Walter placed her in the trunk. He brushed the snow from her face and tucked a pillow under her head. Hannah's nose was bleeding in a slow, steady trickle. He hoped it wasn't broken.
From his pocket he removed the baggie holding the tiny Ambien pills he ordered online from Mexico and wedged three of them down her throat. Hannah moaned, swallowed. Good. He moved her arms behind her back and handcuffed her wrists. Then he handcuffed her ankles.
Walter stared down at Hannah. Her face was remarkably warm and open. Her face was what had attracted him. He had seen her waiting for the bus and Mary spoke to him, told him Hannah Givens was THE ONE and Mary was right, she was always right.
Walter rolled Hannah onto her side so the blood wouldn't trickle down her throat and make her sick. He'd have to stop and check on her at some point.
Walter tucked a blanket under her chin. He kissed Hannah on the forehead, then shut the trunk and got back behind the wheel.
The wet snow was coming down at a fast clip. Walter drove slowly, carefully, with both hands gripping the wheel. A lot of cops would be out tonight.
As he drove, Walter kept glancing at the statue on the dashboard. Mary's voice was clear in his head. His Blessed Mother told him not to worry.
6
The dead woman lying on the autopsy table didn't look like a woman any more – she didn't look human, in fact, but more like one of those creatures from an old black-and-white horror movie, a frightful, angry thing that had clawed its way out from a grave. The teeth were bared, the lips and surrounding facial tissue and missing eyes picked away by postmortem fish feeding. The rest of the body was covered by a blue sheet. A white card with a case number was placed under her chin.
The face was unrecognizable. Darby wondered if the woman was Judith Chen.
A heavyset man from ID, the section of the lab that dealt exclusively with crime scene photography, took close-up pictures of the bloated face. Coop stood behind him, watching. The small white-tiled room reeked of disinfectant mixed with the overpowering metallic odour of the Boston Harbor.
Darby had already taken her own set of pictures. As she waited, she reviewed what little she knew of the case, most of which came from newspapers.
Two and a half months ago, on a Wednesday night during the first week of December, Judith Chen, a freshman at Boston's Suffolk University, was studying for her chemistry midterm at the campus library. Five minutes shy of 10 p.m., Judith, dressed in pink nylon running pants, a pink sweatshirt and Nike sneakers, decided to call it a night. Somewhere between the library and the apartment she was renting in Natick, the nineteen-year-old chemistry major disappeared.
It was now mid-February and the body lying on the table wore the same clothing.
The ID man gave her the nod. Darby, dressed in scrubs, put on a surgical mask and a face shield and approached the body.
The woman's pink sweatshirt and pink nylon running pants were wet, caked with mud and twigs. The feet, still laced with sneakers, hung over a sink dripping with water. Darby was glad to see Bryson had tied paper bags around the woman's hands.
The right running-pant pocket was sewn shut with the same black thread used on Emma Hale's dress pocket. Darby peeled back the waistband, and through the transparent pocket lining she saw the same five-inch statue of the Virgin Mary she had held in her hands at the lab.
On the back of the woman's head was a puckered hole – the muzzle stamp from a handgun. There was no exit wound. Darby recalled that the.22 calibre slug found in Emma Hale's skull hadn't produced an exit wound either.
Coop removed the paper bags and examined the woman's hands. The fingers were gnarled into claws, and the skin, white and puckered with wet wrinkles known as washerwoman's syndrome, had started to slough off the body. The fingernails were painted a bright pink.
'They're pretty shrivelled,' Coop said.
'Which way should we go? Tissue builder? Injecting water under the skin?'
'Since the body's already showing epidural detachment, the best method would be to use the glove technique. Your hands are roughly the same size, so we can print her here.'
Darby collected grit and fingernail samples. After she finished, Coop slid the skin off the right hand and transferred the 'skin glove' to a dish holding alcohol.
She didn't see any evidence to indicate the body had been weighted down. It didn't matter, really – the putrefaction gases would cause even a weighted body to float to the surface eventually. Did the killer know this?
Darby plugged in the portable Luma-Lite and waved the alternate light source across the clothing. She found several hairs. After she collected them, she adjusted the wavelength and found stains that fluoresced – blood or semen. She marked the areas and then cut off the clothes.
The saturated bloodstains on the back of the sweatshirt resembled the same pattern she had seen on Emma Hale's jacket and dress. Like Emma Hale, this woman had lain in her blood for a period of time before she was dumped into the river.
Darby unlaced the sneakers and carefully removed them. River water, sand and grit fell into the sink. She cut off the socks. The toenails were painted the same bright pink as the fingernails. She packed each item of clothing into its own bag and then, using a hand-held magnifier, examined the Virgin Mary statue. It was the same size and colour. 'Our Lady of Sorrow' was stamped on the bottom.
The evidence packed and sealed, Darby turned her attention to the body.
The veins were a dark purple and stood out against the bleached white skin. Darby examined the facial abrasions. There was no way to tell with any certainty if the abrasions were postmortem or antemortem.
When a body sinks in water, it's knocked around the ocean or river floor. The head is battered against rocks, and fish and crustaceans pick apart the soft flesh in the face. When the body finally surfaces, it is most often mangled; the face, like this one, is practically unrecognizable.
Above the right breast was a moon-shaped tattoo. The colour was from chromogenic bacteria – Bacillus prodigiosus and Bacillus violaceum. They invaded the dermis and produced patterns resembling tattoos.
Part of a Snickers candy wrapper was stuck to the inside of the thigh. Darby bagged it and then swabbed the vagina and anus for possible DNA evidence. She ran a comb with wool through the woman's pubic hairs and transferred it to an evidence bag.
Darby had finished making her notes when Coop signalled for her.
She carefully fitted the woman's loose skin over her gloved hand. Then she pressed each fingertip against the inkpad and transferred the prints to the print card.
'There's no hair growth on the legs or under the arms,' Darby said. 'Her pubic hair is also trimmed.'
'So her killer allowed her to shave before she died?'
'Maybe.'
'You think the perp might have done it? I ask because there was this case not so long ago, in Philly, where this guy washed his victims in his bathtub after he raped and strangled them. He shaved their legs, arms, even their heads.'
'To remove evidence,' Darby said.
'Exactly.'
'A true psychopath doesn't have empathy for his victims. They're objects, a means to fuelling a fantasy that's often based on sadism. Women who are used as sexual objects are tossed like trash. They're not allowed to shave their legs and put on nail polish. He cared for this woman.'
'If you say so,' Coop said.
Darby fitted a headset equipped with a magnifier lens and light and examined the body for any trace evidence. What she found was mostly silt and twigs.
'Darby?'
She looked up from the body.
'Twelve-point match,' Coop said. 'It's Judith Chen.'
Darby felt a hot, tearing sensation work its way through her chest as she went back to work.
Like Emma Hale, Judith Chen had disappeared for weeks, being held somewhere until her captor decided to put a bullet in the back of her head. Like Emma Hale, Judith Chen had been dumped in the water dressed in the same clothes she was last seen wearing, a small statue of the Virgin Mary sewn into one of her pockets.