Fear is a disease that eats away at logic and makes man inhuman.
The modest, claustrophobic changing area for female doctors at the Milwaukee FBI crime lab run by Dr. Ira Sands left little shoulder room between the lockers. As a result, Jessica had donned her surgical garb as quickly as possible to join Ira Sands out in the larger arena of autopsy room #1. There Joyce Olsen's now cleaned and stark white body lay awaiting her attention, lying not on its back as in any normal autopsy, but on its front atop a gleaming metal slab, built-in suction tubes running down either side, to carry away any loose or falling matter.
Overhead vents filled the room with a steady flow of humming air, clean and antiseptic, and another pair of vents worked equally hard to shoot air out in a constantly moving current.
She pushed through the double doors with sterile hands in gloves, mask in place, her eyes meeting those of Dr. Sands. In a corner of the room stood the tall, imposing Agent Reynolds. “Observing,” he announced. She nodded.
“Nothing new, really,” said Sands. “Darwin is often here… observing. He's a lifelong learner.”
“Shall we get to work then, Dr. Sands?”
“I have begun already with the preliminaries, and have examined the fingernails.”
“You mean with microscopic lens?”
“Exactly.”
“Anything?”
“Afraid there's no evidence of tissue under her nails.”
“None whatsoever?”
“No evidence of a struggle,” Sands replied. “Some material we could not readily identify is being analyzed now by our toxicology guy, Grant.”
“Grant?”
“Our go-to guy for toxins, yes.”
“Barring we find any toxins in her system, and given the nonfatal blow to the head, then Joyce Olsen expired of gross loss of blood-hemorrhagic shock,” Jessica stated for the recorder, to be transcribed later.
“A sure indicator she remained alive when he began his butchery,” added Sands, heavily sighing. “Hence the coloration around the wound itself.”
Under the bright lights of the lab, Jessica said, “A week to ten days she'd lain there in her own blood.”
Sands agreed, nodding. “It'd take at least that long for the larvae to be planted and to hatch.”
Jessica and Ira stared at the insect life phoenixing from the very womb of decay and death. “Kind of like new blades of grass wriggling amid the dead matted forest floor, wouldn't you say, Dr. Coran?”
“Almost a Hallmark card in there somewhere,” she replied. “But frankly, I hate the grubs.”
His eyes dimmed at once. She'd finally let him down. Then Sands groaned and winced with some internal pain.
“Are you all right, Dr. Sands?” “Old sciatica kicking up. Damn strange how the longest nerve in your body can be such an evil to you.”
“I am sorry to hear it. Do you have any medications, pain killers we can call for?”
“Any more and I will OD, no. Besides, they don't touch this thing* Nothing does.” Sands struggled on. “I'd say, from the position and angle of the wound over her left ear, that the killer hit her from behind,” he said.
“Yes, my guess is she turned her back on him, and she never saw it coming.”
“I agree. She was comfortable enough around him to turn her back on him.”
“And when she did, he brought the hammer down-one quick blow, so says the tattoo left behind,” Jessica said, directing a video camera to that area. “Blunt-force trauma from a rounded edge.”
“A ball peen hammer most likely.”
“The Claw in New York used a hammer to subdue his victims before he ripped them apart.”
“She was most likely unconscious when our killer ripped open her back, but the pain to the back, I suspect, would jolt anyone from an unconscious state. I fear our original diagnosis at the scene correct, Dr. Coran.”
“That she suffered greatly.”
“Most assuredly, she felt the great rent and tearing of flesh from her back, yes.”
Jessica nodded, her body rigid, braced. “Until hemorrhagic shock set in.”
“We can only pray for that small mercy,” replied Agent Reynolds, pacing before making his way to the exit, where he stopped and turned and filled the echoing room with his voice. “Creep did all that and had the presence of mind to strip away his clothes and destroy them, to use the mop to wipe out any tell-tale shoe or footprints, and to leave no trace of his DNA behind.”
“He's definitely an organized killer, one who thinks through his every move, planning for months at a time before striking,” replied Jessica, while her thoughts revisited the blood-painted, stiff and unyielding mop head. It, too, was being processed and analyzed for trace evidence.
“I gotta get outta here for now,” said Darwin. “Get some air. When you're finished here, Dr. Coran, I'll… I'd like to talk further.”
“When I get done here, I'm going to want to shower.”
“I'll see you get to your hotel. I'll be just outside.”
Jessica understood Darwin's need to get out. Back at the Olsen apartment, she herself had felt the walls closing in more than once. The only improvement in the situation here as opposed to what had been Joyce Olsen's safe little cozy corner of the world-home for her and her dog, Shep-was the reduction in number of people milling about and the sterile environment. In terms of space, the lab was close quarters, especially given the horrendous decay and mind-numbing wound.
A glance at her watch told Jessica the hour now neared 2 P.M. She marveled at how time seemed at first compressed, then stopped completely at a mutilation murder scene such as the one they had collectively endured today, and how amazingly time had vanished as a result of her focus and concentration on the job.
Sands now said to Jessica in a near whisper as he worked, “That boy Darwin's got a tear on for this monster. Can't say I blame him.”
“Darwin believes it's all the work of one man, these three separate murders.” Jessica hoped to get Ira's feelings on the matter.
“Covered his tracks well if Darwin is to be believed. Not an iota of DNA left at the other two crimes scenes. Kills at opposite ends of the country… unusual if it is a single killer. So who'd notice?”
“Who'd notice? Apparently Xavier Darwin Reynolds,” Jessica said, a half grin creasing her features. “I can't count the number of times intuition alone led me to unmask a killer.”
A valet stood outside Darwin's unmarked FBI car below a huge golf umbrella with the Wyndham Lakefront Hotel's logo clearly marked. He appeared to be held in check as he watched the arguing couple inside the car. A light drizzle had begun to speckle the lit windshield where Jessica and Darwin sat below the Wyndham's marquee.
“I am willing to accept your final verdict, Dr. Coran. I know you are the best the FBI has to offer.”
“You're that sure?”
The light drizzle began slapping hard at the car, turning into a downpour, encouraging Darwin to swear and pull further up under the crowded carport-canopy.
The young valet and a bellhop with another logo-stamped umbrella pecked on the windows. Reynolds rolled his down and popped the trunk from inside, saying, “Bags are in the rear.” He then turned to her and asked, “Well? Do we go over things tonight after you're refreshed or am I to leave?”
“All right. You can buy me dinner.”
“Thank you. I'm sorry to be so damned pushy, but we don't have a lot of time, Doctor, not if we're to stop this execution.”
“Give me half an hour and then call. We'll put our heads together on Robert Towne's behalf. No promises. That's the best I can do.”
Darwin grinned and almost crushed her hands in his. “That's all I can ask… all I can ask. Thank you, Dr. Coran. Thank you.”
As Jessica slipped from the car beneath the umbrella held for her, she stuck out a hand to the rain, enjoying its touch. “At last, something straight outta Mother Nature. Something real. I love it,” she muttered, while within she wondered when she had last been as passionate about a case as young Darwin Reynolds felt about this one and its relation to the impending Towne execution over half a continent away.
Jessica rushed for the warmth and safety of the well-lit lobby. Her mind kept at her, begging the question, When did you lose that enthusiasm and passion for hunting and running down evil, Jessica Coran? She wondered how she'd become so jaded and casual about something so absolutely awful, so terrifyingly and horribly unique as a murder case like this one-bodies stripped of their spines. To some degree she'd been thinking it was just another case, just another in a long line of jobs to be gotten through. Perhaps the time had come for her career with the FBI to be through. She wondered how many cases she compromised, how many people she hurt, including herself, while in her present frame of mind. A frame of mind she did not fully understand but one which painted her as an accountant in Hades-enumerating body parts, the remnant leavings of mutilation murderers- as if each body part formed just another bead on a rosary of evil, as if she were counting bones, organs and tissue for Sa-tan's ledger.
Darwin had followed her in. “I have a few things to do, but I'll call up to your room in thirty or forty, and we'll have dinner, and I'll leave you with the murder books from Minnesota and Portland.”
Too tall to stand below the umbrella held by the bellhop, Darwin had gotten wet. He'd helped load the bags onto a four-wheeled cart, and he had tipped both bellhops for taking charge of the bags, and the valet for allowing the car to remain in place for a short span.
“If you get no answer when you call up, I will've fallen asleep,” Jessica warned.
“Shower and you'll be refreshed,” he reminded her. “If I get no answer, I'll pound on your door.”
“Pushy man.” Jessica left him for the registration desk, acquired her key and made her way to the elevator. She felt a certain relief in watching the passionate and sure of himself young agent disappear through the revolving doors toward his waiting car. He was an exhausting man to be around for one thing, and for another, she had gotten by so far without the murder books. Perhaps he'd have second thoughts, perhaps he'd get involved elsewhere, and perhaps she could get a good night's sleep. Not a likely thing while within arm's distance of a man so filled with kinetic energy.
After showering off the taxing day, Jessica sat on the bed in her white terry-cloth robe and pulled the phone into her lap. A red light signaled messages. She ran through them. One from Eriq Santiva, checking in, asking if she needed anything in Milwaukee, and wondering if this horrible case she was working on might signal a serial killer or not. After Santiva, it was John Thorpe, with a few pleasantries, saying he missed her at Quantico, and that everything was functioning quite well in her absence.
“Thanks, J.T. You always know how to make a girl feel needed,” she said aloud.
The third message was Richard Sharpe, calling from their Virginia home. He had called to tell her how much he missed her.
Jessica smiled at the sound of Richard's baritone voice. He sounded like the actor Richard Burton.
She immediately went to her suit jacket and pulled out the PCS Vision phone with built in camera that Richard had purchased for her-or them rather. It'd been a special gift, a way to see one another despite the miles between them. This particular model had a feature that allowed real-time panning of a room or vista.
Using the gift, she now called her live-in lover and best friend. She had first gotten to know him as Inspector Sharp of the New Scotland Yard, London, England. They had met when Richard had come calling at Quantico in search of help, and she had gone back to London to work with him on a curious case there involving millennium-phobic cultists and crucifixion murders. Richard, nowadays a working consultant and liaison between the FBI and the State Department, had only recently returned from an overseas assignment, and now she had to leave him at their home in Quantico, Virginia. Richard kept up a half-kidding needling of her to marry him, but she had remained reluctant, fearful of such a heady commitment.
He came on, standing in the yard at a white fence, horses playing over his shoulder as he smiled at her. His first words on hearing her voice were direct, as always. “When are we going to tie the knot, as you Yanks say? I'm feeding apples to Ben and Porsche. Bet you wish-”
“I was there, yes! As to getting hitched, things between us are too good to sacrifice to a marriage license,” she firmly replied, waving into the camera for him to see.
“That room behind you could be our wedding suite,” he persisted.
“Are you kidding, Richard? I'm going to want Maui or Tahiti, maybe New Zealand, but certainly not Milwaukee for our… But why am I even talking about this?”
“Because, you secretly want it as much as I?”
She quickly changed the subject. “I've gotten myself involved in quite a strange case here, Richard.” He became instantly curious on hearing the details of the bizarre Milwaukee case and Agent Reynolds's theory that it could be connected to two other murders years apart from one another.
“Does his theory have any credence?” Richard jokingly asked Ben, one of the horses nuzzling, when a second horse shoved him completely off camera. Jessica heard Richard shout, “Porsche! That's not very ladylike at all!”
More apple slices calmed both horses.
“As a matter of fact, Darwin's theory has a great deal of credence, just not enough hard evidence to get a man off death row. We have no DNA, no fingerprints to match, not even the killer's blood to make any comparisons with. And Towne's defense went from pleading insanity to denying this, and then he apparently stopped any move toward an appeal made on his behalf.”
“Sounds like a confused man this Towne. Still, young Reynolds may have a case, but how can you be sure? About the first crime scene. Just how bungled was it?”
“Hard to tell from here. But like I said, the kid's made some compelling arguments.”
“Fill me in.”
She rattled off the similarities in the three cases and added, “The only thing that distinguishes them as not being the work of the same killer is-”
“-the disparity of time between each.”
“Exactly, yes.” She nodded, her image reaching him but breaking up. “From all we know of serial killers, they strike within days, weeks, months at best, not years apart.”
The horse tugged off Richard's hat in a bid for attention. Richard laughed his full rich laugh. “And given our predilection for accurate bureau statistics, such an aberration frightens the hell out of us, doesn't it?”
“You're going to make those horses sick if you feed them any more apples. Put an end to it, for goodness' sake,” she suggested.
After a moment's thought, Richard said, “Speaks highly of this fellow Reynolds, I'd say, his catching these killings spaced so far apart both in time and geography.”
“He's awfully good and awfully young for an Area Special Agent in charge. I mean to be in charge in a field office as large as Milwaukee. I suspect he has a sterling record.”
“Else he knows how to suck up!”
“Don't think he needs to. He's enormous. Even on his knees, he'd find kissing up impossible. More likely has something to do with placing more blacks in high-level decision-making positions, not that he isn't talented from what I have seen of him.”
“Quotas, really? In the FBI?” Richard's mock grimace sold his sarcasm. “Does sound as if he's made an impression.”
“He does make an impression, yes.”
“Good bloke, heh?”
Jessica loved Richard's English accent and idioms. “Wish you were here,” she said.
He replied, “In Milwaukee?” But his imagination was sparked now, his rapt attention had left her for the burgeoning details of her case. Over the videophone, she recognized that his mind burned with curiosity.
“So then, we only have days if we're to save this chap in Oregon from the barbarous electric chair.”
“Three after today, and it's not quite so barbarous. They use lethal injection in a pristine sterile environment.”
“Like putting down a dog, huh?”
“And what do you mean by we? 'We only have days'?”
“If the man is innocent then I want to help.”
“How, Richard? How will you help?”
“I'll get on a plane for Millbrook, go over their tracks.”
“I'm not even convinced that Reynolds is right.”
“But you are convinced of his sincerity. I can tell that much.”
“True. I believe he believes.”
“And we don't have the luxury of debating it. This lapse in time between the murders could simply mean the killer himself has, at times, been incarcerated either in prison or an asylum.”
“Else he has the patience of evil,” she suggested.
“It may be what is meant by vengeance being best served up cold.”
“Well this is damned cold. If he knew any of these victims, they didn't know him. There's nothing in their backgrounds to warrant any of them should have ended life as mutilated victims.” “I'm just suggesting he likes his bone soup served as a consomme.”
“I tell you, Richard, you have a cookbook inside you wanting to get out.”
“You must know the Buddy Holly title, 'Love Waits,' right?”
“Of course, but-”
“Hate waits longer.”
“Still, can't help the doubts. A sociopathic monomaniac capable of this… I hardly think him capable of timing his killings to coincide with mid-November, spacing each by a year of interim quiet. A fantasy life for these guys is t wen ty-four-seven.”
“There's always the exception. But speaking of fantasy life…”
“I miss you, too, darling.”
“Another reason to join you on the case. So suppose that this Millbrook, Minnesota, place was in fact his first time, and it frightened hell out of him, learning what he was capable of?”
“So he lives with it for a long time, and then something else in his life intensifies, and with a sudden volley of stress placed on him, say the death of his mum, the loss of his income, a bout with depression all at once…”
“And so in Oregon later,” mused Richard, “he has a new and overpowering urge to do it all over again, to again kill?”
“And the same thing happens in Milwaukee,” she added. “But it's not like he's a loose-cannon, spur-of-the-moment type who leaves a trail of clues. Rather he goes at this thing in calculated fashion, hence the drawings. This is highly organized, premeditated stalking and butchering.”
“Certainly doesn't appear anything random about it, save perhaps how he selects his victims, and even then there may be some hidden agenda. All of them being matronly in age and appearance.”
“This creep apparently wants the bones still wet with the victim's bodily fluids and blood, because his damnable brain is telling him that something special resides therein, the victim's soul perhaps, her anima perhaps.”
“Imbued with the essence of the known victim,” suggested Richard. “Look here, I've finished up with that North Korea affair in China. To great ends, I might add.”
“Congratulations again.”
“I tell you the mucky-mucks running the country are so like the Russians of the fifties, that they could still screw it up. I could push them from the bloody balcony in a heart's beat. It's like stepping back in time going to Beijing, and not only did they destroy a lovely name for a city- Peking-but the pollution is horrendous as well. And what's frightening is that they are meat eaters in a country where not so much as a single swine, sheep, goat, bovine, antelope, deer, dog, cat or chicken may be found, only birds and rats.”
“Can it be that bad? Really?”
“Really, yes! All livestock lost to extremely poor planning to say the least at the last emperor's feast I suppose, where he kept a continuous feast going for fifty years, every day of the year, every hour of the day and night for his thousands of honored guests like there was no tomorrow. It's no wonder-”
“Black market thrives,” she finished for him.
“No wonder they love to go to the zoos and stare at the animals in the cages, and why they hunt down and eat wild animals like those cats, celts are they called, suspected of carrying SARS?”
“It's sad really.”
“Now, except for what you can get on the black market, everyone is served some sort of mystery meat at every meal-a true mystery, my analytical sweetheart. One you could certainly sink your teeth into.”
“What do they tell you when you ask about the food?”
“Chicken… everything is chicken or fish. Even the meat with the four-inch bony tail, chicken. Sometimes they get cute and tell you it's the fish that walks on land.”
They laughed over this and said tender good-byes, blowing one another kisses via the video link.
“I'll call you from Millbrook when I can!” he shouted and hung up.
Just like Richard to drop everything to help out, she thought. She knew no other man who'd be so willing to get involved in such a nebulous cause.
Jessica put away her PCS Vision phone and dropped back on the bed, exhausted and hungry. Still no call from Darwin. She wondered what had become of him when there came a knock at her door. She remained in her terry-cloth robe, her hair still stringy from being wet.
She went to the door and peeked through the one-way telescopic peephole and found Darwin on the other side with a large room-service cart filled with food.
“I took the liberty of ordering!” he shouted through the door.
She pulled it wide, shaking her head at him. “What is this?”
“I feared you'd be too exhausted to come back out after all you've been through, and I know how I am after my evening shower. Last thing I wanna do is go back out. Just wanna curl up is all,” he spoke as he wheeled the cart into the center of the room.
“You can be honest, Darwin. You saw a woman dead on her feet and you took pity.”
“Ahhh… that, too, yeah, so I brought dinner to you, along with the murder books.”
“You had the casebooks all along?”
“Trunk of my car.”
“You do have it all worked out, don't you, Darwin.” She closed the door and grabbed a huge strawberry and dipped it into a small vat of chocolate, chomping down, famished and unable to wait.
Agent Darwin Reynolds arranged everything on the balcony at the table there, even the two thick facsimiles of autopsy and police reports bound in the covers of what police officials called murder books-all the paper that made up the Sarah Towne murder investigation in Oregon and the Louisa Childe murder investigation in Minnesota.
“A working dinner then,” she said, accepting the chair he held out for her.
Jessica lifted the cover off her meal, a steamy chicken marsala with a side dish of spaghetti in marinara. Between bites, once he sat down and joined her, taking up his meal and pouring wine, she told him about Richard Sharpe, who he was to her, and how he was on his way to Minnesota.
“To do what in Minnesota?”
“To find whatever blood or DNA evidence might help the cause.”
“DNA evidence? But authorities in Millbrook told me they had no DNA evidence from the crime scene.”
“Perhaps there's something hiding in the old evidence lockup. We don't any of us know for certain, now do we? If anyone can inventory the evidence and see beyond the obvious, it's Inspector… ahhh… Agent now, Richard Sharpe.”
“Maybe this Sharpe fella can rattle their cages. I'll certainly keep my fingers crossed.”
“Sharpe has indeed rattled a few cages in his time, and I'm betting Millbrook's finest will be no match for a former Scotland Yard investigator.”
“Those guys in Minnesota who worked the case seemed genuinely concerned and professional.”
“You want to explain your disappearing act?” she asked.
“Whataya mean?”
“Where you've been all this time, if you had the murder books in your trunk?”
“Phone calls. I still have a life.”
“I'm glad one of us has, and one day I damn well will carve one out for myself.” Jessica got quickly back to Richard. “Agent Sharpe cares, and he will do a thorough job in Millbrook, leaving none of the proverbial stones unturned.”
“I doubt he'll find anything useful after three years. What blood they processed all turned out to be the victim's. Don't really see that going there is going to, you know, accomplish anything. Still, I do appreciate his help.”
She forked up more food, famished from the long day of not eating, of being unable to stomach anything. Wiping her mouth with the large cloth napkin, she said, “Millbrook police are as prone to mistake as any agency, and autopsy folks make errors more often than I care to tell. We're not all as adept and agile as the perky young things on CSI, Darwin. And Richard is trained on the scent that ineptness leaves behind. Trust me. Or rather, trust Richard Sharpe. He has absolutely perfect instincts.”
Darwin replied, “One of the detectives on the case passed away not long ago. The other guy keeps his cards close to his chest, and he hates it that this case has gone unsolved. Damned angry and defensive about it.”
“What's your point?”
“Sharpe is going up against a wall there in Millbrook. I mean I appreciate his effort, but it will be a wasted one.”
“We don't know that.”
The sound of the street, like a strangely languorous melody rose up to the balcony where they dined. Jessica asked him what he knew of the medical examiner who had prepared the autopsy report on Louisa Childe.
“Nothing really. Seems competent enough for a smalltown M.E.”
“I know him well. Have met him on occasion at conventions of the American Medical Examiners Association. I've heard him speak. He does shoddy research from what I know. It's bound to spill over in his day-to-day. So, perhaps there is something lurking in Millbrook we have no clue about.”
“And when you need a clue that's not there?”
“Send in Scotland Yard.”
The rattle of stainless-steel utensils against dishware diminished and died. They sat looking across at one another, Darwin lifting his wineglass to accept her toast. “May we all be successful in our endeavors, you, me, Sharpe.”
He drank to this.
“Then again, you are wise to be skeptical. After all, a two-year-old case gets a lot of cold on it.”
“Still, it could save an innocent man if we can connect this murder to the other two.”
“I hope we can find some hard evidence to bolster your cause, Agent. Now, let me read what is before me.”
“I'll shut up and be patient then.”
“Thank you.” She sat back and lounged with the first murder book, that of Louisa Childe, propped atop that for Sarah Towne.
She sipped at her wine as she read. “You can walk me through the reports. I assume you've read both carefully.”
“Nine and ten times over yes.”
“And what strikes you as the most salient feature or point of comparison between the two?”
“The missing spine, of course.”
“What else?”
“The control he obviously exerted over the situation in both cases and the killing here in Milwaukee. Cold and calculated, hence the use of the charcoal drawings.”
“Let me read on through each book.” Her unfocused eyes steadied and met his. “If there's any stone left unturned, we'll find it and exploit it.”