Faceless (2 page)

His physical beauty was only just a bonus to his warm personality. Detective Marty Keal was just a hell of a nice guy, and a pleasure to work with.

***

As luck would have it, Marty had been spending the night at his girlfriend’s place when his cell phone rang. The address that the dispatcher gave him was less than a ten-minute drive from Hope’s house. If he had spent the night at home with his dad, affectionately known by all as the “Captain” a name the old man had acquired while working as a corrections officer at the state penitentiary, it would have taken him three times as long to get to the scene.

He reached his destination pulling his unmarked car behind Officer Patricia Beck’s cruiser, and grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment.

Although a few large estates were scattered throughout the area, this particular spot was just on the outskirts of a wooded section. The full moon was shining brightly in the night sky, but a forest of tall pine trees cast dark shadows on the ground, making it difficult to see.

To make matters worse, and although Marty would deny it vehemently if asked, he suffered from ophidiophobia. Nothing could make Marty’s skin crawl faster than a slimy, long reptile that made rattling and hissing noises.

Ten yards from the road, he spotted Officer Beck. She stood directly across from a young girl who seemed to be in emotional distress. He could hear Officer Beck’s own voice quavering as she attempted to calm the girl down. As he got closer, he noticed two other girls standing in the shadows.

It was apparent that Beck, who was the first officer to arrive at the scene, was a little shell-shocked. She appeared to be desperately in need of reassurance. Even in the dim lighting, Marty could see that the pint-sized rookie’s face was a ghostly white, with a slight green tint. She looked as if she was trying hard to keep whatever she had for dinner from making a re-appearance.

Marty couldn’t blame her. He recalled puking in some bushes at a gory crime scene not that long ago.

“Patty, what do we have?” he asked as he tried inconspicuously to shine the flashlight across the faces of the three girls. He pegged them to be most likely high school age.

Grabbing hold of the crook of Marty’s arm, Officer Beck turned to the girls. “We’ll be right back, please try and relax… just stay right here.” She turned back to Marty.

“It’s bad, Detective Keal—real bad.”

She turned on her flashlight, establishing a bright LED path ahead of them, and she led him toward the tree line. The sound of the weeds and small rocks beneath their shoes seemed to echo throughout the woods. Each crunch beneath their feet seemed to be magnified tenfold as they walked down an overgrown footpath.

Officer Beck stopped abruptly, causing Marty to bump into her.

“There.” She pointed with her light a few feet ahead.

Marty followed the ray of the young officer’s flashlight with his eyes.

He could make out a small body lying face up, surrounded by a mound of broken twigs and weeds. Naked from the waist up, the small exposed white breasts assured him that his first assumption of it being a female was correct. He shined his flashlight slowly up from the torso toward her head, which lay at an angle facing away from them.

Something seemed to be placed over her face, because he couldn’t make out any of her features. He walked closer in order to get a better look.

His first thought was that someone had placed a blanket over her, or that she was wearing a mask of some sort, but he wasn’t sure. He also finally understood what it was as he caught a whiff of. There was no mistaking it now; it was the distinct odor of burnt hair and flesh.

There was no mask and there was no blanket: whoever this was no longer had a face. Instead, there was just a charcoal mass of melted skin and muscle tissue.

He turned back to Officer Beck who was kneeling now, head between her knees, trying hard not to be sick.

Marty walked over and knelt next to her, his large palm gently rubbing her tiny back.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked, as he tried to swallow some bile of his own.

She nodded as her top teeth bit down on her bottom lip. It reminded him of that thing that Hope would do if she thought she was going to start to cry.

“Do you know who she is, Patty?” he asked her, still rubbing her back. “Do those girls know who she is?”

His hand rose and fell as he felt her inhale and exhale.

“They said that she is a friend of theirs, they all came up here together and she got separated from them. They went looking for her and…”

As they heard the sound of backup vehicles arriving they immediately both let out a sigh of relief.

“Come on,” he said as he led her back down the path to where they had left the three girls. He could see the other officers and crime scene investigators exiting their cars as they reached the opening of the woods.

Somehow, he managed to go on autopilot and began the task of directing crime scene techs and officers to maintain the integrity of the crime scene. This was his first major case, and he knew that this would make or break his reputation as a Homicide Detective. He was determined to do everything right.

Yet there was more at stake here than his reputation. Everything he did from this moment on would be key to finding the animal that murdered the girl now lying faceless in the woods.

He prayed silently that Jean would arrive quickly. Marty knew that there was nothing better than the voice of experience.

Chapter Two

Jean

“What do we have, Marty?” I asked, as he lifted the yellow crime scene tape so I could join him under the canopy.

I could tell by his expression that whatever it was had disturbed him.

Being an officer of the law, he had come upon death in many forms, including car wrecks or death caused by some illness. This was the second time he had come upon a very unnatural death.

Two years earlier, when Marty was still in uniform, he had been dispatched to a home for a well-care visit where he discovered ten-year-old Brad Madison covered in blood, playing a video game, while his parents lay bludgeoned to death in their upstairs bedroom.

It was the call that changed Marty’s life. It was how he met Dr. Hope Rubin, his girlfriend. It also was the experience that inspired him to take the Detective’s Exam; something that had previously only been a fleeting thought.

If I had to work with anyone besides Joe, I was happy that it was Marty. Marty didn’t have the experience and knowledge that Joe had accumulated over his twenty-eight years in law enforcement, which I had always depended on. However, Marty was turning out to be a fast learner, and I hoped I could be even half the teacher and mentor to him that Joe was to me.

A couple of the techs muttered a tired hello to me and I nodded in reply. I glanced down as Marty knelt down and lifted the tarp. My stomach did flip-flops and the taste of vomit shot up my throat. Whoever it was no longer had a face.

I waited until Marty pulled the cover down lower. It appeared to be a young girl, naked from the waist up.

Marty dropped the cloth and stood up shaking his head.

“Do we know who she is?” I asked him. “Does she have any ID on her?”

“We didn’t find anything in her possession, except for what appears to be a house key. Her friends say her name is Jamie Camp, age sixteen.”

“Friends?” I looked at him, bewildered. As I turned, I realized that about thirty feet away from where we stood was a group of girls. In the dark, I had assumed everyone here was law enforcement.

“Yeah, the girls claim they were just messing around near the Forester house when one of them came up missing.” He indicated by nodding his head in the direction of the assembly of young women.

“What do you mean, ‘messing around’? What the hell were they doing out here in the middle of the night?” I shook my head in disgust as I started to walk over to the teenagers. I could hear a female officer trying hard to calm one of them down.

Even in the low light, I was able to recognize the officer by her slight figure. She was a rookie—Patricia Beck, barely five feet tall and weighing all of one hundred pounds in full dress uniform. Two of the girls she was talking with towered over her. But at this moment, it didn’t matter that she herself looked like a teenager. The girls were looking at her for comfort and support.

Beck turned when she heard our footsteps approaching.

“Detective Whitley,” she greeted me. I heard a slight tremor in her voice.

“Officer Beck, thank you, I’ll take it from here.” Apparently, she had been putting up a brave front for the girls, but I could see in her eyes that she was seconds away from losing it.

“Do you have any blankets in your vehicle, Officer Beck?” I asked her.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Why don’t you gather up a few for the girls?” I suggested. “It’s a little chilly.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She gave me a grateful look as she turned to the girls and told them that she would be right back.

I turned to Marty.

“Did you notify their parents yet?” I asked.

“No, I thought we would do that once we get back to the station,” he replied. “I didn’t want to drag any distraught parent out on these dark roads in the middle of the night.”

“Good thinking, Marty. Let me just ask them a few questions and then why don’t you get them back to the station. Call their parents and have them meet you there.”

I turned to look at the girls again, only this time I took a good look. Two of them looked familiar to me, but I just couldn’t place them.

The girl closest to me was about five foot four. A lone patch of her shoulder-length dark brown hair was streaked with a highlight of hot pink. A small diamond stud sparkled from her right nostril. She was the one who seemed the most distraught, and the one that Officer Beck was having the most difficulty trying to calm down.

The girl was sucking on her fingers, and as I got closer, I could see that each nail was well manicured and polished in black. Her thick black mascara was smeared below her eyes. The whites of her eyes had turned a pale pink, which emphasized the gray tint of her irises.

She was standing directly in front of a large rotting log, one of many that were scattered throughout the woods. I took her hand and sat down on the log, gently giving her arm a tug so that she would sit down with me. The thought briefly crossed my mind that I might be inviting a host of chiggers to join me as well.

“Honey, what’s your name?” I fished through my purse, found a pack of Kleenex, and handed it to her. She wasn’t looking at me, but had her eyes locked intently on the tallest of the three girls. I nudged her shoulder; it seemed to get her attention.

Looking down at the package of tissues, she took the pack. As she leaned over, I got a whiff of a strong fragrance on her clothes. It was apparent that she was trying to mask the odor of marijuana. I also caught a faint scent of alcohol on her breath.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“My name?” she said, repeating the question, as if she was confused.

“Yeah, your name—what’s your name?” I repeated. She was obviously a bit disoriented.

“Lisa Padilla,” she answered me this time, but kept her eyes on her friend, as if she was taking some sort of silent instruction from the taller girl.

After a moment, she answered me as if the other girl sent her some sort of cosmic message. “My name is Lisa Padilla; I want to go home, please.” Her voice quivered. I wondered whether it was more of a reaction to the chill in the air than nerves.

“Lisa, can you tell me what happened here tonight? What were you girls doing out here this late?”

She didn’t answer. I tried another question. “How did you get here?” I looked around, my eyes searching for a means of transportation. “Do you have a car?” I glanced at Detective Keal. He shook his head, indicating to me that there didn’t seem to be a vehicle around.

Once again, I saw the tallest of the three make eye contact with Lisa. Again, she seemed to be sending her some kind of silent message.

“We… um… we hitchhiked up here.” I thought I detected a slight wheeze in her breathing and her voice started to break as if she was starting to cry.

At that moment, Officer Beck came back with the blankets and gently laid one over Lisa’s shoulders. She handed the other girls blankets as well. No one bothered to say “Thank you”.

There was something so familiar about the taller girl. I felt that I had seen her before.

“What’s your name?” I stood up and faced her.

“Katie Hepburn, my stepdad’s Mayor Knox.” She spoke with her mouth twisted in a sneer.

I could see that this took Marty by surprise. He looked at me and shrugged those broad shoulders of his. Apparently, this was news to him, as she hadn’t given him that information before now.

“My parents are divorced, I live with my mother. I gave him my mother’s address and phone number,” she indicated, gesturing toward Marty.

She had a cocky attitude about her, as if she and her friends had been caught shoplifting instead of discovering her friends’ faceless dead body lying in the woods, partially naked.

“And you?” I said, turning to the third girl. Smaller and slightly thicker in her waist than the other two, she seemed to be in some sort of stupor. When she didn’t answer, I got up and walked over to her.

“What’s your name?” I asked again.

She was looking straight at me, but I don’t think she saw or heard a word I said.

I gently touched her arm.

“Her name is Tiffany.” Katie answered for her.

This time it was my turn to speak in silent code. I sent Miss Katie Hepburn a stern look.

I guess she got the message, because Ms. Hepburn didn’t speak again.

“Tiffany, do you have a last name?” I made an effort to sound compassionate, though my patience was running thin.

She nodded but didn’t reply. I had to coax her.

“Tiffany… Tiffany what?”

“Bennett,” she answered, but her eyes were focused over my shoulder at Katie Hepburn.

I tried to reposition myself so that she had to look at me alone.

“Tell me about your friend. Did you come up here with Jamie?”

She nodded a yes, her eyes drifting as if she was trying to connect with Katie. She seemed to be putting a lot of effort into not looking at me directly.

She kept making a slight movement with the right side of her mouth. It seemed Tiffany Bennett had some sort of nervous tic.

I turned my focus back to Marty.

“Marty, get the girls back to the station and call their parents.” I leaned over and whispered to him to keep them separated. I received a nod from him before I even finished what I was going to say, letting me know that he understood.

Marty and I hadn’t worked too many cases together, and until recently, homicides in our town were relatively scarce, but we seemed to have an uncanny ability to read each other’s mind.

“Give me the name and address of the dead girl’s family, I’ll notify them.”

I could tell by the look on his face that he was grateful that he didn’t have to perform that duty. It was the part of the job that we all hated the most.

It was then that I realized just how angry I was with my missing partner. Joe always took the lead and gave the families the bad news. Now I had to tell some poor woman that her daughter was never coming home. I had to tell her that she would never plant another kiss on what was once her daughter’s face. I had to be the one to inform her that her daughter probably spent her last minutes on this earth scared to death and in pain.

“Damn it, Joe, where the hell are you?” I thought I said it under my breath, but I must have been louder than I thought, because Marty heard me, and it prompted a reaction from him.

“Justin’s working the graveyard shift and on patrol tonight. Do you want me to radio him and have him go to Detective Moran’s house? See if he’s okay?”