Eleven (48 page)

Chapter 3

The night before…Dumfries, Virginia

Monday evening, 7:30 p.m.

The news was public now. Another woman’s life summed up in the media—missing. Trent Stenson wished he could discredit it as something menial. He was surprised it was worthy of the news, and the reason was likely because she was the wife of some rich businessman—Kirk Rogers of Trinity Communications—and he was worth millions. According to the newspapers, Rogers even got the FBI involved.

His superiors made Trent feel that his contributions held little value. He had the official training and three years on the job, but he didn’t rank and was kept under the label of officer. There wasn’t much room for advancement within Dumfries PD, but he could always move up to captain. That was the only downfall about a smaller department. People typically retired before they were replaced. It had him considering a move over to Prince William County PD where they had about six hundred officers to Dumfries eleven. PWPD also got involved with the complex crimes—where he saw himself.

He already had a friend there too. Lenny Hanes, a detective from the Violent Crimes Bureau. They even had beers on occasion. Trent hoped that Hanes would put in a good word and help him transfer and advance, but things hadn’t worked out that way yet. For the most part, shit floats to the top. At least, that’s how some disgruntled cops saw things.

But none of this stopped Trent from doing the job. In fact, he was determined to excel. He subscribed to the advice “anything worth doing is worth doing well.”

Amy Rogers wasn’t the only missing wife who graced the missing persons database from the area. There had been many others before her. He suspected more would follow.

He looked beyond the front desk, and out the glass doors to the parking lot. It was a quiet night. The PWPD communications center had dispatched only a couple domestics calls and one drunk and disorderly at a local bar. Officer Becky Tulson had that covered.

Yes, it was the perfect time. Management had left for the evening—it was up for debate who benefited the most from their absence. He loved being left alone to do his digging, and these missing women had his attention.

He logged onto the missing persons database and searched the area for women ages twenty-two to thirty. It didn’t seem race mattered so he let that parameter go. He searched Prince William County and surrounding areas as far as Washington on the south side.

Thirty faces came on screen. He searched for new ones. He had the others memorized and categorized in his mind—and in his filing cabinet at home. If his sarge found out about the latter, he could lose his badge, but it was worth the risk if it meant bringing even one woman home.

Most of their faces were familiar to him. He scoured this information every day, sometimes more than once day. It had become not a fascination, but an obsession.

Who would take these women? How did the husbands lose track of their wives?

Not that Trent had any experience being married. He was only twenty-four and preferred to hold onto his single lifestyle as long as he could. He didn’t need a woman telling him how to live his life.

He dropped forward and cupped his forehead in the palm of a hand for a few seconds. His bangs brushed the back of his hand. Silly how, at a time like this, he thought of his mother and how she preferred his hair cut above his collar. He let it grow out, only trimming its length periodically. The women he took to bed liked to run their fingers through his hair.

The door opened, and a woman in her late sixties walked in. Her blue eyes stood out in stark contrast to her pale face and gray hair. Tears had dampened her cheeks.

“I should have called it in. I shouldn’t have driven all the way here.” She shook her head, and tremors ran through her body as if she fought off a chill.

Trent rounded the desk. “Ma’am. Slow down. You’re safe now.”

The radio crackled to life, and Officer Tulson confirmed she was returning to the station.

“Sorry about the interruption. Ma’am?”

In the time he listened to the transmission, the woman had collapsed to the floor. She sat there with her knees tucked into her chest.

“Ma’am. I’ll call you an ambulance. You’ll be fine.”

She reached for his hand and tugged on it. “There’s no time.” Her eyes seeped fresh tears. “It’s there…I found it. I should have called.”

Trent agreed with her assessment that she should have stayed put at home and called it in, but he didn’t verbalize this. “It’s okay. You said, ‘it’s there’ ma’am? It what?”

She nodded, slowly. Her eyes reached into Trent’s. Her body heaved with another bout of crying. Her hand covered her mouth, her eyes pinched shut, and her head burrowed to her knees.

Oh, he thought, please don’t be another crazy.

“Ma’am, I can help you, but only if you talk to me. Let me help you off the floor.” He held out a hand to her, and she took hold. He helped raise her up, but when she reached about halfway, her legs faltered.

“You have a face like my grandson.”

He pulled up on her, attempting to straighten her out—this time assuming most of the responsibility against gravity. He feared that, if he let go, she’d crumple back to the floor.

“I could go home and pretend I never saw a thing. I’ll shut my eyes, and the body will be gone.”

The body?

Morbid excitement pulsed in his veins.

A homicide case—in his lap? Maybe this was the break he was waiting for?

He reined in his emotions which were balanced quickly by the realization that this body was once a human being, or at least he hoped so, although, even that thought sounded wrong to him. He didn’t need a crazy making a fool of him. If he took her seriously and an investigation revealed nothing more than a decomposing cow on a riverbank, or even worse, thin air, he’d never make detective.

He considered the empty station. If anyone came in, no one would be at the front desk. “Excuse me. One minute.” He spoke into his radio. “Officer Tulson, what is your ETA?”

“Tulson here. Pulling in now.”

“Roger that.” He turned back to the woman. “We’ll just wait for Officer Tulson and we’ll make out a report.”

The woman nodded. She understood. Good. She had some wits about her.

He studied her in those few seconds. Her eyes, although moist, were cognitive. There was awareness behind them. Her pupils followed his as he took in her face. They were not dilated or pinpricks. She wasn’t on medication.

“Honey, I’m home.” Becky walked in the front door, her steps coming to a standstill when she saw the woman.

He went over to Becky.

In the limited space of the station, her sexual pheromones sparked making it impossible for any man in her vicinity to ignore them. She had a uniquely shaped face, and, when paired with her confidence, it made her beautiful.

“I need you to watch the front for a bit.”

“Sure.”

The way Becky’s gaze pierced his eyes, he wondered if she read his thoughts. Then she smiled, but only a partial display. The light in her eyes completed the expression.

Trent led the older woman to a conference room, thankful his sergeant wasn’t there to take over. If he got in over his head, though, he had someone he could call—Hanes—but he’d reserve that as a final option. Technically, he should have driven her to PWPD, but why squander this opportunity?

“Would you like some water?” he asked.

She was already seated at the table. “Yes, please.”

He poured a glass and sat beside her. “My name is Trent Stenson.” He dropped the officer part, not because he lacked pride in his position, but what did it matter in here? If he wanted her to relax and feel like an equal, he needed to level the playing field. “And you are?”

“Audrey Phillips.”

Holding a pen in his hand, he fidgeted with the pad in front of him. He would rather listen to her recollection of the situation and then make notes, but he had to follow things by the book if he would ever rank. He wrote her name on the form.

“Now, you said you found a body?”

Her face paled further, eyes blank and distant. She nodded.

“This was a human body, I assume.”

Seconds had passed before she answered. “Yes.”

This would take a long time if all he received were simple answers, direct, concise, and to the point. “Continue.” His pen was poised, eager to spread some ink on the page.

“Most of her…” Shivers jerked her shoulders upward and her head twitched. “Most of her was a skeleton, but her face, her hair, it was there. And she was…gray. Is that normal?”

Excitement laced through his insides. Could this be one of the missing women?

“Where did you find her?”

“Out back. On my property.” She gave him the full address and waited while he took down the details. “She was in the field. Just…just lying there.” She covered her mouth with a hand, lowering it a second later. “We had flooding, but it’s receded now. Do you think she came up in the river?”

It was too early to offer an opinion, and they needed men out on the scene. The longer the body remained exposed to the elements, the more contaminated it would become.

“How old do you think she was?”

She lifted her shoulder and nudged it against an ear. “Thirties. I took this. ” She pulled out a plastic sandwich bag and extended it to him. Inside was a gold band.

He wanted to scream, you touched the body, but, instead, countered with, “She was a married woman?”

Audrey nodded.

He took the bag and pinched the ring between his fingers. Saying those words out loud caused images from the missing persons database to play through his mind as if on fast forward.

Could it be her?

He studied the ring and got the burning sensation in his gut, the one that contracted it into an acidic raisin. “Can you excuse me for a minute?”

“Yes, of course.” Her brows sagged, and the corner of her mouth twitched as if she were confused by his rush to leave the room.

“I will be back. We need to get some officers over to your place.”

His heart beat fast, the pressure in his gut not easing up, instead, intensifying. He pulled out his cell and dialed. “Len…you’re at home…this is important. You know all those cases we’ve been talking about? How I think they’re all connected somehow? Well, now we have a body.”

Detective Lenny Hanes stood in the doorway of his kitchen. He watched his wife cleaning up the dinner dishes and loading what would fit into the dishwasher. Nicole and Brett, both under eight years of age, had been put to bed not long before. Lenny hoped the ringing phone hadn’t wakened them.

“You’re sure this is her?” he asked into the receiver.

His wife looked at him and he mouthed the words, it’s a case.

“When isn’t it?” She closed the dishwasher door and started the cycle, leaving him in the kitchen but kissing his cheek on the way by. “See you in the morning?”

Lenny made a sad face. He held her hand until it filtered out of his, keeping his eye on her until she disappeared up the staircase.

“The ring. It matches, I swear to you.” Trent sounded out of breath.

“And she took the ring off the woman’s finger?”

“Off Nina’s finger? Yes.”

“Before you get all caught up on—”

“I swear to you, it is. The engraving on the band matches the one noted in the missing persons database and there’s—”

“There’s what?”

“Audrey Phillips, who found the body and took the ring, she took some of the flesh with it.”

Bile hurled up Lenny’s esophagus. He swallowed—roughly. “What is wrong with some people?” His stomach tightened, compressing his dinner into a reduced space.

“Don’t know. She seems like a sweet woman, but I don’t get it.”

“People do strange things when faced with extreme circumstances.”

Lenny remembered one case where a woman leaned over her husband’s body and open-mouth kissed him. She only admitted that he was dead when he didn’t reciprocate. The hole in his head and the blood pool around him wasn’t enough. He shook the memory from his mind.