CHAPTER SIX

Ambrose had never been inside a medical examiner’s office before. Right off the bat, he hated the smell of the place, and he also hated the cold. He had to admire people who spent all day with the dead in a frigid, stark room that smelled like formaldehyde and decay in an effort to bring those souls justice. Or at least answers.

Or maybe they deserved some amount of general skepticism, considering they could tolerate a work environment like this without going mad.

Whatever the case, many of the people who ended up here had families who’d do far less for them than the doctors at this lab. A tragedy that the first time some of these individuals were taken care of was after they’d ceased breathing.

“Just as suspected,” said the medical examiner, Clyde Gates, whom he’d met a few minutes ago and insisted Ambrose call him Clyde. “The homemade hallucinogens are the same as the ones found at the previous scenes. A mixture of ecstasy, dextromethorphan, psilocybin, and food coloring. However, these ones have the fun addition of a light LSD coating.”

Jesus. When he’d seen the “BB” on the top of the purple pills, he’d guessed at the concoction, but hearing it confirmed made his stomach roll. The additional LSD coating was unexpected, though, and he’d need to inquire about that. “And it was found in these victims’ systems too?” he asked.

Clyde nodded. “In high doses. They’d popped more than one. These people were certainly in la-la land. And this one”—he pulled the sheet back to reveal the young woman who’d been on the floor of the vacant motel the last time Ambrose had seen her—“was pregnant.”

Across from him, Lennon’s eyes flared subtly. “How far along?”

“About twelve weeks.”

“Long enough to know she was pregnant if she was at all in touch with her body,” Lennon murmured.

He had a feeling this woman on the slab in front of him was not even remotely “in touch” with her body. Thankfully, however, her face had been cleaned, eyes shut, and mouth closed. That awful scream he’d last seen on her face was now an expression of peaceful slumber. His gaze moved to the dead woman’s arm, where there were clear track marks at the crease, and then farther down where there was a line of pale red scars, each about the same width and length. “She was a cutter,” he noted.

“Most definitely. She has scars on her thighs, too, some years old, others more recent.”

“That one always gets me,” Lennon murmured. “Why hurt yourself more than you’re already hurting?”

“The pain is better than the numb,” Ambrose said. “Pain reminds you you’re alive.” Lennon’s eyes met his, and even in this cold, sad room, standing over the body of a young woman who’d suffered in—very likely—more ways than just one, or even two or three, he was struck by the inspector’s beauty. She was intriguing to him, too, and he’d have liked time to figure her out but knew that wasn’t going to be possible.

She looked away from him, back to Clyde. “The thing that keeps bothering me about this scene in particular is that I’ve never heard of hallucinogens being part of an orgy. I’d think that would make things ... very bizarre.”

“Some people like bizarre,” Clyde said.

True enough. But the case already disturbed Ambrose, and this only added to it. The light-purple hallucinogens with the “BB” imprint ... the teddy bear and the children’s toys. “No, you’re right,” he said to Lennon. “Hallucinogens are typically used for a mental or spiritual experience, not a physical one.”

“Right. Exactly,” she agreed.

“These people appeared to be drug users, however,” Ambrose said. “They might not have been very discerning if given free product.”

Lennon’s brow knitted. “Could you tell if she’d had sex?” she asked Clyde after a moment. “Willing or otherwise?”

“I’m going to get the second female up on the table this afternoon, but there was no semen in—or on—this one. As far as I can tell, she didn’t have sex recently.”

“And the shower didn’t appear to have been used,” Ambrose said, recalling the report they’d received that morning from the criminalists who’d worked the scene and sent the samples they’d gathered to the lab for testing. The water had still been on at the property, but the shower had been dry, and there weren’t any towels available to mop up the residual water.

“And no condom or fresh semen found either,” Lennon murmured. “So maybe it hadn’t gotten sexual yet.”

“The footage from the bank up the street showed all three of them headed in the direction of the motel at midnight, though,” Ambrose said, referring to the footage they’d received early that morning. “You estimated time of death to be about three a.m.?” he asked Clyde.

“Give or take an hour,” Clyde answered.

“Three hours would be a long time to sit around and chat,” he said. “So if they weren’t having sex, what were they doing for all that time?”

Lennon chewed at her lip for a second. “Yeah. It doesn’t fit.” She paused again. “What can you tell us about the wounds?”

“Well, the male has some defensive wounds on his hands, but they’re very light and shallow, practically scratches. Which aren’t congruent with the wounds on his chest, and especially the one to his heart that ultimately killed him. Those ones are deep slashes. Considerable strength was used for those.”

“And conviction,” Ambrose said. Whoever had stabbed him with enough strength to penetrate his heart muscle had gone all in. Literally.

“Yes,” the doctor agreed. “No hesitancy whatsoever. And from a visual aspect, there doesn’t appear to be blood spatter on either of the female victims—blood, yes, which I suspect is only their own. But there most certainly would have been spatter had they stabbed him with the force necessary to cause the weapon to go through his chest wall and into his heart.”

“Which means neither of the women killed him. So in this case, at least, there was a fourth person present who walked away from the scene,” Lennon said.

“I’ll have more definitive answers shortly, but yes, I strongly suspect so.”

“Which leads me to wonder if there was another person at the first two murders as well.”

“Evidence confirmed those people stabbed each other, though, correct?” Ambrose asked.

“Yes. But some of the wounds were deeper and more ... purposeful?” She looked at Clyde for confirmation, and he gave her a nod. “Because of the hallucinogens, it was difficult to say whether the wounds held different levels of vigor, for lack of a better description, because of multiple knife wielders or because of the drugs.”

“That makes sense. People tripping on hallucinogens can morph quickly between emotions, reactions, et cetera,” Ambrose said.

“Right. But now—”

“Now it’s looking highly likely there’s a killer who probably walked away from each scene.”

Lennon nodded slowly before looking at Clyde. “The more superficial wounds—what’s your take there? That the killer was just warming up with the ones the male victim fended off?”

“Could be. Or the killer didn’t expect him to fight back, and the fact that he did made the person holding the knife angry enough to go for gusto.”

“Or if the women did partake in some violence, perhaps he was angry that they weren’t stabbing with enough force to do any harm. The victims at the other scenes became very violent with each other. But maybe these ones didn’t. Maybe that made the killer mad, but also meant he had to take over the job if their death was his goal,” Ambrose said.

“Okay, yes,” Lennon said, and Ambrose swore that even though he didn’t know this woman at all, he could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. She definitely had layers, but one thing was clear—she was also deeply intelligent. “That’s a possibility too. And further, if this killer who was there walked away, does that mean he set it up?”

“I think he would have had to,” Ambrose said, and that specific more than any other caused him great distress.

“Anything else?” Lennon asked Clyde, who had been watching them volley comments back and forth.

“Well,” Clyde said, lifting the woman’s hand and showing them her dirty fingernails. “Cursory glances at all three of them tell me they were likely living on the street, just like the other victims. Heavy drug use for all three at some point—though, again, I only detected the hallucinogens in their blood.”

“That’s a little odd, too, isn’t it?” Ambrose said. “All three of them were clean except for the drugs found at the scene. Was that true of the four other victims?”

“It was,” Lennon said. “It is odd, actually, that they’d all gotten clean for at least some amount of time before arriving at the scene of their death.”

The scene of their death. That description made a shiver dance over his skin because it was another nod to a preplanned event. “Few show up willingly to the scene of their death,” he said, meeting Lennon’s eyes.

“No, not many,” she said.

“So they probably didn’t.”

“Agreed. These people likely showed up expecting something very different than what it turned out to be.”

“I do have something that might offer a lead,” Clyde said, turning and reaching for something on the table behind him. He held up a plastic bag with a pair of folded jeans inside. “The man was wearing these.”

“Please tell me you found an ID in an inside pocket,” Lennon said. They both knew there hadn’t been one in an obvious spot, as the criminalists had carefully searched them all. ID’ing the victims had proved difficult, as was often the case with those considered transient. Locating records, if they existed, wasn’t easy, especially since these folks often came from all over the country. The fact that arrests for drug offenses—which would have put them in the system—were way down only upped the challenge.

“Unfortunately, no. But this might help.” Clyde folded the bag slightly so that the tag at the back of the jeans was showing. Ambrose and Lennon leaned in, and he caught a whiff of her perfume. He was amazed that anything could remain light and fresh in this particular room, and the brief pull of her air was a too-short but welcome reprieve.

“Does that say ...” A line formed between her brows as she obviously strained to make out the black ink on the white tag.

“Gilbert House,” Clyde said. “I googled it, and it’s a shelter for homeless men in the Tenderloin.”

“You could have led with that, kind sir,” Lennon said with a cock of her brow.

Clyde chuckled. “Yes, but I have so few breathing visitors. I wanted to make sure you stayed for longer than a minute.”

Clyde brought the sheet back over the woman. “I’ll call you this afternoon if I find anything else that might help immediately. Otherwise, the report will be sent over as soon as possible.”

“Thanks, Clyde.”

Ambrose walked with Lennon out to her city-issued vehicle and got in the passenger side. He pulled his seat belt over his chest and then looked at Lennon, who was now just sitting there, moving her fingers distractedly on the steering wheel as she stared out the window. She stretched and tapped as though playing on an invisible set of piano keys. “What are you thinking about?” he asked her.

“I was thinking about the items we found at the first two scenes. I’ll have to look back at the list because I don’t remember it all. Mostly, it was stuff the victims carried around in their backpacks or bags ... extra clothing, a blanket, a hairbrush, et cetera.” She paused. “But at the first scene, there was a belt lying near the man.”

“Were there other things strewn around, or just that?”

“Just that, which is why I remember it. The other things were cataloged from the bags lying nearby. No identifying information, but it all seemed like stuff a homeless individual would carry with them.”

“But the belt had been removed.”

“Yes. And it was right near the man’s body, just like the teddy bear at the most recent crime scene.”

Ambrose thought about that. “Are you thinking those specific items are clues? Or ... messages?”

She played a few inaudible notes on the steering wheel again. “Maybe. Or maybe the belt is a prop like the teddy bear, also used as part of a role-play.”

“What sort of role-play would involve a belt?” Although he had his own ideas, ideas that were making him more and more uncomfortable by the moment. In fact, a feeling of mild dread was beginning to drift nearer. He wanted to know what the inspector thought, however. She was familiar with murder scenes, while he was not. Not only that, but he had his preformed suspicions, and he didn’t want those to get in the way of clear sight.

“Well,” she said. “There’s the obvious bondage angle. S and M? Fifty shades of fucked up?”

He huffed out a small chuckle. “A singular belt is a pretty skimpy prop collection for a domination scenario.”

“Red rooms of pain are expensive. Our victims weren’t exactly rolling in dough.” She frowned as she ran her tongue over her teeth. “But yeah, one belt doesn’t tell us a lot. It might be a role-play, and it might just have fallen out of one of their bags.”

“Or one of them could have removed it to use as a weapon.”

“Maybe, but there was no blood or tissue found on it.”

He looked away out the passenger-side window as he pictured the photographs he’d seen of the two people who’d died bloody deaths in the abandoned building, thinking about what exactly might have happened there. Lennon had proposed that the belt might have been a prop because she’d made a guess that the toys at the other scene were used that way. But ... “We have no direct evidence the teddy bear was part of a role-play, so this line of thinking might be moot.”

“No, I know. I’m just thinking aloud.” She turned toward him. “It helps me sort through things. Does it bother you?” There was no sarcasm in her voice. She seemed to be posing an honest question, and so he took a moment to think about it.

He usually worked alone, so it’d never been an issue. But for Inspector Lennon Gray? It wouldn’t be a sacrifice. “It’s not my usual style, but I can adjust.”

She let out a small breathy laugh, and in the bright daylight of the car, he could see the faded freckles scattered across her nose. The glow caught the golden hazel of her eyes and brought out the pale ring of green. Her eyes were like the clearing he’d once stood in in the redwood forest, gazing up at those impossibly massive trees as sunlight seeped between the gaps in their feathery branches. He’d closed his eyes and felt connected to some greater whole even while he’d never been more aware of his own smallness. There had been something ... wonderful about that feeling. A letting-go. An acceptance. An understanding that was beyond him and yet was more real than anything he’d ever experienced before that moment. And for whatever reason, he felt some small remnant of that feeling now, though he couldn’t begin to explain it, couldn’t imagine how that moment and this one were remotely similar. “I appreciate that, Mars,” she said. “There might be hope for this partnership yet.”

He smiled. He couldn’t even remember what she was responding to, his mind had drifted so far away. But regardless of why, he liked what she’d said. And despite his deep uneasiness about this case, he hoped that was true, because he enjoyed being around this woman who was a confusing mix of traits that he hadn’t yet managed to make sense of. Typically, that bothered him. He liked categorizing things, identifying and naming them. He found comfort and satisfaction in both the process and the result. But in Lennon’s case, he didn’t mind being in somewhat uncharted territory. Interesting. What is it about you that makes me comfortable with a lack of boundaries?

Lennon turned over the ignition and looked in the rearview mirror as she began backing out. “I have a meeting with the lieutenant in an hour, and then I need to look through the other footage from nearby businesses. Unfortunately, several in that area closed in the last few years, so we’re limited. But an alert just came in that some more was delivered. I’ll call the Gilbert House this afternoon and make sure they’re open tomorrow, and we’ll meet up in the morning?”

“Yeah, sure. That sounds good,” he said. “I need to bring myself up to date on the details of the other scenes. Hopefully in the morning we can get at least one ID.”