Chapter 2
What was that supposed to mean?
A second ago she was strictly warning me to step back from the scene.
Why is it that the moment I dropped Silas's name, instead of chasing me away, she escorted me straight in?
Could it be...
No, that's impossible.
Muddy water seeped into my leather boots. I followed behind Detective Vance, stumbling my way into the dark factory.
The smell in the air changed.
Mixed into the damp, musty odor was a nauseating stench of rust. The unmistakable scent of massive blood loss. My stomach began to churn violently.
A few floodlights hit the base of a central load-bearing pillar. A massive plastic tarp had been laid out there.
"Brace yourself," Vance stopped in her tracks. "It's a gruesome scene."
I gave a stiff nod, my teeth chattering wildly.
The CSI stood up and stepped aside. On the ground lay a black body bag, the zipper only partially undone.
"Got an anonymous call about a disturbance. By the time we arrived, he'd been dead for less than an hour." Vance stared a hole right through me. "Face was repeatedly bludgeoned with a heavy object. Unrecognizable, and holding zero ID."
Through his latex gloves, the CSI pinched the zipper and pulled it down.
It was a mass of mangled flesh.
The skull was caved in, facial features completely disjointed. Dark red blood clots mixed with mud, looking like a sponge repeatedly run over by a car.
I jolted back a step, whipped my head away, and clamped both hands over my mouth, dry-heaving violently.
"Look closer." Vance's voice was freezing cold in the vast factory. "See if there's anything you recognize."
I desperately swallowed the bile in my throat, forcing my eyes lower. The dead man wore a dark jacket, completely soaked in blood, his left hand dangling limply by the edge of the bag.
Under the floodlights, there was a metallic glint near the wrist.
A black dive watch. Right on the edge of the bezel, there was an incredibly familiar scratch.
Silas had accidentally scraped it while mowing the lawn last month. I had even yelled at him for it.
"No..." My legs gave out, dropping straight into the muddy puddle. I reached out toward the body bag with trembling hands. "This isn't Silas... It can't be! That's my watch... No, the watch I bought!"
Like a madwoman, I tried to claw at that mangled hand, desperate to snatch the watch away, but Vance grabbed my arm and yanked me up hard.
"Don't touch the body!" Vance warned sharply.
"Let me go! He only left two hours ago!" I broke down completely, tears mixing with the cold rain on my face as I screamed out of control at the surrounding cops. "His flight to Portland is at eleven-thirty! His luggage is still in his trunk! He grabbed that damn cashmere coat by the door right before he left! It's just a watch, how could this possibly be him?!"
"The time of the murder perfectly aligns with the time he left your house." Vance cut through my hysteria with an impassive face. "Ms. Vaughn, if he went to Portland, you wouldn't have shown up here holding a tracker. Right now, this watch is the only thing that can prove his identity."
"Then go test his DNA!" I roared at her, my voice cracking.
"We will." Vance shut her notepad, her eyes full of scrutiny. "But until the results come back, you need to come to the precinct with me and recount every single conversation you two had tonight word for word."
For the next three hours, I sat like a corpse in the freezing interrogation room, mechanically answering every one of Vance's questions.
It wasn't until 3:00 a.m. that I was finally allowed to leave.
Walking down the empty hallway, my mind was nearly bursting with the image of that unrecognizable male corpse.
Silas was dead. His head bashed in at an abandoned factory.
But if that really was him.
Why did the AirPods' location—which had been frequently pinging on my "Find My" app just moments prior—suddenly disconnect and completely vanish shortly after the cruisers arrived and taped off the scene?
A corpse with a bashed-in head wouldn't close its own AirPods case, much less reboot to reset its Bluetooth location.
