CHAPTER THREE

Avery opened her eyes and looked at the unfamiliar ceiling over her head. The muted light of dawn came in through the bedroom window, spilling across her mostly naked body. It also painted Ramirez’s naked back beside her. She turned over slightly and smiled sleepily. He was still asleep, his face turned away from her.

They’d made love twice the night before, taking two hours between each session to make a quick dinner and discuss how sleeping together could complicate their working relationship if they weren’t careful. It had been close to midnight when they had finally drifted off side by side. Avery had been drowsy and could not remember when she’d fallen asleep but she did remember his arm around her waist.

She wanted that again…that feeling of being wanted and being secure. She thought about running her fingertips along the base of his spine (as well as a few other places, perhaps) just to wake him up so he could hold her.

But she did not get the chance. The text alarm of her phone went off. So did Ramirez’s. They pinged together, an occasion that could only mean one thing: it was work-related.

Ramirez sat up quickly. When he did, the sheet slid off of him and revealed everything. Avery snuck a peek, unable to resist herself. He grabbed his phone from the bedside table and looked at it with bleary eyes. While he did this, Avery retrieved her own phone from the pile of clothes on the floor.

The text was from Dylan Connelly, the A1 Homicide Supervisor. In Connelly’s typical fashion, the message was direct and to the point:

Body discovered. Burned badly. Maybe trauma to head.

Get your ass to abandoned construction lot on Kirkley St NOW.

“Well, that’s nice to wake up to first thing in the morning,” she grumbled.

Ramirez climbed off the bed, still completely naked, and hunkered down on the floor with her. He pulled her close to him and said, “Yeah, this is nice to wake up to first thing in the morning.”

She leaned into him, a little alarmed at how insanely content she was in that moment. She grumbled again and got to her feet.

“Shit,” she said. “We’re going to be late to the scene. I need to get my car and get back home for a change of clothes.”

“We’ll be okay,” Ramirez said as he started getting dressed. “I’ll text back in few minutes, while we’re on the way to your car. You space yours out. Maybe the text sound didn’t wake you. Maybe it took me calling you to wake you up.”

“That sounds deceptive,” she said, sliding her shirt on.

“That’s clever is what it is,” he said.

They smiled at each other as they finished getting dressed. They then went into the bathroom, where Avery did her best to make sense of her hair while Ramirez brushed his teeth. They hurried to the kitchen and Avery threw together two bowls of cereal.

“As you can see,” she said, “I’m quite the cook.”

He hugged her from behind and seemed to breathe her in. “Are we going to be okay?” he asked. “We can make this work, right?”

“I think so,” she said. “Let’s go out there and give it a try.”

They wolfed down their cereal, spending most of the time looking at one another, trying to gauge the other’s reaction to what had happened last night. From what Avery could tell, he was just as happy as she was.

They headed out the front door but before Ramirez closed it behind them, he stopped. “Wait, back inside for a minute.”

Confused, she stepped back inside.

“Inside,” he said, “we’re off the clock. Not really officially partners, right?”

“Right,” Avery said.

“So I can do this one more time,” he said.

He leaned in and kissed her. It was a dizzying kiss, one with enough force to cause her knees to sag a bit. She playfully pushed him away. “Like I said before,” she said, “don’t start. Not unless you intend to finish.”

“Rain check,” he said. He then led her outside and closed the door behind them this time. “Okay, on the clock now. Lead the way, Detective Black.”

***

They went with Ramirez’s plan. She did not return Connelly’s text for another sixteen minutes. By that time, she was nearly back to her apartment and still quite giddy over the way last night had played out. She managed to get dressed, grab coffee, and hit the street again in less than ten minutes. The result, of course, was arriving at the scene on Kirkley Street roughly half an hour later than Connelly would have preferred.

There were several officers already milling around. They were all familiar faces, faces that she had come to know and respect since becoming a Homicide detective. The looks on their faces this morning clued her in to the fact that this was going to be a very long and bitter morning.

One of the people she saw in attendance was Mike O’Malley. She found it alarming that the captain would be out here so soon. As the head over most of Boston PD, he was rarely seen in the hustle and bustle of everyday crime scenes, no matter how vile they might be. O’Malley was currently speaking to two other officers, one of which was Finley. Avery had grown to respect Finley as an officer even though he tended to be a little too aloof for her liking.

She spotted Ramirez right away; he was chatting with Connelly on the far side of the abandoned lot.

As she made her way over to Ramirez and Connelly, she took in the scene as best she could. She’d been through this part of town several times but had never paid it any real attention. It was one of the many financial blights on this end of town, an area where enthusiastic developers had sunk tons of money into property only to see the property lose its value and potential buyers quickly run away. Once the housing efforts had shut down, the area had gone back to ruin. And it seemed to fit well with the surroundings.

Twin smokestacks could be seen in the distance, rising up like blemished giants. They both sent broken plumes of smoke into the air, giving the morning an overcast sort of feel – but only in this part of town. On the other side of the abandoned lot, Avery could see the edges of what could have been a promising little creek that would have run along behind the properties of upper-middle-class houses. Now, it was taken over by an overgrowth of weeds and brambles. Plastic bags, snack wrappers, and other litter were stuck in the dead weeds. The shallow banks were muddy and neglected, adding a whole new stagnant level to the sludge of it all.

Overall, this area had become a part of town that just about anyone would gladly skip over. Avery knew the feeling; taking it all in as she closed in on Ramirez and Connelly, the area instantly made her feel burdened.

An area like this can’t be a coincidence, she thought. If someone killed here or even just dumped a body here, it has to have some significance…either to the murder itself or to the killer.

Immediately to the left of Finley and Ramirez, an officer had just finished putting up thin red stakes to border off a rectangular section of the lot. As Avery’s eyes fell on what rested inside that rectangle, Connelly’s voice boomed at her from just a few feet away.

“Damn, Black…what took you so long?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I slept right through the text buzz. Ramirez called me and woke me up.”

“Well, you aren’t late because you were busy doing your hair or makeup, that’s for damned sure,” Connelly remarked.

“She doesn’t need makeup,” Ramirez said. “That shit’s for girls.”

“Thanks, guys,” Avery said.

“Whatever,” Connelly said. “So what do you think of this?” he asked, nodding down to the rectangle drawn out by the red stakes.

Inside of the marked-off area, she saw what she assumed were human remains. Most of what she saw was a skeletal structure but it seemed to gleam. There was no age to it. It was unmistakably a skeleton that had very recently been robbed of its flesh. All around it was what appeared to be ash or some sort of grime. Here and there, she saw what may have been muscle and tissue clinging to the skeleton, particularly around the legs and the ribs.

“What the hell happened?” she asked.

“Well, what a great question for our best detective to start with,” Connelly said. “But here’s what we know so far. About an hour and fifteen minutes ago, a woman out for her morning run put in a call about what she described as something that looked like a weird Satanic ritual. It led us to this.”

Avery hunkered down by the red markers and peered into the area. An hour and ten minutes ago. That meant that if the black stuff around the skeleton was ash, this skeleton had been covered in skin at least an hour and a half ago. But that didn’t seem likely. It would take some sick determination and planning to kill someone and then miraculously burn them down to nothing but bone in such a short amount of time. In fact, she thought it would be next to impossible.

“Anyone have evidence gloves?” she asked.

“One second,” Ramirez said.

As he ran to Finley and the other officers who had stepped back to allow Avery some room, she also noticed a smell in the area. It was faint but noticeable – a chemical smell that was almost like bleach to her nose.

“Anyone else smell that?” she asked.

“Some sort of chemical, right?” Connelly asked. “We figure a chemical-induced burn is the only way you can fry a body like this one so quickly.”

“I’m not thinking the burn was done here,” she said.

“How can you be so sure?” Connelly asked.

I’m not, she thought. But the only thing that makes sense to me at first guess seems pretty damned absurd.

“Avery – ” Connelly said.

“One second,” she said. “I’m thinking.”

“Jesus…”

She ignored him, looking at the ash and the skeleton with an investigative eye. No…the body couldn’t have been burned here. There are no scorch marks around the body. A burning person would flail and run about wildly. Nothing here is burned at all. The only sign of a fire of any kind are these ashes. So why would a killer burn the body and then bring it back here? Maybe this is where he took the victim…

The possibilities were endless. One of the possibilities, Avery thought, was that perhaps the skeleton was the property of a medical lab somewhere and this was just some stupid sick prank. But given the location and the brazenness of the act, she doubted this was the case.

Ramirez returned with a pair of latex evidence gloves. Avery slipped them on and reached down to the ash. She gripped just a small bit of it between her pointer finger and thumb. She rubbed her fingers together and brought it to her face. She sniffed at it and looked at it closely. It looked like standard ash but possessed traces of the chemical smell.

“We need to have this ash analyzed,” Avery said. “If there was a chemical involved, there’s a good chance that there are still trace amounts in the ashes.”

“There’s a forensics team on the way as we speak,” Connelly said.

Slowly, Avery got to her feet and removed the latex gloves. O’Malley and Finley came over and Avery wasn’t surprised to see Finley keep his distance from the skeleton and ashes. He looked at them as if the skeleton might jump out at him at any moment.

“I’m working with the city to get footage from every security camera within a six-block radius,” O’Malley said. “Because there aren’t many of them in this part of town, it shouldn’t take too long.”

“It might not be a bad idea to also get the numbers of any companies that sell highly flammable chemicals,” Avery pointed out.

“That could be millions of places,” Connelly said.

“No, she’s right,” O’Malley said. “This burn wasn’t done with just a household cleaner or spray. This was a concentrated chemical, I’d say. Finley, can you start working on that?”

“Yes, sir,” Finley said, clearly glad to have a reason to leave the scene.

“Black and Ramirez…this is your case now,” O’Malley said. “Work with Connelly to get a team on this ASAP.”

“Got it,” Ramirez said.

“And Black, let’s make sure we’re prompt for the rest of this thing. You showing up late this morning set us back fifteen minutes.”

Avery nodded, not allowing herself to get baited into an argument. She knew that most of the men above her were still looking for any small thing to bust her on. And she was fine with that. Given her sordid history, she almost expected it.

As she started to step away from the red markers, she noticed something else several yards to the right. She’d seen it when she first approached the skeletal remains but had disregarded it as simple litter. But now as she walked closer to the detritus, she saw what looked to be the broken shards of something. It looked almost like glass, possibly something that had been fired in a kiln at some point. She walked over to it, getting a better view of the murky and stagnant creek along the back of the lot.

“Did anyone take note of this?” she asked.

Connelly looked over, barely interested.

“Just litter,” he said.

Avery shook her head.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

She slipped the latex gloves back on and picked up a piece of it. Upon closer inspection, she saw that whatever the object had been, it had been made of glass, not a ceramic material. There didn’t seem to be any dust or weathered wear and tear on the fragments. There were seven larger chunks, about the size of her palm, and then countless little slivers of it all over the ground. Aside from having been shattered, whatever had been broken looked to be fairly new.

“Whatever this is, it hasn’t been here for very long,” she said. “Make sure forensics checks this for prints.”

“I’ll sic forensics on it,” Connelly said in a tone that indicated he did not appreciate taking orders. “Now, you two…make sure you get to the A1 within the next half an hour. I’ll make some calls and have a team waiting for you in the conference room. This scene is less than two hours old; I’d like to nail this asshole before he gets too much of a head start.”

Avery took one final look at the skeleton. Without the cover of flesh, it looked like it was smiling. To Avery, it was almost as if the killer were smiling at her, biting back a taunting laugh. And it wasn’t just the sight of a newly stripped skeleton that made her feel a sense of foreboding and doom. It was the location, the almost perfectly sculpted mounds of ash around the bones, the purposefully unhidden remains, and the chemical smell.

It all seemed to point to something precise. It pointed to vast intention and planning. And as far as Avery was concerned, that could only mean one thing: whoever did this would certainly do it again.