I brushed away a strand of hair covering her left ear and saw that it was pierced in three places, but she wore no earrings. I checked the other ear. No jewelry. “Let’s find out if she was wearing earrings the day she was abducted. If she was, check ViCAP for other cases of killers who take earrings as trophies of their murders.”
He wrote in his notepad.
“Kurt, besides you, how many officers have been in here?”
“Just two.” He pointed his light toward an intersecting tunnel leading to the east. “I checked the tunnels before they got here. It’s clear. No more bodies.”
Water dripped out of sight somewhere deep in the mine. Wet echoes crawling toward me.
“Do we know who owns this mine?”
He shook his head. “Up here, mineral rights change hands a lot. Get inherited, resold. It’s hard to track down. Jameson’s working on it.”
I gave Heather my full attention again.
No contusions on her face, no blood in her hair, no ligature marks on her neck. How did he kill you, Heather? Press a pillow against your face? Drown you? Poison you?
“Let’s get a tox screening.”
“ME’s on his way up to get things rolling.”
The candle beside her right shoulder blinked out.
I moved my beam of light past the heart and directed it onto the slight folds and wrinkles in her clothing.
Kurt bent beside me, pointing first at her shoulders, then at her ankles. “No clumping or bunching of her clothes,” he said. “He didn’t drag her in here; he carried her.”
“Looks like it. Either way, he took time to smooth out her clothes, to brush her hair. He spent time with her. Posing her. Making sure everything was just right.”
I felt a renewed sense of sadness at her death and the death of the person whose heart now lay on her chest. Moving the beam of light across her body, I thought of how many killers return to the dump sites of their victims to violate their remains, to relive the thrill of the murder, but there was no sign he’d defiled her remains. And I was thankful, if for nothing more than that.
Why here? Why did you bring her here? When I’m in the middle of an investigation I have a tendency to talk to myself, and I didn’t realize I’d done more than just think my two questions until I heard a woman’s voice behind me: “He’s sending us a message.”
Then footsteps, quick, firm, purposeful. Careful to avoid shining the beam in her eyes, I tilted my flashlight toward the woman approaching us. In the corner of the light, I could see her naturally beautiful, cowgirl face and strawberry blonde hair.
“Detective Warren,” I said.
“Agent Bowers.”
At twenty-nine, Cheyenne was the youngest woman ever to be promoted to homicide detective for the Denver Police Department. She was smart, down-to-earth, dedicated, and I liked her. I’d worked six task force cases with her over the last year, and each time I’d become more impressed.
Even though I was seven years older, there was definitely chemistry between us, and she’d taken the lead and asked me out twice, but the timing hadn’t been right. However, in light of the problems I was having in my current relationship, those two instances came to mind.
Her eyes whisked past me and found the body illuminated by Kurt’s flashlight. “Ritualistic posing,” she said. “He took his time to get it just right.”
“Yes.” I focused my light on Heather again.
One of the CSU members called loudly for Kurt. I saw his jaw tense; he spent a moment in quiet deliberation, then handed Cheyenne his light, excused himself, and stepped away.
I returned my attention to Heather, and as I leaned close to her face, I noticed something in her mouth. Gently, I pressed against her lower lip to peer inside.
A black device the size of a folded-up strip of gum lay on her tongue.
Cheyenne saw it too. Knelt closely beside me. Most of my attention remained on the crime scene, but some of it shifted to her, to the soft brush of her arm against mine.
We both scrutinized the object. “What is that?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll be right back.” She exited the mine while I used my cell phone to take pictures of Heather’s face and the placement of the object in her mouth.
Cheyenne returned with plastic tweezers and an evidence bag. “CSU was thrilled to pass these along.”
“I’m sure they were.”
She handed me the tweezers, and I slid them carefully into Heather’s mouth. Squeezed the object to remove it.
And heard a voice.
“I’ll see you…”
I toppled backward.
“… in Chicago…”
A recording.
“… Agent Bowers.”
I caught my breath.
Felt my heart race.
I stared at the tweezers, at the small recordable device. It looked like the kind you find in some types of greeting cards. Depressing the sides had activated it.
“OK.” Cheyenne let out a long narrow breath. “I didn’t see that one coming.”
My heart was still hammering. “Me either.”
The message repeated. “I’ll see you in Chicago, Agent Bowers.”
I waited to see if there was more to it, but those seven words just repeated every six seconds. Carefully, I placed the recording device into the evidence bag.
“He knows about Chicago,” Cheyenne said, taking the bag from me. “About Basque’s trial.”
Tomorrow morning I was flying to Chicago to testify at the retrial of a serial killer named Richard Devin Basque, a man whom I’d caught thirteen years ago in my early days as an investigator. He’d been found guilty and had been imprisoned since then, but recently new evidence had emerged and now it was possible he might be set free.
I didn’t want to think about that now.
The recording continued playing: “I’ll see you in Chicago, Agent Bowers.”
The faint sound of dripping water.
For a moment I listened to the tunnel. To my thoughts.
Whoever left the recording not only knew I’d be in Chicago tomorrow, he knew I’d be here, at this crime scene today.
But how?
And how is this murder connected to Basque’s trial?
Another candle blew out. Stale darkness crept toward us from deeper in the mine, and the heart Heather was clutching no longer looked red at all, but completely black.
Voices behind me. Kurt and the CSU.
“All right,” Cheyenne said. “Here they come.”
The recording continued repeating the message. I wished I knew how to shut it off.
As the team approached, I let my light drift from Heather’s body and wander along the wall of the tunnel, where I studied the glimmer of light glancing off the minerals embedded in the mountain. Occasional fissures and clefts only a few centimeters wide ran through the rock.
An ancient, rough-hewn ladder disappeared down a shaft four meters past the body. I walked to it and aimed my light down. The shaft was barely wide enough to allow a person to descend. About ten meters further down, it terminated at another tunnel.
“Any idea how big this mine is?” I asked Cheyenne.
“Not yet, but some of these old gold mines run for miles.”
Then the crime scene unit arrived, we left the recording device with them, and Cheyenne and I headed for the mine’s entrance.
As I passed the men on my way out, I greeted them softly, but Kurt was the only one to reply.
3
Cheyenne walked beside me. “You think it’s Taylor who left the message?” she asked.
Sebastian Taylor was an ex-assassin on the FBI’s Most Wanted List who’d taken a special interest in me a few months ago and had started sending me taunting letters and cameo photographs of people in my family. He signed all the notes “Shade,” the code name a pair of killers had used in San Diego on a case I’d worked in February. Trace DNA left on one of the envelopes told us Taylor was the one sending the messages and that he was actually the father of one of those killers.
Two weeks ago an officer had found tire impressions in the mud next to a rural mailbox that Taylor had used to mail an envelope. We didn’t know yet if the tire prints were from his vehicle, but it looked like a good lead. Kurt’s team was looking into it.