Chapter 12

Nick walked into his office whistling, in too good of a mood to let much bother him. Despite the lack of sleep, another body found, and his upcoming dressing down by the sheriff, he felt like a million bucks.

He opened the door, pausing when he saw Michelle sitting behind his desk. Her head was leaning against her hand which was propped up on the wooden surface, her eyes were closed and her mouth was opened slightly. He could hear the deep, even sound of her breathing from here.

He stood there a moment, watching her. She was more than beautiful. She was smart, and funny. And she didn't take any shit from him. His grin widened thinking of the number of times she had told him off in the ten days that he had spent time with her.

In bed, he shook his head in wonder, she was fantastic, inventive and insatiable. He felt himself grow warm just thinking about the night they had just spent together.

Michelle sensed his presence and opened her bleary sleep deprived eyes. How any man could be cheerful after the past twenty four hours they had just gone through, she could never figure out. Well some of it was pretty good, she blushed as she thought about the things she had done to him, with him.

But the rest. Oh God, she would never forget the scene this morning, standing in a set of green scrubs, her face masked, her hands covered with latex gloves, with their dead body laid out on a stainless steel table. The sounds, the smells of autopsy, in that frigid sterile room had seemed almost nightmarish and unreal.

She had been one of five people there; Nick, the coroner who had been nicknamed Bones after an old TV series doctor, the medical examiner from Flint, and the coroner's assistant, who moved so unobtrusively behind the main scene that he was almost a ghost. All of them had been dressed similarly, all had been there to hopefully uncover something that would unmask a monster.

Some of the preliminary work had been done before they got there. The body had been gone over carefully for any trace materials, there had been plenty picked up from the farmhouse; dirt, hairs, a biological stain that had probably been made by a very old condom that was found under the body, not sure if any of what had been found had anything to do with the killer. The body had been swabbed, a standard rape kit collected and readied to be sent to the lab. Hair and

saliva samples had been taken, material collected from under her nails. Then she had been washed, wounds carefully counted, measured and categorized. Blood had been taken for testing, labeled and sealed.

It wasn't her first autopsy. It was her second, but the first where she was to place such an integral part. It had been a prerequisite for one of her criminal justice classes. She had stood there with the rest of her class, twenty-five kids trying to be tough and not show emotion as death was dealt with in front of them. They hadn't even been in the procedures room, instead standing in front of windows in a viewing chamber above the main amphitheater.

Five girls had fainted at the first sight of blood, two guys had turned away and thrown up. Many more of the students couldn't handle the sounds of scalpels slicing through flesh, of bone saws cutting through skulls and had quickly fled the room.

She'd stayed stoic throughout the entire procedure, swallowing down any idea of nausea, forcing herself to ask pertinent questions, answer any questions that had been given to her. Her instructor had taken her and three other students aside on the last day of class and congratulated them on the professional mien they had shown that day.

He didn't know about the nightmares she'd had for weeks after. Of seeing that man, a victim of a car accident, mangled by the force of two machines colliding at a high rate of speed, cut open, organs removed and weighed and then returned to the body cavity in a plastic bag. He'd had no clue what it had actually done to her.

That was the one and only time she had ever had any doubts about the career she had chosen for herself.

This autopsy had been worse. It was clinical, she was dissected without compassion by the two men who's job it was to find out what the body could tell them medically and report their conclusions in their professional jargon. Maybe she had expected more humanity to be involved. But it had seemed to her that the body had been handled as if it were another piece of evidence such as a fingerprint or a hair sample. Catalogue, process, report the facts and then slam it in a cold metal drawer to be kept until it was no longer necessary.

Maybe it was necessary for these people who saw death at such a close and intimate proximity everyday to keep their feelings sheltered and to treat the victims as such. But it seemed so cold blooded to her, so wrong.

The preliminary report of the coroner's findings were sitting on the desk under her elbow. The body had been diagramed, showing the massive amount of stab wounds, forty six that were discernable, probably more that weren't. The amount of rage and strength it would take to stab someone that many times was enormous. In some of the wounds, the handle of the knife had gone into the body, indicating the extreme amount of force used.

The girl's face had been viciously kicked in, a black mark had been found along a part of the skull. It had been swabbed and sent in with the trace materials found. But Michelle would almost bet a month's pay that it was a scuff mark from a boot. Yet no bloody footprints had been found at the body dump. Indicating he either removed his shoes or changed his footwear before dumping the body.

The preliminary report also showed massive signs of abuse, vaginal tears so excessive that it was a wonder she hadn't bled to death before being stabbed. She had been sodomized numerous times, there was scaring that showed that it was a long term abuse. If this girl hadn't been abused before she had been picked up by the killer, she had been held long enough that some injuries had healed, and not in kind ways either.

Their were multiple fractures; left arm, right hand and fingers, left foot, four ribs. She had been slapped hard enough that her right eardrum had blown. Just the thought of the abuse, the pain and terror that this poor unidentified woman had suffered before death made Michelle sick.

Dehydration and starvation had been the least of her problems. Circulation had been cut off from hands and feet long enough that the flesh had blackened and died. It had been theorized that she had been kept tied to something, probably a rough, wooden table from the scars and splinters found on the body's back.

The fabric that had been found with the body, the square of high end wool material was the same as the fiber found on victim two. It hadn't been torn but had been placed in the girl's hand, her dead fingers curled around it. She couldn't have ripped it from her captor if she tried, she couldn't feel her hands much less use them.

Michelle tried to imagine it, tied down so tightly that your hands and feet died. Abused physically and mentally, tortured in ways too devious for a normal mind to imagine. Had she known her captor? How long had she been missing? Who was this poor woman?

Hopefully the woman's mind had gone way before she had been killed. Hopefully

she was unaware of the abuse done to her. The opposite was too horrid to imagine.

She looked up at Nick, and saw the smile leave his face. She was so tired, physically, emotionally, mentally exhausted. She hadn't expected to feel so much for the victims, had thought that she could hold it away from herself and not feel connected. But how do you not see the violence that is done to another living human being and not feel for the victim? And how had Nick seen this as many times as she could imagine he had and not let it get to him?

She didn't know, and she didn't know if she wanted to find out.

He came around the desk and knelt beside her, closing the file and pushing it out of the way. There were tears gathered in her green eyes, but she wouldn't let them fall, he knew. She would tough it all out. She was just that way.

But he knew from personal experience that if you hid it deep inside, it festered and became an open wound, poisoning you until you either cracked up and ate your own weapon, left law enforcement, or got help.

Too many good cops were afraid of looking weak. They were afraid that no one out there but other cops understood what it felt like to leave the things that they saw and try to go back to the world of normal people. Normal people who didn't deal with the filth and destruction on a daily basis. It was why the divorce rate was so high for cops.

How do you tell a wife or husband that you went to a scene of a murder, a three year old child who's father had picked him up by the heels and swung him against a wall, leaving holes in the plaster. And that one day, he had misjudged and swung the kid into a wall stud, shattering his skull.

Or how it had felt to see the father, in handcuffs, standing there pissed off as hell, yelling about police harassment and how he was calling his lawyer and suing the city. How he had yelled that the rotten brat had deserved what he had got because he wouldn't shut up his God damn crying.

And how it felt to be required to show professional respect to an inhuman monster who could do that to a child. It had almost killed him to not be able to grab that bastard by the back of the neck and shove his face through the wall. He wanted to grab the poor kid's mother and force her to look at the shattered head of her son. He wanted her to admit she had known what was going on and had done nothing. How could she not know? But that wasn't his job. His job was to arrest the bad guy, to make the case stick, to find the evidence that would put away another heartless monster.

He had known many a good cop who had lost the battle between loathing the brutal monsters who prey on the weak and being professional. They had been either reprimanded or sent to jail for losing control.

He still felt a lot of that same rage inside. He could hold it in and find an outlet, pounding nails was good for him. But it was the reason that he had left Los Angeles. Too much death; senseless unnecessary brutal attacks on innocent lives left too many scars on his soul.

If she wanted to stay in this gig, she would have to find her own outlet. He could help her, keep her from keeping it all inside of her and losing it in the end. But right now she needed sleep.

"Hey," he said gently. "You're drooling on my report." He made a show as if wiping the file dry with the sleeve of his wrinkled shirt. "You should go home and grab some sleep. Only thing that is going to happen anytime soon is the Sheriff seeing if he can find the right size drill bit to ream me a new ass."

She sat up straighter and wiped at her mouth. Then glared at him.

"I did not drool. I don't drool." She tried to look more alert and failed miserably, earning a tender smile from him at the effort. "I'm fine," she said. "Really," she added at his look of disbelief.

He smoothed down her hair, hooking a rope of it behind her ear and letting his hand trail down to the collar of her jacket. He played with the button there, his fingers brushing against the warm skin of her collarbone. When she didn't push his hand away but leaned against him, he knew she was more tired than he had even thought. The fire was missing, the other emotions; stress, horror, sorrow, were all too evident. She needed to recharge, to find her balance before this case took her down too many emotional roller coasters.

She needed to curl up in his big bed, held safe in his arms, her head resting on his chest. They would sleep, eat and make love every day for a week. They would recharge each other, comfort each other, hold each other until the world looked right again. Or as right as it can look for a police officer.

And if he suggested it, she would probably pick up the file and beat him over the head with it. Or she would have yesterday. Today she looked too tired to move. Well he was the boss, he was going to do something about it.

"Yeah, your so fine that you'd probably shoot me, instead of a criminal if we had to go to a scene." He hitched her collar up a little and let his hand drop to her lap. He curled his fingers around one of her hands that were resting there, just to touch her.