Nowhere Pure, page 5
Frank leaned back against the sink and let out a low whistle. “Well, it’s creative, I’ll give them that. Can’t imagine those silos get much attention, not unless they’re being sold. Why anyone would want to live in such a dark dungeon is beyond me—you’d have to be a doomsday prepper to buy one of those.”
The words stuck in Cole’s mind. She thought of the room in the silo, and Ginny’s claim to have seen a face—a smiling face—in the doorway. Was the killer a prepper, someone who believed a nuclear holocaust was imminent? If so, what did that have to do with murder?
She was still pondering this when Frank pushed off from the counter and moved toward the body. He carefully pulled the sheet free, revealing a young woman with auburn hair, high cheekbones, and wondering, wide-spaced eyes.
“Nicole Beck,” Cole said, her stomach sinking as she recalled the picture she had seen in Newbury’s office of a smiling young woman in the prime of her life, ready to take on the world. Nicole was almost unrecognizable now, not because of any disfigurement to the body but because the light had gone out of her along with the life. Her skin was gray, like the fine ash of burned paper, and her lips stuck fast together as if sewn that way, though Cole knew Frank had a lot of work to do before making any efforts to embalm the body.
Frank’s bushy eyebrows rose, and he looked at Cole with curiosity. “You know her?”
“Bureau chief already gave me the name,” Cole said, her eyes never leaving Nicole’s face. “I think one of the officers identified her.”
Cole wanted to study Nicole’s face a few moments longer and try to imagine the beautiful young woman she had been, but her eyes were drawn as if by magnetic force to the collar of ugly bruises that wrapped around Nicole’s throat.
“Strangled?” she asked, more as a formality than anything else.
Frank nodded. “A chain, of all things. I don’t see it very often—it’s an unwieldy weapon, and there are far more convenient alternatives, such as rope—but occasionally I’m surprised. You can even see flakes of rust pressed into her skin.”
He pointed, and the two agents leaned close.
“I’ll be damned,” Callaway murmured. “Must’ve taken a lot of strength.”
“Oh, yes,” Frank agreed. “It was a thick chain, based on the pattern of the bruises, so this was no easy task.”
“Defensive wounds?” Cole asked, glancing at the victim’s hands. The nails were clean and undamaged.
Frank shook his head. “Not that I’ve discovered. There is grime on the hands, but she could have picked it up from just about any surface in that environment.”
“Could have been walking around in the dark,” Callaway said. “Feeling her way.”
The thought sent a chill down Cole’s spine. Was it possible the killer had lured Nicole in somehow, and she had entered the silo of her own volition like an ant crawling into a spider’s web?
“If you look at her feet,” Frank said, “you’ll see they’re quite dirty.”
Cole studied Nicole’s feet, which were dark with grime. “Was this how she was found? Barefoot?”
Frank nodded. “It appears she may have been stumbling around in the dark for a while before your killer attacked her.”
Like a game of cat-and-mouse, Cole thought.
Her attention returned to the victim’s neck. Following a hunch, she asked, “Is it possible to tell anything about the killer based on the bruising?”
Frank arched an eyebrow. “Besides the fact that he’s a sick bastard? As a matter of fact, yes. If you look closely, you can see that the bruising is more severe on the left side of the neck—left to us, right to her.” He pointed. “If you imagine the killer striking from behind, then the natural inclination of a right-handed person would be to pull right while a left-handed person—”
“Would pull left,” Cole said. “So, you’re suggesting the killer’s left-handed?”
“Suggesting, yes. It’s by no means a certainty, but it’s a working theory.”
Cole filed this tidbit of information away. It didn’t make a great deal of difference on its own, but there was no telling when such a small detail could prove pivotal in identifying the killer.
She glanced down the length of Nicole’s exposed body, searching for signs of injury or any other clues as to what had happened to her. She noticed a bruise on the woman’s hip and pointed at it.
“Any idea what that’s from?” she asked.
“Bumping into a wall would be my best guess,” Frank said. “A lot of dark turns in a nuclear silo, I imagine.”
“How old is the bruise? Can you tell?”
“Based on the coloration? Not very. In the last twelve hours, I’d say.”
Cole nodded. It seemed highly likely—though by no means certain—that Nicole had received the bruise while in the silo, which brought up another question.
“Is it possible she was being carried?” Cole asked. “Maybe the person carrying her bumped her against the wall, and that’s how she got the bruise?”
Frank rubbed thoughtfully at his face. “Not likely, based on the position of the bruise. I think the most obvious solution is the best one here.”
Cole glanced at Callaway, who nodded solemnly back. “And if that’s true,” he said, “that suggests she was walking around there on her own two feet—not carried in after she was killed.”
Cole nodded, thinking the same thing. Frank watched this exchange, frowning.
“Sorry, am I missing something?” he asked. “Wasn’t she found hanging in the silo?”
“She was,” Cole agreed, “but it’s not unheard of for a serial killer to murder his victim, then hang the body afterward. Some killers are very particular about how they display their victims.”
“Like a trophy,” Frank murmured, frowning. “Yes, I suppose I’ve heard of it often enough before.”
Cole fell silent, pondering what had happened. “What about restraints?” she asked, turning her attention to the victim’s wrists. “Any sign her hands were tied behind her back?”
Frank shook his head. “Far as I can tell, she was completely free.”
“He must’ve had a gun on her, or some other weapon,” Cole murmured. “He forced her to walk through the silo, then killed her and hanged her.”
“But how’d he get her there in the first place?” Callaway asked. “According to the file, she was an admissions counselor at Cibola College. What reason would she have to go poking around in a nuclear silo?”
“And she left work at her usual time, apparently without even the smallest inclination that anything was wrong,” Cole added, remembering what Newbury had told them.
Her partner nodded again. “Looks that way. Left at six o’clock, should’ve been home around seven or seven-thirty.”
What, Cole wondered, had happened on Nicole’s way home? Had she been ambushed in the parking lot? It was a large campus, with plenty of places for an attacker to hide. Or had she made another stop, perhaps picking up gas or a few groceries?
“How did he convince her to go with him?” Callaway asked. “Did he brandish a gun, a knife? Maybe pop up behind her while she was driving, give her directions for a little detour?”
Frank cleared his throat, and the two agents looked at him. “I might be able to help with that,” he said. “I found traces of some chemical clinging to the skin around the victim’s mouth.”
“Chloroform?” Cole asked.
Frank shook his head. “No, not chloroform, but maybe something similar. I won’t know until I run some tests…but based on all the evidence I have, I’d say it was used to knock the victim out.”
Cole nodded and leaned back, growing thoughtful. She imagined Nicole Beck locking up her office after a long but fulfilling day evaluating and counseling potential students on their possible fit with the college. She saw Nicole walking down the tiled hallway, smiling and waving now and then at colleagues, the young woman’s mind already turning to thoughts of the evening as she pushed open the glass door and stepped outside. She imagined Nicole putting the window down while driving home and feeling the warm air caress her face, stepping into her home, kicking off her shoes, plopping down on the coach, and letting out a sigh of relief as she leaned back and closed her eyes.
The only problem was that Nicole had never made it home. Not according to her neighbors, anyway. And her car—what had happened to her car? Was it sitting in some grocery store parking lot, waiting for someone to notice how long it had been there?
Or did the killer have it?
Frank pushed a rolling table close to the body, then studied the tray of gleaming tools on top. He snapped on a pair of gloves and lifted a scalpel.
“You don’t have to leave,” he said, “but I warn you: If you stay, I’m going to ask for your help.”
As accustomed as Cole was to the sight of dead bodies, she had no interest in participating in an autopsy when her time could be better spent elsewhere.
“Thanks for your time, Frank,” she said, glancing at Callaway to see whether he had any further questions. Callaway, however, was already moving away, clearly having no desire to watch Frank perform the autopsy.
“No problem,” Frank said, smiling. “I’ll call you if I find anything interesting.”
As Cole and Callaway returned to the parking lot, Callaway said, “So, where does this leave us?”
Cole frowned, thinking. The sound of their footsteps was loud in the narrow corridor.
“It leaves us,” she said, “with some key details. Our killer is physically strong (he had to be to hang those bodies), knows his chemistry, and is probably left-handed. It may not seem like much, but it’s a lot more than we had an hour ago.”
“Could be homeless, too, considering the fact he was staying in that silo.”
Cole fell silent as they pushed open the swinging door and stepped outside. Sunlight glittered off the windshields of the parked vehicles, and an eighteen-wheeler rumbled past the hospital, spewing dark smoke.
“What is it?” Callaway asked, studying Cole. “Something’s on your mind.”
“I can’t help thinking,” she said, “that our killer’s like a spider. He lures his victims to his silos, where he traps them and kills them.”
She paused, her heart heavy as she came to her next thought.
“The only difference is, our spider’s web may span hundreds of miles and dozens of silos, and if we spend too long in the wrong place, there’s no telling how many fresh victims he may catch.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“We might as well be throwing darts in the dark,” Callaway said, leaning back and wiping his mouth with a napkin. “We just don’t have enough information to go on.”
Cole and Callaway were sitting at a diner, surrounded by the remains of their lunch—a few forkfuls of carne adovada, a few spoonfuls of green chile stew, and a lonely tamale—and discussing how they might find the killer.
Cole understood Callaway’s discouragement. She also knew, however, that they could not allow such discouragement to get to them if they were to have any hope of solving the case.
Dragging a blue tortilla chip through her stew, Cole scooped up a chunk of tomato and bit down on it. “Let’s refresh,” she said thoughtfully, dusting her hands. “What do we know about the killer so far?”
“He’s careful,” Callaway said. “Didn’t leave any witnesses or incriminating evidence, at least not that we’ve found. He knows what he’s doing.”
She nodded. “So, maybe the kill nine months ago wasn’t his first. We should check whether there are any cold cases involving victims discovered in nuclear silos.”
Callaway shook his head glumly. “Someone already ran a search.” He tapped the case file sitting on the table next to Cole’s glass of water. “No help there.”
Cole sighed, trying not to let this discourage her. “Okay. So, maybe he’s new to all this. There’s no rule that states a killer has to botch it the first time—after all, if that was the case, we wouldn’t have nearly as many serial killers.”
Callaway said nothing. He just stared out the fingerprint-smudged window at the small park across the street, watching a pair of children chase one another down a slide.
“Then there’s the fact he’s left-handed,” Cole went on. “Physically strong too.”
“Neither of which narrows down our search much.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Cole agreed, picking up her spoon and stirring the remains of her stew. It felt a little like they had come to a dead end. She was not afraid of dead ends, however. A case was like a maze, full of twists and turns—and, yes, dead ends as well. It didn’t mean the maze was impossible to solve, but rather that one needed to back up and try a different route.
Cole decided to take the same approach here.
“Maybe we focus on the chemistry piece,” she said. “The killer could have a background in chemistry.”
Callaway glanced at her, suddenly engaged in the conversation. “You thinking he might be a student at Cibola College? He could have met with Nicole, maybe feigned interest in the university’s programs.”
Cole nodded, intrigued by this theory. “And what does he do after meeting with her? Finds her vehicle and waits for her to leave the building?”
Callaway shrugged, as if he didn’t want to get hung up on the exact details at the moment. “Something like that. It’s not so far-fetched, is it?”
“No,” Cole agreed softly, thinking.
Callaway went on. “We could contact the school, see if we can’t get her schedule for yesterday. The killer’s name might be on it.”
Cole could hear the excitement in her partner’s voice. It sparked like electricity in his eyes as he leaned toward her, both elbows on the table, one hand cupped over his mouth as if to stifle a shout of triumph. As much as Cole appreciated his enthusiasm, however, she was not quite ready to commit to this theory yet.
“I hate to rain on your parade,” she said, “but our first victim was a stay-at-home dad. No connection with the school that I’m aware of.”
Callaway took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his excitement cooling.
“Doesn’t mean it’s not worth investigating,” Cole said, throwing him a lifeline. “But I want to consider everything before we make a plan of action.”
“What else is on your mind?”
“Do you remember the comment you made earlier? Maybe our killer’s homeless, living in the silos and re-entering society just long enough to grab his next victim. How far apart are the two silos?”
Callaway typed away on his phone. “About two hours’ drive.”
Cole frowned, thinking. “I wonder if he was living at the first one up in Belton. Then, after Jesse Vega’s body was discovered, he leaves and ends up in the second silo.”
“How does he do that? If he’s homeless, he ain’t gonna have the money for an Uber, and there ain’t much for public transportation between those two points.”
“Don’t underestimate him. I think he’s clever enough to figure out how to get from point A to point B. Besides, he had nine months to make the trek. He could’ve walked, for all we know.”
Callaway merely grunted and said nothing. Cole sat up straighter, prompted by a fresh idea.
“There may be only two reported homicides in nuclear silos,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened anywhere else. What are the chances that if we start visiting these sites, we’ll discover either another dead body or the killer himself?”
Callaway rubbed his mouth, as if considering the idea. Then, finally, he shook his head. “That’s a wild goose chase. We’d be driving all over the state for days, even weeks, during which time, the killer could be stalking his next victim. If it was our only option, sure. But I think we’re better off heading to the school.”
As disappointing as it was to hear Callaway splash cold water on Cole’s idea, she knew he was right. They might have nine months before the killer struck again, or they might not. For all they knew, they didn’t even have nine hours. There were many leads they could pursue—heading to the school, visiting other silos, talking to the victims’ families and coworkers, tracing the route Nicole would have taken home, investigating homeless men who were left-handed and strong and had some knowledge of chemistry—but the challenge wasn’t how to keep busy.
They needed to figure out which lead was most promising and then put all their efforts into pursuing it.
At last, Cole sank back, troubled. “I still feel like we’re missing something.” She drummed her fingers on the edge of the table. “Instead of starting with the killer, why don’t we start with the victims? What do we know about them?”
Callaway pawed the file toward himself and opened it, his eyes scanning the pages inside. “Who do you want to start with, Nicole Beck or Jesse Vega?”
“Let’s start with Jesse,” Cole said, thinking that she knew almost nothing about the man. “I remember Newbury saying he was a stay-at-home dad with three kids, but that’s about it.”
Callaway nodded. “Looks like he was a security guard at a local credit union for nearly twenty years, then retired. Wife’s a special ed tutor—freelance, not affiliated with any institutions.”
Cole frowned, unsure what to make of this information. “What if you compare the two victims? What do they have in common?”
Callaway took a breath that hissed between his teeth. “Not much, at least by appearances. Nicole’s female, Jesse’s male; Nicole was single and worked at Cibola, Jesse was married and stayed at home with his kids. I don’t see much overlap there.”
“There has to be something they had in common. A place they both frequented, maybe. What about where they lived? Were they close to one another?”
“Only if you consider fifty miles close.”
Cole cursed under her breath. “So, why did the killer target these two? Was it just about opportunity? He was out cruising around, and these two made easy targets?”
“Jesse went missing after a guys’ night out. There was some drinking, some friendly pool wagers. According to his wife, she hated when he went out with his buddies—he ‘became an animal,’ she said. Claimed it was as much the influence of his friends as the alcohol.”
