I let out my own piqued sigh between pursed lips and sent the mild anger with my friend to spin away down an imaginary drain. I knew he meant well and that this was all a part of what made Detective Benjamin Storm, “Ben Storm the devoted friend.”
I unlatched my door and shouldered it open. “Let’s go have a look. If I can help, you know I want to.”
“Ya’know… I really hated to ask you to do this, Rowan.” Ben turned back to face me, his eyes betraying the pain he still refused to let go. The temperature inside the van had quickly dropped, and his words came in a cloud of steamy breath.
“I know you did, Chief,” I answered. “But get over it. You can’t protect the entire world.”
“Maybe not. But I can sure as hell protect my corner of it.”
CHAPTER 3
“We haven’t cleaned her up yet,” the emotionless voice of the medical examiner told me officially. “We just finished the external examination early this morning. Detective Storm asked us not to proceed with the rest of the postmortem until you had a look.”
The climate controlled gelidity of the autopsy suite, though still a fair amount warmer than the current outdoor temperature, injected itself uninvited into my joints, quickly hardening them to ice. Insinuating itself like a prickly arthritis, it froze me in place next to the stainless steel table bearing the young woman’s partially shrouded corpse. The only sound to reach my ears was the dull thudding of my own heart. I had been in this very room before with none but the living, but even then the restless souls of the departed had called out to me.
Clawed at me…
Pleaded with me…
Spoken to me as their conduit to this physical plane…
They had sought me out as the one who understood their continued existence and as the one who could pierce that unyielding veil between life and death.
And, they had spoken to me then just as they were speaking to me now.
This unearthly connection to the other side was my own personal bane as a Witch. Something I had never wanted but could never deny.
My eyes were beginning to burn, and I suddenly realized that I was staring. A fixed, unfocused gaze upon her uncovered face and torso. A face that had once belonged to a vivacious and beautiful young woman. I blinked and removed my glasses before rubbing my eyes and taking a moment to will away the voices of the dead. All of them but one, I hoped.
In life, I am sure that Brianna Walker had been the proverbial knockout blonde. Even in death, she was beyond striking. Measuring five-feet nine-inches, she would have been described as statuesque. From what was visible, her shape fit the criteria for the much sought after hourglass figure, and the Mother Goddess had been more than kind to her in the area of endowment. Still visible along her shoulders and upper arms were the subdued lines of trim musculature. Her stomach was tight and flat. All of this gave silent testimony to her superlative physical condition. Soft but powerful, which is exactly what clients seeking her particularly specialized services would have been after. It was also a fact that told me she wouldn’t have gone down easily. This woman would have fought for her life if given half a chance.
Her natural blonde hair was cropped neatly, shoulder length; and what had been a stylish coif was matted with a dried crust of her own blood. The back of her head had impacted violently with the stone inlaid courtyard in front of the hotel but not before the rest of her body had won that final race. According to the medical examiner, the x-rays showed countless fractures along her spine and each of her limbs. Like Ben had wryly commented-it wasn’t the fall that killed her, it was the sudden stop at the end. Cliche, but then everyone had their own way of dealing with the horrors that they saw. Defense mechanisms are what the psychologists like to call them. Cliches and dry humor just happened to be Ben’s. Brianna Walker’s fine Grecian features and clear complexion bespoke of an austere beauty combined with a cold arrogance that exuded supreme confidence. She knew she was beautiful, and she had not hesitated to use that fact to her advantage.
Now, however, her lifeless blue-grey pallor contrasted hideously with the painted face of fantasy she had worn that night. Once full, pouting lips sagged flatly, still lacquered a garish red. Dusky steel-greys coated her now sinking eyelids in sharp contoured lines. Thick blue-black mascara still clung in places to spidery lashes, but only where both it and eyeliner hadn’t run in dirty streams down her rouged cheeks. She had cried beyond the threshold of waterproof makeup.
She had sobbed in pain.
She had whimpered for mercy.
She had died in unfathomable fear.
No longer the cold seductress, she now wore the mask of a weeping clown, and her pain reached past her cloak of darkness to tear at my very soul.
I felt Ben’s large hand rest lightly on my shoulder. “Hey, Kemosabe. You okay?”
“Yeah, Ben.” I whispered past the frog that had made a home in my throat. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
“You aren’t gonna try anything, are ya’? Ya’know, like…” He allowed his voice to melt into silence.
I had previously worked side by side with Ben on a gruesome serial killer case almost every step of the way. It was then that he had seen me exhibit abilities that until that time he had discounted as pure invention. Among those talents had been the capacity to channel and witness the death of a victim first hand. However, he had also learned that in doing so, I could run the risk of joining the victim on the other side permanently. It was to this that I knew he was now wordlessly referring.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I’ll try not to without warning you first.”
“Good enough.” After a brief, brotherly squeeze, he released my shoulder and stepped back. I could hear him flip open his notepad, and the rustling sound was punctuated by the metallic click of a ballpoint pen. “Go ahead, Doc.”
Ben spoke to the medical examiner who stepped around my motionless form and pulled back the pristine white sheet to reveal the rest of the nightmare.
I slipped my glasses back on to my face and adjusted them down the bridge of my nose with slow determination, and only then did I allow my eyes to roam across the rest of the young woman’s body.
“As you can see,” the M.E. began as if he were giving a lecture while directing my gaze with his gloved hand, “there are several deep lacerations along her hips and thighs.”
Razor precise incisions lined her shapely, once unblemished legs in diagonal, half-chevron stripes. Lifeless flesh, now growing mildly flaccid, shrank away in opposing directions, exposing the severity and depth of the cuts.
“Whoever made the incisions managed to miss any major blood vessels.” The doctor continued his dispassionate dissertation of the facts. “And, as I told you, her spinal column was virtually shattered, most likely from the fall. However, there were several fractures in her limbs, and both shoulders were displaced. Bruising would indicate that both the dislocations and a number of the leg fractures occurred well before she died.”
“How long?” I asked.
“Six to twelve hours, approximately.”
“I assume she rented the room and not her client?” I directed the question over my shoulder to Ben. “Or else I wouldn’t be here looking at this.”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Room was in her name. Rented that afternoon on her credit card. Not unusual for her accordin’ to her Vice rap sheet. Considerin’ what she charged per hour, I expect she just considered it the cost of doin’ business.”