Only Spite (A Sadie Price FBI Suspense Thriller—Book 5)

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

Getting used to often horribly mutilated bodies was one of the hardest things for a new agent. As Agent O’Hara met her on the wharf, she could see he was fighting to hide his revulsion at the crime scene. She had seen that look on too many agents’ faces not to recognize it when she saw it.

She also knew not to mention it.

“Are local police at the scene?” Sadie asked as he led her along the wharf.

O’Hara nodded. “The police chief is there, and a detective, who I think will be working alongside us. He doesn’t seem over-friendly.”

Sadie grimaced. Working with local law enforcement could always be tricky when you were FBI, as in her experience they often resented the intrusion on what they saw as their turf. When Sadie had arrived back in Alaska and been assigned a case up at the Lynx Lakes, Sheriff Cooper had been much the same toward her, as had his sister, Jane, the deputy.

Obviously, things had changed.

But a serial killer, if that’s what this turned out to be, targeting the center of Anchorage could cause plenty of jurisdiction problems, as not only would she cross paths with the local detectives but also Cooper himself, since as county sheriff, he could well end up involved too, especially if bodies started turning up outside the city center.

There was no time to worry about potential conflicts now, though. Right now, she needed to get a look at the body.

The smell of death hit her as soon as she entered the warehouse, but it didn’t faze her. She had grown used to it over the years.

Two forensics experts were already going through the warehouse, gathering evidence, while two men stood by the body. One, a middle-aged guy with neat salt-and-pepper hair and keen brown eyes, came over to shake their hands. The police chief.

“Special Agent Price. Agent O’Hara. Thank you for coming.”

“Better late than never,” the other man said. He was around the same age as the chief, but looked more weathered, lean and wiry with a downturned mouth and bushy gray eyebrows. His dark eyes swept over Sadie disdainfully. She met them with a cool gaze, wondering if his hostility was due to the fact that she was a Fed or the fact that she was both a Fed and a woman. She had met enough old-school, misogynistic detectives who thought women should be nowhere near a crime scene in her time, to not recognize when she was in the presence of one.

“This is Detective Linden,” the chief said, almost apologetically. “I want you to work closely together on this case.”

Sadie nodded at the detective, who, unlike his superior, made no attempt to shake their hands. She suppressed a sigh, and the sinking feeling that this case was going to be harder than it needed to be. Then she turned her attention to the body.

It was a young woman with long, pale hair, and Sadie’s eyes swept over the girl’s frozen, terrified features, forcing herself to look. To remind herself that a victim was never just “the body.” They were people, with hopes and dreams for the future that would never be realized thanks to a cold-blooded killer. Sadie knew that many agents couldn’t allow themselves to humanize the victims too much; that it was too painful and keeping a dispassionate view was the safest way to operate. But personally, Sadie found that the pain motivated her.

It made her angry, and that made her determined to find the killer, at all costs.

It was an attitude that had nearly gotten her killed on more than one occasion, but it was also why she had such a good track record of cracking high-profile and complicated cases. If there was a suspected serial killer in Alaska, she knew she would be the first agent assigned to the case. If that sometimes felt more like a burden than a source of pride, then it was one that she had taken on herself.

Detective Linden’s attitude didn’t matter. This woman did.

“What do we know so far?” Sadie asked the police chief.

“There’s nothing to identify the victim,” he told her, “so we will have to wait for DNA and fingerprints—or a missing person’s report. As you can see, her hands and feet are bound, and the coroner’s report may reveal more, but it looks as though there’s just the one wound, a slice to the abdomen.”

Sadie winced as the implications of that hit her. She was carefully avoiding looking at Agent O’Hara, who hadn’t yet seen enough bodies to be able to entirely subdue his reactions. She was aware of him though, standing stiffly next to her, looking anywhere but at the victim.

“So, she bled out while wrapped in the plastic?” Or suffocated first, she added silently, wondering what kind of sick mind would condemn a young woman to such a terrifying fate.

The chief nodded. “Yeah. Some teenagers cutting school found her and got her down, not knowing what was in there. The body was completely encased. When it landed blood went everywhere as you can see. Kids were terrified.”

“I bet,” Sadie murmured. She knelt down near the body, careful not to disturb anything, her eyes sweeping over the scene. Taking in the woman’s delicate features and slim frame, wondering why she had been targeted. Was she known to the killer, or did she fit a particular profile? Of course, sometimes being a female alone was enough. Women made up the majority of victims of serial killers, assuming from what Golightly had told her that that’s what this was, and the majority of serial killers were men. It was one of the things that made the violence of serial killers stand out against other forms of homicide, where the victims were predominantly men, and often men from marginalized communities.

This woman, however, could have been simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, managing to attract the attention of a monster.

What had been her last movements, that brought her here to a disused warehouse and a plastic tomb?

Until they knew who she was, Sadie knew those questions would go unanswered.

And maybe even then. Thoughts of Jessica, whose cold case had been her top priority just an hour before, came to mind and for once, Sadie allowed them in. Since her arrival back in Alaska she had come to terms with the fact that it was largely her sister’s unsolved death that motivated her. That she had turned her grief and pain into a need to find justice for victims and understand those who preyed on them, only enough to bring them in.

Sadie wrinkled her nose as a strong smell hit her that she knew instantly. She turned her head toward O’Hara, who had stepped up behind her but stayed standing, no doubt not wanting to get too close.

“Can you smell that, O’Hara?”

His pallor looked sickly under the light of their flashlights, but his expression was carefully neutral. He nodded.

“It smells like the harbor,” he said. “Sea and fish.”

Sadie straightened up. “That’s what I thought. So, she was kept on a boat maybe, or the plastic comes from one.” She looked at the chief again. “This is all the same as the first case?”

It was Detective Linden who answered her. “Yeah,” he said in a hoarse voice that had known too much tobacco, “the MO is exactly the same. First victim was a local college student, but an out-of-towner. New to the area.”

Sadie nodded, suspecting this current victim would fit much the same profile, given her likely age. If someone was picking off college students, then that gave them a place to start.

“There were no leads?” she asked and was surprised when Detective Linden openly glared at her. It must have been his case, she realized, and if he was anything like her, he would be cursing that he wasn’t able to solve it.

“No,” he said, and she could hear the anger in his voice. “I had a team on it day and night, but we found nothing.”

And now there was another body.

Linden’s tone almost seemed to be daring Sadie to challenge him on his competence. It was obvious the old guy’s ego was bruised. She could understand that, but she didn’t have time for it. She looked around again, scanning her flashlight around the floor of the warehouse. b****y drag marks led over toward the forensics team.

“So, she was transported here,” she said aloud, but more to herself, organizing her thoughts, “and then hung up while she was potentially still alive.” She sensed O’Hara shudder next to her.

“We know all that,” Linden retorted. “You’re an hour late and a dollar short, honey.”

Sadie ignored him, although she felt herself bristle at the “honey.” She was right, she thought, he was a chauvinist. Well, he was going to have to get used to being led by a woman, because if this turned out to be a serial, then this was her case. And she wasn’t going to let Linden distract her from what she needed to do.

She shone her flashlight in wider, concentric circles, stopping at a pair of smeared boot prints in the drag marks.

“Forensics will run those prints,” she said to O’Hara, “but it’s likely nothing to get too excited about, unless our guy was wearing a particularly rare brand of footwear.” She continued shining her flashlight around the warehouse. Forensics knew what they were doing, but things could sometimes be missed. She could sense Linden watching her.

Then one of the forensics team, a young guy with a neat beard who was at the other side of the warehouse, gave them a shout.

“There are a few partial footprints over here,” he said, sounding excited. “They lead out of the back door.”

With Linden and O’Hara following, Sadie jogged toward the exit, her adrenaline rising.