by B Anders
“Thought the vic was alive,” Colby asked as she hit the speed dial for the ME's office.
“Warm but dead. Heart still tossing beats every few minutes. Probably on some cardiac med to regulate her pressure. ER pronounced her as a formality ’cause the ME wasn’t driving out here on a Sunday.”
The Captain waited until Colby finished passing instructions to Dickie, their boy in the autopsy room. Dickie was to get the doctor to keep the body on the table until Colby could get there.
The Captain calmed enough by the end of the call to question, “What makes you so sure he suddenly wants to communicate with us?”
“This scene is a major change for him." Colby explained. “All the bodies up until now have been found in secluded places. Our boy likes to leave his handiwork hidden from sight but give the vics plain view of public areas. He’s a sadist. It’s part of the game. All of his vics were found long dead. Their bodies staring at public areas where help was just a shout away only he made sure they couldn’t get help.”
“You mean all the bodies you found so far, Columbo,” an emotionless voice stated flatly behind them.
Colby and the Captain turned around to see Jessie staring at them with Faust holding her by the elbow. Faust looked as stunned as they did by Jessie’s comment.
“What’s that supposed to mean, Jessie? You know something? Something you’re not telling?” The Captain asked, his voice hardening into an angry whisper.
Jessie looked straight at the Captain with an ugly sneer. “You’re the one the Feds are fuckin’ up the ass like some twenty dollar whore. You figure it out, unless you like the attention, pretty boy.”
The Captain bolted for her, snarling expletives. Faust dove forward to intercept the man while Colby charged Jessie and dropped her easily to the ground.
“Don’t move!” Colby whispered before taking her position standing over Jessie—protecting her.
“Come on, Cap, it ain’t worth your pension,” Faust grunted as she struggled to hold back the enraged man.
“Get out of my way, Faust. Don’t make me hurt you,” the Captain warned, roughly grabbing her by the biceps.
“Cap, you really gonna smack me stupid and have a go at whacking Colby so you can kick some fucked up psycho’s ass? Seriously, let’s just go to Smokin’ Joe’s and have a drink or two or maybe twenty. It’ll be my treat. They even have them ribs you love as a Sunday Special.”
Slowly Faust reached out and placed a trembling hand on his clenched fist as she whispered, “Please don’t make me go to my sister’s wedding with a black eye. My mother would cry. I hate it when she cries.”
“You’re worried about a black eye? Shit, if he hits you you’ll need a cervical collar, black eye my ass.” Colby quipped hoping to break the tension in the air. Her hand ready on the mace, just in case she needed to bring the Captain down herself.
“You’re both wrong,” the Captain said as he stepped back from Faust and regained his composure. He took an extra step back to clear his head before saying, “If I hit you, you’d be in a pine box before sundown.”
“You’re right.” Faust replied with a short laugh grateful for Colby’s intervention. She really didn’t want to have to explain how she managed to acquire facial injuries a week before her sister’s wedding to her mother and a hundred of her closest relatives.
Calling back to Colby with a tight smile, she urgently pleaded, “Get your friend out of here before he changes his mind. She’s a walking red flag and he’s the bull.”
“I’m all over it,” Colby softly replied.
“Hola Faust, estás tan caliente, que puedo oler tu coño desde aquí," Jessie shouted as Colby tried to pull her to her feet.
“One more word, bitch, and I put a bullet between your eyes and fuck your shivering corpse,” Faust snarled.
“Chica, deseas tanto mi culo blanco que ya estás saboreándolo. Admítelo y le daré a ese gran culo negro tuyo una profunda lamida justo como a ti te gusta.” Jessie grinned in reply even as Colby dragged her away to safety
Faust began to reach for her gun but the Captain rested his hand on hers. She glanced back at him and he gave a little head shake. It was almost too subtle to notice but his expression told her it was an order. She relaxed her arm. The Captain turned his attention back to the departing pair.
His last instruction rang out ominously in the crisp air. “Find out what she knows, Colby. Use any means necessary even if you have to break her into a million tiny pieces. Just do it.”
*****
Chapter 8
With uncharacteristic patience, Colby maneuvered the chugging station wagon into the empty spot next to the receiving door of the Boston Medical Center. Although it was a no parking zone, Colby’s apprehension about ending up towed like some two-bit loser paled in comparison to the morning’s fiasco.
If the run-in with the Captain was anything to go by, it was shaping up to be the start of a big, fat, fuckin' ugly day. The sort, which typically ended each sultry summer evening when she was a kid in Dorchester with screaming police sirens followed closely by an ambulance racing to retrieve someone lying flat out on the street. A body either dead or bleeding with a knife blade sticking out of an eye socket or some vital organ.
The only good thing so far, other than the fact that Colby didn’t have to mace the boss, was Jessie calmed right down after she took Faust’s advice to exit. Oddly enough, Jessie offered no resistance when Colby bundled her into the wagon and stranger still, remained dolefully quiet for the remainder of the ride. It was like she was looking forward to going back to the city. Back to the bloody playground of the Ripper's Daughter. Back to deadtown.
Colby couldn’t quite put her finger on the pattern of Jessie's behavior. The flashes of paranoia and aggression she could understand even come to expect. It was the pockets of calm that disturbed her. The fleeting periods of lucidness betraying a stronger, saner presence hidden away in the recesses of Jessie’s fractured mind. The demeanor reminded Colby so much of Jessie’s mother. Jane Walsh was a woman with an iron resolve, the emotional glue that held all of them together as a family, Marty, Jessie, and in some sense, Colby herself.
It was the echoes of summer barbeques, Thanksgiving with all the trimmings, and the sound of laughter in the backyard on lazy afternoons haunting Colby. Hours of a happy life now long gone seared into her memory. Images of Jessie sitting out on the back porch, stripped down to her black lace bra and a small tight pair of daisy dukes, slowly icing herself down with a handful of melting ice cubes, while Marty busied himself with the grill. In her mind’s eye, Colby could still longingly trace each trickle of water as it dripped down naked skin and exposed flesh.
That episode ended like so many others with Marty shouting at Jessie to get back in the house and put on some decent clothes. He was not having a slut for a daughter. It was no secret that Jessie and Marty never got along. They were too alike—smart, hot tempered, and bull headed to a fault. But, Jane loved the both of them with a fierce passion that to Colby seemed far more than either of them deserved. Then Jane started getting sick.
It started with a cough that wouldn’t go away. None of them could have foreseen it was the beginning of the cancer. It would eventually eat her insides out. Marty could not deal with the fact his Jane was dying. He was always talking about the things they would do when she got well enough to travel. They were going to drive down all the way to Florida to see the Everglades and maybe take in the Keyes where the fishing was good. They’d skip Orlando, though. The park down there was nothing but a tourist trap.
When the end came, Marty was away working a lead on the Ripper case. He hated hanging around the hospice, said he felt like a ghoul waiting around for the dinner bell. Colby was out in the corridor, cradling Jessie when he finally retrieved the hundred odd messages she left on his cell. He came barreling through the swing doors in a wild panic fifteen minutes too late. He wasn’t there to say good bye. Jessie never forgave him for it.
Glan
cing at the silent woman sitting next to her, Colby followed the line of her unblinking gaze to the black funeral hearse parked across the lot. The driver left the engine running, sending plumes of exhaust billowing upwards into the stone grey sky. Like their loaner wagon, it was obviously illegally parked, but might as well be invisible for all the lot attendant cared. The man was scrunched in a shabby shed a dozen feet away, snoozing on a broken chair with his mouth hanging open. Snug under a tattered hospital blanket as a rat in his filthy nest.
“I don’t think I need to say it again but just in case you haven’t been paying attention do not give me any trouble inside the building. Jessie, I mean it. It’s a secured area and I don’t want to have to mace you,” Colby said as she killed the wagon’s spluttering engine.
Jessie turned around and gave Colby a frightened look that gradually hardened into defiance. ”I’m not going in there. I’m not leaving the car. You can’t make me.”
“Yes, you are. There’s no heat with the engine off and I’m not leaving the car running until I get back … and I can make you.”
“You, you, you don’t need to worry I’ll take off. I got no shoes. There’s nowhere for me to go. And, you don’t have to take my word to stay put. You could chain me to the steering wheel,” Jessie pleaded frantically as she huddled herself deeper into the seat, away from Colby’s reach.
Colby ignored Jessie’s rising panic and got out. She was in no mood for an argument. Jessie was getting out of the freakin’ car even if Colby had to drag her out kickin’ and screamin’. There was no way she was leaving Jessie Walsh alone and unattended for the hour or so she needed with the Medical Examiner to gather the autopsy results. She wasn’t stupid.
The air outside was crisp but far from fresh. The remains of the old Four Point Channel, buried beneath a hundred thousand pounds of land fill trash was at low tide. You could smell the noxious stench of rotten eggs in the wind.
Colby pulled open the car door on the front passenger side and leaned forward intent on releasing Jessie’s seat belt. What came next was a vicious head butt she never saw coming. As the blow connected to her face, Colby stumbled back seeing nothing but stars. For a split second, she struggled almost managing to stay on her feet before gravity won out. She fell with a solid thump against the brick wall behind her and slid down to a seated position on the ground.
“Fuckin’ Son of a Bitch! That hurt! You are crazier than a crack whore!” Colby gasped holding her throbbing face. Jessie’s forehead had caught her on the rim of her left eye orbit where the skin was thin, tearing it.
“I don’t want to go in there! You can’t make me!” Jessie screamed defiantly. Her eyes glazed over with equal measures of fear and rage.
Colby squinted at the ranting woman and felt her temper finally break. From here on in there would be no tamping it down. Not now with her hurting and stone cold sober for almost twenty-four fuckin’ hours. Colby couldn’t remember the last time she'd gone so long without a drink. It seemed to her she started drinking at Marty’s wake and never ever stopped.
“I’m going to bring you inside. If you try to hit or stab me again, I promise you I’m gonna mace you right here and now and drag that skinny ass of yours across this parking lot. If you continue to give me shit, I will get my nightstick out of the trunk and beat you until you resemble a pile of slush. You hear me, Jessie. Don’t push me, baby girl because I’m just a sick fuck waiting for an excuse to put the hurt on you.”
Jessie sat staring at Colby for a while, her eyes regarding the other with an expression akin to grief. “You always used to call me baby girl. It was always the same with you. Baby girl. I hated it, but Jane thought it was cute. She always liked you. What happened to us, Colby? Why didn’t you come get me? Why did you leave me there?”
Looking at Jessie's abject confusion, Colby felt a deep twang of guilt. Three years was a long time to be locked away and forgotten in some Dickens excuse of a psych hospital. Colby knew Jessie was aware she had been abandoned. They had shut the door on her and gone on with their lives for better or worse—family, friends, even Colby herself.
“You’re bleeding,” Jessie whispered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, Colby. I get scared, Colby. So very, very scared. Do you know what it feels like to be scared, Colby?”
“Yes,” Colby mumbled. “I’m sorry things turned out the way they did. I didn’t want … it to be this hard too, Jessie. I’m so sorry.”
Colby got up from the ground and approached the car with utmost caution. She was going to issue another warning to Jessie about hitting her again when she released the seat belt but Jessie had gone quiet. Whatever it was she was afraid of had won out. Jessie Walsh was gone, retreated back inside the recesses of her mind. Colby wasn't too sure who was left minding the front desk at the moment.
***
They entered through the heavy metal doors. As they rounded the corner towards the corridor leading to the Medical Examiner’s Office, Colby noticed she needed to tug a little more with each step. The closer they got to the autopsy suite the more Jessie was dragging her feet. The reek of death, decay, and disinfectant was strongest in this wing of the Center. It was the oldest section of the medical complex where the ancient air was stale and heavy from more than a century of death. Colby could feel the foul stench beating down on them in successive waves, each one stronger than the last causing even her already bloodshot eyes to sting and tear.
“No,” Jessie blurted out as she dropped to her knees on the heavily waxed tiles.
Colby raised an eyebrow, “No? Come on. What’s-a-matta now? Don’t tell me you’re ‘fraid of a little blood and guts?”
“Yes,” Jessie replied in a soft whisper as she used her shoulder to wipe away a tear trailing down her cheek. “Why not just leave me outside and chain me to one of the pipes while you do whatever you came to do? I feel sick. This place makes me want to throw up.”
Colby squatted in front of Jessie and lifted her chin up with two fingers to look her straight in the eyes. “But, I came here ‘specially to let you see the grisly remains of the Ripper’s last kill,” she joked as she pulled her face into a crude maniacal grin. “Thought you of all people would appreciate a good gutting.”
Jessie swallowed hard trying not to get sick, “You’ve gotten to be a real jackass over the last few years, Officer Willis. Where’s your goddamned bleedin’ heart?"
Cupping Jessie’s face with her hands, Colby pulled her in close and corrected her in a softer whisper, “You say it like it’s a bad thing and no, I have no heart. I lost that three years back …”
The sudden bang of a metal door opening behind them shattered the quiet, causing Colby to reach for her weapon. Craning her neck, Colby could see the foot end of an overburdened stretcher as it edged out into the corridor, filling it with the sickly sweet smell of rotting fruit. Slowly, the length of the stretcher followed as it angled into the narrow space. After several long seconds, a blond-haired gentleman in a finely tailored black suit came into view as he emerged pushing the head of the stretcher straight. He paused a moment to make sure the door was secured behind him. When the man turned around he seemed shocked to see the two women blocking his path.
“Edwin, Edwin Dodd,” Colby called out with a happy grin as she stood and put her weapon away. “How the hell are you? I haven’t seen you since what? St Patrick’s Day two years ago or so?”
The man smiled back warmly in reply. Tall, trim, and good looking, he was beautifully turned out in what even Colby could see was an expensive Italian suit and black patent leather shoes. His black Cashmere overcoat was the perfect outerwear for an undertaker's morbid work. He moved the stretcher aside and walked towards Colby with a purposeful stride. She politely accepted his extended hand and returned his greeting with a firm shake.
"It’s been too long. Good to see you, Edwin," she said.
“Colby, it’s good to see you too but I’m a bit stunned.”
“What’s to be surprised about fin
ding me down here heading to see Dr. McGhoulish?” Colby was confused by his remark before she realized she had a gun pointed at the man until a few minutes ago. “Sorry about that, Edwin. The Captain has me working a big homicide case and you know how hairy things get on the job.” Colby apologetically offered by way of explanation.
Edwin Dodd gave a gentle sigh and looked away with a small tight smile, “Yes, I do but that’s not the surprise. My niece is an unexpected surprise. Why is Jessie here with you? I thought she was supposed to be at the Abhordale Clinic getting medical treatment.”
Colby reddened at her error, “I’m so sorry, Edwin. I forgot you were once married to Marty’s sister.” Colby shook her head and said, "My memory hasn't been right since …"
Edwin waved Colby’s explanation aside. “Ah yes, those were the days—cookouts, baseball, piano lessons, and Carson Beach. We had it all didn't we? We were all still one big happy family back way then, Christine, Jane, Marty, Jessie, and you. But Christine and I were not to be. It was a personal failing on my part. I knew it then as I know it now. I’ve always assumed we’d have more time. Who would think somebody so young and beautiful would become so distraught? The hardest thing I ever did was to cut her down from the ceiling beams in our bedroom. I was such a fool not to have been more insightful to the nature of her depression. We’ve lost quite a few friends and family between us, haven’t we, Colby?”
