Page 43 of The Woman Who Couldn't Scream
He jumped as if someone had sneaked up on him, as if what he’d seen made his skin hurt.
“Sorry.” She removed her hand. “Sorry. As soon as you drop me off, you should go home. See your folks. Talk to your father.” Who was a former cop, disabled while in the line, but proud of his son and more capable of helping him than anyone she knew.
“I can drive you back.”
“I know you can. But your shift is over and I think there will be plenty of police presence, don’t you?” He did not need to view the scene again.
Moen nodded jerkily. “Okay. I’ll drop you off and head back. I have to file the report, anyway.”
She wanted to tell him to forget it until later that day. But if he wasn’t going to talk, she needed that report. “Right. If you would.” She pulled out her phone, dialed. “Let me video chat with Bergen. Get an update.” Her phone connected to the car, rang half a ring.
Bergen’s face lit the small screen in the middle of the dash. “Sheriff. Another slashing. No one local, not a big woman, not this time. A petite tourist, single, forty-five, taking the long way around to visit her kids in Portland. Stopped in Virtue Falls to pick up dinner, drove down the highway to Lupine Point. Got out to picnic. Cheese and crackers and baby carrots were scattered toward the front of the car. I’d say she pulled into the pocket park, found an isolated overlook, sat on the hood to eat her lunch and enjoy the sunset. He snuck up on her…”
Behind him, she saw floodlights, men moving from one place to another, serious expressions and the occasional angry glance.
Bergen continued, “He used a scalpel? A razor blade? Something sharp. Mike doesn’t know what. Not yet. Cut along her jawline, traced the line around one ear. I’ve never seen anything like it. She bled…” Bergen gestured randomly.
“Who is she?” Kateri asked.
“According to her driver’s license, she’s Carolyn Abner of Springfield, Missouri.”
“Her driver’s license was on her?”Not good.
“It was in her purse. Which was in her car. Keys in the ignition. Robbery was not the motive.”
Which left little motive except… murder for the joy of it.
“Coroner is here,” Bergen said. “Preliminary—Mike says she’s been dead at least eight hours. At one point her killer crushed her windpipe. But cause of death was bleeding, not suffocation. She fought. She’s got bruising and scrapes on her knuckles and two torn fingernails.”
“Let me see.”
“You aren’t going to like it.”
“Doyoulike it?”
He turned his camera and pointed it at the scene.
First Kateri saw the congregation of lights against the ground. Then she saw their coroner, Mike Sun. He moved back on Bergen’s command. Bergen zoomed in and Kateri saw the body.
Carolyn Abner rested on her back, her eyes open, staring toward the sky. Blood had poured from the incisions along her jawbone and up past her ear and cheek. Blood had filled her blondish hair and turned the strands into a gruesome, clotted black. Her face was eerily clean, as if the killer had wiped any trace of blood away from her pale skin.
Kateri fought the same sickness that afflicted Moen and Bergen. “Mike, anything you want to tell me?”
“Look at this.” Mike gestured Bergen closer. “I just found this. Right here, right at the point at her temple where he stopped cutting, there’s a tear in the skin. I couldn’t figure out why there wasn’t some symmetry here.”
“Right. Symmetry.” Mike was five-foot-five, half-Chinese and half-Aleut, raised in Virtue Falls and had been with the city most of his career. He was a good guy, a good coroner, and Kateri trusted his findings—and his intuitions—implicitly. If he said there should be symmetry, then he was right.
“If he’s going to cut half her face, why not the other half? But it looks like he screwed up, tugged at the delicate skin here and it tore.” In a characteristic gesture, Mike swiped his shoulder-length straight black hair off his forehead. “That’s why he stopped. I think otherwise he would have kept right on cutting.”
Moen rolled down the window, slowed the car.
She glanced at him.
Maybe it was the dash lights, but he looked green.
He came to a stop on the shoulder of the dark, isolated highway, opened the door, unclicked his seat belt and vomited on the pavement.
She reached back into the first-aid kit, got a cold pack, broke it to release the chemicals and placed it on the back of his neck.
