Captured in Death, page 2
Kenzie wondered how he felt about the treatment that Vera had put him through. Did he understand that she had just been trying to help him? Did he resent being treated like an animal or a child with no understanding, with no choice in how she decided he should be treated? He hadn’t been able to talk to her at the time, hadn’t been able to understand or to express his wishes one way or the other, but that understanding wouldn’t necessarily change his feelings about what had happened.
Feelings were not always logical. Kenzie sometimes found herself feeling completely opposite from what she wanted to sometimes. No matter how much she tried to talk herself into feeling a certain way, she couldn’t control her primitive brain.
“So…” Kenzie took a deep breath and let it go.
They had asked him whether he wanted to talk about Grandpa Clarence and what he remembered. He had shown them the picture of the stranger and asked Kenzie to look into it. Kenzie didn’t know how much success she would have in her assignment.
Rhys was looking tired and strained around the eyes. It was bound to be taking a lot of effort for him to act as normal as possible and socialize with them. He had been through a lot in the last couple of weeks, and it would take time for him to recover.
“So, I guess we should probably be going,” Kenzie said, standing up and looking at Zachary to encourage him to do the same. “You’re looking pretty tired,” she told Rhys. “I don’t want to wear you out. I’ll talk to the police and get started on this… and one of us will bring you a new phone by the end of the day so you can use it to communicate. I don’t know how long it will be before you get this one back. I assume they’ll need it for a day or two to get all the information they need.”
Rhys shrugged, looking unconcerned about whether he got the phone back or not. Kenzie supposed that if he got a new phone in the deal, he wouldn’t be too upset about it, as long as he could still log back in to all of his accounts and not lose any information.
3
Kenzie and Zachary were quiet while they took the elevator back to the main floor and walked out to Zachary’s car. Kenzie rubbed her temples. As much as she would like to pretend that she was back to full health, she couldn’t deny that she was still having headaches, which she assumed were the result of her mild concussion.
Or maybe it was just this new headache that Rhys had handed her. How was she going to get anywhere on it?
“Who are you going to talk to?” Zachary asked, putting a slightly different spin on it.
Kenzie knew her share of homicide detectives. She could pick who she wanted to take it to and who would give it the most time and attention. Someone who was more likely to believe Rhys, a mentally ill teenager, and not to just brush the case off or say that since no one had found a body, it was obviously a faked photograph, and she could forget about it and just go about her normal business. And so could Rhys.
But how would Rhys go on as usual when the memories of his Grandpa Clarence’s murder and the picture of the murdered man that had arrived on his phone stacked up to cause him even more mental distress than he had felt over the previous decade? How was he going to put his grandpa’s murder behind him, relegating it to the past when this new face brought it all back again?
She had worked with Detective Elena Garcia on a couple of cases, but Garcia was more likely to be impatient and to roll her eyes at the paucity of the information. She would need a lot more concrete evidence before she would take something like that on. Tuttle and Baker had worked with Kenzie on the Wade homicides, and she considered them seriously before shaking her head. She was sure they had already taken enough flak for having to arrest the congressman’s wife. They probably didn’t need to take on anything controversial in the wake of that case.
Kenzie shook her head, thinking about it.
“What about Campbell?” Zachary suggested.
Kenzie considered him. He had come to her aid when her father had been missing, helping her sort that mess out and deal with the threats and unexpected developments involving the Russians. He wasn’t strictly a homicide detective, but he was a good man to go to with a case that needed to be handled somewhat differently from the straightforward homicide cases Kenzie was used to dealing with.
“Yeah. He might be a good person,” she agreed.
“He doesn’t jump to conclusions,” Zachary offered. “He listens.”
“Do you think he’ll believe it? That this is real?”
Zachary chewed on his lip. “I think he would consider it. He wouldn’t automatically brush it off.”
“Yeah.”
They reached the car and Zachary disarmed the alarm and unlocked the doors.
“What do you think of the picture?” he asked.
“What do I think? I think someone needs to take it seriously. I don’t know who this guy is or when or where he was killed, but someone needs to make sure that we find out.”
“You think it’s legitimate. That it is someone who was shot and killed.”
“Yes.” Kenzie looked at him. “You don’t think so?”
“I reserve judgment. I don’t know.”
“You think it’s a prank?” Kenzie’s voice rose slightly, though she tried to keep it under control.
“I think you know a dead body when you see one.”
“And I say it is a dead body.”
Zachary nodded. He started the engine and pulled out of the parking space. “Then it is.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Yes.” He said it firmly. No waffling. Not that he believed it if she believed it. If Kenzie were looking for an argument, she wouldn’t get one from him.
The rest of the discussion on the way to the police station was whether Zachary should also go in with Kenzie. Would they be taken more seriously if both of them showed up, believing this was a real case that Campbell needed to look into? Or would Campbell wonder why Zachary needed to be there to prop up Kenzie’s story?
Zachary didn’t have any evidence independent of what Rhys had given Kenzie. She had the phone and the picture, and Rhys’s brief explanation of where it had come from.
Ultimately, they decided it would be best if Zachary dropped Kenzie off. She worked in the basement of the police department so, when she was finished talking to Campbell, she could just go downstairs and work the rest of the day. Meanwhile, Zachary could go home and analyze the copy of the photo Kenzie had forwarded to him and see if he could find out anything about its origins.
Sergeant Joshua Campbell was at his desk and able to see Kenzie right away. She had been worried that he wouldn’t be around, and then she would have to decide whether to leave a message, put it off, or pick someone else to talk to about it.
“Dr. Kirsch,” Campbell greeted, standing up when she walked in and extending a hand. “It’s great to see you. What can we do for you today?”
“Well… I’m in kind of a quandary,” Kenzie admitted, sitting down in the guest chair in front of his desk and thinking about it. She had been trying to script out how the meeting would go ever since they had left the hospital, but she had been unable to come up with anything that made her happy. Of course, it would be great if he just agreed that it was a case that needed to be looked into and that it was an actual, legitimate murder and not some hoax. But she couldn’t see a clear path toward getting him to agree with her on that point.
“I’m happy to help you out any way I can,” Campbell offered with a smile. “Can I get you some coffee?”
“No, no. I’ll get one when I get down to work.”
“How’s Zachary?” Campbell’s eyes wandered to his computer, maybe checking the date to see how close they were to Christmas. “Is everything okay with him?”
“Yes, so far.”
Campbell was aware of Zachary’s seasonal depression and the suicidal thoughts that had landed him in the psych ward the previous year.
“He’s on a different cocktail this year and I’m hoping it will work better,” Kenzie told him.
“Good. Glad to hear it. So you aren’t here about anything to do with him.”
“No. This is… a new case. Maybe a case. Something I’m hoping you can investigate.”
Campbell raised an eyebrow, waiting for Kenzie to get on with it.
Kenzie pulled Rhys’s phone out of her pocket. She brought the picture up on the screen again and handed it to him.
Campbell looked at the picture for a few long seconds before focusing on Kenzie.
“Is this a threat? Did someone send it to you?”
“No. It was sent to a friend of ours. Rhys Salter. From what we can understand, it’s circulating throughout his school. One of those… horror pictures that people gawk at. Like a bad car crash. Shock value. Curiosity. Have a look and pass it on to your friends.”
Campbell blinked at her. Kenzie wasn’t sure why he looked so confused. She shook her head, waiting for his response.
“Rhys Salter?” Campbell repeated.
“Yes. It was received by him. This is his phone.”
“Is he related to Robin Salter, the woman who was murdered?”
“Oh.” Kenzie nodded. She had forgotten that he had been involved in the case while Zachary had been investigating it. “Yes, this is Gloria’s son. Robin’s nephew.”
“The mute boy.”
“Selectively mute,” Kenzie amended. “Yes. But he does have other ways to communicate, and he gave us this. Wanted us to pursue it.”
Campbell pondered this. The picture on the phone disappeared as the screen shut off, and he pressed the button to bring it up again.
“This man appears to have been killed in the same way as Rhys’s grandfather.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t find that odd?”
Kenzie shook her head, frowning. “No. What do you mean? What’s odd about it? It is disturbing, for sure, but I don’t know that I would call it odd.”
“I’m thinking that perhaps… this boy has unresolved issues where his grandfather’s murder is concerned. Maybe he sought out a picture of a man who was killed in the same way because he is trying to understand his feelings about what happened. Or trying to play it out in his mind again in order to try to control the outcome this time. You hear all the time about adult criminals who are trying to reenact something that happened to them as children in order to be in control of it. Because they had so little control as children.”
4
You’re not saying that you think Rhys killed someone because of what he witnessed.” Kenzie’s anger flared at the suggestion. “This boy has been through enough trauma without someone accusing him of being a killer.”
“No, no,” Campbell made a dampening movement with his hands, patting downward. “I’m not saying that he killed someone. I’m saying he might be trying to accept his feelings about the original murder. This could be his attempt to gain control or to examine those feelings from another perspective.”
“No,” Kenzie shook her head. “All it will take is one of us going to the school and finding out whether this picture has really been circulating the students like Rhys says it has been. But I can tell you, I believe him one hundred percent. I believe this picture was sent to him by someone else, out of the blue, and that it greatly disturbed him. He went into a fugue state. He’s been hospitalized since he got this picture; it bothered him so much and brought back all those old feelings. This is not something that Rhys did himself.”
“Okay, okay. It was a question that had to be asked. And even if it is circulating the school, that doesn’t prove he didn’t start it. He might have been the first one to send it around. He could control multiple fake accounts to keep it circulating. You don’t know.”
“I don’t believe that. This is something that was sent to him and caused a great emotional shock. And he wants to know who it is and what happened. That is what he wants to resolve. He already knows who killed his grandfather. He doesn’t need to resolve that.”
“He may still be having a lot of emotional disturbance due to his grandfather’s murder. He is still mute, isn’t he?”
“He’s… well, mostly, yes.”
“So it hasn’t been resolved.”
“Not in that way. But there is no way to tell if he will ever be able to talk normally, even if he has fully accepted and integrated what happened to his grandfather. Sometimes those scars are just too deep.”
Campbell nodded, looking at the picture. “So you are coming to me to… investigate this crime…?” He tapped the side of the phone.
“Well, yes. I can’t really open an investigation from the medical examiner’s office because I don’t have a body. But maybe this is enough evidence for you to open a file and conduct some preliminary investigation…”
Campbell swiveled slightly to face his computer and typed a query. He scrolled through the screen, shaking his head.
“This doesn’t appear to be a local death. Nothing on our system indicates that we have opened an investigation into a man who was shot in the head in the last few days.”
“It would be longer ago than that.”
“How long?”
“Closer to two weeks. Maybe longer, if the picture didn’t start to circulate immediately.”
“At two weeks, it should be on your table by now. If there was such a crime.”
“Unless the body was dumped somewhere and just hasn’t been discovered yet.”
“I’m not sure how we’re supposed to do anything if that is the case. But there’s also nothing to indicate that this is a local murder. It could be hundreds of miles away. It could have been five years ago. It could be staged.”
“It’s not staged.”
But Kenzie couldn’t deny that he could be right about it not happening two weeks before. Or being local. She had assumed that the murder happened just before the picture started circulating at the school. Still, she had seen a number of stories make their rounds on social media every few years, showing up with a few details changed so that it was suddenly brand new again. Everyone was agog, not realizing it had happened five, ten, or even twenty years before.
“What about facial recognition?” she suggested. “If we could identify who the man is, we could narrow down the time and place. Find out whether it really is something that happened recently.”
Campbell sighed. “I can get the techies to run it, see if they get any hits. I don’t know whether the resolution is high enough or whether we have enough of his face to get a hit. The portrayals you see on TV of facial recognition are highly exaggerated. You need a full-frontal view, no profiles, with all of the landmarks visible. And only a fraction of felons are actually in the database yet. There are a lot of databases that are not accessible to us.”
“It’s almost straight on.”
“Almost. That’s why I said I’d see if they can get any hits off of it. But don’t hold your breath. It isn’t as easy as you see on TV. It’s a very sophisticated technology, and it doesn’t do as well in the wild as it does in controlled tests and fiction.”
“So you’ll open a file on it?”
“I’ll need to open a file to log the evidence and have it examined,” Campbell said, touching the phone again. “But I’m not opening it as a homicide. Only as ‘disturbing peace by use of telephone.’ Someone sending this disturbing picture to a minor, especially one who has previously witnessed a similar murder in his own family, could well be seen as an attempt to ‘terrify, threaten, harass, or annoy.’ ”
Kenzie nodded her agreement. “Especially when you consider the outcome.”
“Right. In the meantime…”
Kenzie waited for his question. “Yes…?”
“I assume you kept a copy of this.”
Kenzie shrugged, her cheeks getting warm. “Well… yes.”
“You might see if Zachary can trace the origin of the picture. If it has been circulating the internet for a few years, or if it is from a movie set, he may be able to identify it and confirm that it is not actually a current, local murder that needs to be solved.”
“I already have him looking at it,” Kenzie said. “I hadn’t thought about finding out if it is already on the net somewhere, but I did ask him to check the metadata to see if it leads us anywhere.”
“I’m sure he’ll go the whole way. Photography is his thing. If he could do that, I would appreciate it. My techs’ time is precious. I don’t like to waste it on a wild goose chase. If he can narrow down whether it is really something that we need to look into… I would appreciate that.”
“Sure. I’m sure he would be happy to loop you in.”
“Good. I haven’t talked to him for a while. We could do coffee and catch up.”
5
After the talk with Campbell, Kenzie headed downstairs to the morgue. It was a late start, but she had warned Dr. Cook ahead of time. She and Zachary had needed to go see Rhys, and Kenzie had put in a lot of hours at the morgue lately. It wouldn’t hurt them for her to take a couple of hours off. Better for her mental health than overworking herself for two weeks straight. Had it been that long since she’d had a break?
Kenzie sat down at her desk and dialed Zachary to tell him about her meeting with Campbell. As she checked her email and digitally filed a number of reports that had come in overnight, she filled him in on the details. Zachary agreed to do as Campbell had said and to do some image searches to see if he could find out where the picture had originated.
“He says you guys should get together for coffee,” Kenzie said. “So if you can find anything, you should follow up. Maybe he has some other stuff they want to contract out. Or maybe he just wants to catch up with you.”
“It has been a while,” Zachary admitted, sounding far away. “I’ll follow up.”
“Good. And can you email me the photo? I want to have Dr. Cook take a look at it, too.”
“Yeah? Okay. I can do that.” She heard him typing rapidly. “There you go, on its way to you. Thanks for talking to Campbell. I’m glad he decided to look into it.”
