Sworn to Silence - Linda Castillo

Mona is my graveyard dispatcher. She’s not prone to hysterics, so the anxiety in her tone garners my full attention. “What happened?”

“T.J.’s out at the Stutz place. He was rounding up cows and found a dead body.”

Suddenly, I’m no longer sleepy. Sitting up, I shove the hair from my face. “What?”

“He found a body. Sounds pretty shaken up.”

Judging from the tone of her voice, T.J. isn’t the only one. I throw my legs over the side of the bed and reach for my robe. A glance at the alarm tells me it’s almost two-thirty A.M. “An accident?”

“Just a body. Nude. Female.”

Realizing I need my clothes, not the robe, I turn on the lamp. The light hurts my eyes, but I’m fully awake now. I’m still trying to get my mind around the idea of one of my officers finding a body. I ask for the location, and she tells me.

“Call Doc Coblentz,” I say. Doc Coblentz is one of six doctors in the town of Painters Mill, Ohio, and acting coroner for Holmes County.

I cross to the closet and reach for my bra, socks and long johns. “Tell T.J. not to touch anything or move the body. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

The Stutz farm sits on eighty acres bordered on one side by Dog Leg Road, the other by the north fork of Painters Creek. The location Mona gave me is half a mile from the old covered bridge on a deserted stretch of road that dead ends at the county line.

I crave coffee as I pull up behind T.J.’s cruiser. My headlights reveal his silhouette in the driver’s seat. I’m pleased to see he set out flares and left his strobes on. Grabbing my Mag-Lite, I slide out of the Explorer. The cold shocks me, and I huddle deeper into my parka, wishing I’d remembered my hat. T.J. looks shaken as I approach. “What do you have?”

“A body. Female.” He’s doing his best to maintain his cop persona, but his hand shakes as he points toward the field. I know those tremors aren’t from the temperature. “Thirty feet in by those trees.”

“You sure she’s dead?”

T.J.’s Adam’s apple bobs twice. “She’s cold. No pulse. There’s blood all over the fuckin’ place.”

“Let’s take a look.” We start toward the trees. “Did you touch anything? Disturb the scene?”

He drops his head slightly, and I know he did. “I thought maybe she was . . . alive, so I rolled her over, checked.”

Not good, but I don’t say anything. T.J. Banks has the makings of a good cop. He’s diligent and serious about his work. But this is his first job in law enforcement. Having been my officer for only six months, he’s green. I’d lay odds this is his first dead body.

We crunch through ankle-deep snow. A sense of dread staggers me when I spot the body. I wish for daylight, but it will be hours before my wish is granted. Nights are long this time of year. The victim is naked. Late teens or early twenties. Dark blonde hair. A slick of blood two feet in diameter surrounds her head. She’d once been pretty, but in death her face is macabre. I can tell she’d originally been lying prone; lividity has set in, leaving one side of her face purple. Her eyes are halfway open and glazed. Her tongue bulges from between swollen lips, and I see ice crystals on it.

I squat next to the body. “Looks like she’s been here a few hours.”

“Starting to get freezer burn,” T.J. notes.

Though I was a patrol officer in Columbus, Ohio, for six years, a homicide detective for two, I feel as if I’m out of my league. Columbus isn’t exactly the murder capital of the world, but like every city it has a dark side. I’ve seen my share of death. Still, the blatant brutality of this crime shocks me. I want to think violent murder doesn’t happen in towns like Painters Mill.

But I know it does.

I remind myself this is a crime scene. Rising, I fan my flashlight beam around the perimeter. There are no tracks other than ours. With a sinking sensation, I realize we’ve contaminated possible evidence. “Call Glock and tell him to get out here.”

“He’s on va—”

My look cuts his words short.

The Painters Mill PD consists of myself, three full-time officers, two dispatchers and one auxiliary officer. Rupert “Glock” Maddox is a former Marine and my most experienced. He earned his nickname because of his fondness for his side arm. Vacation or not, I need him.

“Tell him to bring crime scene tape.” I think about what else we’re going to need. “Get an ambulance out here. Alert the hospital in Millersburg. Tell them we’ll be transporting a body to the morgue. Oh, and tell Rupert to bring coffee. Lot’s of it.” I look down at the body. “We’re going to be here a while.”

Dr. Ludwig Coblentz is a rotund man with a big head, a balding pate and a belly the size of a Volkswagen. I meet him on the shoulder as he slides from his Escalade. “I hear one of your officers had a close encounter with a dead body,” he says grimly.

“Not just dead,” I say. “Murdered.”

He wears khaki trousers and a red plaid pajama top beneath his parka. I watch as he pulls a black bag from the passenger seat. Holding it like a lunchbox, he turns to me, his expression telling me he’s ready to get down to business.

I lead him into the bar ditch. It’s a short walk to the body, but his breathing is labored by the time we climb the fence. “How the hell did a body get all the way out here?” he mutters.

“Someone dumped her or she dragged herself before she died.”

He gives me a look, but I don’t elaborate. I don’t want him walking into this with preconceived notions. First impressions are important in police work.

We duck under the crime scene tape Glock has strung through the trees like toilet paper at Halloween. T.J. has clipped an AC work light to a branch above the body. It doesn’t cast much light, but it’s better than flashlights and will free up our hands. I wish for a generator.

“Scene is secure.” Glock approaches holding two cups of coffee and shoves one at me. “You look like you could use this.”

Taking the Styrofoam cup, I peel back the tab and sip. “God, that’s good.”

He glances at the body. “You figure someone dumped her?”

“Looks that way.”

T.J. joins us, his gaze flicking to the dead woman. “Jeez, Chief, I hate to see her laid out like that.”

I hate it, too. From where we stand I can see her breasts and pubic hair. The woman inside me cringes at that. But there’s nothing I can do about it; we can’t move her or cover her until we process the scene. “Do either of you recognize her?” I ask.

Both men shake their heads.

Sipping my coffee, I study the scene, trying to piece together what might have happened. “Glock, do you still have that old Polaroid?”

“In my trunk.”

“Take some photos of the body and the scene.” I think of the trampled snow and mentally kick myself for disturbing the area. A boot tread might have been helpful. “I want shots of the drag marks, too.” I speak to both men now. “Set up a grid inside the crime scene tape and walk it, starting at the trees. Bag everything you find, even if you think it’s not important. Be sure to photograph everything before you touch it. See if you can find a boot tread. Keep your eyes open for clothing or a wallet.”

“Will do, Chief.” Glock and T.J. start toward the trees.

I turn to Doc Coblentz, who is standing next to the body. “Any idea who she is?” I ask.

“I don’t recognize her.” The doc removes his mittens, slides his chubby fingers into latex gloves. He grunts as he kneels.

“Any idea how long she’s been dead?”

“Hard to tell because of the cold.” He lifts her arm. Red grooves mark her wrist. The surrounding flesh is bruised and smeared with blood. “Her hands were bound,” he says.

I look at the scored flesh. She’d struggled violently to get free. “With wire?”

“That would be my guess.”

Her painted fingernails tell me she’s not Amish. I notice two nails on her right hand are broken to the quick. She’d fought back. I make a mental note to get nail scrapings.

“Rigor has set in,” the doc says. “She’s been dead at least eight hours. Judging from the ice crystals on the mucous membranes, probably closer to ten. Once I get her to the hospital, I’ll get a core body temp. Body temp drops a degree to a degree and a half per hour, so a core will narrow down TOD.” He releases her hand.

His finger hovers above the purple flesh of her cheek. “Lividity in the face here.” He looks up at me. His glasses are fogged. His eyes appear huge behind the thick lenses. “Did someone move her?” he asks.

I nod, but I don’t mention who. “What about cause of death?”

Removing a penlight from his inside pocket, the doctor peels back an eyelid and shines it into her eye. “No petechial hemorrhages.”

“So she wasn’t strangled.”

“Right.” Gently, he sets his hand beneath her chin and shifts her head to the left. Her lips part, and I notice two of her front teeth are broken to the gum line. He turns her head to the right and the wound on her throat gapes like a bloody mouth.

“Throat was cut,” the doc says.

“Any idea what kind of weapon made the wound?”

“Something sharp. With no serration. No obvious sign of tearing. Not a slash or it would be longer and more shallow on the edges. Hard to tell in this light.” Gently, he rolls her body to one side.

My eyes skim the corpse. Her left shoulder is covered with bright red abrasions or possibly burns. More of the same appear on her left buttock. Both knees are abraded as well as the tops of her feet. The skin at both ankles is the color of ripe eggplant. The flesh isn’t laid open like her wrists, but her feet had definitely been bound.

My heart drops into my stomach when I notice more blood on her abdomen, just above her navel. Obscured within the dark smear is something I’ve seen before. Something I’ve imagined a thousand times in my nightmares. “What about that?”

“Good God.” The doctor’s voice quivers. “It looks like something carved into her flesh.”

“Hard to make out what it is.” But in that instant I’m certain we both know. Neither of us wants to say it aloud.

The doc leans closer, so that his face is less than a foot from the wound. “Looks like two X’s and three I’s.”

“Or the Roman numeral twenty-three,” I finish.

He looks at me and in his eyes I see the same horror and disbelief I feel clenching my chest. “It’s been sixteen years since I’ve seen anything like it,” he whispers.

Staring at the bloody carving on this young woman’s body, I’m filled with a revulsion so deep I shiver.

After a moment, Doc Coblentz leans back on his heels. Shaking his head, he motions toward the marks on her buttocks, the broken fingernails and teeth. “Someone put her through a lot.”

Outrage and a fear I don’t want to acknowledge sweep through me. “Was she sexually assaulted?”

My heart pounds as he shines the pen light onto her pubis. I see blood on the insides of her thighs and shudder inwardly.

“Looks like it.” He shakes his head. “I’ll know more once I get her to the morgue. Hopefully the son of a bitch left us a DNA sample.”

The fist twisting my gut warns me it isn’t going to be that easy.

Looking down at the body, I wonder what kind of monster could do this to a young woman with so much life ahead. I wonder how many lives will be destroyed by her death. The coffee has gone bitter on my tongue. I’m no longer cold. I’m deeply offended and angered by the brutality of what I see. Worse, I’m afraid.

“Will you bag her hands for me, Doc?”

“Sure.”

“How soon can you do an autopsy?”

Coblentz braces his hands on his knees and shoves himself to his feet. “I’ll shuffle some appointments and do it today.”

We stand in the wind and cold and try in vain not to think about what this woman endured before her death.

“He killed her somewhere else.” I glance at the drag marks. “No sign of a struggle. If he’d cut her throat here, there’d be more blood.”

The doctor nods. “Hemorrhage ceases when the heart stops. She was probably already dead when he dumped her. More than likely the blood here is residual that leaked from that neck wound.”

I think of the people who must have loved her. Parents. Husband. Children. And I am saddened. “This wasn’t a crime of passion.”

“The person who did this took his time.” The doctor’s eyes meet mine. “This was calculated. Organized.”

I know what he’s thinking. I see it in the depths of his eyes. I know because I’m thinking the very same thing.

“Just like before,” the doctor finishes.

CHAPTER 3

Snow swirls in the beams of the headlights as I turn the Explorer onto the long and narrow lane that will take us to the Stutz farm. Next to me, T.J. is reticent. He’s my youngest officer—just twenty-four years old—and more sensitive than he would ever admit. Not that sensitivity in a cop is a bad thing, but I can tell finding the body has shaken him.

“Hell of a way to start the week.” I force a smile.

“Tell me about it.”

I want to draw him out, but I’m not great at small talk. “So, are you okay?”

“Me? I’m good.” He looks embarrassed by my question and troubled by the images I know are still rolling around inside his head.

“Seeing something like that . . .” I give him my best cop-to-cop look. “It can be tough.”

“I’ve seen shit before,” he says defensively. “I was first on the scene when Houseman had that head on and killed that family from Cincinnati.”

I wait, hoping he’ll open up.

He looks out the window, wipes his palms on his uniform slacks. In my peripheral vision I see him glance my way. “You ever see anything like that, Chief?”

He’s asking about the eight years I was a cop in Columbus. “Nothing this bad.”

“He broke her teeth. Raped her. Cut her throat.” He blows out a breath, like a pressure cooker releasing steam. “Damn.”

At thirty, I’m not that much older than T.J., but glancing over at his youthful profile, I feel ancient. “You did okay.”

He stares out the window and I know he doesn’t want me to see his expression. “I screwed up the crime scene.”

“It’s not like you were expecting to walk up on a dead body.”

“Footwear impressions might have been helpful.”

“We still might be able to lift something.” It’s an optimistic offering. “I walked in those drag marks, too. It happens.”

“You think Stutz knows something about the murder?” he asks.

Isaac Stutz and his family are Amish. A culture I’m intimately acquainted with because I was born Amish in this very town a lifetime ago.

I make an effort not to let my prejudices and preconceived notions affect my judgment. But I know Isaac personally, and I’ve always thought of him as a decent, hardworking man. “I don’t think he had anything to do with the murder,” I say. “But someone in the family might have seen something.”