West Palm: The Complete Novel by Joss Cordero

Author:Joss Cordero
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Star Books

PART THREE

Bloody Valentine

The area had been secured with yellow tape when Ingersoll and his team of homicide detectives arrived and scribbled their names on the clipboard held by Officer Gomez.

Though the sun hadn’t set, an evening breeze was blowing gently through the alleys that led to the abandoned old houses. Paved long ago, the tarmac had crumbled and grass had reclaimed the area. Under other circumstances, it might’ve been pretty, a rural relic tucked away just west of Dixie between 10th and 11th Street.

Gomez had been drawn to the site by the unusual number of vultures circling overhead. The birds had been territorial over their find, and Gomez bore the visible results on his uniform.

“You ever been puked on by a vulture?” he asked Ingersoll. “This is what happens when you get between them and their lunch.” He lifted his gaze from his puked-on uniform to the two or three stubborn birds still circling overhead. “Must be some kind of defense mechanism they’ve evolved.”

“Thank you, Charles Darwin,” said Ingersoll. His eyes moved toward a square of yellow between the two abandoned houses. “You covered the body with a blanket? You know how bad that is for trace evidence.”

“The chick wasn’t wearing any clothes. What were we supposed to do?”

More official cars and vans arrived, attracting people from the neighborhood, including kids on bicycles.

“I take it no witnesses have come forward.”

“None.”

Ingersoll turned to his detectives. “Question the bystanders and knock on doors.”

The civilian forensic team was putting screens around the body, after which they carefully removed the blanket covering it.

Ingersoll picked his way toward the screens and stepped inside. The naked figure lay on the grass, looking blindly at the sky.

A camera flashed.

The young woman’s throat was torn apart from where the vultures had been feeding, and her eyes were eaten out. Ingersoll glanced up at the circling birds. “They don’t waste any time, do they?”

“Fast food,” said the photographer.

Ingersoll crouched beside her. On the grass adjacent to her head was a splattered length of white lace. “It looks like the killer draped the lace across her face, and the vultures pulled it off.”

The woman’s hands were laid over each other on her chest as if in peaceful prayer. Her body was covered with more than just blood and bird shit.

“Rice,” said the photographer.

“A bad wedding,” said Ingersoll, getting to his feet.

By the time Investigator Singh arrived in his short-sleeved polo bearing the logo of the County Medical Examiner’s Office, Ingersoll had a pretty clear idea of what had happened. “He killed her in her car”—Ingersoll gestured toward the victim’s car—“and then he carried her here. Then it looks like he stripped her and conducted his wedding ceremony.”

“He fucked her after she was dead?” asked Singh, putting on his gloves.

“You tell me.”

Singh knelt to examine the corpse and the ground surrounding it. “The pathologist will know when he examines her more thoroughly, but the depression in the grass is so faint it’s unlikely another body was on top of her. Just birds.

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