Silenced

sealed and labeled, though Lucy couldn’t make out the wording.

“We shouldn’t even be here.” Noah stood straight, hands behind his back, legs slightly apart, looking more like former military than she’d seen him. He watched everything through narrowed eyes, his irritation increasing with the temperature.

When the call came in from DC asking for an assist, Slater assigned Noah. They’d been behind closed doors for ten minutes before Noah walked out, the apparent loser in the argument. He’d hardly spoken on the drive over.

“I thought Josh was fine about you taking the Wendy James murder.”

“We’re still on it. We’re here,” he jerked his head toward room 119, “because of budget cuts and lack of manpower, both for DC and us. There was no one else Slater could send this morning, unless he called in one of the resident agencies.”

All they’d been told was the homicide had special circumstances. A serial murderer, maybe, or perhaps the victim was a federal official, or there was another federal crime component to the case.

Noah continued, “I wanted to be at Stein’s meeting with the U.S. attorney this morning. He wouldn’t postpone it.”

“It’s his way of reminding you he’s in charge.”

A dozen cops filled the parking lot, keeping nosy bystanders behind the crime scene tape. Human curiosity to stop and observe death, pain, and suffering had always saddened and angered Lucy. Did any of them care enough to help someone in trouble? Or was their compassion limited to being horrified only after tragedy?

The creepy sensation of being watched made Lucy shiver, even in this heat. Second-floor guests peered over the railing above her, many shirtless, some smoking, all watching the investigation with unveiled animosity. Watching her. One young punk made a crude gesture when she accidentally caught his eye. She averted her eyes, cheeks flaming, embarrassed and disgusted.

“This crime scene is a mess,” Noah muttered.

A sharp, feminine voice snapped, “Sorry to be such an incompetent local.”

They turned to face the lead detective who’d been on the other end of Taback’s radio. Detective Reid had dark skin with equally dark hair cut close to the scalp. Only the wrinkles around her eyes suggested she was closer to fifty than forty.

She jerked off blue latex gloves and dumped them in a plastic bag, which she handed to another cop. Lucy noticed a long, jagged scar that started midway up her left tricep and disappeared under her sweat-dampened short-sleeved white blouse. Lucy wondered at the circumstances of the nasty injury. Had she gotten it on the job?

“Detective Genie Reid, senior detective. And you’re the feds.”

“Special Agent Noah Armstrong, analyst Lucy Kincaid. And the crime scene is a mess.”

“Don’t I know fucking know it. Shit!” She pulled out a coin purse from her pocket. “Whenever I get a case like this, I owe my grandson big.”

She took two quarters from one side of the coin purse and put them on the other, bulkier, side.

“Your grandson?” Lucy asked, curious.

“I promised Isaiah-he’s nine-that I’d stop swearing. On the honor system, I give him a quarter every time I say anything worse than ‘damn.’” She looked down at her coin purse. “I started with five dollars in quarters today. He’s already earned three-seventy-five and it’s not even noon.”

Lucy grinned. “You’ll be paying his way through college.”

“I already have, honey,” Genie said. “I told the CSU to clear out.” She hollered into the room. “I meant clear out now, people!”

“We’re nearly done, Detective,” one of the men said.

“Has the coroner been here?” Noah asked.

“Come and gone,” Genie said. “Good thing because it still reeks of death and the vic was hauled away thirty minutes ago.”

They stepped into the room, just the three of them, as the last of the crime scene unit left. Torn wallpaper, the dresser missing one leg, water stains on the sagging ceiling-the room was uninhabitable even before the murder. Lucy couldn’t picture anyone willingly staying here.

Desperate people.

What had led the victim to this room last night? How desperate was she? Did she know her killer? Invite him in?

Noah raised his voice over an ineffective, but loud, air-conditioning unit. “What are we looking at here?”

Genie kicked the dented wall appliance. “It doesn’t do anything to cool this place down, but every time I turn it off someone turns it back on.” She turned the old, chipped black knob from hi to off. The unit rumbled and clanked as it shut down.

She continued in a normal voice. “Victim was a twenty-year-old hooker named Nicole Bellows. One of the uniforms recognized her, she’d been busted over a year ago. I ran her sheet, she’s been clean since. Looked healthy-other than having her throat slit so deep it severed her vocal chords-no obvious drug use, no needle marks. Maybe she had a sugar daddy who got tired of her, or a pimp who thought she wasn’t pulling her weight. Or, maybe, a john who can only get his rocks off when he kills.”

Lucy’s chest tightened at the image.

A john who can only get off when he kills.

All the people who’d stared at her outside fueled her panic. The bystanders. The cops. Watching, waiting for her to crack.

Did they know?

They don’t know anything about you. They can’t see you anymore. They’re outside, you’re inside. They aren’t watching.

A flash of memory wiped out everything in her vision.

She didn’t see the bed, the blood, the filth, the flies. She heard Genie and Noah talking from far away. Her blood rushed to her ears, swirling, pounding. Her knees buckled, but she willed them to work.

Focus, Lucy, get it under control.

She leaned against the wall when her knees refused her command. The memories hit her, one right after the other, in a rapid series of snapshots.

The mattress. The knife. The ropes. The camera’s evil eye, watching. Always watching.

focus focus focus

Lucy shifted her body, the urge to run so great she leaned out the door. The sharp edge of splintered wood jolted her back to reality. The colors around her turned vibrant and she closed her eyes.

You are in control. Breathe in. Breathe out.

The mantra was working. Voices brought her back to the present.

Genie was explaining what they’d found in the room, how the body had been positioned. Lucy focused on the detective’s crisp cadence.

Noah was looking at her, his face expressionless, but she saw his eyes questioning her. Or was he questioning his own judgment in bringing her here? God, what must he think? It was only a few seconds, had her panic been that obvious?

She forced an I’m-just-fine smile on her face and waved away flies. She didn’t know if Noah bought her act.

It’s not an act. You’re fine. You’re in control.

“Except,” Genie was saying, “the coroner said no external sign of sexual assault. But that really doesn’t matter, because there’s something bigger here than a prostitute getting whacked.”

“What do you mean?” Noah asked.

Lucy bit her lip to keep from adding a comment about how the detective denigrated the victim. That physical pain helped assuage her panic. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. She knew, from being raised in a household full of cops and working at the morgue, that cops often needed to compartmentalize. They couldn’t look at the victim as a person, lest rage and defeat cloud their judgment. But she still looked at victims as people, and while she didn’t condone the prostitution lifestyle, she empathized with the circumstances that put many of these young