Page 27 of Zero Divergence
“More like he didn’t want to deal with the questions that were sure to follow once he lowered the boom,” Royce corrected.
“Sergeant Lock! Detective Key!” a reporter yelled from the barricade. “Can I have a moment of your time?”
“We have no comments,” Royce replied, which would’ve been true even if he weren’t clueless. “Keep your secrets, Bobby. I have a feeling I don’t want my reaction to learning the identity of the victim broadcasted on the news.” They slipped on the booties and gloves and headed into the house.
The interior of the home was modern chic with a white-on-white monochromatic scheme interrupted only by chrome accent pieces and an occasional pop of color scattered throughout the first floor, making the black powder residue smudges from dusting for prints stand out in stark contrast in the pristine environment. The place, although fully furnished and expensively designed, felt impersonal to Royce. There were no pictures displayed anywhere to give a clue as to whose home they stood in.
“Can you imagine Bones living in a place like this?” Royce asked. “He’d ruin a white couch in five minutes or less by yacking up his cat food all over it.”
Beside him, Sawyer chuckled. The sound never failed to warm his soul, and Royce fought off the urge to reach for him, even though they appeared to be the only two people downstairs at the moment. “This place is definitely not intended for kids or pets. It reminds me of the model homes Vic and I looked at when we were trying to decide if building a new house was the right fit for us. Nothing about this townhouse resembles the other crime scenes either. Harper’s apartment could probably fit in the powder room we just passed.”
Looking around the room, Royce couldn’t help but compare the opulence to the places Christi, Tara, Harper, and Abby had called home. He wondered if they’d dreamed of living in places like this one someday. “Maybe our guess was way off.”
“Locke, Key, up here,” the chief called.
They looked up and saw him standing at the top of the stairs, observing them. But for how long? It was a good thing Royce hadn’t reached for Sawyer after all.
“Yes, sir,” Sawyer said, heading toward the steps and leaving Royce to follow him.
“Sorry to start your first day back so early, Detective Key,” Mendoza said once they reached the landing at the top of the steps.
“I was eager to get back, sir,” Sawyer said.
“This case is going to be a PR nightmare for the department, fellas,” Mendoza said. “I need you at your very best.”
“You can count on us, sir,” Royce said.
Mendoza studied them for a second and must’ve liked what he saw because he nodded curtly, then pivoted and walked toward the master bedroom. Royce and Sawyer exchanged curious glances before following him.
Two things struck Royce like a punch to the gut when he walked into the bedroom, helping him to understand the chief’s somber mood and dread: the identity of the victim and how similar her death had been to Humphries’s victims.
Someone wanted them to believe Franco Humphries had struck again.
Sawyer looked away from the sprawled woman on the bed whose open robe didn’t afford her any modesty. It never got easier seeing a person violated so heinously. “Is that Humphries’s attorney?” he asked in disbelief.
“Yes. Vivian Gross,” Royce said.
Sawyer recalled the story Royce told him about the bizarre encounter between Humphries and Gross outside the jail, which was confirmed by the photographs Felix ran with his article the day after Humphries’s release.
The ME, Dr. Fawkes, was leaning over the woman whose wrists and ankles had been secured to the bed by restraints. “She’s in the flaccid stage of rigor mortis.”
The general rule for rigor mortis is 12:12:12. Twelve hours for her body to have reached full rigor, then twelve hours in the rigid stage before it had started reversing itself. Her contracted muscles would’ve started relaxing during the flaccid stage, which was the final twelve hours in the equation. “So, Ms. Gross died within the last twenty-four to thirty-six hours?”
“I’d say closer to thirty-six,” Fawkes replied. “There’s still some rigidity in the larger muscle groups, but not much.”
Looking around the room, Sawyer noticed the apparent signs of a struggle. The bedside table next to the right side of the bed was shoved against the wall hard enough for the corner to puncture the drywall. A lamp on top of it had been knocked over, and a cell phone, watch, and a paperback book had fallen to the floor during the collision. While he couldn’t see bruises on the front of Ms. Gross’s body, he anticipated Fawkes finding contusions on the back of her thighs if she were the one who’d crashed into the table.
“Was she sexually assaulted?” Royce asked quietly.
“There are no external signs of bruising, tearing, or bleeding, but I will check for any signs of internal vaginal or anal trauma during her autopsy.” Dr. Fawkes pointed to two round burn marks on Vivian Gross’s chest above her left breast. “Those look like a stun gun caused them. I suspect her attacker used it to subdue her so they could tie her to the bed and strangle her.” Fawkes straightened and looked at Royce and Sawyer. “Upon entering the room, I saw our victim was strangled with her robe belt and thought the Savannah Strangler had struck again.”
Savannah Strangler was the nickname the media had given to Humphries once it became apparent they were dealing with a serial rapist and killer.
“The Strangler didn’t use sex restraints purchased from adult stores like the ones utilized to incapacitate Ms. Gross. The college coeds were all restrained with articles of their clothing. Ms. Gross put up a valiant fight, as well.” Fawkes lifted a hand and pointed to the dried blood beneath her nails. “So far, I haven’t found wounds on her body that would’ve generated the dried blood we see here, so I don’t believe it belongs to Ms. Gross. We were never able to collect foreign DNA from anywhere on the coeds’ bodies.”
“It appears Ms. Gross was interrupted while taking a bath,” Mendoza said, gesturing toward the master bathroom.
Sawyer and Royce walked to the doorway but didn’t enter because the techs were busy collecting evidence. From their vantage point, they could see the filled bathtub and gutted candles lining the wall opposite the bath pillow suctioned to the tub. There was a half-empty wineglass tucked in the corner and a tablet lying on the fuzzy bathmat on the floor.