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Scuff marks blackened the yellow wall, the sole of one of her shoes ripped apart at the toe. She had kicked and kicked the common wall that separated the living room from the kitchen and nearly knocked the picture off the hook. The woman's legs were pale in the kitchen light, her dress pushed above her knees. Her torso and face were hidden behind the kitchen island. On top of that island was a cutting board, a tomato sliced into thirds, and a knife slicked with pulp and seed. A fan motor rattled above the oven. A pot of pasta sat on the stove top, the smell of starch thickening the heat in the room. The screen to the sliding back door had been peeled open.
"Anyone touch that door?" Ben said to Rafferty.
"No," he said. "First on scene said it was like that when he got here."
She had been at the cutting board, he guessed, her back to the door. Between the fan and the boiling water, and the carpet on the floor to soften the intruder's footsteps, she wouldn't have heard anyone sneaking up behind her.
"Get someone to print that," Ben said, pointing to the stove.
There was another smell, too. When he came around the corner of the island, he saw the puddle glistening beneath her dress, the orange flowers deepening red where it was soaked with her urine. He could tell she had been strangled before he saw the bruises on her neck and the fingernail crescents cutting blood out of her skin, before he saw the scratches crisscrossing her chin, before he discovered the petechiae around her eyes like little pinhole blisters.
"Medical examiner on the way?" Ben asked.
"Don't have one." Rafferty shook his head. "It's me."
"The perks of living in paradise, huh?"
"I can do it," he said. "I just don't want to fuck it up. That's why I called you. I mean, this is the guy, right?"
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Ben said.
In recent months, there had been a series of killings in L.A. and northern Orange County, mostly manual strangulations. No one yet had said there was a serial on the loose, but cops had started to whisper exactly that to one another. The last body, six days ago, had turned up in Seal Beach, thirty-five miles away.
Ben knelt down next to the body. One eye was open, the sclera red with broken blood vessels. "She fought," Ben said. "Hard."
The woman was in her late forties, at least. Barefoot, a reddening burn on her left thigh—from splashed pasta water, he guessed. Jesus. Ben could understand the shootings in L.A. It was business, a twisted ethic among the gangs, a harsh world with harsh laws, and the kids bought into it. But not even a Crip or Blood, not even a Loco, would strangle the life out of someone. It was too much work, too personal, too brutal. You had to be out of your head angry to do such a thing, psychotic angry, or else you had to enjoy it, had to find pleasure in the power of your hands.
"Who found her?"
"Anonymous tip," Rafferty said.
"The killer?"
"That's my guess," Rafferty said. "Doesn't seem to have much faith in us."
"Look what I've done," Ben muttered, looking at the bruises on the woman's neck.
"What?" Rafferty said.
"This guy wants an audience."
"Sick dick."
"Get a call in to the Orange County ME," Ben said. "We need some science down here."
2
Natasha Betencourt was in the middle of teaching a class on weighing organs. Liver, 1,560 grams. Lungs, 621 grams. And the heart: 315. That always surprised the UC students, the lightness of the heart. When the call came in, she was placing a kidney (276 grams) on the scale. Some of the students had tissue paper stuffed up their nostrils—a bad idea, she told them, since you tasted the stink then; tamp down one sense and another compensates. Vicks was the way to go, but everyone dealt with the smell the way they dealt with it. She'd already lost two students to the toilets. The first one with the Y cut and the second when she unraveled the lungs. Those were the sentimental ones. She had a soft spot for those students; they still attached a person to a body, still sympathized with the cadaver. An admirable sentiment, but misplaced and ultimately ineffective in this line of work. "The soul flew away a long time ago," she liked to say in the examination room. "Just tissue and bone here."
Excerpted from Shadow Man by Alan Drew. Copyright © 2017 by Alan Drew. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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