The Betrayed (3 page)

Cassian bent down to look closer. “Top of the line,” he said, noting the brand name. “Should fetch our boy a pretty penny.”

“Hope it was worth killing for,” Train muttered.

Cassian took a deep breath as he scanned the room. Then he exhaled loudly. “Main event’s upstairs, huh?”

Train nodded.

“Okay, then,” Cassian said without enthusiasm, “let’s have a look.”

z

They followed the trail of blood back toward the stairway near the front of the house, around the banister, and up the stairs, careful not to disturb any of the splotches so that the technicians could get good samples and photos. Train pointed out a few smears along the wall, near the floor. “That’s the other reason we’re pretty sure she was dragged,” he explained. “Her initial wounds were above the waist, so in order to get that much blood so low to the floor she had to have either been dragged or been crawling.”

As they rounded the corner at the top of the stairs, Jack took in the floor’s layout. It was smaller than he expected. Straight ahead off the stairs was a small bathroom—the only one in the house—and to the left, he could see into a neat little bedroom that looked undisturbed. The bloodstains traced a path around the banister back toward the front of the house. “Master bedroom?” he asked with a tilt of the head.

“Yeah,” Train responded. “That’s the daughter’s room.” He pointed to the smaller bedroom on the left.

Jack poked his head into the room and looked around. It was pink and bright, with soft white carpeting on the floor. On the walls were hung colorful pastel prints and a map of the world in a gold ornamental frame. All in all, it was exactly what one would expect in the room of a well-adjusted fourteen-year
old girl. And yet something seemed forced, as if someone had tried to plaster normalcy over depression. Jack nodded to Train, indicating he was ready to proceed to the master bedroom. Train extended his arm in invitation. “After you.”

As he stepped into the room the sickly sweet smell of burnt flesh pierced his nostrils and he choked back his lunch. He looked at Train, who nodded solemnly. Cassian took a few deep breaths to acclimate himself to the smell, and then briefly canvassed the scene. Several police technicians were working their way around silently, but Jack ignored them. He took note of the location of the woman’s body, stretched out on the bed, covered in blood, but avoided focusing on the corpse—that would come later. Too often, he found, even seasoned professionals could become distracted when they began their investigation by examining the body and then working their way out into the rest of the crime scene. It obscured the larger picture, and caused them to overlook crucial details that seemed inconsequential in comparison to the enormity of the corporeal evidence. Cassian’s practice was to focus on the crime scene at its widest possible point, working his way inward in concentric circles toward the epicenter of violence, only examining the body after he felt he had a full impression of the overall picture.

He started along the wall closest to the door, farthest from the bed where the body lay. He noticed immediately that the room was the most cheaply decorated in the house. Against the wall across from the bed stood a set of white lacquer bookcases, the kind that could be bought at Wal-Mart for twenty dollars. The shelves were lined with books, most of them big, heavily bound volumes of history, or biographical works dealing with prominent political figures. In front of the books stood a parade of pictures, mostly of a shy-looking girl progressing in age from birth to early teens, although Jack also noticed a few candids of a young woman who looked to be in her early twenties. She was relatively attractive, Jack noted, as he continued to pan around the room.

The wall farthest from the door looked out onto the street, although the shades were drawn. Again, Jack noticed that the window dressings were cheap, and failed to keep even the waning light from penetrating the room.

As he swung his line of sight around past the windows, he saw that the bedside table had been overturned. On the floor he could see a small lamp and a jewelry box that lay open and empty of all its contents.

He looked up at the wall above the bed. Two prints from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, both of impressionist works—Monet, if Jack was remembering his art history correctly—hung in nondescript frames in a feeble attempt at adding color to the room.

Finally, almost reluctantly, Jack looked at the woman on the bed.

She was strewn over the queen-size mattress, her arms akimbo, and her legs bent at the knees, crisscrossed at an impossible angle. Her throat had been cut—deeply—and her neck was twisted to the side. Her face, jaw frozen in a perpetual scream, was stuck to the sheets with blood that had pooled from her wounds. The damage was extensive, and Cassian forced himself to stay focused.

He walked around to the other side of the bed to take a closer look at the woman’s body. From that angle, he could also see a deep wound in her abdomen. “How many wounds total?” he asked, without looking away.

Train was silent for a moment, and it was Deter, the lead technician, who answered. “There’s at least one in her belly. There may be more in that area, but we haven’t moved her yet, so we can’t be sure,” he said. “There’s the obvious cut to her throat—damn near took her head off. It’s through all the way to the spine. Then there are a couple cuts to her arms that look like defensive wounds. Some of those blend into one another, so it may be difficult to get an accurate count.” He paused and looked over at Train. “It’s the burns we can’t figure out, though.”

Cassian leaned in and examined the woman’s body more closely. He started at the feet, which were blackened on the soles and toes, the skin having been largely burned off. “They’re regular,” he said of the wounds, directing the comment to no one in particular.

“Maybe where you come from,” Deter replied.

“No, I mean there’s a pattern to them. It’s like they’re made up of lines and dots.”

“We’re pretty sure they were made with either a butane lighter or maybe an acetylene torch,” Train posited. “They’re popular with the crack crowd. Great for sparking rock. Our perp spent some time on the woman’s hands and feet. By the time he got to her face, there’s a chance she wasn’t even conscious.”

“Jesus Christ,” Cassian whispered as he moved up to examine the woman’s face.

“Yeah, I know,” the technician said. “Effective torture, though. I’m guessing the guy got what he was looking for.”

Cassian leaned in and took an even closer look at the facial wounds. “The magic question is: what was he looking for?” he said after a moment, looking up at Train.

“Money.” Deter voiced his opinion. “You get a guy whacked out on crack or meth for a couple days, and they’ll do anything to get what they need to buy their next fix.”

“Maybe.” Cassian mulled it over. “Let’s walk through the chronology. It looks like the first wound was to her abdomen, that’s probably the one inflicted downstairs. It was serious, but not serious enough to cause death; it just incapacitated her. Then, when the perp brings her up here, he takes out the torch and gets whatever information he’s looking for. Finally, when he was done”—he pointed to her throat—“he kills her.”

“Sounds right to me,” Deter agreed. Train kept quiet and let Cassian continue.

“So how does he keep her still while he burns her?” Cassian asked. He ran his hand down along the woman’s leg, toward her ankle. “There we are,” he said at last, pointing to a light pink striation above the heel. Then he moved up to her arms. “And I’m guessing, if we look close enough . . .” He started examining the woman’s wrists and forearms. “Here it is,” he said, pointing at a spot just above her right wrist.

“Ligature marks,” Train assumed.

“Yeah. They’re faint, but they’re there.”

“She was tied up?” Deter asked.

“She had to have been,” Train pointed out. “Otherwise, it would have been too difficult to inflict this kind of damage while she thrashed around.”

“I wonder whether our boy was smart enough to take whatever it was he used to tie her up. Have your people looked under the bed?” Cassian asked Deter.

“I don’t think anyone’s been there yet,” Deter replied. “We started with the rest of the room first.”

Cassian looked around the room and located a cardboard box filled with latex gloves that had been brought in by the technicians. He pulled on a pair and then bent down at the side of the bed. He pulled up the bed skirt and looked underneath, careful not to disturb anything. Scanning the area near the wall behind the headboard, he hoped to find the rope that had been used to bind Elizabeth Creay, but there was nothing there. He was about to stand up when he noticed something else lying near the bottom of the bed.

“Sweet Jesus, tell me I’m this blessed. You got a camera, Deter?” he asked.

“Joe does,” Deter replied, motioning toward one of the other officers.

“You wanna get a shot of this for me, Joe?” Cassian asked, still bent. The officer with the camera walked over to the side of the bed and bent down next to Jack. He put his eye up to the camera and snapped two shots in quick succession. Then he withdrew and Cassian reached under the bed to retrieve the object. He held it up so Train could see that it was an ornate silver lighter with a skull and crossbones on it. With a gloved hand, Cassian flipped open the cover and pressed down on the igniter. An angry, sharp blue flame hissed up, compact and controlled.

“I’m guessing Ms. Creay wasn’t a crack smoker?” Jack asked.

Train shook his head wearily. “No indications like that. Christmas must’ve come early this year. What are the chances the perp is stupid enough to leave that behind? We’ll know whether we’ve been naughty or nice when we see if we can pull a print off that.”

“It’ll suck if we get nothing but coal,” Cassian agreed. He handed the lighter to Deter. “Tag that and put a rush on it to check for fingerprints.”

“You got it. I’ll have the prints run overnight.”

“We found anything else interesting?” Cassian asked.

“Nothing yet, but we’ve still got some work to do before we get out of here,” Deter replied.

Train nodded. “Let’s make sure we’re thorough. I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.”

“Like always, Sarge,” Deter confirmed. “Like always.”

z

It was another hour before Cassian and Train emerged from the house, pausing on the stoop to catch their breath. The crowd had dispersed, and only a few onlookers remained, packed in tight groups, whispering to one another as the po
lice detail started to break down the scene. The last rays of sunshine were filtering through the trees that lined the quiet little street in southeast D.C. Train raised his face to them and closed his eyes, letting the sun soak into his skin. It was almost as if he hoped the sunlight would wash away the reality of the horror he’d seen inside.

“You thinking about the daughter?” Cassian asked.

Train nodded. “How do you come back from that? From finding your mother like that?”

Cassian had nothing to say. There
was
nothing to say, and both of them knew it. Some things were out of their control, and to pretend otherwise was folly. There was always the slim hope that if they did their job well, they might provide some closure; perhaps conjure a face for the young girl to look at and say,
That’s the one—that’s the man who took my mother from me.
But even that was cold comfort. The damage was always permanent before they were called to the scene, and Cassian and Train knew that better than most.

“I’d like to get this guy,” the sergeant said after a moment.

Jack squinted up into the sky. “I know.”

“I mean I’d really like to fuckin’ get this guy.”

Jack looked over at his partner. Officer Wozniak had been right; this one had gotten to the old man. His face was deadly serious, and the lines around his eyes had grown deeper over the course of the day. It was the first time he had ever really looked his age. Cassian took out his sunglasses and put them on. He reached over and slapped his partner on the shoulder in a gesture of understanding. “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s get to work.”

S
YDNEY
C
HAPIN SAT
hugging her knees on the couch in her mother’s living room—the living room in which she had grown up, in the house she had fled for college nine years before, vowing never to return. She played idly with the fraying cuffs of her jeans, unconsciously pulling and twisting on the loose threads. A white button-down oxford shirt hung haphazardly on her frame, the shirttails falling untucked over the denim. She was used to adversity, and considered herself a person who relished a challenge, but right now she felt numb.

She had been back in D.C. for three weeks, living in a base
ment apartment as she got settled in at her job as a research assistant for a law professor at Georgetown. It was a summer job; she had one year left in law school at Stanford, and she had originally planned to work for the summer at a large San Francisco law firm, but things had changed.

She’d begun talking to her sister, Elizabeth, more and more over the previous winter, which was unusual. They were nine years apart in age, and had never been particularly close. Yet that winter the bonds of sisterhood seemed enough to overcome nearly a decade’s age difference and three thousand miles’ separation. They had found, over the phone, that they had much in common, and Sydney came quickly to realize that she missed the connection she had once felt to her family. After much deliberation, she had decided to come back home to face her demons. She thought that together she and Liz might reunite the family. Now all of that was gone.

She’d been at the law school’s library when one of her mother’s assistants reached her to tell her about her sister’s murder, and she’d gone immediately to the hospital to be with Amanda. Her first breakdown had come in the waiting room, unexpectedly, the tears streaming down her face as she sobbed silently, leaving ragged tracks on her cheeks. The second had come shortly thereafter as she was allowed into the hospital room to visit Amanda—the enormity of her niece’s situation gripping her as she caught herself at the door, trying to stem the flow of her tears before she entered the room.