Page 22

CHAPTER 22

Frankie

Worrying about everything under the sun other than this case was going to scramble my brain and I’d make mistakes I couldn’t afford to make.

I had to focus.

Soren was nothing. Just a rookie I had to train. He was the least interesting person in the world.

Which was why he was so fucking fascinating.

Regardless , we both had work to do.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and shoved everything else down.

Once that numb feeling was back, I opened my eyes and focused on the rookie at my side, not the least bit surprised to see he didn’t look nervous at all. “After we cross that line, how are you going to use your skill set?”

“I’ll use a map,” Soren told me, his voice too low for anyone other than me to hear. He pulled out his phone and showed me a map of the state park. “I’ll find all the entrances and exits. Every trail. Where they meet up or cross paths. Then I’ll mark every route I could think of to this location.”

Well…that was definitely not something Lucy normally did. That’s what I did.

Soren tucked his phone into his back pocket and clasped his hands behind his back. “I doubt any of those entrances and exits have security cameras, but they might have them in the parking lots and around the office buildings.”

He shifted his weight and scanned the people doing their jobs for a few minutes. I almost thought that was all he was going to say on the matter, but then he looked up at the sky through the trees.

“Sometimes satellites cover areas like this considering how dangerous the coastline is. Most cars have dash cams and hikers almost always carry their phones on them. Every device that uses GPS can be tracked in one way or another.”

His gaze dropped to one of the guys on the forensic team and I wasn’t sure what to think.

Lucy has never gotten access to a satellite. At least, not that I was aware of. But Soren was talking like it was a normal thing to think about.

I guess it could be when he was working for the government. He’d have access to all kinds of things that would definitely get Lucy put away for a long time.

“We don’t have access to satellites.” I crossed my arms over my chest and raised my eyebrow. “Unless you can call in a favor or something.”

“There are private satellites.” Soren shrugged a shoulder and readjusted his pack. “The police can request a warrant for access to them. There are also private yachts, shipping boats, and the dock. That would cover the coastline.

“The parking lots are bound to have at least one car with a dash cam, if not more and we can ask for footage from everyone who drove here over the last twenty-four hours.”

He looked down at me then and I didn’t know what to say because that was exactly what Lucy would do, but he’d covered more angles than I thought he would.

A satellite? Lucy might consider that if the other shit fell through, but not as her first choice.

But the differences between them weren’t bothering me as much as the similarities.

I rubbed my forehead with the back of my hand, annoyed he might actually be good enough to replace Lucy. “I want you to take a look around the scene first and once I’m satisfied you’re not going to accidentally tamper with evidence, I’ll go talk to that hiker. When we’re done here we’ll go visit the office and see what they have for us.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

My eyes darted to his, shocked to hear him use that honorific when he could just use my name.

Soren winced slightly when he noticed my attention and dropped his gaze to the ground. “I apologize, detective. It’s a habit.”

Still? Hasn’t it been years since he’s left the military?

“It’s fine.” I waved away his apology. I could worry about his habits and what it might mean later. “Let’s get this done before lunch.”

I grabbed the tape and pushed it down so he could step over it, holding up my hand to help him over like I always did.

Soren stared at it and it suddenly occurred to me what I was doing and how fucking ridiculous all this was.

“Sorry,” I muttered as I dropped my hand. “It’s a habit.”

It may be a habit but it wasn’t like Soren needed my help stepping over the tape when he was a good six or seven inches taller than me with long legs.

How embarrassing.

I’ve never been in a crime scene with anyone else other than Lucy as my partner and if I wasn’t working with her, I was alone.

I really needed to get my shit together.

Soren stepped over the crime scene tape and I watched as his entire demeanor changed just like it had in the gun range.

He readjusted his gloves and studied the area. Then he checked the trees and the trail, stepping to the side so he could look back toward the parking lot.

Soren suddenly crouched down and grabbed the phone, angling it to record…something. Whatever it was, I couldn’t see it.

Then he stopped by every evidence marker to study whatever it was the forensic team had found.

My stomach turned as I waited for him to finish, shoving down the nerves again, but this time I couldn’t feel the numbness.

Sweat dripped down my spine as I tried to remind myself I didn’t have to get close enough to smell it. Just close enough to catch the basic details.

I followed after my rookie and focused on him instead of the thing I could see in the corner of my vision, resting on a stump like something out of a second-rate horror movie.

Thank god my sense of smell wasn’t as good as Lucy’s, but the scent of earth and mulch rose all around us, making my stomach turn again.

I grabbed Soren’s wrist and pulled back just before he was within touching distance of the head.

He turned around with a tiny look of surprise on his face. “I wasn’t going to touch it.”

I yanked him closer and stepped to the side so his body was between me and the officers. Then I paused the recording on the phone hanging around his neck. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

Telling him about this was probably a bad idea, but letting the cops find out was even worse.

I kept my eyes down and did my very best to make sure he couldn’t tell how embarrassed I was about this. “Lucy usually inspects the dead bodies…I have a difficult time with the smell.”

Glancing over at the head was a mistake, but I needed to know how bad it was so I could warn him.

I swallowed down bile.

Thankfully, it wasn’t too hot today and there was a strong breeze coming off the ocean, but that head didn’t look fresh.

“It’s difficult to explain,” I muttered, knowing how stupid it sounded that a detective who regularly solved murders had a sensitive stomach. “But anything older than a few hours makes me uncomfortable.”

I looked up to see his expression was as neutral as always. It didn’t seem like he was going to make fun of me for this, or tell the whole world, but it was impossible to know for sure.

“I’m just telling you in case I act a little…weird,” I warned him. “Now, take a look, but for the love of god, don’t touch it.”

Soren nodded and refocused on the head, tapping the phone to restart the recording.

Clenching my hands into fists, I took a deep breath and held it as I followed him a few steps closer.

He crouched down and I crossed my arms over my chest.

Dead bodies didn’t bother me. Neither did blood. Even the coppery smell didn’t make me too uncomfortable. It was the scent of rot and decay I couldn’t handle.

And the waxy sensation of flesh. It didn’t feel real. Like a toy or something.

It was the most awful thing I’ve ever felt.

The chemical smell used in morgues and funeral homes weren’t usually that big of a deal, but it couldn’t quite cover the smell of what I could only describe as sweet, rotting chicken.

Soren held up the phone to record the head from as many angles as possible and all I could do was stare at the face of a man whose skin was starting to sag under his eyes.

There was no residual blood either which made the churning in my stomach worse.

I could see why they’d thought it was a bad prank at first.

What normal person would think a disembodied head this clean was real?

I turned slightly to watch the forensics team do their thing and took another breath before refocusing on Soren.

Three heads without bodies with no visual similarities in appearance other than their brown hair.

Considering there wasn’t any blood dripping down the tree stump, it made me think there wasn’t any blood left in that thing at all.

Whoever put this here had removed the head from the body, drained all the blood, and cleaned it off the skin.

Why someone would do that…I don’t know.

Yeah, I was a behavior analyst and I knew more about criminal psychosis than most, but understanding what made a person like this never really explained why doing this satisfied those urges.

Why this specifically?

Was killing the person really not enough? Did they really have to torture them too?

I knew why they did it. I understood that it was partially for their perceived survival, and partially as a way to ‘get back’ at the person they were afraid of but it was just kind of…lame.

Of course, it was disturbing, but once you stripped away all the horror, the motive was truly childish.

There was this one serial killer over a hundred years ago who trapped people in his hotel and murdered them in secret rooms. That hotel had been his playground and the things they uncovered in there were truly horrific, but his only motive was the thrill of it all.

None of his victims had anything in common other than the fact that they’d stayed at his hotel and the things they’d learned about the killer’s victims reminded me a lot of this one.

Whoever was behind this atrocity was still in their infancy when it came to murder if the jagged cuts on the neck were any indication. That or they were crazed in a way that would make it really fucking hard to blend in to society.

Soren stood and I turned away, taking another deep breath as I headed for Garcia. “Now what are you going to do?”

“Study the tracks.”

I turned to look back at him, shocked enough by his statement that I couldn’t hide it. “You can track?”

He nodded and studied the ground again. “It’s not going to be easy with everyone walking all over the trail, but if the killer went unseen, they probably didn’t use the main trail. If we can figure out how they left, it would narrow down some of the possibilities.”

“Did the military teach you that?” I couldn’t help it. I was intensely curious about this new fact.

Tracking wasn’t one of the skills listed on his resumé even though it would be considered valuable for this line of work.

“No, they didn’t.” Soren cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck – one of his tells, but I wasn’t sure what exactly it meant yet.

“Really? Then who did?”

“Before I joined up, I was an Eagle Scout,” he admitted. “Tracking and hunting were my specialties. Navigation was my secondary skill.”

“You got badges for that right?” I was impressed despite myself. “Isn’t that shit hard?”

“It’s not easy, but you get used to it.” Soren glanced at me, clearly unsure if I was fucking with him or not. “I can take a look around the crime scene while you talk to whoever you need to talk to, but I’d like to come back after we go to the office to take a look at the areas off the trail.”

“Sure.” I just stared at him like an idiot, shocked that he was being so assertive. And helpful. “Just stay where I can see you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I clenched my teeth and turned on my heel, hating how much I liked this side of him.

Quiet. Respectful. Intelligent. Non-combative yet assertive. Good at everything I wasn’t.

Soren was exactly the kind of partner I needed and if Lucy decided she didn’t want to work in the field anymore, he would be perfect for me.

Maybe I should stop working in the field too. That would probably be for the best.

It was only a matter of time before everything blew up in my face anyway and pretending like it wasn’t going to happen was only going to make me look stupid. It was time I really thought about what I was going to do and how that was going to affect everything.

Eventually, my role as Francesca Lopez was going to conflict with my role as Frankie James, and I was going to have to choose.

No matter how much I didn’t want to admit it, my life as Frankie James was pretty much over. I needed to accept that and be who I was always supposed to be.

Unfortunately, even I didn’t know who Francesca Lopez was anymore.