Death Rites

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

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  Acknowledgements

  Canelo Crime

  About the Author

  Also by Sarah Ward

  Copyright

  Title Page

  Cover

  Table of Contents

  Start of Content

  For Sarah Tarlow

  Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

  Exodus 22:18

  1

  It was only while knotting the red thread that he realised the woman he’d slaughtered was still breathing. She made a small sound, a slight release of air, and across the room he watched as her eyelids flickered. She was dying. He knew it and so, surely, did she. She was without any hope of help – even her dog had high-tailed it into the night. That had been his first mistake. Nowhere in her online presence had there been evidence of a pet. People who spent their days posting on social media usually couldn’t resist a photo of their animal, but this woman, for reasons he couldn’t guess at, had chosen to keep the little French Bulldog a secret. The focus of her Instagram account had been her house and garden. That had been her mistake.

  She lived in a single-level duplex built in the 1930s before real estate boomed and developers crammed three-storey townhouses into postage-stamp-sized plots. He’d been able to sketch a rough floor plan of her home based on her Instagram posts. There was a corner that he hadn’t been able to identify until last week when she’d revealed a photo of her revamped bathroom. Once he’d completed his sketch, he turned his focus to her garden. One shot in particular of rhododendrons in bloom had revealed the insubstantial latch she used to secure her yard gate. Only a quick drive-by was needed to ensure what was in his head matched reality. Then, it had been a case of checking calculations and biding his time.

  The waiting had been the hardest. Once you’ve killed, he was discovering, you wanted very quickly to do it again. He forced himself to remember that there was an order of things and he had to be careful his baser senses didn’t threaten to undo all his meticulous plans.

  In the distance, he could hear the damn dog yapping. It was only a matter of time until a neighbour woke and recognised it as belonging to this house. He had to get a move on. The fact the woman was alive wasn’t a problem. It was his second error of the evening but easily rectified. The key was to ensure the significance of the carefully chosen items remained unnoticed by the police when they finally got here. The woman had been a drinker. Nothing wrong in that, he supposed. Many of her ‘look at me I’m relaxing in the evening’ photos had featured a glass of red wine. The goblet didn’t interest him, but the bottle did. It was perfect and he didn’t even need to touch it. It sat open on the table with the cork next to it and would serve its purpose.

  The woman was also a quiltmaker and had been keen to show her creations in her photos. Patchworks of colours – she’d liked cornflower blue set against crimson with splashes of green. Very New England, but it was what was in the background he’d been interested in. The spools of thread and a hedgehog pincushion. Cute. He sat with her sewing box on his lap as he tightened the knot.

  When he was ready, he checked everything was in place and finished the task he’d failed to complete earlier. Then, going to the kitchen window, he pulled out the etching knife he’d bought in a hardware store two weeks earlier. He’d made sure it was an item among innocuous purchases. A couple of lightbulbs and a new garden hose. He’d also paid by cash and was pretty sure no one would remember him. It was one of those old-fashioned places without security cameras. He also didn’t think for a minute anyone would notice what he was now sketching against the glass in the bottom right corner, hidden by the fold in the drapes. The dog was silent, which worried him more than the barking. It suggested someone was comforting the animal. He sped up the task and, when it was finished, slipped out of the side door, the one this householder had helpfully photographed with the locks in full view.

  The night was silent except for a muted thud from the neighbouring property. A light was on in the hall; he was certain the house had been in darkness when he arrived. He hurried on, his sneakers squeaking on the frosty pavement. He allowed himself to relax when he saw his car down the alley. It was only as he was driving away that he realised his third mistake. But that was okay. He was certain no one, absolutely no one, would see that mark until he was ready.

  2

  The atmosphere was stifling as state medical examiner Erin Collins began her external examination of the cadaver. The air conditioning was doing battle with the heat of an unseasonably warm week and losing. Erin would have preferred to wait for the maintenance contractor to come and have a look at the unit before she started the autopsy, but no one could give her a time when that might happen. Personnel shortages, according to the woman on the phone when Erin had chased it up. In desperation, she’d set up a fan in the corner of the room and gritted her teeth. At least the woman lying on the table, ready for her last ever medical examination, was in decent shape. It could have been a lot worse.

  Erin’s colleague Scott, one of the office’s medical investigators, had visited the crime scene to do an initial assessment at the victim’s house. Only in movies could the medical examiner be in two places at once. Tasks were delegated. A suspicious death would first be attended by one of her investigative colleagues before a decision was made as to whether an autopsy was appropriate. At seven that morning, she’d been having her coffee, checking through emails and hassling the maintenance department before her day began. Scott had called her at ten past the hour. This one needed a post-mortem.

  There were no signs of a break-in at Jessica Sherwood’s house, but her dog had been in the garden at four a.m., which was unusual. Either she’d let the animal out and collapsed in her living room or someone had entered her home, with or without an invitation, and played a role in her death. Erin had shuffled her workload around while she waited for the body to be brought in. The teen who’d hanged himself in his uncle’s garage and the farm worker who’d accidentally shot herself with a hunting rifle would wait until tomorrow when, hopefully, things would be a little cooler.

  ‘Sure you want to do this one by itself?’ Jenny, her assistant, was finishing her photographs, beads of sweat on her forehead as she bent over the body. It wasn’t unusual for Erin to complete two autopsies at the same time on busy days. She could do the initial external exams together, moving from one cadaver to the other – it helped speed things up. Erin shook her head.

  ‘Just this one, please. I’m in no mood to rush around today. It’s too hot.’ She looked at her notes. ‘So, we have a Jessica Sherwood here, aged, according to her driver’s licence, sixty-two. A former kindergarten teacher who still helped out occasionally at the local day care. Discovered lying on her side on her living room floor. No medical information yet, but her neighbour says she was fit and well.’

  ‘A mystery.’ Jenny lowered the camera and began to flick through the digital images. ‘You like those. Jericho’s very own Quincy.’

  ‘Every time, although you’re too young to remember Quincy.’ Erin, who had been marking up the autopsy report, noting marks on the body, stopped when she reached the woman’s neck. ‘Jenny, will ya take a photo of this.’

  With the post-mortem finished, Erin picked up the phone and called in the results to one of the investigating officers. She knew Detective Charlie Baros of old. Prickly and easily offended, talking to him was never a straightforward task. She kept the summary brief. He listened in silence as she outlined her findings.

  ‘Appreciate the quick work, doc,’ he said and cut the line.

  The admin out of the way, Erin went to the women’s cubicle and stripped off her scrubs, hair covering and mask and balled them up into a disposable bag. Naked, she crossed to the shower and let the hot water cover her body. Jessica Sherwood had died from asphyxiation caused by strangulation. The mauve bruises visible on her neck told a partial story; the cerebral hematoma and neck muscle contusions confirmed the external evidence. The dog in the garden hadn’t been let out by its conscientious owner. It had escaped as life was being squeezed out of its mistress.

  Homicides were rare in the state. Maybe twenty a year. OK, so not that rare, but everything’s comparative. Killings were comparatively rare. Strangulations she saw less often, at most one or two a year. There were no defensive wounds on Jessica’s arms and hands, which suggested she’d been taken by surprise. Her attacker had asphyxiated her and left her lying on the floor. The victim – early sixties, homely looking, no indications of having borne a child – reminded her of her Aunt Connie. Most likely it was a burglary gone wrong. It wasn’t her job to make that call, but it had made for a bad start to her day. What she really didn’t want is women who looked like Aunt Connie strangled in their homes by panicking thieves.

  Erin wrenched the shower off and grabbed the towel, glancing up at the clock she’d had installed, to everyone’s amusement, in the women’s restroom. Well, what the hell? Time didn’t stop even when she was taking a pee. The day had started and not a minute of it was her own. Erin retrieved her cosmetics bag from her rucksack and began to rub moisturiser into her face. Thank God it was summer. During spring and fall, she was committed to two afternoons a week at Jericho College. A new initiative encouraged by the Mayor’s office, keen to forge links between the prestigious college and law enforcement. Within a month she’d be run off her feet. A new term, new colleagues, and that damned mentoring programme she’d been coerced into joining. Worse, a sea of new students brought up on a diet of TV who thought forensics was the only way to solve major crimes. The murder clean-up rate in Jericho? Previously ninety-five per cent, now down to sixty after a couple of bad years. That would give them something to think about in their first class. Solve that, Sherlock.

  3

  Carla, jet-lagged and disorientated, stared in dismay at the room that was to be her temporary home for the coming weeks and wondered if she’d made a terrible mistake. She shook the thought away – late summer, after all, is a terrible time to judge a place. Residents are away holidaying, and an influx of seasonal workers and visitors swell a town on the tourist trail. It had been the case in Oxford, and Jericho was no different. She was in another country, yes, but one that Carla had longed to work in. She loved the thought of New England, brought alive in the books by Edith Wharton and John Updike, and wanted to embrace the small towns that retained their settler feel, the changeable seasons each with their own dynamic and the academic excellence offered by Jericho College. It had been time for a move, a change from the lassitude that she could not shrug off. A way to escape the ennui of grief that had dulled but not disappeared.

  She’d found temporary accommodation in the attic wing of a brick townhouse and even that hadn’t been easy to locate. The summer season stretched into late September, by which time the semester would have started. Eventually, Patricia, a fellow parishioner of the church attended by her new boss Albert Kantz, had been prevailed upon to house Carla on the understanding that she’d look for somewhere else during the autumn. Standing in her flight-grubby clothes in the large garret room, she remembered once more that you couldn’t run away from your troubles; you just packed them up and brought them with you. Perhaps her mood would improve when she got onto campus. She missed the busyness of a September start of term inundated with emails, invitations to meetings and disputes over office space.

  Carla eyed the modern double bed, wondering if it was as comfortable as it looked. The exterior of the house gave off gothic vibes and she’d had visions of sleeping on an ancient iron bedstead infused with decades of other people’s sweat and skin. Her landlady Patricia had promised her the mattress was only two years old, which Carla guessed was the average lifespan for a bed in a hotel room. The other pieces of furniture were older – a bleached pine chest of drawers and a matching thin wardrobe with a mirrored door that creaked as Carla hung her clothes inside its pleasant, closed fustiness. She’d brought three suitcases with her, wincing at the extra luggage allowance, and was determined to make do with what she had. Anything missing, she would buy locally, from a goodwill store if necessary. Her Oxford flat, with its painful memories, had been cleared and rented out.

  Carla crossed to the window and looked out over the town. The college, she knew, was over to the east, beyond the river and out of her sightline. In the fading twilight, she could see the white spires of two churches, one Episcopalian, the other Latter-day Saints according to Patricia. Her landlady, while showing her the room, had paused, offering Carla the opportunity to offer up her own religious affiliations. It was too early in their relationship for Carla to admit she had none. Patricia, she gathered, was an expert on religion, stray animals and quilt making. It made her sound more twee than the stocky, no-nonsense mother of five she was. Carla turned at the sound of a knock and Patricia came in with a tray.

  ‘You didn’t need to carry that up for me. I’d have come down for tea.’

  ‘I doubt my tea-making skills are up to English standard. I’ve brought you hot chocolate and cookies. It’s your first night and you’ll be tired.’ Patricia put the tray on top of the chest of drawers as the smell of cinnamon filled the room. ‘My son will be bringing a table over from his basement tomorrow for you to work on. Will you manage until then?’

  ‘Of course. It’s kind of you to go to this effort for this temporary arrangement – I’m not sure what I would have done if you hadn’t come to the rescue.’

  ‘Rescue?’ queried Patricia. ‘I’d hardly call it that and, if you don’t mind me saying, you look the competent type.’

  Carla smiled. ‘I guess I am, but it just feels so strange. I mean, I’ve travelled around the world on digs, but I’ve never managed to shake off the unfamiliarity of first days.’

  ‘Digs? You’re in the same field as Albert then?’ Patricia perched gingerly on the bed, careful not to disturb the smoothness of the home-made quilt.

  ‘He’ll be my new boss. Do you know him well?’

  ‘Well enough. He and his wife Viv are regulars at the church, their kids less so, but you know what it’s like for youngsters these days. Plenty of other things to occupy their time. You know she’s a cop?’

  Carla started. ‘A cop? No, I didn’t. I don’t actually know much about Albert as I was interviewed over Zoom.’

  Patricia snorted. ‘That’s the way everything is going these days. Working remotely. Not much use for an archaeologist though, is it?’

  In fact, quite a lot of Carla’s work had moved online over the last couple of years, but Patricia ploughed on, not expecting a response.

  ‘I have to say it sounds an exciting life. I think if I’d had a choice, I’d have wanted to be an archaeologist too, unearthing the past and all that. Don’t tell me it’s nothing like I imagine because I won’t believe you.’

  Carla laughed and picked up a cookie, sure that the sugar would help lift her mood. She bit into it, savouring the burst of flavour in her mouth.

  ‘I’m a bit of an outlier when it comes to my profession, if truth be told. It’s not enough for me to excavate the sites and build a picture of the lives of the people I’m studying. I want to understand the feelings behind what I find. I call it the archaeology of emotion. It’s what my reputation is built on.’

  ‘The archaeology of emotion? I like that. People don’t express their feelings as much as they should.’ Patricia held her gaze, a flicker of understanding in her eyes. ‘I heard you were a widow, so I was expecting someone a little older. You’re young to be so unfortunate.’

  Carla swallowed her biscuit dry in her throat and took a swig of hot chocolate. Unfortunate? She’d not been described as that before, but it wasn’t a bad adjective. ‘My husband died after a long illness. It’s a been a while, but you could say I’m still excavating my own emotions.’

  ‘Well, my advice, for what it’s worth, is don’t expect change to produce miracles.’

  Carla, suddenly near to tears, turned back to the window. ‘I think I’m beginning to appreciate that. Still, Jericho is beautiful tonight, a bit like the Oxford I left behind. Through this window it looks as if I’m in a fairy-tale town.’

  Patricia grimaced.

  ‘Did I say something wrong?’ asked Carla, thinking of Oxford’s seedier side and the occasional bouts of city centre violence.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. You’re actually not that far wrong. Fairy tales have their dark side as well as happy endings.’

  ‘And does Jericho have its underbelly?’

  Patricia hesitated and pulled a wisp of grey hair behind her ear. ‘All places have the wrong side of the tracks. We’re just better in Jericho at hiding it. You just take care. Not thinking about dating again?’

 

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