When the Devil Speaks Read online

  She shrugged. “Skipped a few years in high school.”

  “Nice.”

  Ogden coughed. “Nice to see you can get along with people, Mr. Specter, but we really ought to focus on the investigation.”

  “Sorry,” Dylan said sheepishly. “Itching for a little light conversation after the drive down here.”

  “Didn’t want to make you come all this way in the rain,” Ogden admitted, “but the forecast is all storms till Friday.”

  “It’s all right. I made it here in one piece.” Dylan rubbed his hands together. “That said, if you could point me in the direction of a good restaurant, I’d really appreciate it. My stomach is going to start eating itself if I don’t get a full meal soon.”

  “I’ll take you to Stacy’s Diner after the autopsy,” Dr. Grayson offered. “They serve all-day breakfast. It’ll give us some extra time to review my autopsy findings.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Speaking of the autopsy.” Ogden woke the screen of his ancient desktop computer and logged in. “You need me there? Because if not, I want to take a look through VICAP, see if there have been any other murders with this kind of MO anywhere. What the perp did to the body was so weirdly specific, I feel like they might’ve done it before.”

  “Or this was the first time,” the dazed Deputy Bosco said, “and they’ll do it again.”

  “Thank you for that contribution, Bosco.” Ogden motioned to the door. “How about you go back on regular patrol? Mayer can accompany Mr. Specter to the autopsy.”

  Bosco didn’t need any more encouragement. He hurried out of the office.

  “The morgue’s in Latterly, the next town over,” Mayer said, peeling himself off the wall. “You can ride with me, if you want. Or you can follow me in your car.”

  “I’ll follow.” Dylan stood up and stretched, working out the aches caused by the awful chair. “I got a lot of gear in my car—gloves, cameras, evidence collection kits, etc.—that I like to have on hand at all times. You never know when you might come across something relevant to an investigation. I’ve found evidence in some strange places before.”

  “If we have time over breakfast”—Dr. Grayson rose and intentionally brushed shoulders with Dylan—“you should tell me about some of your past consulting jobs, Mr. Specter. I love a good true crime story.”

  Dr. Grayson was an attractive woman. Strawberry-blond hair. Mischievous blue eyes. A sharp air of intelligence. But Dylan knew better than to get too flirty with a work colleague, however temporary the arrangement.

  That way lies trouble, he thought. Keep it professional, Specter.

  “I’d prefer that we keep to the topic at hand,” he demurred. “But if I have some free time after the investigation is finished, we can certainly discuss my work over lunch.”

  Dr. Grayson snorted. “Well, aren’t you a gentleman?”

  Chapter Three

  The morgue in Latterly was housed inside an older brick building, but the space was clean and well organized. In front of a bank of freezers, Dr. Grayson had set up a metal table and a tray with a set of tools that she would need for the autopsy. The victim’s body lay beneath a white sheet on the table, having been removed from the body bag and prepared by Dr. Grayson’s assistant, a short Chinese woman who had cheerily introduced herself to Dylan as Abigail Wu.

  Near the doorway, Dylan and Deputy Mayer, now decked out in masks and paper gowns, watched the two women finish their preparations. Wu adjusted the lighting above the metal table. At a nod from Dr. Grayson, she turned on a recorder that had been set up on the tool tray.

  Dr. Grayson rattled off the basic facts about the autopsy, including the date and that the body was currently a John Doe. Next, she described in detail all the external injuries visible on the body. Finally, she picked up a scalpel and made the classic Y incision.

  “Heard he was found with his eyeballs in his mouth,” Mayer whispered to Dylan.

  “Sheriff Ogden told me that last night.” Dylan eyed the now exposed corpse.

  It was covered in cuts and bruises, but the most striking features were the exposed intestines and the empty eye sockets. Judging by the body’s snow-white pallor, the man’s heart had still been pumping when the perpetrator gutted him, and the bulk of his blood volume had gushed out of his abdomen from a severed vein or artery. Despite the heavy rain at the dump site, the body’s legs were still stained dark red.

  “What do you think that means?” Mayer pressed. “Did he see something he wasn’t supposed to?”

  “No clue.” Dylan rose to his tiptoes to get a better look at the chest as Dr. Grayson removed the sternum. “What I can tell you is there’s a disgustingly bloody crime scene out there somewhere, and we need to find it.”

  Mayer frowned. “You don’t think he was killed in the woods?”

  “No,” Dylan said with certainty. “He’s too clean. If he had been on the ground at any point—and he would’ve fallen to the ground after having his abdomen sliced open—there’d be all sorts of debris on him. Leaves. Twigs. Dirt. Bugs. But besides the blood and what look to be rope fibers, he’s perfectly clean. I’d wager he was killed elsewhere, wrapped in something, transported to the dump site in the trunk of a car, and then posed in the woods.”

  “We found a few pieces of the body on the ground though.”

  “Yeah, they came off the body while the perp was tying him to the tree.” Dylan scrutinized the corpse’s open mouth. “Although the tongue might’ve been cut at the dump site. Would’ve been difficult to ‘properly’ position the eyes inside the mouth with the lolling tongue in the way.”

  Mayer winced. “That’s a special kind of fucked up.”

  “Whoever this perp is,” Dylan said, “he’s got a lot to say.”

  “You’re telling me,” Dr. Grayson cut in, suddenly increasing her volume. “Come over here and look at this, Specter.”

  Dylan strode up to the autopsy table, where Dr. Grayson was holding something with a large pair of tweezers. The object was covered in blood and wrapped in plastic. But upon close inspection, it was identifiable: a cassette tape.

  “Where exactly was that?” he asked.

  “Hidden behind part of the small intestine.” Dr. Grayson plopped the tape into a bowl that Wu had set on the tool tray. “He definitely did not swallow it.”

  “So it was placed there post-mortem.” Dylan examined the tape for any important markings, but it appeared to be a generic cassette tape onto which a person could record anything they wanted.

  Question was, who the heck recorded anything on cassette tapes in this day and age? Dylan hadn’t owned a cassette tape player since he was seven years old.

  Was the retro recording medium a specifically chosen part of the perp’s MO? Or was this the work of a middle-aged individual who’d had some old blank cassette tapes lying around in the attic? A matter of intent, or a matter of convenience?

  “Don’t suppose you found a written confession note in there anywhere?” he said to Dr. Grayson.

  “Not yet.” Dr. Grayson returned her attention to the pile of intestines, which were starting to smell pretty rank even though they remained intact. “But I’ll keep looking.”

  Over the course of the next hour, Dr. Grayson and Wu picked apart every piece of the body, combing the smallest crevices for additional evidence. Other than the cassette tape, however, the perpetrator hadn’t left any calling cards.

  The victim’s death, Dr. Grayson concluded, had been fairly straightforward: Someone had roughed him up with their fists, likely to make him compliant, and then his abdomen had been slit open with a sharp knife. The knife had severed an artery, and the victim had bled out in a matter of minutes. The eyes had, thankfully, been removed post-mortem.

  It hadn’t been a good death, but it wasn’t the worst that Dylan had seen.

  “I estimate time of death was between nine AM and noon yesterday,” Dr. Grayson concluded. “He was placed on his right side after that, and he remained in that position
for a few hours after death. I can’t say exactly when he was bound to the tree, but he wasn’t exposed to the elements for very long. There’s no evidence of insect involvement, and the cold temperature had minimal effects on the progression of decomp.”

  Dylan turned to Mayer. “How long was Singleton in the woods?”

  Mayer said, “About three hours.”

  “Meaning there’s a good chance the perp was in the woods with him.”

  Wu shivered. “Creepy.”

  “You help me chop up bodies for a living,” Dr. Grayson said, amused. “Now help me finish up, will you?”

  “Sorry, boss.”

  While Dr. Grayson and Wu began cleaning up, Dylan asked Mayer, “Did Singleton report seeing any other vehicles in the area when he arrived?”

  Mayer shook his head. “He said his was the only vehicle parked on the side of the road. Bosco did look for other tire tracks along that stretch of Hanson, but he didn’t find any. And if somebody had parked near Singleton’s truck, there would’ve been clear evidence. Singleton practically dug a new ditch when he backed his pickup out of the mud.”

  “Hm.” Dylan rubbed the back of his neck. “How much traffic is there on Hanson Road?”

  “Not a lot,” Mayer said, “but not so little that the perp would’ve had enough time to carry a body a quarter mile through the woods and string it up on a tree without somebody else coming around the bend to find a vehicle blocking a whole lane.”

  Dylan stripped off his protective gear, backing toward the door. “Then I think your first order of business should be asking around to see if anybody came upon such a vehicle yesterday afternoon.”

  Mayer followed Dylan’s lead, tossing his gloves, mask, and gown into the trashcan by the door. “Think you may be right, Mr. Specter. I’ll get on that ASAP. Meet up with you again at Stacy’s, after your breakfast with Dr. Grayson.”

  “There’s nothing else to it, pal.”

  “Mhmm.” Mayer held the door open for him. “Whatever you say.”

  Dylan strode out into the hall, sucking in a cool breath that didn’t smell like a decaying corpse. “Don’t feel like you need to rush on my behalf. I’m hungry enough to eat a horse right now.”

  “Sure thing.” Mayer winked at him. “I’ll take my time.”

  Chapter Four

  “Abigail’s going to clean the cassette tape up,” Dr. Grayson said, flipping open the well-worn menu. “She’ll deliver it to the sheriff’s office when she’s finished, so you guys can give it a listen.”

  Dylan ran his finger down the list of large breakfast plates on his own menu. “Assuming we can find a cassette tape player.”

  She set her menu down. “Don’t need to worry about that. There’s one in the storeroom, left over from the nineties. They never cleaned that room out after the old sheriff retired, and the old sheriff never cleaned it during his fifteen-year tenure.”

  “You make a habit of snooping around in the sheriff’s office?”

  She smiled. “I had to dig an overhead projector out of the storeroom once.”

  “Dare I ask what for?”

  “I wouldn’t,” she teased.

  A waitress stopped at their table. “Morning, Linda. You and your new friend ready to order?”

  The way she said “friend” made it clear she thought they were a couple.

  For god’s sake, Dylan thought. Can’t I go half an hour without someone assuming that I’m planning to sleep with the medical examiner?

  “I’ll have the triple stack of pancakes with a side of sausage,” Dr. Grayson answered. “What about you, Mr. Specter?”

  Dylan gave the waitress a wide, fake smile. “Three scrambled eggs and a waffle, please. And keep the coffee coming. I need a boost.”

  “Will do.” She jotted the orders down and returned to the kitchen.

  Once the waitress was out of earshot, Dylan started, “Dr. Grayson—”

  “First off, you can call me Linda,” she interrupted. “Second off, it’s not you. It’s me.”

  “What?”

  She lowered her voice. “I have a bit of a reputation for only dating men from out of town. An unfair reputation, mind you. But I’m sure you know how small-town rumor mills work. Point is, every time a remotely handsome guy who’s not from Crenshaw Point appears in my immediate vicinity, everybody thinks he’s going to be my next ‘beau.’”

  Relief swept the tension from Dylan’s back. “Thank god.”

  Her eyebrows shot up.

  “Not about the unfair reputation. That sucks. It’s just…” He laughed awkwardly. “I thought everybody in this town was labeling me a ladies’ man at first glance, and it was starting to rub me the wrong way.”

  Dr. Grayson—Linda—laughed as well. “No, no. You’re just the right age, and you look kind of smart. They think that’s all I want in a man.”

  “I’m going to refrain from asking about your actual criteria.”

  “Good decision.”

  Dylan ran a hand through his hair. “Now that we’ve cleared up the confusion, let’s get back to our John Doe. Any leads on his identity?”

  “I ran his prints and came up empty.” She sipped her coffee. “He didn’t have any tattoos or unique scars either, so unless he comes up on missing persons, he may be difficult to ID.”

  “I gathered from your comment about ‘men from out of town’ that this area doesn’t get a lot of visitors.” Dylan tapped on the rim of his own coffee mug. “You think the John Doe is from elsewhere?”

  “Possibly.” She wrapped her fingers tightly around her mug, considering. “Ogden and both his deputies have lived in the area all their lives, and they know a good eighty percent of the populace by name. That they don’t know our John Doe does suggest he might’ve been a recent arrival.”

  Dylan peered out the window that bordered their booth and scanned both sides of the highway that cut through the heart of Crenshaw Point. “Are there any hotels around here?”

  “There are exactly two places in the county that cater to visitors.” She set down her mug and pointed northward. “There’s a motel just off the interstate, about half a mile from the rest stop, and a three-room bed-and-breakfast on Primrose Street.”

  Dylan jotted that information down on the little notepad he kept in his coat pocket. “I’ll check out both of those with Deputy Mayer after I visit the crime scene.”

  Linda leaned back against the booth cushion and crossed her arms. “What are your thoughts on the murder? You’ve been tight-lipped so far.”

  “I don’t like to jump to conclusions,” Dylan said. “Shortly after I started this consulting gig, I made the mistake of speculating to a sheriff up in Minnesota that I thought a murder might be the work of a serial killer who’d been active for several years. Next thing I knew, the story was on the national news, and I spent the rest of the investigation being stalked by the press. And no, it wasn’t the work of a serial killer. It was an angry ex-wife.”

  She grimaced. “Don’t like being in the spotlight, huh?”

  “Never have. Never will.” He drained the rest of his coffee. “I got enough press coverage to last me a lifetime after the Schroeder case.”

  Sympathy washed across her face. “That was your last case as a detective?”

  “A nice way of putting it. It was the case that forced me to ‘retire’ at the ripe old age of twenty-four.” He stared into his empty mug. “Funnily enough, police departments aren’t keen to let you return to field work after you get shot five times while chasing down a pedophile child abductor.”

  “You caught him though, didn’t you?” she asked. “And saved the little girl he abducted?”

  “He shot me. I shot him back.” Dylan pushed his empty mug to the edge of the table as the waitress emerged from the kitchen with two heaping plates of food. “He died. The kid survived. And I spent three months in the hospital, where they removed my right kidney, resected eighteen inches of my bowel, replaced my left hip joint, and drilled a bunch of screw
s into my left humerus so it wouldn’t collapse like a Jenga tower.”

  “But you lived to fight another day,” Linda said, a touch of awe in her voice. The news articles written about the incident hadn’t revealed the extent of his injuries because the department had kept a tight lid on the case after the shooting. “You’re a lot more impressive than you appear, Mr. Specter.”

  “Dylan,” he replied. “And you’re not the first person to tell me that.”

  Chapter Five

  The location of the dump site was more remote than Dylan had expected. He parked his Cherokee on the shoulder behind Deputy Mayer’s cruiser and emerged into a heavily wooded area with no houses in sight. The trees were tightly packed, and while most of them had lost their foliage for the winter, between the evergreens and the dense patches of thorny vines, there was plenty of cover for someone to move through the woods unseen. Especially in the low-visibility conditions created by the weather.

  Crossing the road, Dylan found the deep indentations in the ditch left by Johnny Singleton’s pickup truck yesterday afternoon. As Mayer had told him at the morgue, there was no sign that any other vehicle had parked nearby.

  He scoured the vegetation that bordered the ditch, from the roots to the skeletal treetops. The perp had left nothing to indicate that they had dumped a body in the woods.

  If you didn’t want someone to find the body, Dylan thought, you wouldn’t have bothered with the elaborate posing.

  Mayer sidled up to him. “Want to head to the dump site?”

  “Yeah. I need to see it.”

  The walking trail through the woods was barely the width of the average adult man. It sharply zigged and zagged, and steep dips appeared where you least expected them. Countless low-hanging branches partially blocked the path.

  More than once, Dylan had to step off the trail to circumvent a rotten log that had been lying on the trail for years. It would’ve been a major challenge for one person to carry a body a quarter mile through these woods.