A Dangerous Affair (29 page)

"I can't be involved in this."

"Did Blanchart threaten you?"

Varden rubbed his forehead and turned around, confronted by a crisis of conscience. "Carter told me he heard things. Rumors mostly. About street level dealers disappearing. No bodies. No crimes. Just gone. At one point he had a dealer in custody for slinging crack in a school zone. The perp was facing a max sentence. Carter said this perp begged him to let it slide. The perp claimed he saw Blanchart kill a rival dealer in cold blood and steal the drugs."

"Did Carter tell anyone else about this?"

"He never said anything more about it to me, and I never asked. Are we done?"

"One more thing," said Leslie. "What do you know about Blanchart's predecessor?"

"Sheriff Neely? Not much. Good cop. Ran a tight ship in Lakewood. He retired a few months before Blanchart took over."

"Charles Neely died in a car accident six weeks before Blanchart became sheriff."

"What are you saying?"

"I think Blanchart killed him—or had him killed."

"We're done here," said Varden.

"Wait—"

Varden put his hand up to push Leslie aside. "You need to get out of my way before you get hurt."

Leslie stood firm. "Did Carter say anything more about Blanchart? Anything at all?"

"He said he wanted me to help him dig into Blanchart's past."

"Did you?"

Varden sighed, contemplating the bleeding heart attorney's true agenda. "I've worked this job a long time. If there's one thing I've learned all these years it's that some rocks are better left unturned."

Chapter 42

Invigorated by his brush with death at the hands of Uri Costa, Blanchart raced across town to the Lakewood coroner's office, blasting through intersections with his lights and sirens flashing. After a long flight marred with technical difficulties, he welcomed a hot shower, a cold beer, and a home-cooked meal from the wife he sorely missed. But the homecoming party would have to wait, thanks to the coroner's urgent message on his phone.

Inside the justice building, Blanchart took the elevator to the basement, munching on a bag of salted peanuts to curb his appetite. His stapled scalp, sutured forehead, and bruised ribs ached like a son-of-a-bitch in the absence of pain medication. But the pain kept him sharp. More alert. And served as a constant reminder to keep his guard up and stay focused on his priorities.

"You got here fast," the coroner acknowledged when Blanchart entered the autopsy room.

"I got your message when I landed," said Blanchart.

"Business or pleasure?"

Blanchart chewed the last salted peanut from his snack pack and stuffed the wrapper in his pocket. "A little bit of both."

The coroner adjusted the calibration on the organ scale. An Indiana native with a teenage daughter and a wife who constantly complained about the Florida humidity, he found solace by himself in the morgue. No one talked back to him. No one nagged him for money. And no one bitched about his dirty laundry on the floor. "What happened to your face?" he asked the sheriff, addressing the obvious without any real desire to know the truth from this man who played his cards close to his chest.

Blanchart covered his face with a paper mask to keep the smell of decomposing flesh from curling his nose hair. "Nothing I couldn't handle." He'd seen his share of bloody bodies and bloated corpses hauled out of watery graves. But in eighteen years of law enforcement, nothing hammered him like the contents from the damaged cello case. "What
is
this?" he asked the coroner, his voice muffled through the mask.

The coroner snapped on a pair of latex gloves from the box above the hazardous waste bin. "Young female. Or what's left of her. Mid to late twenties. Five-foot-three, give or take an inch. A landfill worker caught part of her arm sticking out of the case." He snapped the corpse's lower legs forward from their backward position. "You never get acclimated to the smell."

Blanchart gagged from the cocktail of decomposed tissue and anaerobically produced gases emanating from the bloated body, which was crawling with beetles and maggots. He inhaled through his mouth and swallowed a peanut chunk stuck between his teeth. "What happened to her?"

The coroner pulled the sheet back further to reveal the entire decaying corpse with a broken neck and one arm severed at the elbow. "From the looks of things, she suffered a crushing force."

"Time of death?"

"Judging by the state of putrefaction and the creamy consistency of her flesh, she died sometime between three to ten days ago."

"Can you be more specific?" said Blanchart, fighting to keep his snack in his stomach.

"I'll know more when the lab results come back."

"Who else knows about this?"

"Just us girls and the first officer on the scene, although he didn't stick around long when I got there. I called you as soon as I realized what we found."

"I'll need the officer's name."

"It's in my report."

Blanchart examined the woman's bloated body. He scrutinized a distorted butterfly tattoo above her pubic bone. "Did you find anything else inside the case?"

"No purse. No ID. But I did find a cell phone when I examined the body."

Blanchart covered his hand on his mask and inhaled through his mouth. "Her name's Sheila Jarvis."

"How do you know?" the coroner asked, somewhat surprised.

Blanchart pointed to the initials S.J. engraved on the cello case handle. "I also recognize the sloppy tattoo."

"A runaway?"

Blanchart shrugged. "A prostitute. I collared her two years ago for possession."

"I'll pull her file and compare the dental records. I'll let you deal with the next of kin."

"I can't recall any," said Blanchart, still lost in thought.

The coroner reviewed his notes on a clipboard by the autopsy table. "I did a rape kit to rule out sexual assault. Her torn labia and pelvic bone position indicates she gave birth fairly recently."

"How recently?"

"Three to four months. I sent a blood sample to the lab. I should have toxicology results in a few weeks."

Blanchart stepped away from the autopsy table. He used a Polaroid camera to snap a photo of the body. "Cause of death looks obvious to me."

"Not necessarily. She suffered numerous broken bones to her upper and lower extremities. Her lumbar vertebrae were shattered. I also found evidence of blunt force trauma to the occipital region of her skull but no indication of internal bleeding about the brain. All of these wounds were serious, but none of them killed her."

"Then what did?"

"Petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes supports my initial finding of traumatic asphyxiation, usually associated with victims who suffocate in an overturned car, or an avalanche, mud slide, that sort of thing. The enormous pressure bears down on their entire body and impairs their ability to breathe. I also found broken fingernails and defensive wounds on her hands and wrists, suggesting signs of struggle. Or an effort to claw her way out."

"You're saying she was stuffed inside the case alive?"

"It's possible."

Blanchart used a glove to examine the cell phone from the evidence tray. He scrolled through the list of calls. "I'll dump the phone records and have this dusted for prints. Fax me your autopsy report when you're finished. And forward all the lab results to me."

Chapter 43

Lloyd centered the Triumph on the plywood ramp extending from the tailgate of Marvin's truck. "I owe you," he told Marvin outside the halfway house.

Marvin helped him steady the machine on flat tires before the two men rolled it down the ramp tail first and propped it in an empty space.

"I mean it," Lloyd continued. "About the other day—"

Marvin shoved the boards in the truck bed and shut the tailgate. "Don't sweat it, Sullivan. You know I got your back. My time's almost up in here. I got a couple strikes to spare. You don't."

Lloyd assessed the bike's condition. The tires were trash, but the rest of the damage could be fixed with minimal effort. "I'm glad you were here when I called."

"I haven't been to that old drive-in for as long as I can remember," said Marvin. "I suspect neither have you."

"Just out for a ride."

"Is that lipstick on your neck?" asked Marvin.

Lloyd wiped at his neck.

"Other side."

Lloyd ran his hand through his hair. "I had a date."

"I hope she was worth it," said Marvin. "I've seen Varden go postal before, but not like this. Whatever you did to piss him off, it worked."

Lloyd nodded in agreement and checked his watch. Ten minutes to spare before curfew. "I just want my old life back, you know. Before everything went to shit."

"The old life died when you hit the joint," said Marvin. "Better to forget the past than ignore the present. Stop thinking about where you been and start looking at where you're going. You need to get your act together. Varden's got his hooks in you. Don't let him tear you down."

Lloyd thought about Marvin's advice, and he thought about Jamie. About the life he wanted to have with the woman he barely knew. A woman with the voice of an angel and a radiance that warmed him from the inside out. "Do you believe in Karma?"

"What are you asking me?"

Lloyd rephrased the question. "Do you believe our destiny is what we make of it or do you believe God plays a hand in all things?"

Marvin followed Lloyd to the house. "I believe there's a purpose for everything. Whether God's part of the equation for me or not, the jury's still out."

Lloyd met Varden at the door, expecting another confrontation in public.

Varden shook his head and grudgingly pinched a hard-earned Jackson from his money clip. He gave the bill to Lloyd and said, "Your luck won't last forever."

Lloyd stuffed the money in his pocket and thought,
Neither will yours.

Chapter 44