“That would be consistent with the descriptions of Bethany Reed and Mike Marlowe.”

“I’ve not had a chance to really study the bones in great detail, but I have taken dental x-rays of the teeth. I’ve requested X-rays from Bethany Reed’s dentist so I can compare.”

“Any thoughts on cause of death?” Jake asked.

The method of murder often left indicators on the bones. A knick from a knife. A dent in the skull from blunt force trauma. A hole from a bullet. A break in a pelvis that had once been very vascular. A snap of the small horseshoe-shaped bone at the base of the neck called the hyoid. However, sometimes the manner of death wasn’t recorded on the bones, in which case, the medical examiner would begin more extensive testing.

She folded her arms, shaking her head. “The female’s skull appears to have a hairline fracture in the back. I don’t think that injury was enough to kill her, but certainly enough to stun her. I’ll get a better idea when I dig into the examination. The male however has a hole to his right temple. He appears to have been shot in the head.”

“He shot himself?”

“That, I don’t know yet. I need to analyze the entrance and exit holes more carefully.”

Impatience nipped at Jake. “Great. Call me as soon as you’ve got anything here.”

“Of course.” Dr. Heller adjusted her protective goggles and pulled back the sheet, exposing Elisa Spence’s body. Jake shifted, doing his best to remain objective and view the body before him as evidence and not as a person.

Rick cleared his throat and grimaced slightly.

Dr. Heller selected a scalpel from the instrument tray and made a Y-incision in the chest. After she peeled back the flesh, she reached for bone cutters to open the sternum. The two detectives stood and watched as she began the process of autopsying Elisa Spence.

By the time they left the exam room, they had confirmed that Elisa Spence was healthy and fit, had maintained a good weight, strong bones with no breaks, and no signs of drug use with a needle. Despite clean living, she’d died hard, in a manner no one deserved.

The detectives stripped off their gowns and made their way down the elevator and out the front door. The air was warm, the afternoon sun brilliant in the western sky. These kinds of details rarely got past Jake, especially if he were fresh from an autopsy. “Life is so fucking fragile, so fleeting,” he said. “And yet everyone thinks they’re owed tomorrow.”

Rick shook his head. “What makes a girl who’s smart and has such a bright future go into the woods with a near stranger? So damn stupid.”

Jake shook his head as he reached for dark sunglasses in his breast pocket. “Sex always trumps smart.”

Rick drew in a deep breath and shifted his weight as if working tension out of his body. “How could anyone be so starved for attention?”

Teenagers mostly don’t think beyond the moment. Didn’t stop. Didn’t consider. Jake wished the hell they did, but they didn’t. He reached for his cell and checked his messages. None from Georgia, but that wasn’t a surprise. “You didn’t do anything stupid when you were that age?”

“Yeah. I did plenty. So did Deke and Alex. Hell, Alex almost got himself killed falling off Miller Falls. But luck was with us.”

“What was Georgia like as a teenager?”

“Much like she is now. Demanding. Hardworking. She loved Mom and was closest to her of all us kids. She also took it the hardest when Mom died.”

He’d heard once from Buddy about how Georgia had suffered when her mother died after a long battle with cancer. The old man, who’d been a rock for so many years, also looked broken and lost when he spoke about his late wife. “You Morgans are one hell of a tight-knit group.”

Rick cocked his head as he slid the phone back into his pocket. “Buddy and Mom made sure of that.”

Jake shoved his hand in his pocket, his fingers absently turning the pocketknife over and over. “I want to put out a BOLO on the guy who met Elisa in the coffee shop. We’ll use Jenna’s drawing.”

“Good.”

“Scruffy guy with a beard and jeans in Nashville. Hell, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a guy like that in this town.”

Rick arched a brow, a smile teasing the edges of his lips. “Said by the guy with the beard.”

He rubbed the neat whiskers on his chin. “My beard is always neatly trimmed and never a bird’s nest like this character’s.”

“How long have you had that damn thing?”

“Twelve years.”

“Why grow it?”

Jake had grown the beard long ago for a woman who liked them. She was thrilled when he told her it was just for her. And later, after she was gone, well, he couldn’t bring himself to shave it off. He scratched his chin, never stopping to wonder what Georgia thought of it. “Fashion statement.”

The detectives moved toward the car. Jake slid behind the wheel while Rick rode shotgun. He fired up the engine, glanced in the rearview mirror, and backed up. “I’ve read up on Mike Marlowe in a few of the old files, but I want to track down some of the people who knew him. The kid had a hot temper and was considered a bully by many.”

“Best place to start is with his old man, Dalton Marlowe. He’s champing at the bit for a visit.”

 

J
ake and Rick pulled into the exclusive gated community located ten miles north of Nashville. They drove down the freshly paved road peppered with manicured flowerbeds and well pruned trees towering over them.

“So how did Marlowe make his money?” Jake asked, as he drove down a long private drive.

“Started off in law, then real estate and from there bought up distressed homes, then flipped them. The guy did fairly well. Didn’t set the world on fire, but had the great fortune to marry a rich woman.”

Jake pulled into a circular drive and parked in front of a brick home that had to be ten thousand square feet. They stepped out, pausing to take in the long staircase that led to massive dark oak front doors.

“He also has a penthouse in the city center,” Rick said.

“The wife was loaded?” Jake said.

“Yeah. He couldn’t have touched this kind of community on his own.”

“Mike Marlowe, kid with the silver spoon,” Jake said. “Think he could be alive and also our killer?” He thought about the hours of interviews Amber gave to the cops. “Amber always defended him in her interviews. Were they sleeping together?”

“Several cops asked her the same questions multiple times,” Rick said. “She said no.”

“And you believe that?” Jake asked.

“I’ve no idea. I’ve not spent enough time to get a read on her. She sure as hell looks like she couldn’t hurt a fly, but that’s not what makes her dangerous.”

“If Mike Marlowe killed Bethany and Amber saw it, she might have become hysterical and run. She doesn’t look where she’s going and falls. He thinks she’s dead and his life would be spent in a cage, so he returns to the cave, walls it up, and shoots himself.”

“Maybe,” Rick said.

“Dalton won’t be ready to hear that his kid was a killer,” Jake said.

“I only report the facts.” Rick shifted his hand, nudging the handle of his gun as he stared up the staircase.

“Let’s see what Daddy has to say,” Jake said.

Rick followed Jake up the stairs and resisted the urge to button his jacket as the doorbell echoed inside the house. Marlowe had met with Deke, but this would be their first meeting. Jake pulled his badge from his breast pocket, as steady footsteps clicked in the hallway and the door opened to a short round woman dressed in a black dress and white apron. She wore her gray hair back in a tight ponytail.

“I’m Detective Jake Bishop and this is my partner, Rick Morgan. We’re here to see Mr. Dalton Marlowe.”

A frown deepened the lines at the corners of her dark eyes. “Come in. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

They waited in the marble tiled foyer surrounded by modern paintings featuring bold, striking colors. A curved staircase hugged the wall and led up to a landing that wound along a hallway of closed doors. From the ceiling, a large chandelier made of dozens of crystal teardrops hovered above them. Not one stick of furniture cost less than his annual salary.

Before either detective could comment, hard determined steps marched toward them from deep within the house. The door to the parlor on their right swung open.

Dalton Marlowe was tall and slim with a fit build. He wore black dress pants, a white shirt opened at the collar with sleeves rolled up his forearms, and polished loafers. Short gray hair, brushed back, accentuated a face with chiseled angles and lines etched deeply around the mouth and across the forehead.

“It’s about time I got an update. I’ve called the station a dozen times since the news started reporting this morning. How the hell did they get the scoop before me?”

Jake bristled a fraction, reminding himself to smile. Always smart to play nice with the big boys with political juice until the gloves had to come off. “I’m Detective Bishop and this is my partner, Detective Morgan. We’d like to talk to you about Mike.”

Frown lines deepened. “What about Mike?”

“Bones were found in a cave today at Percy Warner Park.”

“I heard the reports. I don’t care about an unnamed girl. I care about my son.”

“Is there somewhere we can sit and talk?” Jake did not want to have this conversation in the hallway.

A shadow passed over Dalton’s eyes as if he braced for their conversation. He nodded toward the side door and headed toward it without extending an invitation to follow. Jake, never one to be easily put off, followed, figuring if the old man had an issue, he could say so. Rick followed in step.

They moved down a long hallway painted a creamy white and carpeted with a rich, plush light tan rug. Hanging from the walls were a collection of black-and-white photos. One quick glance told Jake they featured Mike. As a small boy at Halloween. As a young football player. With his father on a tropical beach. In Paris. All images of Mike and his father. No pictures of any woman who looked as if she could be his mother.

Marlowe pushed open pocket doors and moved into a large library. The centerpiece of the room was a tall stone fireplace surrounded by bookshelves filled with leather-bound books, various trophies, and more pictures of Mike and his father.

Marlowe moved to a side bar displaying crystal decanters filled with a host of liquors. He removed the top on one and poured the nutty brown liquid into a tumbler. He drained it in one swallow.

Jake removed his notebook from his breast pocket. “We discovered the remains of two females and one male in Percy Warner Park. One female died a couple of days ago, but the second female and the male were found in a back chamber of the cave. They’ve been dead at least five years.”

The man’s sallow face paled. “Is it Mike?”

“We haven’t identified the bones of either victim yet, but expect to within the next twenty-four hours. We have your son’s dental records on file for comparison.”

“Jesus H. Christ.” Marlowe refilled his glass and tossed the soothing liquid down in one shot.

“Can you tell us about your son?” Jake asked, as he reached in his breast pocket for a pen. “Was there any hint of trouble before he vanished five years ago?”

“I told all this to the police countless times five years ago. Can’t you read a fucking file?”

Jake clicked the pen a couple of times. “Doesn’t hurt to go over it one more time with your help.”

Marlowe raised his glass, his index finger pointing at Jake. “You’re not even sure the body is Mike’s. This could be a mistake.”

“Possibly, but not likely. The skeletal remains suggest a male in his late teens who stood about six feet. That fits Mike’s description.”

Marlowe’s jaw clenched. “Mike was a popular kid. Not the smartest, but one hell of a football player.”

“No one made any threats against him?”

“No, none that I’m aware of. He was an eighteen-year-old boy. He wasn’t under my thumb all the time and boys will be boys. If Mike really fucked up, I heard about it and could clean it up.”

“Was he friends with Bethany Reed?”

“No. She was a mousy kid like her mother. Smart. Useful when he needed tutoring, but overall, forgettable.”

Jake watched Marlowe closely. “What about Amber Ryder?”

The man’s face thinned into a contemptuous frown as if he tasted something foul. “She was trouble. If there’s anyone that you should be chasing, it’s her. That bitch remembered what happened in the woods.”

“The doctors corroborate her claim of amnesia as possible given her head injury,” Jake said.

“She’s smart, conniving, and trouble. Don’t believe her.” He refilled his glass, but this time took only a small sip. “She’s in Dallas. I can give you her address if you need it.”

“You know where she is?” Jake asked.

“I’ve kept tabs on her for five years, waiting for her to make a mistake.”

“So you didn’t know she was back in Nashville?” Rick asked.

Dalton’s faced hardened with hatred. “I did not. How long?”

“Arrived on Monday.”

Dalton moved to a large picture window and stared out over the green landscape. His body stilled as if the weight of the news settled on his shoulders.

“Was Mike ever depressed?” Jake asked.

Marlowe didn’t face him for a long moment before he turned. “Is this some kind of fishing expedition? Why would you come into my home and ask me about my son’s mental health when you know Amber Ryder is here? Anybody ask her why she returned to Nashville?”

“One of the folks on our team called her. She was a prime witness in the case five years ago and it made sense to re-interview her. She states she is here to help.”

Dalton laughed, but the sound held no hint of humor. “Right. Amber is here to help. Did she tell you her memory has miraculously returned?”

“She still has no memories of those days,” Jake said.

“Where is she? I want to see her.”

“Not now.”

“You’re not going to tell me what to do.”

Like hell. The old man might have opened the case, but now that it was wide open it belonged to Jake. He might have his own doubts about Amber, but until he had solid proof, they stayed within his team. “We wanted your take on Mike.”

“Why?”

Tension snaked up Jake’s spine as he stared at the older man. Whatever slack he wanted to cut this guy had thinned rapidly. “Sir? About Mike?”

Dalton shook his head and then downed the remains of what was in his glass. “Christ, the cops were all over that park five years ago. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve driven through since then myself. Hell, I even hired people to comb those woods.”

“This is a small cave with two chambers. It could have been easily missed. And the older bodies were in the back chamber.”

“Shit.”

“What can you tell us about Mike?”

The old man’s eyes sharpened as he set down his glass. “He was a great kid. The best a father could ever ask for.”

“Mike got into some trouble when he was fifteen. He vandalized several cars in the school parking lot,” Jake said.

Marlowe frowned. “He was a good kid. But even good kids sometimes do stupid things. I paid for all the damage.”

“Your son wasn’t depressed?”

“Hell no, he was not depressed. I resent you asking the question.”

He ignored the man’s bluster. “I also read an interview of a teacher who said Mike could be disruptive.”

“He was a boy. A high-energy, athletic boy who did dumb things. I never denied that. But he was a good kid until Amber got under his skin.”

“They were dating?”

Marlowe shook his head. “Fucking would be a better description.”

Jake studied the hard lines of Marlowe’s face. “Someone is sending her threatening texts.”

He looked amused. “Threatening texts?”

“That’s right,” Rick said. “She received several while in Dallas.”

A mirthless laugh rumbled in his chest. “And you think I might have been the one to do that?”

The man’s disdain for Amber was clear. “Why don’t you like her?” Jake asked.

He rested his hands around the empty glass. “She’s a liar and a manipulator. Other than that, I have no opinion of her one way or the other.”

Jake shifted tactics. “Your wife passed away when Mike was a freshman in high school.”

“You seem to know so much about my family. Why don’t you tell me?”

Tension thumped the back of Jake’s skull like an annoying flick of a finger. “I’m asking you, sir.”

Lips flattened into a rigid line. “Susan was never a strong woman and she struggled for most of our marriage with many illnesses. However, she did love Mike. He was her whole life. About three years before he vanished she was diagnosed with cancer. It killed her.”

“She came from a wealthy family?”

“She did.” He shook his head. “And just in case you’re wondering, when she passed, her family money went into a trust for Mike. He was slated to inherit next week as a matter of fact. He would have been twenty-three in just a few days.”

“How much money was in the trust?”

“Millions.”

“And if Mike were dead?”

Frown lines deepened. “I pray every day he’s not.”

“But if he were dead or declared dead, what would happen to the money?”

A muscle tensed and released in his jaw. “Then the money would go to me. Mike has no other living relatives.”

“Make you a really rich man,” Rick said.

“I don’t like what you’re insinuating,” Marlowe growled.

Jake’s phone buzzed on his hip and he glanced at the number. Dr. Heller. “I need to take this.”

Marlowe’s jaw tightened and released. “Sure. Why not? Take as long as you want.”

Jake moved into the hallway and dialed back the doctor’s number. It rang twice before she picked up.

“Detective,” Dr. Heller said. “I have dental X-rays on my desk.”

“And?”

“And, I can say for certain that the female is Bethany Reed and the male is Mike Marlowe.”

A ray of light streaming through a skylight cut across the foyer’s tiled floor. “You’re sure?”

“Bethany had two front teeth replaced when she was twelve. She wrecked her bike and flew over the handlebars. She went headfirst and struck the curb with the side of her face. Broke two teeth and ended up with a bridge. That is an identical match to the skull. Mike had a distinct pattern of fillings in his mouth and had a right molar pulled after it was fractured during a hard tackle.”

Jake dropped his voice a notch as tension climbed up his back and clamped around the back of his head. “Okay, doc. When you have more information, please feed it to me.”

“I have preliminary information that I want to confirm before I share. I should have more to tell you tomorrow.”

“Understood.” Jake pocketed the phone and returned to the room where Rick was talking to Mr. Marlowe. “That was the medical examiner’s office.”