Page 70 of Jar of Hearts
25
Mo has long blond hair, warm brown eyes, an easy grin, and a drooling problem. That’s because Mo is a dog. And not just any dog, but a cadaver dog. The golden retriever’s tail thumps on the grass as Kaiser approaches the tree he’s resting under, about twenty feet from where he found the bodies, in the woods behind St. Martin’s High School. He and Kaiser have met a few times before.
Mo’s owner looks up and smiles. In her early sixties, Jane Bowman is dressed in hiking gear—waterproof shell jacket from The North Face, Dri-FIT pants, Merrell boots. No makeup, but Kaiser’s never known her to wear any, and her long gray hair is pulled back from her face with a black scrunchy.
“Thought you two were retired,” he says to Jane with a smile, and they embrace warmly.
“Thought we were, too,” she says, and Mo stands up. He nudges Kaiser, who kneels and gives the dog a full minute of pats before straightening up again.
“So walk me through what happened.”
“Well, you know Mo’s an old guy now, like me,” Jane says, looking down at the furry yellow face with fondness. The dog is resting on the grass once again, gnawing on a chew toy, unbothered by the activity of the police officers and crime-scene technicians not far away. “Bones are getting creaky, hips are starting to go, and so it was timefor us both to retire last year. But working dogs, just like working people, tend to get bored in their retirement. So you can imagine how happy he was to be walking through the woods this morning and suddenly pick up a scent. We were on the east side of the woods, on the trail, when he got all excited, put his nose to the ground, and started running. At first I didn’t know whether to restrain him or let him go, but I hadn’t seen that zest in him in a long time. So I let him run and followed him, bad hips be damned. He finally zeroes in on the spot and stands there and barks and barks. I caught up to him and saw that the earth had been disturbed. I didn’t realize we had made it all the way through the woods to the high school.”
“If you were on the path on the east end, you two had to have to come almost a quarter of a mile,” Kaiser says, marveling at the old dog. Mo looks up and grins.
“Around that, yeah. Anyway, I know the drill. Called an old friend at Seattle PD to ask if you guys wanted to come see if there’s something in the ground. Took a few hours for you guys to show up, but you did.” Jane smiles. “And wouldn’t you know, there is.”
Kaiser reaches down, gives the dog another pat. “Hope he got a cookie.”
“Gave him two. He earned it.” She pauses, her smile fading. “I caught a glimpse of what they dug up. Pretty bad what happened to the woman. And a child, wow. Hope you catch the bastard, Kai.”
They say their good-byes and Kaiser heads back to the crime scene. Two bodies, like the time before. The woman looks to be a few years older than Claire Toliver, the last victim. The child—a girl, this time—is a bit older as well, maybe three or four. Her Elsa doll from the movieFrozenwas found a few feet away. Other than that, the scene is identical. The woman was dismembered, the child strangled, and on the little girl’s chest was the same heart drawn with the same lipstick. Inside the heart were the same words.
SEEME.
Like Claire Toliver, the woman’s eyes are gouged out. Empty sockets where they once were, the edges rough. And like Claire Toliver, Kaiser doesn’t feel optimistic they’ll find them.
He wonders if the killer keeps them in a jar somewhere, like Ed Gein. Or if he eats them, like Jeffrey Dahmer. Or if he simply throws them away, the act of scraping them out satisfying enough on its own. What’s the significance?See me. What does the killer want them to see?
Or is it some kind of punishment to the woman—all women? one specific woman?—fornotseeing?
Kim stands beside him. He can hear the scratching of his partner’s pencil against her notepad, and the sound is intrusive and irritating. The act of writing things down gives them significance in her mind, helps her remember things later. Kaiser doesn’t work this way, never has. He takes mental pictures, allowing his thoughts to meander unrestricted where they will. He also prefers to do this quietly, and her scratchy note taking is ruining his silence.
They haven’t spoken on a personal level in a couple of days, and he notices she’s wearing her wedding band. She normally doesn’t while she’s on the job or when she’s alone with him, so he’s not sure what makes today special. Perhaps she and Dave had a good weekend away, celebrating their anniversary, rekindling the fire in their marriage. He’s curious, but he’ll never ask her; it isn’t his business and honestly never was. The only thing deader than their affair were the two bodies in the ground, one of them in pieces.
Kim tucks her notebook away. “You think she’s Calvin James’s daughter, too?”
“I don’t think anything right now,” he replies. His tone is a bit more hostile than he intended, and he adds, “We’ll find out soon enough.”
“I don’t get it.” She shakes her head, blond ponytail swinging, her face twisted into a grimace. Kaiser understands. It’s hard seeing victims this way, especially children. And that’s fine; it should never be easy; it should never not be horrifying. “Why kill your own child? And, if this is similar to the other case, why kill her mother? Why take her eyes? This is so confusing, I can’t even begin to make sense of it.”
“Lesson number one when dealing with serial murder is that itnever makes sense,” Kaiser says. “Calvin James isn’t like you or me. He might have been once, but he’s morphed into something else. His sociopathy was clear when I was arrested him five years ago. They don’t operate in logic. The whys of it are unimportant; he can save that for his prison shrink. All I care about is catching the motherfucker.”
“Got the ID on the little girl, Detective,” an officer says, coming up behind him and waving a cell phone. “Parents filed a missing-person report this morning. I have it here. I can forward it to you.”
A moment later it’s on Kaiser’s phone. He opens up the document, scrolls through it.
“Who is it?” Kim asks.
He hands her the phone, lets her read it for herself. The child’s name is Emily Rudd. Her birthday was two days ago; she just turned four. She went missing from her home in Issaquah, a city about thirty minutes east of Seattle. Same story as with Henry. Parents woke up to find her gone. Didn’t panic immediately, as Emily was a sleepwalker and they’d found her in various places inside the house before this. Issaquah police had no reason to suspect foul play.
But it was foul play, of the very foulest kind.
“Jesus,” Kim says, handing the phone back. “Those poor parents.”
“Have that officer look into whether she was adopted. I put a rush on the DNA, but if we can confirm that the child is adopted, that will tell us enough to get started. Keep working on the woman’s ID in the meantime.”
“Will do. But I think we need to talk with Georgina Shaw. She’s the only person we know of who had any kind of intimate relationship with Calvin James and is still alive. Have you been in contact with her?”
