Cause to Fear. Blake Pierce

the bank. “What are you doing?”

      She peered back and saw him standing close to the ice but being very purposeful to not step on it.

      “Working,” she hollered back. “Why don’t you skate on out here and help?”

      He rolled his eyes at her and she turned back to the ice. She dropped the snapped hair tie into the water and watched it bob up and down for a moment. Then it slowly caught the sluggish current of the water beneath the ice. It was pushed away and under the ice to her left, further out toward Watertown.

      So she was dropped in somewhere else, Avery thought, looking down the river in the direction of Boston. On the bank, Connelly and the officer he had been speaking to were heading up behind the Forensics team.

      Avery remained on the ice, standing straight up now. She was getting very cold as she watched her breath vaporize on the air. But something about the cold temperature seemed to center her. It allowed her to think, to use the light creaking noises of the ice as a metronome of sorts as she put her thoughts together.

      Nude and not a blemish or bruise on her. So assault is ruled out. No jewelry, so it could have been a robbery. But most cases of a body after being robbed would show some signs of struggle…and this woman was spotless. And what about those nails and the absolute lack of hair anywhere other than her head?

      She slowly walked to the bank, looking down the frozen river to where it rounded a bend and kept on in the direction of Boston. It was weird to think of how beautiful the frozen Charles River looked from Boston University while less than twenty minutes away a body had been pulled from it.

      She pulled up her coat collar around her neck as she walked back to the bank. She was just in time to see the back doors of the Forensics van close. Connelly was approaching her but he was looking beyond her and out to the frozen water.

      “You get a good look at her?” Avery asked.

      “Yeah. She looked like a damn toy or something. All pale and cold and…”

      “And perfect,” Avery said. “Did you notice there was no hair on her? No bruises or bumps, either.”

      “Or jewelry,” Connelly added. With a heavy sigh, he asked: “Dare I ask for your initial thoughts?”

      She was much more willing to be unfiltered with Connelly now. She had been ever since he and O’Malley had offered her a promotion to sergeant two months ago. In return, they seemed more willing to accept her theories from the get-go rather than questioning the hell out of everything that came out of her mouth.

      “Her fingernails were perfectly trimmed,” she said. “It’s like she had just come out of a salon before she was dumped in the river. Then there’s the lack of hair anywhere. One of those things is odd enough but together, it screams intentionality to me.”

      “You think someone cleaned her up before they killed her?”

      “Seems like it. It’s almost like the funeral parlor making the dead look as presentable as possible for the open casket. Whoever did this cleaned her. Shaved her and did her nails.”

      “Any idea why?”

      Avery shrugged. “I can only speculate right now. But I can tell you one thing that you probably aren’t going to like very much.”

      “Ah hell,” he said, knowing what was coming.

      “This guy took his time…not even in the killing, but in how the body would look when it was found. He was intentional. Patient. Based on similar cases, I can almost guarantee you she won’t be the only one.”

      With another of his patented sighs, Connelly dug his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll call a meeting at the A1,” he said. “I’ll let them know we have a potential serial killer.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      Avery supposed that if she was going to take the position of sergeant, she needed to get over her hatred of the A1 conference room. She had nothing against the room per se. But she knew that a meeting held within it so soon after the discovery of a body meant that there would be cross-talking and arguing, most of which would be used to shoot down her theories.

      Maybe as sergeant, that will come to an end, she thought as she walked into the room.

      Connelly was at the head of the table, shoving papers around. She figured O’Malley would be in soon. He’d seemed a lot more present at any meeting she was a part of ever since they had offered her the sergeant position.

      Connelly looked up at her through the growing crowd of other officers. “Things are moving quickly on this one,” he said. “The body pulled from the river was ID’ed exactly five minutes ago. Patty Dearborne, twenty-two years of age. A Boston University student and Boston native. Right now, that’s all we know. The parents will need to be informed once this meeting is over.”

      He slid over a folder that contained only two sheets of paper. One showed a picture taken from Patty Dearborne’s Facebook profile. The other sheet showed three photos, all taken from the Charles River earlier in the day. Patty Dearborne’s face was present in all of them, her purple-tinted eyelids closed.

      In a morbid train of thought, Avery tried to see the young woman’s face in the same way a killer might see it. Patty was gorgeous, even in death. She had a body that Avery herself would have seen as far too skinny but bar-wandering men would salivate over. She used this mentality, trying to gauge why a killer would choose such a victim if there were no sexual implications.

      Maybe he’s after beautiful things. The question, of course, is if he is seeking these beautiful things in order to fawn over them or to destroy them. Does he appreciate beauty or does he want to obliterate it?

      She wasn’t sure how long she had been thinking about this. All she knew was that she jumped a bit when Connelly called the meeting to order. There were a total of nine people in the conference room. She saw that Ramirez had snuck in. He was in a seat near Connelly, looking through the same type of folder Connelly had given her moments ago. He apparently felt her looking at him; he glanced up and smiled at her.

      She returned the smile as Connelly started. She dropped her gaze right away, not wanting to be too obvious. While just about everyone in the precinct knew that she and Ramirez were an item now, they still liked to try to keep it under wraps.

      “Everyone should have been briefed by now,” Connelly said. “For those of you that have not, the woman has been identified as Patty Dearborne, a BU senior. She was found in the Charles River just outside of Watertown but she is a Boston native. As Detective Black pointed out in the briefing you all received, the current of the river suggests that the body was dumped elsewhere. Forensics is guessing that her body was in the water for as long as twenty-four hours. Those two things add up to a probable dumping spot somewhere within Boston.”

      “Sir,” Officer Finley spoke up. “Forgive me for asking, but why are we not even thinking about suicide? The briefing states there were no bruises and no signs of a struggle.”

      “I ruled that out almost right away when I saw that the victim was nude,” Avery said. “While suicide would usually be something to consider, it’s highly unlikely that Patty Dearborne stripped naked before jumping into the Charles River.”

      She almost hated to shoot Finley’s ideas down. She was watching him become a damn good officer week by week. He’d matured over the last year or so, morphing out of the frat-boy persona most people knew him by and into a hard-working officer.

      “But no bruises,” another officer said. “That seems to be a smoking gun.”

      “Or evidence that it was not suicide,” Avery argued. “If she jumped from any sort of height more than eight to ten feet, there would have been visible bruising on her body from the sheer impact.”

      “Forensics agrees with this,” Connelly said. “They’re going to be sending a more finalized report soon, but they feel pretty certain about this.” He then looked to Avery and gestured to the table with a sweeping of his hand. “What else do you have, Detective Black?”

      She