Chapter 15

Saturday, March 13

4:30 p.m.

Roxanne. Her name was Roxanne.

The deputy medical examiner she'd known as Dr. Jennings stared back at her as though she'd been waiting there for hours. Killed same as the others but not left in the middle of the night. Their unsub was growing far more confident. Escalating as Livingstone had predicted. He'd dropped a body in daylight. In public. With kids around.

Jennings had been positioned against the bandstand centered in the middle of Colburn Park. Right over the storage access. Red brick, a seafoam green metal roof, and white vinyl trim unburied memories of late nights, firework shows, and family picnics. Her parents would drag her and Troy and all their stuff right here in front of the bandstand two days before the parades would make their way through town just to get the best seat. With its Christmas Revels Festival, nature preserve area, farmer's markets, live music, and playgrounds, this park acted as a pulse within the town itself. A half-melted snowman family, complete with hats, scarves, and button eyes, watched on from a few yards away. Thousands of families visited this place to escape their monotonous lives and to socialize.

It was the best—and the worst—location to dump a body.

Their latest victim wore the same clothing she'd noted beneath the personal protective equipment from the morgue during Michelle Cross's autopsy. Inside the hospital she'd been Dr. Jennings, the key to identifying their killer. Out here, she was nothing more than flesh and bone.

Her black slacks had practically been shredded in the process of torture. Wood chips landscapers used to fill between the usually purple and pink blooms had scattered into the grass and around the body. Eight square, red pavers with grass trying to claw its way around the edges ensured Dr. Jennings's balance against the light gray cement protecting the stand's inner electrical and storage compartment. It was as though the good doctor had simply sat down to take a break on her way through the park.

Leigh could've convinced herself that was the case if not for the exposed teeth and gums dried out from the wind cutting through the trees. Healthy black hair had dulled since she'd seen Dr. Jennings last, stringed with sweat and blood. Her skin, once full of life, had drained of color, but there wasn't any slippage yet. She hadn't been out here long enough.

"Witnesses?" Leigh tried to keep her warmth by burying deeper into her coat, but its loss had nothing to do with temperatures. This was sorrow. She hadn't known Roxanne Jennings more than a couple days, but she'd left an impression. She'd cared about the people she cut open. Providing families of the dead peace and answers had given her validation and a reason to serve. For her, it'd been a privilege to be part of their healing. She hadn't said as much, but Leigh had known by the way she'd handled Michelle Cross's body. How she'd taken her time so as not to miss anything crucial to the investigation. It hadn't just been about duty. She'd genuinely wanted to help.

Now she would… as a victim.

"Multiple callers all within a five-minute span. A mom who brings her kids here said one second she wasn't there, the next she was. Didn't see anyone near or around the body, but it'd be easy to avoid being seen with all these trees." Boucher's notebook and pen were at the ready. "Her kid found her."

Leigh's insides clenched. Nightmares were made of scenes like this. Driving her hand into her blazer, she smoothed her thumb over the clean cut made to the toy soldier protected inside her pocket. The emotional rawness determined to tear her apart eased. Chandler Reed had delivered it to her hospital room personally, although she didn't remember that. He'd left it for her because he'd known it'd been important. He'd never know how much. "We'll need the medicolegal investigator to search her pockets when they get here."

"You thinking we're going to find another soldier with your name on it?" Boucher asked.

She had a feeling Boucher already knew the answer. She memorized Dr. Jennings's wide-open gaze, the end of the soldier's rifle stabbing into her thumb in her coat pocket. How did a medical examiner play into this? What was the connection between her and the first two victims? "Guess we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?"

Leigh surveyed the snowman family. Six in total. It was obvious the smaller ones had been created by smaller hands. The button eyes a bit lopsided, the scarves looser than the others. One had a bright green sand bucket for a hat while the rest bore felt top hats. "This place hasn't changed much. Do you bring your son here? For the festival or pumpkin carving, or caroling?"

"You really want to talk about my personal life over a dead body, Brody? That's messed up." Boucher shifted his weight between both feet. She wasn't offended. Banter and humor in the face of a raw situation was an easy coping tool. It wasn't disrespect for the dead. It was protection from the horrible reality law enforcement dealt with on a daily basis. He waited a beat, but there was an anxiety keeping him from holding still. "Tell you the truth, I don't see my son much since the divorce. His mom's got him most of the time. Last time I brought him out here, they had the fair set up. He ate so much cotton candy, he threw up. All over me. Couldn't get the smell out of my beard for two weeks."

Her laugh escaped more forcibly than she'd expected. "The last time I was here, I accidentally stabbed my brother with a pumpkin carver. You know, the really thin ones that come in sets from the dollar store. He broke my Xena action figure as payback."

"It's places like this that help people remember what's important. They remind you of what real happiness feels like, you know. How good life could be if it weren't for the shit we have to deal with every day." Boucher turned his attention back to Dr. Jennings, splayed out in front of them. "Good a place as any to meet your maker."

The humor was gone, leaving Leigh more empty and colder than when she'd arrived.

"Agen' Brody. Lieutenant Boucher." Director Livingstone pulled to a stop within the semi-circle the forensic team had outlined while uniformed officers worked on clearing the park of civilians and media. "I can see why Dr. Jennings wasn't returning my calls. What do we know?"

"Not much. Concord ME's office is scrambling to send us someone to collect her." Boucher scribbled another note. It was a defense mechanism, she'd realized. Note everything. Miss nothing. Not just to have his own back and that of his fellow officers, but to prepare for problems in the future. It kept him oriented and his eye on the prize.

"Seems you got what you wanted, Lieutenant. I believe we can officially count Dr. Jennings as our third victim." Livingstone crouched a few feet from the body, none of them daring to cross the line until the medical examiner's office sent another pathologist to claim the remains. That was how this worked. No mistakes. No personal agendas. It didn't matter how much this death would affect them or that Roxanne Jennings had been part of the team. They would have to treat her as any other body. "Follow up with the ME's office and have a couple of your officers visit her apartment, talk to her neighbors. I want to know everything Dr. Jennings did between the autopsy for our second victim yesterday morning and when she was discovered."

Less than thirty-six hours ago.

"The MO has changed again." Leigh stopped counting the number of stab wounds penetrating through Dr. Jennings's clothing and flesh. The lacerations the killer enacted were smaller, countless, but the bigger ones—the ones that'd done the most damage—stood out. "The killer isn't just escalating. He's breaking the rules laid down by our veteran. Michelle Cross and Gresham Schmidt both went missing for three days. Just like the boys killed twenty years ago. Michelle Cross alienated friends, coworkers, and family members in her obsession to investigate, took time off work, lied. She isolated herself to the point there wasn't anyone to report her missing until her body turned up, but whoever did this had to know Roxanne Jennings wouldn't go unnoticed. She was integral to our investigation. This isn't evidence of a compulsion or trying to push someone else into the spotlight. This is survival."

"You think Dr. Jennings found a lead." Director Livingstone straightened, that telltale intensity in her voice. Her gaze cut to Boucher then back. She'd spent the most time with the medical examiner. Hers and Dr. Jennings's back-and-forth banter had been infectious and light. They'd developed an obvious rapport, if not a temporary friendship, while the director worked this case. This loss would hit Livingstone the hardest, but she wasn't the type to let it show. Not emotionally. "In the lab results or on Michelle Cross's body?"

"I don't know, but we can't rule anything out at this point." She had to hold herself back from searching the body herself. "Dr. Jennings didn't know about this investigation until she was called to the scene of the first body. There was nothing about her or in our conversations to suggest she had a connection with the Joel Brody case."

The director stared down at the body as if waiting for Dr. Jennings to stand up, shake it off, and get back to work. "Boucher, have your officers be on the lookout for Dr. Jennings's phone and laptop. I want to know if her apartment was cleaned like the other victims' as well."

All the pieces were lining up, attributing to the same killer. Same amount of stab wounds, same MO, same flair for drama by leaving the body in a public place. They didn't have all the details yet, but three deaths within such a short amount of time only led to one conclusion.

They had a serial killer on their hands.

"You really think we're going to find anything? I don't know about the morgue, but it's against protocol for law enforcement officers to take home files or evidence pertaining to ongoing cases," Boucher said. "What would the killer have wanted with an ME's personal devices?"

The question tumbled end over end. The lieutenant had a point. "According to her notes, Michelle Cross was writing a true crime book about the Joel Brody case. We'd have to assume her manuscript and notes were stored on her phone and laptop." The headline Leigh had found buried in the victim's research solidified at the front of her mind. "We've been running off the theory these cases are linked. If the unsub's goal is to keep something from the original investigation from going public, he had reason to take everything Michelle Cross had. Only he didn't know about the attic space in Michelle's home, and he didn't know the exact number of stab wounds. He's new at this. He cleaned that entire house to cover his tracks, but the surveillance photos of Chris Ellingson and newspaper articles from over the years were too well hidden."

"According to my contact at Scotland Yard, Gresham Schmidt kept paper files. He didn't trust technology and had the propensity to hide his case files in all kinds of places around his home and in the paneling of his car," Livingstone said. "At this point, I believe it's safe to say Schmidt had gotten himself involved in the original investigation."

"Okay. Then we can assume both victims hid their involvement and research concerning the case. From friends, family, coworkers. Nobody knew what they were really doing, but the killer found out." She felt as if they were going in circles. Nothing was adding up. While Chris Ellingson had motive to kill Michelle Cross for costing him his job and perhaps even to keep the truth about him from getting out, none of the physical evidence pointed them back to him. The child psychologist was intelligent, familiar with police procedure, and overly intimate with the original case thanks to a leak in the department. But he couldn't be in two places at once if the hardware store owner had been telling the truth about Ellingson's alibi, and he couldn't change what made him who he was.

The man who'd killed her brother and Derek Garrison wouldn't have achieved satisfaction by stabbing these recent victims only twenty-two times. Her initial analysis of the case centered around one truth: This unsub was well-versed in forensics and procedure, but that knowledge didn't come freely. It was trained, studied, and practiced hundreds of times over. "We've kept the details of this investigation out of the media. Dr. Jennings's name was never mentioned in news reports or media coverage. So how did the killer know she was involved in the investigation? How did he know any of them were looking into what happened twenty years ago?"

"A cop." A heaviness they all felt pressed along Leigh's shoulders. "If Gresham Schmidt was investigating the original case, he would've approached someone within the department to get ahold of the case files. You said Michelle Cross interviewed Chief Maynor, and Dr. Jennings's name would have been all over the initial scene reports."

"You don't seriously believe your own bullshit, do you?" Boucher's sense of honor fed quickly into his ego. Small muscles along his jaw clenched under pressure. "A cop didn't do this. You think I'm going to stand here and let you bring down this department all over again? You're wrong." He pointed out over the park. "These are good officers. They risk their lives every day trying to protect this town and the people in it. For all we know your daddy could be pulling the strings from prison to get his sentence overturned. Or, hell, maybe he is innocent, and the son of a bitch who killed your brother is playing you. Instead of undoing twenty years' worth of work in a community you turned your back on, how about you accept the truth: The only reason you're here is because you've convinced everyone in this unit you're important. But I guess we all lie to ourselves from time to time."

Boucher turned on his heel, heading for the perimeter tape.

Leaving the invisible hole in Leigh's chest pulsing.

"Excuse me." Director Livingstone followed after the lieutenant, bringing him to a halt with a single call of his name. They were too far away for Leigh to catch the conversation, but within a minute, Boucher shoved through a grouping of officers and headed for his cruiser.

Leigh caught sight of Officer Pierce directing people behind the yellow crime scene tape. With his dominant hand extended, she remembered the smudge of black on the back of his index finger as they'd left the station in response to the call. Pierce had been the first officer on the scene when she'd clawed herself out of those damn woods after the shove down the hill.

Because he'd been the closest after luring her into the woods?

Because he'd been the one to threaten her and graffiti her garage?

It was obvious he hadn't wanted her here from the beginning. To him and others in this town, her family had destroyed Lebanon's sense of peace. Just as Boucher had accused her of doing.

Livingstone resumed her position a few feet from the victim. "The ME's office has sent another medicolegal investigator to collect the body and begin the examination. What's your next move, Agen' Brody?"

Her brain worked to match the voice of her attacker with the limited conversations she'd had with Officer Pierce at the primary scene, but she was met with dark spots where memories should've been. Concussions sometimes came with gaps. Temporary or permanent, it just depended on the sufferer, but her gut said Pierce showing up as fast as he had last night wasn't a coincidence. "I think it's time I finally had a talk with my father."