Chapter One
India Carsten sat on the marble bench waiting. The courthouse in Raleigh, North Carolina, was cool at this time of the day and almost deserted. The four story buildings looked rather plain on the outside but inside the walls and floor were tiled with brown marble. As you came in the foyer, you were met with two open staircases leading to the upper floors. The halls of justice housed many offices and several courtrooms and if you paused alone in the dark, you could swear you heard the echoes of past.
Working as a law clerk for Judge Byron Jackson, she’d been in this building at all hours of the day and night. She knew every inch of the law library and it was there where she often found solace after a trying day deep in the trenches of the law. There, she could read anything she wanted. Reading had always been her passion and her escape. So much had happened in her young life that when she picked up a book and began reading it, she could be carried off to her own new world.
She had waited until the end of the work day for a reason. She wanted privacy for her talk with District Attorney, Briar Rivers. She’d been sitting here trying to gather her courage to present her evidence to someone she thought of as a friend. She’d known him for some time now and every time she’d been around him, she couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to be with him. Her cheeks heated up when she thought about what she wanted to do with him and thanked her lucky stars he never knew she was interested in him. She couldn’t imagine he even knew she was alive but she wanted to know him in a biblical sense.
She glanced down at the files in her hand and licked her dry lips. Inside the manila file folders were what she hoped was enough evidence to open an old case, a case that had haunted her for the last fifteen years.
The door to his office opened and Briar Rivers paused for a brief moment when he saw her sitting there. “India, what in the world are you doing here?” he asked in a surprised voice.
She stood up, pursed her lips, and said, “I was hoping to talk to you.”
Briar tilted his head and motioned for her to come into his office. “Well then, come on in and talk to me.”
India stepped through the door and looked around the office. It was a man’s office, not dominated by junk or little trinkets as some of the offices along this hall were. Here, the counters and desk were clean and clutter free. His desk was large and it took up a great deal of the room. His chair was leather and very comfortable looking.
Briar walked over to his chair and sat down. He looked very distinguished in his dark suit but even the tailoring couldn’t hide his muscular trim body. The white shirt he wore contrasted starkly with the darkness of his suit and the bright red of his tie. His dark hair was brushed back away from his forehead and was just beginning to turn silver at the temples. His dark blue eyes searched her face as he leaned forward. With his elbows on the desk, he folded his hands and cupped his chin waiting for her to speak.
India sat down on the other side of the desk and laid the folders down. She was nervous and fiddled with the hem of her tan skirt as she searched for the proper way to say what she had to say. She tucked her strawberry blonde hair behind her ear and began her story. “This may sound crazy and I’m not at all sure what I remember is real or not, but I was reading an article the other day about a murder that was discovered six months ago in Savannah, Georgia. It involved a woman who had been eviscerated. Her organs were removed and not found with her linen wrapped body.” She paused and hen blurted it out, “I think I saw such a murder fifteen years ago in Boston.”
Briar stared at her for a moment then asked, “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”
“When I was growing up it was just me and my Mom. My grandparents threw her out of their home when they found out she was going to have me. My father dumped her when she wouldn’t abort me or put me up for adoption. She often had to work two jobs to make ends meet and I was left alone most of the time. My best friend at the time was T.K. Jonas. When I was ten, we were running the streets of East Boston until pretty much all hours of the night. If my mother knew about it, she never said anything. Anyway, one night TK and I were in an abandoned warehouse down by the docks when we heard a noise. We didn’t want to get caught but we wanted to know what was going on.” India paused to she glance at Briar and tears formed in her eyes as she continued her story, “What we saw scared the crap out of both of us. We saw this man carrying in the body of a woman. The woman was unconscious but she was still alive at the time. He tied her to a wooden platform and undressed her. When she was naked, we saw him start cutting her open. The woman screamed but the man continued to cut open her torso. She must have passed out at some point because we couldn’t hear her anymore.” She shuddered slightly at the memory. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to close my eyes and not hear those screams in my nightmares.”
“What else was the man doing to her?”
“We watched as he drained her blood and began removing her organs and he placed them in four ceramic jars. He was playing music while he cut her up and when he placed her body parts in the jars he was mumbling some gibberish in a foreign language. When he was finished, he cut off her head. He placed her head in a clear glass jar then sealed the jar. He wrapped her body in bright orange linen. When he finished, he sealed the jars and began loading them into a box.”
“How do you know all this?” Briar asked curiously.
“My friend and I were watching him the whole time. We were up on the second floor and we had a direct line of sight to what he was doing. The first trip, he took her head outside then he came back. With the second trip, the man carried the woman’s body outside. TK and I snuck down to his table and we saw what was left there. All we found were the four small ceramic jars.”
Briar sat forward very quickly. “Are you totally nuts? If he had caught you, he would have killed you.”
“I know that now but when you’re ten years old, you don’t think about stuff like that.” She looked away for a moment, then took a deep breath and admitted, “Back then, we didn’t think he would miss one small jar either.”
“Are you saying you took one of the jars?” Briar looked stunned.
India nodded. “I took one of the smaller jars and TK and I got the hell out of the warehouse. TK went her way and I went mine. I went home and locked all the doors and windows then I stayed awake the rest of the night, fully expecting the man to come after me. I was still awake when my Mom got home at six.”
“What happened the next day?” Briar asked
“Nothing, and that’s what so strange. Nothing happened and the murder was never reported. No one ever found a trace of the missing woman either. I kept checking the newspaper for an article about someone finding her body but I never saw one.”
“What happened to the jar?”
“I hid the jar. For all I know it’s still right where I put it fifteen years ago.” Her voice was low and shaky.
“And where would that be?” Briar queried.
“I buried it in the corner of the basement in the apartment building we lived in fifteen years ago. I doubt anyone has disturbed it since I buried it.”
“What makes you think that murder and the latest murder are connected?”
India licked her dry lips. She went through the files until she found the one she wanted and handed it to him.
Briar picked up a pair of reading glasses and opened the file.
India explained what was in the file, “A woman’s body was uncovered in a shallow grave. It was wrapped in bright orange linen, almost in the same style as the ancient mummies of Egypt were buried. When the medical examiner unbound her he found the woman’s organs missing. He also found small pieces of jewelry wrapped in the linens. He also said the woman’s head was missing. This could be the same woman we saw being murdered all those years ago.”
Briar listened to her explanation as he read the exact same account in the newspaper clippings. When he was finished, he glanced over to the other files piled on his desk. “What are those?”
“More files of murders with similar particulars, all from different areas of the East Coast. I found seven other murders besides the one I told you about from fifteen years ago.”
Briar reached for the other files on his desk. He spent the next several minutes looking at the newspaper clippings dating back ten years from different cities up and down the east coast. “This is all very interesting. It seems like you found the trail of a serial killer no one else is aware of and he’s been in business for at least fifteen years.” He placed the files down on his desk and sat back in his chair for a moment. He folded his hands in front of his face and steepling his fingers. “I think we should look into this a little deeper. We need to find out if these murders are truly related and then we need to find the killer and stop him.”
“How? I mean how would we do that?” India asked. “I can’t go to all these cities and dig up information that’s ten years old. We would never get our hands on police reports and ME exams. Besides, this killer could be anywhere by now, including right here in this city or anywhere.”
Briar shook his head. “I’m not suggesting you go anywhere, except to see my brothers. Cade and Elliot along with our youngest brother have established a foundation that works with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to track down desperate and dangerous criminals. I think you should tell them your story. This guy needs to be found and stopped and that’s exactly what they do. They can contact the police departments and get their hands on Medical Examiners’ reports.”
“Then you believe me?” India had to ask. She’d been nervous about coming to Briar in the first place. She hadn’t thought about the first murder in so long she had almost convinced herself it had all been just a bad dream. It wasn’t until she read about the latest murder that the memory came back to her.
He nodded his head looking somber. “I think you are very lucky to be alive. Whoever murdered that woman fifteen years ago in Boston could have just as easily murdered both you and your friend TK that night.”
“I realize that. Believe me I do. I lived in fear for days after the murder. I didn’t see TK for a few days and then when I did I was going through a very hard time. My Mom had just been the victim of a robbery gone wrong and she was gone. The junkie that tried to rob the place ended up shooting her in order to get away. I don’t remember even talking about that night again with her.”
“I’m sorry about your Mom. It must have been a dark time for you.”
India nodded. “It was. She was all I had. After her parents threw her out, she made her own way. She got a job and a small apartment. She finished school and after I was born she was always there for me, no matter what.”
“What about your grandparents? After her death, you could have gone to live with them. Why didn’t you?”
India took a deep breath and said, “My grandparents wanted nothing to do with me before I was born, I didn’t want anything to do with them after my Mom died. I watched her struggle to make ends meet but I never heard her complain. There were nights when she gave me all the food she had to make sure I didn’t go hungry. She always said she wasn’t hungry or that she ate at her job but I know she gave what little we had to me. I would lay there at night and listen to her cry herself to sleep but the next morning she had a smile on her face when she woke me up for school.” India paused and shrugged. “When they rejected me again after she died, I guess I had enough of my Mom inside me that I didn’t want to live with someone who didn’t want me. Besides, the county had contacted them and they didn’t want me anyway. I went into the foster system and by the time I was seventeen, I’d moved around to seven different foster homes.”
“Did you ever have any contact with your grandparents?”
India nodded. “I was seventeen when I heard from my grandmother. She told me my grandfather was dying and he wanted to make amends for the past. She had felt so bad all these years but because of who he was she couldn’t make contact before then.”
“Who was your grandfather?” Briar looked curious.
India shifted in her seat before she answered, “He is Retired Judge John Carsten. It seems he wasn’t dying after all. His doctor found a tumor and it scared them. When they were able to do surgery and take care of his cancer through chemo and radiation therapy, he wasn’t very happy that she contacted me.”
“What a bastard,” Briar muttered under his breath.
“Oh, that wasn’t the worst part.”
“What do you mean?”
“I found out that John had gone through the courts and my father had been paying child support all the years I had been alive. He banked the money Jared had paid him.” India shook her head. “If my Mom had known about that she wouldn’t have had to work so hard, or gone hungry, and maybe she wouldn’t have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She might not have been murdered.”
Briar sat there thinking about what she’d told him. He looked angry. “Did he ever turn the money over to you?”
India shook her head. “He tried to but by then it was too late. I didn’t want it then. It was too late. I didn’t want anything to do with either of them. My mother made her own way in the world and so would I. So I worked my way through college and now I’m a third year law student.” She raised her head and stared at him. “I can honestly say that I did it on my own without any help from them.”
“They had no right to keep the child support from you and your mom. The fact that they did constitutes a crime,” Briar told her.
“When I was a kid, I used to sneak into my grandfather’s courtroom and watch him at work. He was a mean spirited man with little compassion for the people in front of his bench. I made up my mind I could never be like him. Over the years, I tried very hard not to hate the man he was. My Mom wouldn’t have wanted that but it was very hard at times. At best, I can say I despise him a lot.”
Briar sat quietly for a long moment as if absorbing what she said. Then he leaned forward and checked his calendar. “It’s Thursday now, can you be ready to go on Saturday?”
“Sure. Where are we going? Where do your brothers live?”
“They live in Edenton. It’s about a two and a half hour trip from here. I’ll call and let them know we’re coming. You might want to pack a bag for the weekend.”
India stood up and nodded. “I can do that. Should I get a motel or something?”
Briar grinned. “You won’t have to. The foundation has plenty of room. We’ll stay there.”
India got to her feet. “Do you think that even at this late date, we can catch this man?”
“This guy hasn’t stopped killing. You may have caught him in the beginnings of his madness when he first started fifteen years ago. If we can fill in the gaps between then and now, we might be able to find his trail. The cases you found already can tell us where he’s been. If we can trace his timeline, we might be able to find out where he is now. Can you leave your files with me for a day or so? I’d like to read through what you found and maybe fax them to my brothers so they can get started on them.”
India nodded as she walked toward the door. “I’ll leave them here. I hope your family can find this monster.” She paused and glanced over her shoulder at Briar, “When I saw what he was doing to her that night I should have screamed and run away, but I couldn’t. I sat there and watched him dismember another human being. If he is a monster, what does that make me?”
Briar got up and came over to her side. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he stared at her. “What he did that night would have scared the shit out of anyone. The fact that you didn’t run screaming probably saved your life that night. You were probably in a state of shock. The human brain can protect itself by allowing you to repress certain memories. Your brain repressed this memory for a reason. You were too young to deal with the horror you were seeing. Now you’re old enough to deal with it, so the article brought back the memory. No one even bothered connecting the cases until now. You need to bring the details of the murder you witnessed to the authorities, so they can work the case and stop the killer.”
“What if I bring the focus of the killer to me?” She laughed nervously. “Guess I should’ve thought about that before, huh?”
Briar shook his head. “Don’t worry about that. My brothers will protect you. You did the right thing India. I don’t blame you for being afraid. This is the stuff nightmares are made of.”