Detective Carter
Homicide in the High Desert
It was late summer on the rural backroads of Fayden County. The days were stifling, every last scrap of vegetation had turned a colorless tan, and the locusts were so thick, most residents truly believed the end of the world had to be near.
In this heat the stench of death stretched for miles. Even with the windows of her 1990s Jeep Cherokee rolled up all the way up, Detective Erin Carter smelled the decomp before she made the final turn. There was no mistaking it. Rancid meat she could almost taste no matter how hard she tried to ignore it.
She sighed and patted the dash. “Looks like we are in for a long night my friend…” Another body. Another sleepless night. Another case that her friends, who wouldn’t understand, would ask for details she couldn’t share. At least she had her Jeep. The Jeep that kept all her secrets. It had seen things, been through the worst of everything with her, and at this point she considered it as much a part of her as the badge she toted on her hip. “Let’s hope for open and shut tonight huh?” she said rolling up to the Deputy guarding the caution tape.
“Bob,” Detective Carter said as she stepped out onto the dry dirt road. The rough earth crunched under her heavy Danners.
Deputy Bob Hansen pulled his cotton handkerchief away from his mouth. “Quite the scene… Best put the Vicks on before you walk over.”
“Great.” She walked to the back of her Jeep and opened the hatch. “What’ve we got?”
“Detective Sanchez is already over there,” Bob pointed toward the tree line. “I’ll let him fill you in if you don’t mind. These things have never been easy for me. Since you’re here in fact, I think I’ll just wait in my cruiser?”
She snagged a pair of medical gloves out of the box in her go bag and peered over her Aviators at Bob. Sweat covered the space his belly roll created between his vest and duty belt. A dark brown line all the way across the midsection of his wrinkled uniform. “Sure Bob. You do you. Just keep an eye out.”
“Always do.” Bob said cheesy grin plastered across his face. He patted the side of her SUV twice, “lemme know if ya need me.”
Carter stuffed her black leather notebook against her back securing it in the waistband of her pressed black slacks and closed the hatch. “Yep.” She said and took off toward the trees.
***
As she neared the scene, Detective Carter slowly rolled up one of the sleeves of her pinstripe blouse and then the other. She scanned the surrounding area for anything Bob might have missed outside the police tape. Wouldn’t be the first time, she thought.
When she reached the top of the ridge, she squatted down and rested her forearms on her thighs. “Yo, Sanchez.”
“Carter?” He called back from the thick sagebrush down the hill. “Hope you got your big girl pants on for this one.”
“You let me worry about my pants Sanchez,” she yelled craning her neck to see the direction from which his voice had come.
“There’s a small deer trail just to your right.”
She shifted her focus and spotted the path. Then leaned her weight back onto her heels and mostly slid down the tiny trail. Once at the bottom, she brushed her pant legs off and lifted her gaze. Her eyes went wide. “Jesus…”
“You won’t find any God here,” Sanchez said and pointed to a bloated red mass of meat. “Most of it is still piled, but as you can see… the animals have been at the body and there are pieces all over the place.”
“Has the ME released the scene yet?”
He shook his head. “He hasn’t been here, but I was just about to call and explain what we got.” He sighed and held the bridge of his nose with his hand. “We…”
Erin looked down as her phone vibrated. “It’s Sergeant Eckles.” She held it up to her ear. “Carter.”
“Hey Carter,” he said. And paused.
Sanchez walked over to stand next to her. His dark brown eyes followed the movement of her lips as she spoke.
“Sarg?”
“I’m here…Look Carter… there’s another vic, same MO, just outside of Ambra’s Edge.”
“When?”
“Some hiker found it about ten ago. I’m thinking you and Sanchez should head that way when you’re done with that one. I was going to assign it to Hill, but when I saw the details… I think it would be best if you two take that one as well.”
She sighed. “We’ll try to wrap up here pretty quick and head over there. You know if there have been others?”
“These were the first I’ve heard, but with this frequency there are bound to be more we just haven’t found.”
“Copy that. We’ll have details for you later tonight at the station,” she said and hung up the phone.
Sanchez crossed his arms. “That didn’t sound good.”
“Gonna be a late one… and not in a good way,” Carter said and grabbed the gloves from her pocket.
***
The scene near Ambra’s Edge was much like the first. The body, lit only by flood lights stationed in a wide circle, looked to have been dumped into one large pile. There were pieces strewn here and there like some sort of morbid déjà vu. Though the decomposition was more advanced.
Carter put the back of her gloved hand to her nose and stood from her crouch. “We have to find every one of these pieces,” she said to the techs who had arrived to help process the scene. “We miss one piece and we could miss the opportunity to solve this entire case.”
She bent down again and picked up what looked like a hand from beside the cone it sat beside. The bone structure was slight, Caucasian skin, and the chipped nails were painted yellow.
Probably female, based on structure and size, she thought.
The skin had been removed down to the bone after the last joint of each digit. Degloved… just like the first.
Carter set the hand down next to its marker and walked fifty feet South.
The empty stare of wide brown eyes gazed upward from the severed head. She squatted down onto her heels and used her fingers to open the mouth. No teeth. Great. And all the hair, including the eyebrows had been removed.
She stood up and peeled one glove inside out placing it in the palm of the other. “Sanchez?” She tore off the other and threw the pair at her pack a few feet away.
He stood up and she could just make out his dark brown curls over the berm.
She tucked a stray lock that had escaped her bun behind her ear. “I got no hair on any of these body parts. You have any over there?”
He took off his own gloves and walked toward her. “None. No ID or phone so far either.”
“Same as the last.”
“Meticulous,” Sanchez yelled as he reached the top of the hill, his blue tie flapping in the wind.
She walked closer. “The cuts I examined looked just as precise. No hesitation, clean, made with either one blow or a very sharp instrument that cut all the way through in one motion.”
“We don’t even have clothing to go off for ID. Where the hell are we going to start?” Sanchez asked.
Carter crossed her arms over her chest and sighed. “Let’s get all these pieces to the ME and we can hope the killer missed something for us to run with.”
Just then Carter saw a flash of blue in her peripheral coming toward her fast. She drew her weapon and spun around, on target ready to fire.
The woman put her hands up so fast her phone fell to the ground shattering the screen. “Don’t shoot!”
Carter positioned her weapon to the side, still at the ready. “How did you get past the tape?” Her voice was stern, forceful. “Explain yourself.”
The woman standing in front of her wearing a much too form fitting blue chiffon dress took two steps backward and closed her eyes. “I’m Bethany Beauford.” She stopped clearly expecting that to be enough.
Carter tilted her chin down and set her jaw.
“Really?” She rolled her eyes. “From Channel Five… I’m here to get a statement about the serial killer wreaking havoc all over Oregon. Clearly, I shouldn’t be here. I’ll just.” She started to back away.
“No Bethany Beauford you should not. And you’re a seasoned veteran. You know better than to come into my active crime scene. What’s your angle?”
Bethany froze. “I…”
“How much did you hear?” Carter took a step forward.
“Not much…” Bethany said as she picked up her broken cell phone.
Carter holstered her weapon and pointed the blade of her hand at the woman. “If you print anything you have heard or seen tonight, I will arrest you for interfering with an investigation.”
“I’ve been arrested before…” Bethany said nose in the air. “My viewers expect results…”
Carter narrowed her eyes. “And… Since that does not appear to be enough, I will publicly call out your interference as a contributing factor to the deaths of future victims.”
Bethany gulped.
“Do I make myself clear?”
The reporter nodded.
“Say it.”
“Nothing I have heard tonight will be printed,” Bethany dropped the hand from her hip.
“Nothing you have heard or seen will be on air or in print until I release that information.” Carter raised her brows.
Bethany closed her eyes and sighed. “Fine. I will not print anything or run anything on air that I have observed here tonight.”
“Good.” Erin pointed toward the tape.
Bethany pursed her lips, huffed, and stalked toward it.
***
When Carter turned back, Sanchez was hiding a smile behind his hand.
“Something funny Detective?”
He fought back a laugh. “No way sister, I just like to watch you handle those cockroaches.”
She smiled for the first time that night. A big cheshire grin and batted her long dark eyelashes. She leaned toward him and waited.
Sanchez swallowed hard.
“Just for that…” she whispered.
His breath caught.
Her tone turned to ice. “You can be the one to transport all this evidence.”
Sanchez hung his head and worked his jaw to the side. “That’s how it’s gonna be?”
Carter paced toward the Jeep and looked over her shoulder. “That’s how it’s gonna be.”
“Come on Carter,” he called hands in the air. “I didn’t mean anything by it. No harm no foul.”
“Don’t take too long huh? I don’t have all night and Sarg is waiting.” She lowered her voice. “And we both know how quick you can be if you want to…” She smirked and the door to her Jeep made a clang as it shut.
Detective Carter put her car into drive and watched Sanchez in the rearview mirror bite his bottom lip and shake his head back and forth with a smile as she headed for the station.
© Desarae Damschen all rights reserved
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