Author's Note- Wow, thanks so much for the alerts, favorites and especially the reviews to this story. I'm gratified to know I have managed to peak your interest. I hope this chapter comes across the way I meant it to.
Disclaimer- If it were mine, this is what would have happened... I think. So it's obviously not.
The red was dark now, almost brown like the caked earth on which it was spilled. It puddled in places, a sticky glom that sent a putrid stench up into the air as it slowly decayed. Speckles of it had been splattered over pale skin, once hale and healthy peach now a disturbing white. Limbs bloodless and still. The young woman was laying on her side, legs only slightly splayed away from one another, bottom foot pointed.
She almost looked like she was dancing.
One arm curled over her chest to her other shoulder. The other was jutting in a straight line under her head, pillowing it gently. The dark blood had made a trail down her arm at some point, though the ground beneath the limb was strangely devoid of all but a single droplet beneath her middle finger.
Irises a faded brown that once might have been startling, she was staring sightlessly up into the sky, almost as if she had been telling the heavens she was on her way. Her head was framed by a halo of raggedly chopped hair, all too short for the hair tie around one of her wrists.
Not far away, a gloved hand removed a clot of dark brown hair from one of the bloody pools and placed it gently in a red-banded evidence bag. Like the tech was handling porcelain. It was clear the hair belonged to the victim, but nothing could be overlooked.
Lisbon crouched close to the woman's torso, surveying the body with a face forced into impassiveness. Only a slight furrow near the top of her nose gave her away once the smell wafted over. For a long moment, she said nothing. Just stared.
The body had been split, cut almost completely in half right at the line of the very last rib save only for a portion of skin and spine at her back that was still attached. Insides, from intestines to the spleen, were spread out in the gap between halves, open to the air and elements. It was as though she had been stabbed and the killer had just kept going even after she had finally drawn her last breath.
Like she was a piece of meat, rather than a crying, screaming, clawing human being.
It was the tear tracks still discernible down the woman's face that tugged at her. Drawing away, Lisbon couldn't help but smear the back of her wrist over the skin underneath her nose. Even she wasn't immune to the odor of death and decay, however much she sometimes wished she was.
"Group of kids found the body. Apparently they cut across here on the early morning run for school training." Cho said, mouth just barely twisted as he stood over the wreck of a body splayed on the ground.
Lisbon breathed out, resisting the urge to rub at her forehead. She had a headache, whether from stress or from lack of sleep was unclear, but it didn't seem like it would going away for a while. Slowly, she walked a little further away from the victim. The buzzing from flies around the organs was making her teeth itch.
As she stepped back, Rigsby stepped closer.
"Victim's name is Joanna Lister, boss. L-I-S-T-E-R. The T's silent." He held up a wallet. "Her ID was just set right next to her body."
"Like it was meant to be found." Cho deadpanned close by, now watching one of the techs trying to sort hair from blood.
"The whole thing was posed." Lisbon said roughly, looking over the entire scene. "Body mutilated, left out in the open. ID right next to the body. The killer's asking for attention."
"Probably done this before." Cho added, looking at the spread viscera with a slightly deeper frown than he normally wore.
It was enough to proclaim to his colleagues that he was troubled by his pronouncement.
"Doubt anyone would do this on their first go." She agreed musingly. "Maybe he got tired of being ignored. Rigsby, check out the databases, make sure we haven't got other murders like this one laying around. Even small similarities could be telling."
Rigsby moved off quickly, seeming happy to leave the corpse behind.
"Cho, search of the victim's history. Find out if she has any family- right now before the media gets ahold of this and beats us to the punch. I don't want her loved ones finding out about all this-" She gestured at the entire scene- "-from reporters."
"On it." Cho started to hurry away.
"Hey-" Lisbon caught him. "-where's Van Pelt?"
"Interviewing the kids." He gestured back toward the road. "But a few of them were throwing up, so-"
"Yeah, okay." She waved him off, really not needing to hear any more. Her boots clomped loudly on the dirt as she strode for the break in the fence that would take her in the direction Cho had indicated, when something caught her eye. Slowing to a stop, she frowned toward it.
There was a small growth of weeds and tree-like bushes near the back side of the empty lot, near where it backed right up against the steep hill jutting up several feet into the air. On the other side, a uniform was standing on the edge of the underbrush, watching the entire scene like a soldier on guard. On her side of that same shrubbery, several branches on the tall bushes and stalks of weeds were bent awkwardly toward her.
What had caught her eye though, was a shiny metallic chip of something sticking out of the dirt. Her stomach fluttered slightly, while her heart seemed to putter, like it was going to stop. It brought on a heavy weight to her chest and a tingle in her limbs she recognized as foreboding. She swallowed it down harshly, telling herself not to jump to conclusions, pushed her jacket back and placed her hand heavily on her gun. It made her feel safer, despite the fact that she knew the crime scene had already been secured and there was no danger about.
...still.
Cautiously, she stepped toward the anomaly. She slid her feet through the dirt so that she was ready to run at a moment's notice, sidling nearer without taking her periphery off the concealing brush. As she got close, her feet kicking up ever smaller puffs of dirt and dust as the caked earth gave way to more damp soil, she could make out brown smudges on the bent vegetation.
Dried blood.
Lisbon stopped just before the metal glitter, scanning the brush. Then she carefully kicked the metal gently with her foot. It surfaced from being half-buried in the dirt, revealing its etched face to the sunlight.
A cross.
She looked back the way she had come.
The victims?
She didn't have another pair of gloves on her, so she left it where she'd found it and decided to continue following the trail of broken vegetation. Some ways back, hidden among the tall bushes, was an actual tree, if a small one. Once she reached it, her trail was gone, completely and without a trace. She looked around, turning in a small circle. Then her eyes focused on the bark of the tree where a piece had come loose and she slowly followed the trunk upward.
Her gun was out before her next breath and she looked around furtively as she pulled her phone out with her other hand and hit the speed-dial.
On a branch directly above her head, high up, was a piece of what could only be the victims skin. And painted on it's surface in dried blood, was a face.