The Shattered Lens Read online

  Officer Keen intercepted Detective Devonshire the second he stepped up out of his car. “What’cha got?” Stan asked Keen, walking quickly alongside him toward the house.

  “Dead woman. Thirty-three years old. Throat slit.”

  “Yeah? Who found her?”

  “Friend of the husband. Jeff Auberdine.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Bad,” Keen said, “real bad.”

  Stan nodded, still not comprehending the gravity of the situation. “Throat slit. Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty bad.”

  “Oh—much worse than that,” Keen said, locking eyes with him.

  Stan stopped in his tracks halfway up the drive and looked at Keen. “Worse than a woman’s throat being cut?”

  “Much worse,” Keen replied. He now had Stan’s full attention.

  Stan looked around at the dreary day as a light drizzle fell and cold air chilled the neighborhood. An ambulance sat parked in the drive, radios squawking. A paramedic walked out of the house to grab a bag.

  “Hey,” Stan called out. “What’s the situation—why are you guys here? I thought it was a dead woman.” The paramedic shot some kind of knowing look at him, sighed and shook his head. He grabbed the bag and headed back inside with Stan in tow.

  The floor had a piece of plastic laid down between the foyer and the bedroom that CIU had put in place to preserve evidence. Stan’s feet made a crinkling sound as he walked atop the plastic sheeting following the EMT.

  As he approached the bedroom, Stan noticed the paramedic he’d seen earlier and one other EMT standing in the room. At first glance, he saw the woman, sheet draped over her on the chair. There was something on the bed, but with the two paramedics partially blocking his view, he couldn’t make out what it was.

  Glancing over at the wall, Stan saw a photograph of Jimmy Martinez, his wife Elena and their little girl—all smiles—looking back at him. This is Jimmy’s house, he thought, dismayed. Although he didn’t know Jimmy Martinez well, he and Jonah frequented the couple’s diner on Paradise Road.

  Stan stepped around the two EMTs to discover something he could never have imagined—a head, sitting on the pillow of the bed, tubes coming out of what was left of a neck attached to some machine on the other side of the bed. It was Jimmy all right…what was left of him anyway. “What in bloody hell?” he half-whispered in shock.

  Keen shot him a look. “He’s still alive,” Keen said softly in Stan’s ear.

  Stan’s hand flew to his face, his fingers spread out and clamping his mouth in disbelief. “What? No way. Not possible.”

  One of the EMTs chimed in, sounding as if he didn’t believe his own words. “He’s being kept alive by this heart bypass machine with an oxygen infuser. Never seen anything like this in my life. Never even…imagined it.” The EMT paused, shaking his head side to side, still in shock himself. “We need to get him to Salem Hospital. We’re heading over there in a moment. We just have to secure the machine for transport and make sure that what’s left of this guy is stable enough for transport.”

  In all his years as a cop, all the training that he had completed, the films he’d seen and the classes taken on trauma, nothing could have prepared Stan for what he was looking at now. He stepped quietly forward, leaning and looking closer, studying the head. Currently unconscious, Jimmy’s head faced the woman who was draped in the white sheet. Stan turned and walked over to the woman, carefully lifting the sheet and shaking his head sadly.

  “What?” asked Keen.

  “I know her. It’s his wife Elena.”

  “Sarah and I are regulars at Jimmy’s place on Paradise, too,” Keen replied.

  “You, me and half the fisherman in Manatahqua Point,” Stan uttered in a hushed tone.

  Keen left the room. “Oh, man…Jimmy.” Stan wasn’t sure what the primary emotion was in that moment—abject horror or compassion. He simply stood staring at Jimmy’s severed head, unconscious on the pillow and being pumped with life-giving fresh blood that worked its way through the machine. “Dear God, Jimmy, what in holy hell did this guy do to you?” he wondered aloud in a horrified whisper.

  Stan looked over at the EMTs. “You—what’s your name?” he asked the portly forty-year-old with dark hair. The man turned his head to the side, looking over at him.

  “Paul—Paul Soiref.”

  “Is he…is there any chance at all he’s going to live?”

  Paul shook his head. “Doubt it—but I really don’t know for sure. I don’t see how, but then I’ve never seen anything remotely like this before. Whoever set this up, knew exactly what he was doing. He basically set up a heart bypass machine here and it’s connected to an ECMO.”

  “English, man—speak English,” Stan said, frustrated.

  “Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine. I’ve only seen this type of unit twice before. It’s used on intensive-care patients—serves as their lungs and heart in extreme cases.” He looked at Jimmy’s severed head and cocked an eyebrow. “Doesn’t get any more extreme than losing your body, does it?” The man mumbled, his words indicative of continued disbelief.

  “Where is the rest of the body?” Devonshire asked.

  Paul shrugged. “You are looking at exactly what we saw when we got here. No clue.”

  Stan looked around the room from where he stood trying to get a grasp on the scene. “Can you transport him—what’s left of him—safely?”

  “I think so. The machine has its own built-in battery unit that will keep it going for at least forty-five minutes. We should be able to unplug it and transport what’s left of him with it. We’re just waiting for MedFlight to get here. They’ll land in the courtyard outside and we’ll fly him over to Salem. It’ll be the safest way to do it.”

  Stan nodded and left the room. Time to survey the rest of the house. He found Keen and Officer Roberts sitting at the table in the kitchen talking with Jeff and taking his statement. Jeff supported his head with both hands, clearly in shock.

  Officer Keen informed Stan that this was Jeff Auberdine who had been here when they arrived. Stan sat down and flashed his shield. “I’m Detective Devonshire—sorry, I know this is rough. To the best of your knowledge, has anyone disturbed the scene or is everything exactly as you saw it when you arrived here?”

  “I didn’t touch anything, although a lot of cops have been going in and out,” Jeff replied numbly. Jeff dropped his hands from around his face and looked Stan straight in the eyes. “Why would someone do something like this­—why? And where is Chanel?” he added.

  Stan looked over at Keen and asked, “Jimmy and Elena have a four-year-old girl. She wasn’t here when you arrived?”

  Keen shook his head. “I have Roberts and Palmer canvassing the neighborhood trying to find her.”

  Stan’s face paled. Mother’s throat slit. Father decapitated. And where is the little girl? Dear God—where is that little girl?

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