10
I left Northern Aggression, drove through the downtown loop, and fell into the flow of traffic a few blocks away from the main police station. It was after ten o’clock now, and the mean streets of Southtown were open for business.
Hookers wearing as little as they could without freezing to death ambled up and down the sidewalks, stamping their feet and trying to stay warm between customers, while cars slowly cruised by, the drivers debating who they wanted to take for a spin. Pimps bundled up in puffy parkas lurked in the dark alleys beyond, ready to make their presence known if someone tried to leave without paying for services rendered. Still more folks gathered at the street corners under the flickering lights, buying and selling everything from pills to pot to bags of fresh blood for the vampires. At least, that’s what the dealers claimed it was. I had my doubts, though, especially since it looked more like colored corn syrup than actual O-negative.
I pulled into the first empty parking space on the street that I saw, got out of my car, and locked it. I hadn’t taken three steps down the sidewalk before a couple of guys sporting flashy gold chains over neon-green jackets broke away from their posse of friends at the corner and stopped in front of me. The guys looked to be in their early twenties, and they both grinned like fools as they cracked their knuckles and gave me a leering once-over.
“Hey there, honey,” one of them crooned in a high, twangy voice. “What’s a sweet little thing like you doing out on the dark, dangerous streets tonight?”
I rolled my eyes. Sweet little thing? Please. I’d already been killing people when these idiots were still in middle school.
I could have done the whole song and dance about how they needed to move out of my way, how they didn’t know who they were messing with, and how they would deeply, painfully, and permanently regret hassling me. They would be stupid enough to attack me, and I would kick their asses into next week, just like I’d done with the giants at the country club earlier today. The same scenario had played out dozens of times over the past year.
Part of me wanted all of that to happen just so I could beat somebody down. Just so I could let out some of my simmering anger and frustration that I hadn’t been able to find and save Elissa. But this wasn’t about what I wanted, not anymore. It was about helping Jade as best I could. I needed to get to the coroner’s office before she did, and I just didn’t have time to deal with these fools. So I reached underneath my jacket, pulled out my spider rune pendant, and held it out where the two goons could see it.
“Any more questions?” I snarled.
Their eyes bulged, and their mouths opened and closed and opened and closed again, but no sounds came out. They knew exactly who this rune belonged to and just how dead I could make them.
“I didn’t think so.”
I strode forward, and the two guys practically tripped over each other to get out of my way. And not just them. Everyone on the block had seen our confrontation. All conversation abruptly cut off, and everyone on the sidewalk stopped what they were doing and stared at me. No one else blocked my path, and I got the distinct impression that several people were holding their breath. Of course, I knew that they would all start talking about me the second I turned the corner, wondering what I was doing here tonight, but I didn’t care. Let them gossip all they wanted.
It didn’t much matter when a girl was dead.
A few minutes later, I reached the police station, which was located in a prewar building made of dark gray granite that took up its own block. Despite the late hour, light spilled out of every window, highlighting the columns, crenellations, and curlicued carvings of vines and leaves that covered much of the stone. I’d always thought it highly ironic that the station was housed in such a beautiful building when so much ugliness passed through its doors on a daily basis.
A bored-looking cop was working a metal detector that had been installed just inside the main entrance. The machine beep-beep-beeped out a sharp, high-pitched warning when I went through, but I didn’t want to deal with the cop any more than I had wanted to deal with the thugs outside, so I tap-tap-tapped my fingernail against my spider rune, making it ring like a bell. The cop knew what the symbol meant just like the thugs had, and he swallowed and waved me through.
Sometimes being feared was quite helpful.
Fifty feet later, the corridor opened up into the main part of the station, an enormous room of lovely gray marble with silver flecks running through it. Crystal and brass chandeliers dropped down from the ceiling, highlighting the people below. Uniformed cops carrying paperwork from one side of the room to the other, suited detectives gossiping around a water cooler, criminals slouching on wooden benches along the walls waiting to be processed and taken to their cells for the night. The murmur of a dozen conversations echoed through the room, punctuated by the constant jingle-jangle of one phone after another, and the air reeked of black coffee, burned popcorn, and sour sweat.
I skirted around the uniformed cops, ignored the detectives, walked by the criminals, and headed toward the back of the room, where several desks were clustered. Xavier was already here, sitting at his desk and scribbling on a notepad, a phone wedged in the crook of his neck. He spotted me and waved me over.
“Yeah . . . yeah,” Xavier said. “Gin just walked in the door. I’ll send her down to you.”
He hung up, then threw down his pen, leaned back in his chair, and ran his fingers over his shaved head in a sharp, scrubbing motion, as if he were trying to wipe something particularly horrible out of his mind. Curious. Xavier was rock-solid, one of the strongest, toughest, most dependable guys I knew. I wondered what had upset him so much.
Xavier dropped his hands, leaned forward in his chair, and looked at me.
“Rough night?” I asked.
He gave me a faint smile, but his gaze remained dark and troubled. “Aren’t they all?”
Couldn’t argue with that.
He gestured at his phone. “That was Bria. She’s downstairs with Ryan. He’s just finished his preliminary examination.”
I nodded. Dr. Ryan Colson was the head coroner and a friend to both Bria and Xavier.
Xavier’s mouth twisted, and he stared at me like he wanted to tell me something. After a second, he shook his head, as if banishing the thought. “Ryan will clean up her face as best he can so that Jade can officially identify her. Try to make her look a little less . . .”
“Beaten, strangled, and dead?”
He winced. “Yeah. But there’s no softening a blow like that, is there?”
“Not in my experience.”
Once again, he gave me a strange, almost pitying look. I wondered what he knew about Elissa Daniels’s murder that I didn’t.
“Did you guys find anything at the scene?” I asked. “Anything in the trash you collected? Any clue to who might have done this?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Nothing obvious. Just a bunch of soggy cardboard boxes, empty bottles, and broken glass, which isn’t unusual, given the location. Bria and I will go through all the trash again later, but I’m not holding out much hope of finding anything useful.”
I nodded. “Thanks for trying, though.”
Xavier shrugged his massive shoulders. “Just doing my job.” His gaze flicked over to the detectives, who were still standing around the water cooler, watching a video on one of their phones. “Someone around here has to, right?”
“Right.”
Xavier jerked his thumb over toward the elevators. “You go on down to the coroner’s office. I’ll stay here and keep an eye out for Sophia and Jade.”
“Thanks, Xavier.”
He nodded at me and picked up his phone to make another call.
I got into one of the elevators, punched the button, and rode down to the basement. The elevator doors opened, revealing a long, empty hallway. After the constant noise and motion upstairs, the lack of sound and people was a bit jarring, as if I’d been transported to a distant, deserted planet, instead of just another floor in the same building.
I walked down the corridor, my boots whispering against the floor, and opened the door to the waiting room that fronted the coroner’s office. Padded chairs against the walls, dusty plastic palm trees in the corners, a glass table topped with several tissue boxes. The functional furniture was nice enough, but it was still a thoroughly depressing place. Even worse, I could hear the walls wailing with the cries of everyone who’d been unfortunate enough to come here and identify a dead loved one. Soon Jade’s sobs would be added to the ones already here. The mournful notes made my own heart squeeze tight.
The frosted-glass door at the back of the waiting room buzzed open, and Bria stuck her head out. “There you are. Ryan’s ready for you.”
I walked through the opening and stepped into a room that was mostly made of metal. Stainless-steel vaults, each one fronted with its own door, lined two of the walls, while several long metal tables took up the center of the room, each positioned above a drain in the floor. It was several degrees cooler in here, and goose bumps rippled down my spine, despite my heavy winter clothes. A sharp tang of lemony antiseptic hung in the air, as though someone had just cleaned out a refrigerator.
Dr. Ryan Colson, the coroner, stood beside one of the tables, his blue scrubs looking shockingly bright against the dull metal. The soft lights made his black hair and goatee gleam like wet ink against his ebony skin, and his dark hazel eyes were kind and sympathetic behind his round silver glasses.
“Dr. Colson.”
“Please,” he said. “Call me Ryan.”
“Okay, Ryan. But only if you call me Gin.”
He nodded. “Gin.”
My gaze flicked past him to the table. Elissa’s body had already been stretched out on the metal, with a blue sheet draped over everything but her face and her toes, whose nails were painted a fun, flirty pink. My stomach turned over again.
“I haven’t started my official autopsy yet, but the causes of death are pretty obvious,” Ryan said in a low, somber voice. “Blunt-force trauma to the head, face, and torso, along with manual strangulation. One of the blows to the head probably knocked her out before the strangulation occurred. That’s my hope, anyway.”
He reached out and rested his hand on the table beside Elissa’s head, almost as if he were trying to comfort her, even though she was far beyond anyone’s reach now.
“It’s a bit hard to tell with the cold weather, but I’d estimate that she’s been dead at least twenty-four hours. I’ll know more when I do the full autopsy, but that’s not why you’re here.”
I shook my head. “I wish none of us were here tonight.”
A sharp knock sounded on the door, and we turned toward the frosted glass. Ryan went over and opened the door. Jade stood in the waiting room, with Sophia hovering behind her.
Jade was wearing the same crimson coat she’d had on at the Pork Pit earlier today, but her face had been scrubbed free of its usual makeup, and her blond hair had been pulled back into a messy ponytail, making her look younger and far more vulnerable than she had at the restaurant. Her puffy eyes were bloodshot, and she twisted a white silk handkerchief around in her hands. She’d probably been crying ever since I called.
Jade looked at me a moment before her green gaze locked onto the body on the table. She froze, as if she were as dead as Elissa. No one moved or spoke, giving her time to process the ugly, ugly scene. Jade stayed ramrod-still for the better part of a minute before a single, violent tremor shook her body. Then she started shaking and couldn’t stop. Her lips trembled, her fingers spasmed, her legs wobbled, and she would have crumpled to the floor if Sophia hadn’t reached out and steadied her.
To my surprise, Ryan stepped forward and gently took hold of Jade’s elbow. “It’s all right,” he said in a soft, soothing, sympathetic voice. “I know how hard this is. Whenever you’re ready, Ms. Jamison. Just take your time.”
Jade stared back at him with a blank expression, so far down in her grief that she wasn’t really seeing him. After several seconds, she nodded and let him slowly lead her over to the table. Sophia stayed by the door, while Bria and I both stepped back away from the table.
Ryan had combed out Elissa’s long blond hair and had cleaned the blood off her face, trying to make her look as normal as possible, but her features were still a bruised, battered mess.
Jade gasped and pressed her fist to her mouth, shocked by the sight of her dead, beaten, strangled sister. Another violent tremor ripped through her body, as though she was going to collapse under the weight of her emotions. Jade reached out and grabbed Ryan’s hand, squeezing his fingers as if to push back her own feelings and steady herself. Ryan winced at her tight, bruising grip, but he didn’t remove his hand from hers.
“Can—can I see a little bit more of her?” Jade whispered. “Just down to her shoulders? Please?”
Ryan nodded. “Of course.”
He gave Jade’s hand a little pat with his free one, and she finally realized that she was still holding on to him. Jade grimaced and let go. Ryan nodded his thanks, then stepped forward and lowered the blue sheet a few more inches, revealing Elissa’s collarbones and the curve of her shoulders.
Jade leaned over the table, her gaze roaming over Elissa’s face, trying to see her sister through all the bruises, swelling, and broken bones.
Bria opened her mouth to ask for a positive ID, but Ryan shook his head, telling her to wait.
I looked at Jade, expecting tears to start pooling in her eyes and more tremors to start shaking her body as the hard, inescapable truth sank in. She braced her hands on the side of the table and dropped her head, her gaze locked onto Elissa’s left shoulder, as if she couldn’t bear to look at her sister’s battered face any longer.
After several seconds, Jade shuddered out a long, slow breath. I tensed. This was it—this was the moment when the tears, sobs, and heartbreak would truly begin.
Jade drew in another breath and slowly let it out. I stepped forward to put my arm around her shoulder, to try to comfort her in whatever small way I could, but she lifted her head, her lips stretching up into an enormous smile, despite the tears cascading down her face. She held out her hand, stopping me.
“That’s not her,” Jade said. “That’s not Elissa. That’s not my sister.”
• • •
Jade’s words echoed through the room, bouncing off the walls and freezing me in place, as though I were as cold, dead, and stiff as the bodies inside the metal vaults.
For a moment, I just stared at Jade, not sure that I’d heard her right. Bria and Ryan were doing the same thing, shocked expressions on their faces. Then her words sank in, and my brain started functioning again.
I looked at Jade, then at the body, then back at Jade. “Are you sure? Maybe you should take another look—”
Jade shook her head. “I don’t need to take another look. That’s not Elissa. My sister has a small birthmark on her left shoulder. It looks like a little half-moon.” She pointed to the dead woman’s shoulder. “This woman doesn’t have a birthmark. I don’t know who that is, but it’s not Elissa. I’m sure of it.”
More tears streamed down her face, and her entire body sagged with relief. Once again, Jade would have fallen to the floor if Ryan hadn’t grabbed her elbow. She looked up at him, then grabbed his face in her hands, pulled his head down to hers, and pressed a loud, smacking kiss to his lips.
“Thank you!” she said, her voice high and giddy. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
She kissed him again, once on either cheek, before finally letting him go. This time, it was Ryan who reached out and grabbed the table to keep from dropping to the floor.
“Um . . . thank you too?” he mumbled, his silver glasses a bit crooked from Jade’s enthusiastic smooches.
She beamed at him for several more seconds before reality slowly set back in. Jade frowned and looked at the dead woman again. “That poor, poor girl. But . . . if that’s not Elissa, then where is she?”
And just like that, the last of Jade’s euphoria vanished, and misery filled her face again. Her shoulders slumped, and her breath escaped in harsh rasps that made her whole body tremble.
“That could still be Elissa,” Jade whispered in a grief-stricken voice. “That could still be her . . . She could still be dead . . .”
Her voice trailed off, and fresh tears streaked down her cheeks. Jade whirled around and hurried away from the table, as if she couldn’t stand to be in here a second longer. Sophia was still waiting by the door, and she put her arm around Jade’s shaking shoulders and steered the other woman back out into the waiting room. Sophia nodded, telling me that she would stay with Jade, and shut the door behind them.
That left Bria, Ryan, and me alone in the morgue with the body. Bria bent back down over the woman, studying her face again and trying to see her true features through all the bruises and swelling. I did the same, although after a few seconds, the girl’s face blurred in front of my eyes, and I found myself thinking about Elissa again.
Jade was right: Elissa could still end up here dead on a slab if I didn’t find her.
And I had no idea how to do that.
Bria finally straightened up and shook her head, making her blond hair fly around her shoulders. “This woman didn’t have any ID on her. No purse, no wallet, no phone. If her fingerprints or DNA aren’t in our system, it’ll be difficult to figure out who she is. Much less where she came from and who might have killed her.”
“You don’t think it happened at Northern Aggression?” Ryan asked.
Bria shook her head again. “No. There was no blood anywhere around the body. Not pooled on the ground underneath her and not spattered on any of the Dumpsters around her. She was definitely murdered somewhere else. The killer just used the club to get rid of her body. He probably thought that she wouldn’t be discovered for a couple of days, until the next time the trash got picked up.”
I’d never envied Bria her job of dealing with all the crime in Ashland, especially when it came to something like this, a young life cut short in such a brutal, violent fashion. If the girl wasn’t in any of the police databases and no one had filed a missing person report on her, it could take Bria days, if not weeks, to figure out who she was. That sort of delay would most likely ruin any chance that she and Xavier had of finding out who had done this.
“There’s something else,” Ryan said. “Something you need to see, Gin.”
I looked at him.
The coroner straightened his glasses and stared back at me, his hazel gaze sympathetic, as if I were the one who’d come here to identify a dead relative instead of Jade. “I noticed something in my initial examination of the body. Something that was impossible to miss.” He cleared his throat, suddenly uncomfortable. “You’re not going to like it.”
“What is it?” I asked, wondering what this dead girl could possibly have to do with me.
Ryan hesitated, obviously not wanting to deliver whatever bad news he had, and glanced over at Bria. She crossed her arms over her chest, her lips tightening into a grim slash in her pretty face. They kept staring at each other, having some silent conversation and debate that I couldn’t follow. It reminded me of the strange look Xavier had given me upstairs. The three of them knew something that I didn’t.
Something bad.
“Spit it out,” I said. “No matter how horrible it is, I can take it. Trust me.”
Ryan kept staring at Bria. Finally, my sister sighed and nodded, giving him permission. He nodded back at her, then reached down and gently pulled the dead woman’s arms out from underneath the blue sheet. He looked at me again, then slowly turned the woman’s hands over so that her palms faced up where we could all see them.
He was right. It was impossible to miss.
Something had been drawn on both of the woman’s palms in what looked like bright red blood, a distinctive symbol that was as familiar to me as my own face: a small circle surrounded by eight thin rays.
I sucked in a breath.
My spider runes were on the dead woman’s palms.