Flashback (Kendra Michaels #11)

“Kendra…” He hesitated and then just came out with it. “The Bayside Strangler is back.”

CHAPTER

10

It was completely dark by the time Kendra and Lynch approached the taped-off police line surrounding Pepper Park, a small plot of land in the National City neighborhood south of downtown. Helicopters were circling the area, and Kendra could see at least three harbor patrol boats keeping watch from the adjacent bay.

A uniformed officer moved to stop Kendra and Lynch from ducking underneath the line, but Perry waved them through before it became an issue.

“Who invited you to this party?” he said.

“The FBI. I understand they may be taking over this investigation.”

“In negotiation as we speak. If this is what we think it is, that could very well happen.”

“The victim?” Lynch asked.

Perry looked at his notebook. “Anna Mae Robinson, age twenty-eight. She worked as a customs manager at the Port of San Diego. They have an office a few blocks from here. She went missing after she left work three days ago, then tonight her body turned up on a slide in that play area over there.”

Kendra looked at the cluster of work lights on the other side of the park. “That’s a familiar pattern, but what makes you think it’s really the Bayside Strangler after all these years?”

Perry lowered his voice. “Something that wasn’t released to the media back then. Each of the victims’ hands were bound behind them in a specific way.”

“I remember seeing it in one of the photos in the Morgan sisters’ files,” Lynch said. “A handcuff knot reinforced by an overhand knot.”

“Exactly,” Perry said. “I saw it there, too. The sisters shouldn’t have had that picture. They must have bribed someone for it. And the strangler always used the same kind of rope: a green-and-white triple-braid bamboo-and-cotton blend. That’s what this looks like.”

Kendra nodded. “Wow. That’s his MO, all right.” She looked around the park. “Any security cameras here?”

“No such luck, but we’ve already started combing the surrounding area. There are a hell of a lot more cameras in this city than there were fifteen years ago. We’ll come up with something.”

Kendra took a deep breath, steeling herself for the sight she knew was waiting for her under the work lights. “Take me closer.”

“Of course,” Perry said. “I know how to show a girl a good time.”

He motioned for Kendra and Lynch to follow him across the park to the brightly colored children’s play area, which felt oddly incongruous with the grim centerpiece of all the activity. As police officers, FBI agents, photographers, and forensics techs moved around the scene, Kendra caught her first glimpses of the victim, lying upright on the playground slide, eyes open and staring up to the heavens.

This part never got easier.

This poor woman probably started her last day like any other, showering, walking her dog, making breakfast for her kid, or some other mundane task she’d never do again. All of it taken away by some monster who had already caused so much pain in the world.

Lynch squeezed her arm. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” She tried to toughen her facial expression. “I need to see this.”

She stepped closer. A few of the investigators on the scene probably recognized her, and others saw her with Perry and just assumed she belonged there. She finally stopped about six feet from the corpse.

The victim looked younger than twenty-eight; she could have passed for a teenager. Kendra had long ago given up trying to guess anything about a murder victim’s final state of mind from their facial expression. She had no doubt that young Anna Robinson’s last moments were spent in agony, but no one would ever know it from the serene expression on her lifeless face.

There was something particularly disturbing about that expression, Kendra thought, a reminder of how every thought, every emotion, everything this woman would ever be had been so completely erased.

“Who found her?” Kendra asked.

“Someone called it in shortly after dark,” Perry said. “She was probably placed here just after sunset.” He pointed to the nearby office buildings. “It would be tough to bring her here during daylight hours without someone seeing.”

Kendra stepped closer to examine the bruising on her neck. “Strangled by the same rope used to bind her?”

“That’s how it looks, just like the others. It appears she was killed around the time she disappeared, but the medical examiner hasn’t weighed in on an approximate TOD yet. The killer kept the corpse for a couple of days before delivering it here. No evidence of sexual assault. Every detail lines up with the Bayside Strangler killings.”