Deserves to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

Breaking and entering was a far cry from homicide and the guy was incarcerated to boot. “So we’re back to the unknown assailant.” Pescoli sighed.

“Looks like.” Alvarez started walking out of the office but stopped short.

Blackwater filled the hallway just outside the door. His face was set and hard, lips compressed. “Got a call from a deputy at the waterfront. They’re pulling a body out of the river, just below the old bridge. A woman.” His dark gaze moved from Alvarez to Pescoli. “Looks like you two are up.”

“Suicide?” Pescoli asked. Every once in a while, someone took a leap from the bridge, in summer kids who dared each other jumped or dived into the river under the falls despite the postings, and sometimes, when someone decided to end it all, they took that same plunge.

“Unknown.” He backed up a step as Alvarez made her way into the hall. “Maybe. Units are already in place, but it sounds like we’ve already got a crowd, people stopping to rubberneck. Check it out. Report back to me.”

A phone rang nearby and Blackwater marched to his office.

“He should have a field day with this,” Pescoli said to Alvarez, who was still standing in the hall. “Big splash, you know. Pardon the pun.” Pescoli kicked out her chair and reached for her jacket again. “No rest for the wicked. Meet you at the Jeep? I’ll drive.”

“Yep.” Alvarez disappeared into her office to get her coat and within minutes they were in Pescoli’s vehicle and heading down the road that cut across the face of Boxer Bluff to the lower part of town. The snow had quit falling, but nearly ten inches had piled up overnight, so the plows were out and traffic was a snarl. They followed a school bus over the tracks before they turned onto the street that bisected the older area of Grizzly Falls. Despite the fact that she’d turned on the flashers and hit the siren, they had trouble making headway due to the traffic snarls. She pulled into the courthouse and parked in a spot reserved for a judge.

“You’re going to hear about that,” Alvarez said.

“Yeah.” They walked the three blocks and threaded their way through the crowd. A television news crew was already on the scene despite the clog of vehicles and pedestrians. Traffic was being detoured around from the old arched bridge, constructed before nineteen hundred. Access to the river’s crossing had been cordoned off, two miles farther downstream.

Alvarez showed her badge to an officer as they reached the perimeter of the area beneath the bridge and he motioned them through. Several vehicles were parked along the alley.

Probably from workers who had arrived before the police, Pescoli thought, or had been left overnight by someone who had consumed one or two too many at one of the nearby taverns.

There were other cars in the parking lots that serviced the rear entrances of the buildings positioned on the main street—a couple city cop cars, along with those from employees who had already started their shifts. From the back doors of those businesses a number of people were loitering, some smoking, all watching the action as it unfolded. An ambulance had gotten through and it stood by, lights flashing.

“What’ve we got?” Alvarez asked Jan Spitzer, the deputy who was obviously in charge.

Short, a little pudgy and smart as a whip, Spitzer looked tired, as if she’d put in her shift and was well into overtime. “Female. Caucasian. Already fished out. Thirty-five or so, looks like. Not long in the water. No decomp and, you know, the river’s close to freezing over, so the body would be, too, but no fish or whatever had started taking nibbles.”

Pescoli looked up to the underside of the bridge, where in warmer weather birds and bats probably roosted. “ID?”

“None on her.”

“Distinguishing marks?” Alvarez asked.

“Surgical scar on her abdomen, another on the inside of her left arm, and a couple tattoos—a tramp stamp of hearts and butterflies. You know, the usual. And some kind of tiny hummingbird on her right shoulder, but that’s not what’s interesting.” Spitzer glanced at Pescoli. “Our Jane Doe is missing a finger.”

Pescoli’s stomach dropped.

Spitzer continued. “Ring finger. Left hand. Sliced clean off.”

“Shit.” Pescoli exchanged glances with her partner. “So, it’s another psycho?”

How many could one town the size of Grizzly Falls have?

Alvarez said, “Let’s see.”

“Right this way, ladies.” Spitzer walked them over to the ME’s van where a body bag, blocked from the crowd’s view by the bulky vehicle, lay atop a gurney. As Spitzer unzipped the heavy bag, Pescoli felt her queasy stomach give a lurch and she fought a rising tide of nausea.

With a flip of the flap, the dead woman was exposed, supine, fully clothed, water collecting around her.

Pescoli forced back the urge to retch as she stared at the victim. Where there had been makeup were now only smudges. She was thin with a square face and her skin was tinged the bluish-gray hue of death. Her blue eyes were open and seeming to stare upward, her short, streaked hair wet and flattened to her head.

“Doesn’t look much like Sheree Cantnor,” Alvarez said as if she’d read Pescoli’s thoughts.

The victim’s hands were already bagged. Hopefully there had been a struggle and there was DNA evidence lodged beneath her nails.

“Any obvious areas where the attack occurred?” Pescoli asked as she looked toward the distant mountains, inhaling and exhaling slowly. Thankfully, her stomach was settling down.