Chapter One
The crime scene crew figures the body has been there a while.
Aislinn Byrne slipped into her car and tapped the steering wheel with a chewed nail, the dispatcher’s words echoing in her head. Aislinn hated the rotting, bloated corpses – they were hideous and smelled awful. But there was no choosing which murder you worked, it all came down to whether you were at the top of the rotation. She started her car and pulled into the midday traffic.
Google Maps was dormant on this trip. Jamaica Plain was her backyard, had been since she was a red-haired tomboy racing down hills on her tricycle. She knew the building where some unfortunate had stumbled onto today’s murder victim – an old red brick three-story on the corner across from the Purple Cactus Burrito Bar. Maybe she’d grab some lunch after checking out the scene. Then she remembered the dispatcher’s warning and thought, maybe not.
A forensics unit was already on site and the uniforms had secured a half-block perimeter with crime scene tape. She rolled her window down and held up her badge for the officer guarding the street, then drove under the tape and parked behind the CSI van. She clipped the badge to her belt as she walked toward the door, eyes scanning the crowd from behind her sunglasses. Perps love to watch the cops fuss over their work, Westcott had told her. That had proved to be good advice. She’d solved a murder once by watching the CCTV footage of herself arriving at the scene and seeing a guy in the crowd whose body language was all wrong. Nothing twigged with her this time and she tucked her sunglasses in her blazer pocket and entered the building.
It was dark and the air felt cool after the warmth of the late spring sun. She shivered slightly as she took the stairs to the third floor, where another officer was blocking the hallway. Aislinn flashed her badge and he jotted the number and her name on his notepad, then shuffled aside, throwing her a look as she passed. She’d seen that look before at some of the messier murders – he’d seen something that disagreed with him. The worn hardwood squeaked slightly underfoot and Aislinn noted the names on the closed doors as she passed. An accountant, a PR firm, and a beauty supply distributor were neighbors to the open door at the end of the hall. She pulled on latex gloves and stood in the doorway.
The space was in the midst of a major renovation, with fresh drywall in places and a few wires hanging from the high ceiling where tiles had been removed. A bank of windows fronted onto Center Street, flooding the space with natural light, and the scent of freshly cut wood hung in the still air. The old floor coverings were a mess, crisscrossed with lines where walls had been torn out to create an open workspace. They likely hadn’t expected to find a body in one.
Five people were in the room – two crime scene techs, a photographer, the coroner, and a uniformed officer. She headed for the CSI crew with one eye on the coroner and photographer. Their motions looked choreographed – this was a seasoned team going through their routine. A crime scene technician nodded to her, then went back to searching for and collecting evidence. The coroner was standing next to a drywalled pillar in the center of the room that had been cut open. She glanced over her shoulder as Aislinn came alongside, then pulled down her mask. Her eyes had a look that told Aislinn that this call was something special.
“Hey, Aislinn,” Rebecca Carlisle said. “You got this one, huh.”
“Yeah.”
Carlisle moved aside slightly and Aislinn could now see the head of a body that had been crammed into the tight space. It set her back on her heels for a split second.
“It’s been here for ages, but it’s not going to smell,” Carlisle said. “It’s dehydrated. Mummified, almost.”
Aislinn took another step forward. The body was wrapped in polyethylene but still clearly visible, and it wasn’t pretty. The corpse’s skin had stretched tight over the skull bones and the mouth was frozen open, like the victim was in the middle of a perpetual scream. The eyes were little more than hollow sockets and what had once been a beautiful head of hair looked like brittle straw.
The pillar was an electrical chase, filled with wires that fed current from the main panel in the basement to the lights and plugs throughout the room. The drywall had been cut along the edge of the chase, then snapped off at a height that exposed the corpse’s head. Whoever had pulled off the drywall had stopped immediately, which was hardly a surprise.
“Who found the body?” Aislinn asked.
“A couple of tradesmen,” Rebecca said. “They’re in the adjoining room, pretty shook up.”
“No wonder.” Aislinn took another look at the tortured face, then made her way to where the workers were sequestered with an officer in a small office off the main room. They were both in their twenties with tool belts hanging off their hips. “Detective Byrne. Which one of you found the body?”
The taller, thinner of the two lifted his hand. “I did. Well, we both did, sort of.”
Aislinn took a good look at the pair – the man with his hand up was visibly shaken, his eyes darting about quickly as his mind processed the reality of the situation. The second man had dark hair and seemed more at ease with the whole thing, his droopy eyes giving him an almost-bored look. Mutt and Jeff, she thought.
“Please state your name and then run through what happened,” she said to the thin man.
“I’m Ryan,” he said in a quick staccato. “I was cutting into the edge of the chase, being careful not to slice any of the electrical conduits, and when I was about five feet from the floor I gave the drywall a yank and it snapped. And there it was.”
“A fucking mummy head, staring at us,” the dark-haired man said in a slow monotone. Then he added, “I’m Jeremy.”
“Where were you when all this happened?” Aislinn asked Jeremy.
“Standing behind Ryan. Watching. Didn’t expect that.” Every sentence was delivered separately, like a waiter bringing individual courses.
“Did you touch anything inside the chase?” she asked Ryan.
“No,” Ryan said. “I jumped back, it scared the shit out of me. Some bits of drywall might have fallen inside, but I didn’t go anywhere near her – or him – or whatever it is. We called you guys right away.”
“Preserving the scene, we were,” Jeremy said.
Aislinn stared at Jeremy, trying to figure out if he was serious or mocking her. When she realized he was being entirely serous, she said, “Well, good work, guys.” Ryan seemed pleased, Jeremy remained deadpan.
She turned to the attending officer and said, “Get their statements, please.”
Aislinn returned to where Rebecca Carlisle was preparing to slice open the remainder of the pillar and expose the rest of the body. She had a drywall saw and a utility knife in hand and was calculating where to make her cut.
“Are you okay with me opening the chase?” she asked Aislinn.
“Yeah, nothing on this side of the wall of any value.”
“It’s been years since she was put in here,” Carlisle agreed.
Carlisle started with the razor-sharp knife, cutting down about six inches on one side, then the other. She made a deep incision across the drywall at the bottom of her cuts, then she grabbed on and gave it a sharp yank. It snapped off cleanly, exposing the bare shoulders of the corpse and giving the coroner a better look at what was inside the chase. She peered in with a flashlight, then said, “I can cut all the way to the floor without touching the poly wrapping the body.”
Aislinn didn’t respond and Carlisle made the cuts, then gave the large piece of drywall a tug. It snapped on the cuts and broke away. The corpse came lurching forward and Aislinn grabbed it by the shoulders, its head jerking about like a bobblehead. Carlisle set the drywall aside and got a good grip on the poly near the feet.
“Let’s lift it out and lay it down there,” Carlisle said, motioning to a clear spot on the floor with a drop sheet already in place.
“Right.” Aislinn lifted, surprised at how light the body was and set her end down on the sheet.
They could see the corpse clearly now – a woman in a full-length, strapless red dress. The details of the body and the dress were mostly obscured by the folds in the poly, but the color drained from Aislinn’s face and she took a step back.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
Carlisle snapped her head around and asked, “You okay?”
“Yeah, all good,” Aislinn said, not sure she was. A very dark image was forming in her head and she backed off and sat on the window sill while the coroner and her crew dusted the poly for prints and talked about how to cut it open with the least amount of damage to any potential evidence. After a few minutes Carlisle plodded over in her booties.
“I can cut open the poly here or take it to the morgue,” Carlisle said.”
Usually, the body would be taken to the morgue and the poly cut with CSI and the lead detective in attendance, but since they were all present Aislinn decided not to wait. It was bucking protocol, but she had her reasons.
“I’m good with you doing it here.” Aislinn figured the photos and Carlisle’s report would give her any DNA traces or fingerprints on the plastic.
Carlisle replaced her mask, dug in her toolbox and pulled out a razor knife in a sealed bag. She ripped open the plastic, removed the sterilized blade and cut a slit in the poly from one end to the other, then made shorter slits at each end and pulled it back. The body was that of a woman, dressed in a red satin gown with a matching sash around her waist. The thick, dark hair was like spray-painted straw and had fallen across the face. Carlisle pushed it back, once again revealing the grotesque open-mouth scream and hollow eye sockets. Carlisle glanced up at Aislinn, whose face had gone even whiter.
Vertigo threatened and Aislinn swayed back and forth, fighting to stay on her feet.
“It’s going to take me a while to figure out how long she’s been dead,” Carlisle said. “Even then it will likely be a guess.”
Aislinn struggled to catch her breath and grabbed for a nearby chair. She sat down heavily and focused on the floor. She closed her eyes, images of teenage girls sweeping around the room flooded in, their new dresses swirling about, their voices young and excited. Oh, God, it’s so red. I love it, love it, love it.
Aislinn swallowed, her eyes still shut tight. “Twenty years, give or take a few days.”
Everyone within earshot stopped, the only sound a low hiss from an air conditioning duct.
“That’s pretty specific,” Carlisle said, standing. She waited a minute, then said, “Care to explain?”
Aislinn didn’t respond. Her emotions were churning like an angry sea and she couldn’t keep a straight train of thought. It was threatening to derail her. Long forgotten memories, now as vivid as sharply focused pictures, flashed through the darkness, bringing that day back as if were in the moment. So this is where you ended up. All that wondering, and here you are.
Eventually, Aislinn opened her eyes and said, “Darina Volkov. She disappeared on prom night, June 2001.”
“You knew her,” Carlisle stated.
“Good friends,” Aislinn uttered, turning away from the hollow sockets that had once held dark, mischievous eyes.
She needed to get out of the room and stood on weak knees. “Please send the report to District A-1, Homicide.”
There was nothing of value here, not after twenty years of office workers spilling coffee and dropping bits of their lunch on the floor. Anything of use in the investigation would come from the CSI team’s search inside the electrical chase and from Rebecca’s examination of the body and the poly. Even then, hoping for trace materials on either was optimistic, time had a way of destroying evidence.
“When can I expect it?” Aislinn asked, struggling to keep herself together.
Carlisle gave the corpse a long look, then said, “I can have some preliminary data by tomorrow afternoon. Tissue samples will take longer.”
Aislinn nodded. “That’s fast.”
Carlisle stood with her hands at her sides, dressed head to toe in scrubs, her mask hanging askew around her neck. “Sorry about your friend, Aislinn.”
Aislinn was close to tears and managed a crooked smile. “Thanks.”
Aislinn spun on her heels and headed for the door. She kept moving, one foot in front of the other, not making eye contact with the officer guarding the scene, her hand wiping at her eyes as she walked down the hallway. She took the stairs and stopped at the second floor to regroup.
“Darina,” she whispered, her friend’s tortured face forever burned into her memory. “Oh, god.”
Five minutes slipped by before she could stop the image from banging around in her head. Finally she put on her professional face and made her way to the street. More onlookers had gathered by the tape and all eyes were on her as she walked to her car. She slipped in and pulled away, driving slowly until she had cleared the scene, then merged in with the traffic.
Her anger was building, trampling over the grief and shock. Aislinn’s hands were shaking with rage and she gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles were white. She could hear her teeth grinding and forced herself to relax her jaw before she snapped a piece off one of her teeth. She pulled off the main street and drove a few blocks then steered to the curb and turned the car off. Aislinn sat without moving, one thought running over and over through her mind. Then she said it aloud.
“I won’t let you down, Darina.”
