Picture Me Dead

He switched files.

Eleanore “Ellie” Thorn had been nothing like Dana Renaldo or their latest victim. She’d hailed from Omaha, and had failed to return home after a vacation in Fort Lauderdale. She hadn’t taken a job, had cleared out her bank account at a local branch, and had been seen now and then around town. She had attended Bordon’s prayer services. She had often stayed at the communal property. Nearly five feet ten, she had been blond and athletic. Like the others, she hadn’t been found until both time and the elements had wreaked havoc on her remains.

The first of the earlier three victims had earned a degree in architecture at Tulane. She had been bright and, according to friends, determined. She’d been an orphan, raised from an early age in foster homes. She’d gotten through school with hard work and scholarships. Twenty-six at the time of her death, she’d been petite, five foot two, and a bare hundred pounds. She’d been living on Miami Beach and had loved the architecture of the area. Deeply religious, in need of spiritual solace, she had probably been an easy mark for Peter Bordon, a.k.a. Papa Pierre.

As he hung up, Marty arrived in front of him, tossing a manila folder on his desk. “Peter Bordon is still very definitely locked up in the middle of the state.”

“Marty, I never suggested that he wasn’t.”

“But listen to this. He’s been a model prisoner. He’s due for release soon. Exemplary behavior. And, of course, he’s in there for a nonviolent crime. Everyone who’s worked with him there has found him courteous and polite. Read the report. No, maybe you shouldn’t—it’ll probably make you want to vomit. Well, hell, vomit or not, you’ve got to read it. There’s a section from the prison psychologist you’re really going to like. ‘Mr. Bordon is a man regretful of his assumption that his method of bookkeeping did society no harm. His manner is that of a person determined to pay his debts. He is certainly no danger to society. He is deeply religious, has been a friend to many in extreme circumstances, and is a favorite among his fellow inmates.’”

Jake just stared at Marty, feeling the muscles in his neck tighten as if he were being throttled. He sighed and picked up the file.

“Jake, he sure isn’t committing murder himself.”

“We know that.”

“He was definitely in prison when our newest Jane Doe was killed. According to what Gannet told us, she’s been dead two to four months.”

“I’ve spoken to forensics. I attended the autopsy. Jane Doe….” Jake murmured, irritated. He stared glumly at Marty. “They’re calling her Cinderella. Those guys see so much that’s so bad, and yet she seems to have gotten under everyone’s skin.”

“Like I said, Bordon was incarcerated all that time.”

Jake expelled a long breath. “And like I said, Marty, when you told me before you were certain Bordon was still in prison, I believed you. The point is, that doesn’t mean a damned thing. Wherever he was physically five years ago didn’t matter at the time. And it doesn’t matter now. We have another dead woman. And somehow, that asshole is involved.”

“We don’t know that, Jake.”

“Gut feeling.”

“Can’t give the D.A. a gut feeling, Jake.”

“Hell, Marty, I know that.”

Marty sat at his own desk, which faced Jake’s. “Another dead woman with slashed ears. Cinderella. They just had to give her a nickname. Man, these cases suck. And you know, it’s strange, isn’t it? We don’t even know her real name yet, but they go and give her a nickname, and it’s suddenly all personal, and that makes it all the harder.”

Yeah, no matter what, it got harder with every little nuance that brought a victim’s life more clearly into focus. Jake remembered standing at the table during the autopsy finding a renewed respect for Gannet. Their victim had been badly decomposed, but there had still been those little things that made her an individual. The tiny tattoo, just visible at her ankle. The mole that could still be seen on what was left of her shoulder. Even the color of her hair, a lock of it slipping from the table and looking like…a lock of hair that might fall across the pillow when a girl was just sleeping the night away. But then the whole picture came into focus. The chill of the autopsy room. The scent that always seemed to linger in the morgue, real or imagined. The body…the entire length of the naked body…so sadly decomposed. First mutilated, then gnawed by animals. A home to nature. Part of Gannet’s determination on time of death had been due to the incubation period of flies and the stages of larvae. When Jake had seen the last victim from five years ago, Dana, on the autopsy table, it was as if her humanity had been stripped away. She looked like a creature made in a special effects lab for a horror film. Gannet was one good man, though. Determined that he would do his best to find out all he could. To return her soul, at the very least. To speak for her, help fight those who had so brutally stolen her young life.

Jane Doe/Cinderella. Mid-twenties. A lifetime ahead of her.

What had brought her to such a brutal death in South Florida?

Anything was possible. Maybe she’d been killed by a boyfriend who had struck the mortal blows in passion, realized his act and been smart enough to know that—despite a lot of fiction to the contrary—the police weren’t complete assholes and might well follow a trail of clues to him. Maybe the guy had read about the cases involving members of Peter Bordon’s cult.

Maybe.

Or maybe someone was taking up where Bordon had left off.

Or maybe…

He was back to the possibility that Bordon himself was involved.

There was no reason why he couldn’t be calling the shots from prison.

“Who was she? Where did she come from? Why did she die?” Marty murmured, thinking aloud. “A young woman, just trying to live her life, making a wrong turn in the road somewhere.”

Marty’s words made Jake wince inwardly. This was business, his job; he wasn’t a rookie. He was a seasoned homicide cop, who—if he hadn’t seen it all—had certainly seen enough. The world, hell, the county, had enough homicides to keep cops moving.

And it was what he had wanted. From the time he had joined the force, he had wanted to go into homicide.

He’d always wanted to be a cop. Not because he’d grown up in a family where joining the force had been tradition, because he hadn’t. His father and grandfather had both been attorneys.

He’d wanted to be a cop because the guy who had become one of his best friends in life had been a cop. The guy who had shown up when, at the age of eighteen, Jake had wrapped his graduation gift, a brand-new Firebird, around a tree in Coconut Grove.

He’d been driving under the influence.

Too many times, his dad had gotten him off on speeding tickets. Of course, his father never knew he got behind the wheel while drinking. When he drank with his buds, he usually stayed out. That night, however…

He’d decided to drive. To show off. His family had been thinking about buying a house at the end of the street. He’d wanted to show it to a girl. He could race his Firebird around a few blocks without any damage being done.

Like hell.

He was supposedly a pretty tough kid. Football, soccer, baseball, a star player on every team. Grades high enough to see that he got into the right college. He usually knew when to play and when to keep himself straight as an arrow. But not that night. That night he was exactly what the cop called him when he reached the accident. A snot-nosed rich kid, thinking he could buy his way out of everything.

Carlos Mendez had been a police officer for nearly twenty-five years the night he had come upon Jake in his folded-up Firebird. He could have taken him in for DUI. But he didn’t. He told him off—and when Jake tried to tell him that he wanted to call his father, an attorney, Carlos had said that he’d get his every right, his phone call, his attorney, the whole nine yards—when the time was right. He’d told him what he thought of him—and where he was going to wind up. And that however rich he might be, he was going to spend one night in jail.

He hadn’t been mean, hadn’t raised his voice. But something about the way he’d spoken, so soft and so sure, had scared the hell out of Jake. He’d realized he could have killed not only himself but his date.

“You know, kid, you’re in trouble. But you ought to be on your knees, thanking God. You slaughtered a palm tree. That was it—the only fatality. You could be in a morgue now. Or you could have killed that pretty young girl you were with. So be thankful, accept what you get and try to make it mean something,” Carlos had told him.

Jake had listened. And at some point, he wasn’t sure when, Carlos Mendez had realized he’d had a real effect on the snot-nosed rich kid. He hadn’t charged him with DUI, only with the lesser charge of failure to have his vehicle under control. His leniency had come with strings—promises Jake made that night to Carlos. Of course, Carlos had no guarantees that Jake would abide by his promises. He later told Jake that he had gone on gut instinct—the most important tool a cop could have, no matter what technology offered.

Jake kept all his promises, grateful not to have had to spend a night in jail. He’d even been sober and somewhat cleaned up before he reached his parents’ house, before his mother cried and his father yelled. He’d promised Carlos Mendez an afternoon at the station and fifty hours of community service. He’d put in the hours working for Habitat for Humanity and in downtown Miami at a soup kitchen for the homeless. He’d seen some of the worst the city had to offer there, men and women so strung out on drugs that life had lost all meaning, and the kids who paid the real price for their parents’ addictions. Toddlers with no futures because they’d been born with AIDS. He saw, as well, those few whose lives were changed by others. The junkie thief who’d gone straight because of a decent cop and opened a home for abused children. The prostitute who had changed her ways because of a down-to-earth priest. Even the crooked accountant who had gotten out of jail to do tax forms and apply for assistance for the elderly.

And down at the station, with Carlos, he’d seen videos more horrible than anything ever concocted by the minds of filmmakers. Photos taken after traffic fatalities. Most of them accidents caused by alcohol.

In the process of it all, he met others Carlos could have arrested and sent to prison for long years of their lives but hadn’t.

He’d gambled.

And his bet had paid off.

Jake had been about to leave, having earned the grades good enough to get him into almost any college in the country. He’d been accepted to his father’s alma mater, Harvard.

He hadn’t gone.

Once again, his mother had cried and his father had yelled. But he’d loved his parents, and they’d loved him. In the end, they’d accepted his decision to stay home, take criminology at the local college and apply to the force.

He’d never regretted it, not once. And even his father had been proud of him. No one had been more congratulatory when he had been promoted to detective. He’d known he’d wanted to work homicide because of Carlos. Not because Carlos had worked homicide, but because, while still in college, he’d been with Carlos one day when he had suddenly veered over to the side of the road. He’d spotted a body in a field.