Dirty

By LS Sygnet

The victims are left without blood at nearly bloodless crime scenes. Helen Eriksson knows it can't mean what it appears to be, but faces an uphill battle convincing her colleagues that clinical vampirism is a real disorder, nothing new, and not what pop culture has led the public to believe. The race is on to figure out who the killer is, and how the crimes are committed before it happens again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LS Sygnet
• Release date: May 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370908219

LS Sygnet

LS Sygnet was a mastermind of schoolyard schemes as a child who grew into someone who channeled that inner criminal onto the pages of books. Sygnet worked full-time in the nursing profession for 29 years before her "semi-retirement" in March 2014.She currently lives in Georgia, but Colorado will always be her home.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Midnight

The primal throb pulsed in waves through the steamy air in the room. Bodies undulated to the beat, and I watched with growing fascination. And hunger. What began as finely misted perspiration on scantily clad bodies, quickly became rivulets of sweat rolling over heated skin. Soft, supple skin. Perfect, nubile skin. I could see veins distend in necks of these preciously graceful necks, almost swan-like with delicacy and the corresponding roll of the ropier counterparts in their masculine partner's arms as they writhed together in the eroticism of the seductive beat.

I licked my lips.

They were all masked. My prey wore a simple black filigree that covered part of her forehead, eyes and tickled the tops of her cheekbones. It concealed very little. In fact, all who saw her would easily identify her even before the mask came off.

She was skittish, like a frightened fawn that stumbled into a roadway during rush hour. Poor little Liz Frist. She's been lured to this party under the guise of working for the caterer who fed another type of hunger at these so-called flash parties. They weren't the typical sort of party, however. Perhaps flash saturnalia would've made a more apropos description of these debauched events.

Invitations were quite exclusive. The requirement for anonymity was a must. Those who could afford to attend, could most certainly not afford to be identified for any reason should someone think to violate that most sacrosanct rule of attendance: leave your identity at the door or suffer the consequences.

Everyone had the same stakes in this thing after all: public exposure would be ruinous, and anyone who violated the mandate for strict confidentiality would in effect out himself as a participant too. Or herself.

The place was filled with the perfume of powerful women. It wasn't something that could be purchased at the highest of high-end boutiques. No, it was the pheromone of the powerful women that held the utter allure of every man in the room.

The convention of beautiful people unfolded before my eyes, a feast of flesh and carnal desire.

If the world knew, if Darkwater Bay and its hyper-religious prudes knew, they'd call us dissipated, dirty, the worst filth imaginable.

Beyond confidentiality and anonymity, there were other rules as well. Number one: all attire must be provocative. Number two: safe sex is optional, but strongly encouraged. Number three: no blood sport. Everything else was on the table, as long as it was consensual. The last thing the mastermind of these little soirees wanted was some legal charge spoiling everyone's fun.

So there were rooms for bondage, rooms for any fetish imaginable in fact, orgy rooms, safe places for the bi-curious to explore, role-play scenarios of all sorts. It was truly the most opulent sexual event one could hope to attend—for a price.

Which brings me back to my little barely disguised Liz Frist. She stood near one of the buffet tables, all doe-in-the-headlights, tugging at the skimpy but sheer skirt that covered her barely-there thong. She wore a bikini top of the same transparent gauze with a breezy long-sleeved cover-up that literally concealed nothing, and our hostess Lucritia had a wicked habit of making sure servers at these events were clothed so embarrassingly that their silence was assured too.

I supposed that's why it was so easy to identify the succulent morsel known as Liz Frist.

A wolf approached her, and suddenly, that china-white skin of hers blossomed with a delicious peach flush. Her eyelids fluttered downward for a moment as a strong hand reached out to palm her breast.

Her head snapped up so quickly with shock, I thought she might've given herself whiplash, but the startlement was followed by another emotion, more easily read than the last: recognition. Despite the big-bad-wolf mask he wore, it was clear that Liz knew the man who stood fondling her unabashedly.

Interesting. Perhaps she wasn't as innocent as I'd imagined.

Even more interesting was the sway of her body closer to the beast who thought to snack on she who would be mine.

I frowned behind my bronzed mask of conjoined faces. I thought it funny, fitting even, to come in disguise that represented the duality we all embraced for these events. But this man was no laughing matter.

I watched his head descend to the ear behind which he'd tucked Liz's hair with a seductive flourish. His mask was certainly not particularly imaginative, a simple rubber affair that fit over his head and covered his natural hair. It looked like something a Millennial might wear to one of their ridiculous cosplay conventions.

But his body…

I am truly and staunchly heterosexual. Yet I cannot help but admire the bodies of some men. This one was a work of art. It revealed a couple of things to me. He obviously had patience to put in the effort to sculpt such a masterpiece. Which implied he was not as young as the taut skin over bulging muscle might imply. It's my experience that youth lack patience, and if the impressive protuberance in the front of his skin-tight leather pants was any indication, his bulk did not come from anabolic steroids.

No, this was a man of discipline. The smooth skin of his chest was nearly hairless, save for the dart of black extending from his navel southward.

Cocky bastard. How dare he swoop in and entice my innocent right from under me?

But it was a seduction, pure and simple. Liz listened to those murmured words, brief and to the point no doubt, for moments only before her hands skimmed across the rippled muscle of his flat belly.

Bastard!

She shook her head no, with definite remorse.

Ah, that's my good girl. Tell him no; you're here to work, my sweet. Send him on to some other more deserving slut for his sex-fix tonight.

Liz didn't send him away. In fact, her eyes darted around his too-broad shoulders like she was checking to see if the coast was clear.

My blood boiled. Without thinking, I lifted one wrist to my lips and let the harsh bite of enamel into flesh soothe me before the coppery taste of calm filled my mouth.

I know. I broke the rule: no blood sport. It didn't count if it were a self-inflicted wound.

The dark interloper oozed around her like viscous oil, and I watched him rut lewdly against her from behind. His hands cupped her breasts, thumbs teasing back and forth over her easily roused flesh. He kept whispering things—naughty things, I was certain—into her ear as his seduction progressed.

If he knew her, which he obviously did, was this some sort of planned rendezvous between lovers?

I'd done my homework. Liz was shy, studious. She didn't date, which was common knowledge, and only created some ruse of a mystery man to stop the girls in her sorority house from teasing her relentlessly. It was an unsuccessful ploy.

Yet they'd been wrong. She did know this dark wolf, knew him quite intimately from the look of things.

Finally, her paramour tugged one of her hands, pulled her in the direction of a dark curtain Lucritia's event planner had draped behind the refreshment area of the main hall.

They slipped from my sight while I counted slowly to fifteen before surreptitiously following.

It was dark, almost too dark to see, but my imagination and his more clearly audible words were far more discernible once the heavy drape blotted out the throb of dance music.

"Liz… oh God, Liz, your body."

She was moaning and begging softly. Now, I need you now, D—

Shh, he whispered. Call me Wolf.

A giggle drifted through the space. This is so silly.

Then a gasp. You're wet, so wet for me baby, the low throb was his voice this time. Tell me you want it.

You know I do. I love you so much.

Love? She had to be joking.

No, not joking, just young and idealistic. Lucritia threw a hell of a party. It was about a lot of things: money, power, sexual gratification, kink, debauchery. The one thing that didn't figure into the equation was love.

My little innocent hadn't worked through the hormonal rush of lust yet to wonder why her lover was at such a party. I'd lay odds it wasn't his first. Something about the way he moved, the self-assured manner in which he executed his masked seduction told me he wasn't a novice to the saturnalia. The participants of these events never were innocent. That particular quality had been lost in multiple stages before ever seeking out the buffet of pleasures available here.

She made a soft sound, like a squeak that was trapped somewhere near her vocal chords but couldn't quite find its way out. That's when the rhythmic thumping sound hammered flesh against something hard. He was doing her, and I wished for all I was worth that he'd chosen to take Liz to one of the rooms where voyeurs could watch them. I bet they were beautiful, if the primal rhythm I could hear was any indication.

My mind's eye saw her split open over his thighs, splayed out raw and tender. Ah God, it was unbearably arousing, so much so that I was tempted to approach with stealth and lay the razor-sharp bevel of the pipette in my pocket into his neck, drain him and take his place.

No. No. You must not lose sight of the real goal. He cannot go on like this for long. Make your wager. He'll finish her off, make some lame excuse, and dash. She used the L word, and it's the icy shower for a man in the throes of lust.

He'd leave…and it would be my turn.

Our breathing all took a hard turn, theirs for obvious reasons, but mine in anticipation of what would come next for dear Liz.

Pipette in one pocket. Hand-held Taser in the other. And then there was my room, a secluded place not even Lucritia knew about. She's a frivolous woman incapable of looking for anything deeper than her own sexual gratification. And in all her covert dealings, she hasn't a clue how utterly obvious she truly is.

A sex addict, after all, is a very uncomplicated creature. He or she has one primary motivator. If the sounds from a few feet away were any accurate barometer of the wolf's current state, he was about to achieve what he wanted.

Though part of me ached to stick around and wait to hear the inevitable heartbreak of a nineteen-year-old girl who still believed in true love and happily ever after, I knew better.

I would arrive soon enough, to sweep up the broken pieces and assemble them to my liking. That sweet rolling pulse barely beneath the skin of her left arm would be mine soon enough, after I soothed her into a false sense of security by assuring her that this was no place for an innocent such as herself.

By the time I was finished with her, Liz Frist would be prey to no man, no wolf, ever again.

Chapter 2

Helen Eriksson

Lawanda Booker was directly to my left, standing over the crumpled, pale body left to decompose on a wooden pallet in the storeroom of a warehouse inside the border of Downey.

Damn shame, she muttered. Like the poor child ain't suffered enough in this life.

Suffered? I echoed. It looks like she curled up in a ball and died in her sleep. Though I must say, her choice of bed leaves much to be desired. And why is she so freakishly pale, Lawanda? Shouldn't we be to the purpling stage of livor mortis by now?

She squatted by the corpse and poked one gloved finger into the putty-like flesh of the left arm. See these scabs?

I rolled my eyes. I’m not an amateur in this game, Lawanda. You think I haven't seen fresh track marks before? I'd say she had a penchant for injecting with her right hand into what, the left brachial artery?

She peered up at me. Not an amateur, eh? Baby, these ain't track marks. This is an arteriovenous fistula.

It conjured an old memory, something from undergraduate anatomy and physiology class. I groaned. Then those scabs aren't from injecting drugs—

"But from attaching the catheter that drained this girl's blood, filtered it, and then returned it to her body probably two to three times a week.

Hector! she barked loud enough to startle me. Git me that thingamajig y'all use to scan fingerprints these days, and let's see if we can find out if the DMV got her thumbprint on file. Soonest we can git Ms. Helen out and on her way to talk to the folks who done knew this gal, the better.

I squatted beside her. Tell me why, Lawanda. There's something else here, something pinging your radar and making you feel like this thing has more urgency than your average body recovery.

She nodded. And I ain't gon' say what it is 'til I got the facts lined up to prove my hunch. In the meantime, this youngin' looks to be little more than pubescent, and I reckon she got a family 'bout to climb the walls with worry and fear why they ain't heard from her in…

Lawanda's hand thrust the spiked end of her internal thermometer into the victim's belly and waited briefly for a reading. Days, Ms. Helen. She been dead long enough that I can't tell by her innards' temperature. Now unless she was some sorta plastic surgery addict, I'd 'spect her age to be in the teens, maybe early twenties at most. You think you wouldn't be throwin' a conniption to high heaven if one o' your boys disappeared long enough that we couldn't tell when he died by temperature upon findin' his remains?

Good point. Dammit.

She outta rigor too.

It had been my experience over the past couple of months that the more agitated Lawanda Booker was over recovered remains, the more southern she sounded. Her Mississippi drawl would always be quite foreign to my northeastern sensibilities, but when it was truncated to the bare minimum of verbiage, of pronunciation, it didn't bode well for a run-of-the-mill autopsy finding.

Gloves, she snapped her fingers, and Hector had a pair dangling in front of her in record speed. Not for me, baby, for Ms. Helen. Put 'em on. I want you to help me roll her supine.

I frowned. I don't actually touch the bodies, Lawanda. Outside my scope—

We gon' give this baby the dignity she deserves, Lawanda replied. That means ain't no man's hands gon' touch her 'til I says they touch her. You got me? Least we can do for this part as I sho recollect is offer the lovin' hands of a mother for this dirty deed.

I cringed, but donned the gloves and helped Lawanda move the girl onto her back.

Git yonder on the other side, she pointed over the pallet.

Gingerly, I followed the directive.

Now, we got 'er on her back, layin' in the body bag just so, but Ima gon' pull the flap out this side so 's we can move her a skosh my way, that way…well, you'll see.

She couldn't have weighed more than a hundred pounds, a weight I could easily deadlift myself. Yet there is something far heavier about the human body after it dies that adds what feels like twice the weight of the living host.

We struggled, and for a moment, I was about to insist that Hector help us and Lawanda's weird dignity notions be damned, when she barked, Right there. Don't move her no more, Ms. Helen.

"You needn't Ms. me to death, Lawanda. I get it that it's one of those quaint southern things you do, but seriously, you're making me feel like a parochial school teacher. I'm far more accustomed to people barking out Eriksson than yelling at me with a polite address."

Sorry. I ain't tryin' to be cross. Do as I say, an' we be done lickety-split. Put yo' hand under her knee like so, and when I say, we gon' lift and pull out 'way from her body.

I cringed, recalling another occasion where I'd done a far more delicate exam of a victim for signs of sexual activity. But I followed her cue, lifted and abducted on command. While Lawanda peered and invaded with a penlight, I focused on everything else.

She was clothed, if one could call it that. Some skimpy sort of lingerie type attire in gauzy black with a matching white apron. The panties, if they'd been in use at all, were gone. But judging from the lack of landscaping in her nether-region, I'd have been surprised if someone that young would've flashed the forest through her see-through costume.

And it was apparently a costume. She still wore an eye domino that did little to conceal her identity. It was a sort of rubbery filigree thing, like small diameter webbing in the aforementioned design. Her glassy, vacant blue eyes stared up at me.

I shuddered, and resumed my examination of…other things.

Why was this corpse freaking me out so much? As victims recovered went, our little costumed co-ed was absent all the gore and horror to which I'd grown accustomed over the years.

Perhaps that was why she was so disturbing to me. She wasn't some sort of abstract remains. In fact, she looked like a limp wax figure, complete with bloodless white skin to complete the picture.

That's when I saw it, the melted gauze just above her left breast. Uh, Lawanda?

Keep yo' socks on, Ms. Helen. I—

"No, I need you to look at these burn marks on her chest.

Thunk.

Lawanda dropped her leg and leaned close. She snapped her fingers at Hector again. My specs, son, she said.

A moment later, she had a lighted scope, one I'd never seen worn outside the autopsy bay, strapped to her forehead as she peered through the magnification lenses at my discovery.

Huh, she grunted.

Well? I prompted.

Looks like the burn from a Taser, one might oughtta used a tad longer than required. They usually give a quick zap jolt, and bang. She's out. It fits with my other finding so far. Sadistic mother.

My eyes widened. She was sexually assaulted?

Oh yeah. We got tears a' plenty, Ms. Helen. Pretty mangled under the hood if you know what I mean.

I'm afraid I don't.

Well, you git you a suspect, and we gon' need a forensic odontologist, 'cause we got bite marks in this gal's skin like you would not believe. Done ripped her cl—

I get the picture, I interrupted hastily.

And though you cain't hardly tell it from a casual look, we got ligature at the wrists and ankles, I reckon one point five to two point five inches in width. While that jolt din' kill 'er, it gave your sicko plenty o' time to get her trussed up like a hog to do his deed.

So what actually killed her? I asked.

"I do believe I explained that I ain't givin' you cause 'til I got the facts.

"Hector!"

Yes, Dr. Booker.

You run that thumb through yet?

I did. It's uh…well…

Something tore her focus away from our victim for more than a moment here or there. It's uh what, Hector? Don' tell me this po' chile ain't got a driver's license or some such that would require a thumbprint. I ain't buyin' that!

The warehouse, ma'am…we don't have Wi-Fi to connect to the database.

Lord Jesus, she muttered under her breath. Well then, I 'spect Kenny and his gang got what they need already or we'd still be coolin' our jets. May as well get back to the office and prove my theory—or not.

I followed Hector and Lawanda to the coroner's van and paused.

You comin' back with me or are you gonna Uber elsewhere, Ms. Helen?

She'd apparently calmed somewhat, with little dialect and more professional polish. I shook my head, uncertain what I wanted to do. The car was back at the morgue, and I should ride back with her. It was sheer happenstance that I was on hand when they got the call to recover a body from the warehouse. Still, something tugged at me, urged me to remain behind and digest the crime scene further without anyone around to distract me from pure observation.

I'll call someone, Lawanda. If you find what you suspect, I'd appreciate a call. Otherwise, I'll have a better idea if Downey Division will need a profile after you've got more information. I mean, if this girl had the AV fistula, for all we know, you're going to discover that she died of acute renal failure, right?

A curt nod communicated less agreement than it did abject doubt. She didn't believe a young girl receiving hemodialysis could be dead of sudden cause related to kidney disease no matter what I suggested.

So call me when you learn otherwise.

Our eyes met in a moment of understanding. The Taser, the genital mutilation…it didn't point toward anything but wrongful death. It was the mutilation and bite marks that nagged me almost as much as the victim's prolonged pallor. We'd rolled the dead girl, Lawanda and I. The mottling purpled flesh of lividity was strangely absent. This was not a blood-drenched crime scene. In fact, blood was remarkably absent.

I frowned. Yes. It was absent.

I strode briskly back into the warehouse and made my way into the room housing nothing more than what appeared to be a freshly built wooden pallet. This was where we'd recovered the body, but there was no blood on the rough wood, nothing that had dripped through the slats onto the concrete floor.

Had she been dumped here?

I pulled out my phone and used an ill-conceived app that was supposed to detect ambient room temperature. My guess, based on the chill and growing stiffness in my naked fingers, that we were somewhere between a room temp of thirty-five to forty-five degrees. This was a standard temperature for normal refrigeration. It was cool, not freezing cold.

Naturally, that atmospheric condition would impact determination of time of death. She'd been preserved, much like she would've been inside a morgue drawer. At death, the human body chills at about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit until the body achieves room temperature. But if the conditions are cold, the body continues to cool until it matches its surrounding air temp.

That alone told us something significant. Average human temperature under healthy living conditions is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. If our victim cooled to forty degrees, that indicated cooling of approximately fifty-eight degrees. So a minimum of thirty-eight hours had passed since she died. But the problem with taking that calculation as an accurate determination of time of death was that the cold preserved her remains and slowed decomposition. She could've been lying in this unused room for far longer than a day and a half.

Finding out who she was, was paramount. We wouldn't know how long she'd been missing from her normal life until her identity was known. And if she'd died within that thirty-eight hour window, not enough time would've passed for the police to take the information and proceed with an investigation as a missing person.

It was Downey's case. I shouldn't butt in, but something about all of it unsettled me. I exited the building again and started walking the perimeter. The warehouse was large, and obviously abandoned long ago. Grime covered what windows there were, obscuring what little February sunlight was available this morning from illuminating the interior of the structure.

The parking lot was large, and it was easy to understand why once I reached the rear of the building. No less than a dozen docking bays were evenly spaced across the back of the edifice. The steel doors, upon closer examination, hadn't been used in some time, if the undisturbed leaves, grime and cobwebs could be trusted.

I snorted. Get a grip, Eriksson. You can't simulate this kind of neglect, in the first place. In the second, what kind of killer would bother to do so as a forensic countermeasure?

What kind of killer indeed. I wasn't even certain this was a crime, beyond the sexual assault. It may have happened elsewhere, which would explain the absence of blood. She'd merely been dumped in an abandoned—unheated—building in late February. Talk about a forensic countermeasure.

The ground was cold and more dust than gravel. Still, it seemed like there were a number of fresh looking tire tracks all over the place. Idly, I wondered if Ken Forsythe had at least photographed them. I found it odd that an abandoned building seemed to have so much recent traffic. The number far exceeded the vehicles from law enforcement investigating the scene.

And exactly how had the body been discovered, if this place was indeed abandoned?

I pulled out my phone and dialed the number for Downey Division. A moment later, Paul Dennison answered his private office number.

Paul, Helen Eriksson.

Hey, Helen. What's up?

You sound stressed, I said, frowning.

Oh, we caught a new case today, and I was just about to conference with Hal Vickers. He caught the case—

Alone? I asked.

I was downtown meeting with Sheila Julliard and Chris Darnell first thing this morning, but planned to work the investigation with him. He went to the scene, and now I need to get up to speed. Surely this isn't why you called me this morning.

Well… I hedged.

Helen?

I was at the morgue talking to Lawanda this morning when she got the call to retrieve the remains, so I tagged along.

This is good news, actually, he said. Where are you now? Would you be willing to come over here and chat with Hal and me about your impressions?

Sure, I could do that, but I've probably got more questions about this than you do. I suppose I'd like to know what you plan to do as your first steps.

Come over here, Hal. I'm on the phone with Helen Eriksson, Paul's voice was slightly muffled. First step, Helen, is to find out who this girl was, and it looks like Hal might've done that much already.

Really? I asked.

Yeah, hang on. I'm gonna put you on speaker.

Mornin' Helen, Hal said. I just got off the horn with Hector. Once he got out of the dead zone at the warehouse, he sent me the thumbprint of our victim. She was a nineteen-year-old student at Metro State by the name of Elizabeth Frist. She lived at the university's Phi Beta Kappa sorority.

Whoa, I said. She was only nineteen. How was it possible for her to be Phi Beta Kappa?

Not sure we follow you, Helen, Paul said. Is her age somehow significant to her membership in a sorority?

For Phi Beta Kappa, it certainly is, I explained. Members have to achieve high moral and academic standards to be invited, and have completed three quarters of their required credit hours toward a bachelor's degree. Otherwise, they're not invited to join. Now, unless you're telling me that Elizabeth Frist was some sort of genius who finished three years of a four year degree by the age of nineteen, I have a hard time believing she was in that sorority.

Would it help if she was a month shy of her twentieth birthday? Hal asked.

Some, but not much. Phi Beta Kappa is pretty exclusive. We're talking supreme court justices, presidents and business magnates being amongst its notable members historically.

We're heading over to the sorority now to talk to the chapter president, Hal said. You're welcome to tag along, Helen. I'm not sure if you got a good look at the warehouse, but the place was disturbingly spotless for an abandoned building. Other than the body, we only discovered one other remarkable clue.

Well, I'm still at the warehouse. My car is over at the morgue. I'd planned to Uber back to pick it up, but if you don't mind swinging back over to pick me up, I'd love to learn a little more about Ms. Frist. Based upon her attire at the scene, I have some doubts about the morality clause of her sorority qualification.

We'll be there in fifteen, Hal said.

The connection was broken, and I decided to take one more look around inside the warehouse. Ned mentioned a couple of things I hadn't noticed. One, the warehouse was remarkably clean for its abandoned state. Two, there was a second clue other than the body. Of course, Lawanda, Hector and I had focused our attention solely on the victim's body, where she was left and the condition in which she was left. I hadn't paid mind to much else.

When I stepped inside the warehouse, I was stricken by the fact that it was unlocked when we arrived, and that there was no sign of forced entry into the building. It brought to mind the question I