In the Belly of Jonah

by Brannan, Sandra

I handed her a plate and offered to refill her glass, only to be waved off.

  “I have to finish my profile while Streeter’s gone. He won’t be back for quite some time. He said he had his hands full with the Brannigans, and he had told Kari Smithson he wanted to talk with her later tonight when she got off work at ten.”

  “Too bad. Well, go ahead and eat his share. You need to keep up your strength, right?”

  “Do you mind making him a plate for later? He told me to tell you thank you for dinner. He hasn’t eaten since breakfast.”

  “No problem.”

  We both shoveled our food as fast as we could chew. Lisa talked around each bite. “This Richardson press conference is really going to screw up our investigation. The only one that his stunt helped was the de Milo murderer.”

  “It’s really another de Milo murder?”

  She nodded. “The coroner has concluded that the strange cuts on the couple found at Platteville were the same as on Jill’s body.”

  Curiosity getting the better of me, I asked, “What happened at Platteville?”

  She lifted a file from her satchel, flipped through some pages, and pulled out the glossy eight by tens, splaying them across the coffee table. I would have thought my stomach would have lurched at the sight or my appetite for dinner would have been spoiled, but miraculously, neither happened. Mental note to self: Avoid gruesome details about tragic events involving loved ones and friends. Objectivity is possible when strangers are involved.

  As I scanned the photos, some close-ups of the victims and some of the areas surrounding the crime scene, depicting roads and farmhouses nearby, my eyes locked onto one particular photo. The tall grasses along the riverbank were matted down around the man and woman. The woman had no arms, no legs, no clothes. Her wavy red hair was splayed behind her head, which was turned to the left. Her lips were painted ruby red and nearly touched the groin of the man lying next to her. He had no arms, no head, and his legs were cut off at mid-shin. His chest was hairless, his stomach cut with six-pack abs. He was wearing nothing but tight white cotton briefs that revealed his bulge. Surprisingly, there was not as much blood as I would have expected.

  “She’s young,” I said.

  “Seventeen,” Lisa said. “He was eighteen. They were high school sweethearts.”

  “What’s this?” I pointed at the spot where the girl’s genitals should have been.

  “A locust.”

  “What? Like a grasshopper locust?”

  Lisa gave a nod.

  “And is this a cat?” I pointed to the chunk of meat between her left shoulder and his right thigh.

  “A cat’s head and tongue. We found the cat’s body in the weeds nearby.”

  “And this?” I pointed at the girl’s right hip.

  “A fishhook.”

  “Shit. He sank it into her flesh.” Like that was the worst of this girl’s problems. I could imagine having a fishhook sunk into my flesh and knew it would hurt like hell. The rest of it was too mortifying for my mind to comprehend.

  “He’s sick, Liv.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I said, studying the array of photos.

  Lisa finished her dinner and took her dish into the kitchen. “He’s what we call an organized murderer. Jill’s situation confirmed what I already knew. He’s probably a white male between the ages of twenty and thirty-five and of above-average intelligence; the first born, he was most likely subjected to inconsistent discipline as a child, had a father who worked in a stable job; this guy is very controlled, works in a professional capacity, and is probably married or living with a partner. Our perp has dramatic mood swings but keeps a tight rein on them. Evidence suggests he’s extremely controlled during the murders. And he was probably soaking up all of the news today like a sponge. Wouldn’t be surprised if he was one of the bystanders out there on the road watching Detective Brandt work the crime scene yesterday or at Chief Richardson’s press conference today.”

  “You got all that from these photos? Damn, you’re good.”

  “If I was good, I could give Streeter this creep’s name and we could bust the guy and go home,” Lisa remarked.

  “Anything new you learned from Jill’s murder that changed your profile from the Platteville murders?”

  “Well, I was thinking he might have a sexual neurosis of some sort, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “You mean he can’t perform?” I asked.

  “No, not really. People with one or more sexual neuroses often have normal sexual experiences. But at times they have unusual or abnormal fears or concerns that may or may not affect their performance. I suspect this guy is quite sexually competent.”

  “Did he rape Jill? Or the girl from Platteville?”

  She shook her head and I breathed, not realizing I had been holding my breath.

  “This guy is playing with us. He thinks he’s smarter than we are. Brilliant, actually. And he’s sure he won’t get caught. I’m afraid if we don’t get a line on him, the murders will become more frequent. And possibly more bizarre.”

  “Any clues?”

  “Not at this point. He’s smart enough not to leave any body fluids so that we can check DNA, no fingerprints, no boot prints, nothing. We were able to lift some tire treads at Horsetooth that will come in handy to link the murderer to the scene once we find him. Forensics are following that lead and trying to match them with the treads we lifted in Platteville.”

  She lay back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. I cleared the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen, making a plate for Agent Pierce and putting it in the refrigerator for later. Stir-fry was never better the second time around, particularly when it was made with shrimp. Satisfied that the kitchen was clean and having made sure there were fresh towels in Lisa’s bathroom, I turned my focus on straightening up my bedroom and bathroom. I had decided to give Agent Pierce my room and I’d sleep on the basement couch. I’d fallen asleep there a time or two, and it was comfortable enough. My treadmill, a television set, my shelves of books, and a three-quarter bath were down there, so I had everything a girl could need. I put fresh sheets on my bed and fresh towels in my bathroom, tidying the counter. I was a neat freak anyway, so surprise houseguests never ruffled me much. I threw some clothes in a duffle and slung it over my shoulder.

  I took the duffle downstairs and tossed it near the couch. I glanced around the room, and my eyes landed on a shelf full of my favorite classics. I pulled Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment off the shelf and flipped through some pages to refresh my memory on what the story was about. It came flooding back to me. The young college student who enacted in the real world his theory that a community would turn a blind eye to a crime if the murder victim was so abhorrent that they deemed they would be better off without that individual. Turned out that the young man killed a second person in order to conceal his identity as the murderer; the result was he suffered a self-induced illness that nearly killed him. The cause of his illness was his own remorse, guilt, isolation, and paranoia after the crimes.

  It was a tough read as I remembered it, but in the end the murderer does the right thing. He turns himself in to the authorities and does his time for the two crimes he committed. Rather anticlimactic.

  Why would Jill have been reading it? Was it a requirement for the independent study she was taking over the summer? Was she anticipating a need for reading it for a fall or a winter class and she wanted to get ahead because of her busy schedule once basketball practice began? Or was she reading it for fun? The paperback I had found in Jill’s locker at work appeared new and unopened save for the makeshift bookmarker, the folded letter. No cracked spine. No dog-eared pages or creases. Maybe she hadn’t started to read it yet. But why bring it to work with her? It’s not like anyone has time to read out at the mine. Not even on breaks. I would ask Allan and the other team leaders if any of them had ever seen Jill read on breaks or at lunchtime.

  Lisa was at the computer, waiting for a printout of her final
report profiling the Venus de Milo murderer. She was staring out the front windows as I topped the stairs.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The weapon. It’s the hardest part to figure out. And probably what’s keeping us from piecing this together.”

  “What about the weapon?”

  “We can’t figure out what instrument de Milo used on the victims. Forensics have been cataloging all the various tools they’ve tried over the past nine months, including every variety of knife and chainsaw they could find.” She rounded the desk and moved toward the coffee table.

  “Does it take that long for the FBI to figure out what makes a cut like that?”

  Lisa nodded. “Hundreds of cases, thousands of boxes of evidence, too much to do and too little time to do it in. Honestly, within a month they had exhausted their inventory of weapons and related cuts. The rest of the time is spent on dreaming up other possibilities not cataloged in our weapons inventory.”

  The close-up pictures from the Platteville case and Jill’s torso were side by side. If I didn’t think of it as Jill’s body, I’d be okay.

  “Look. See the regularity and single direction? On all three bodies. Identical.”

  The notching of tissue indeed looked identical on all three bodies. It reminded me of Yosemite Sam’s cowboy hat after the cartoon cannonball went through it. As if a giant finger had poked through Jill while she was impersonating the Pillsbury Doughboy.

  “Huh,” was all I could say. Very clever and efficient. I could see why it was bothersome. Something familiar began to tickle the far reaches of my mind; I’d seen that kind of evenness before, but where? My mind was getting fuzzy and the hour late.

  “Lisa, I’m bushed. Mind if I call it a night?”

  “No problem. You going into work in the morning?”

  “If you need me to. I don’t want to be a bother here while you and Agent Pierce are calling this home—”

  “Headquarters,” Lisa groaned through clenched teeth, miming strangling me as she did.

  “Okay, okay. I don’t want to be a pest while this is your headquarters.”

  “We don’t want to crowd you out either.”

  “Oh, I know. Listen, I’m sleeping downstairs so I can stay clear of your space. I put clean sheets in the master bedroom for Agent Pierce. He can stay there. I made a plate of dinner for him and covered it with blue Saran Wrap and put it in the refrigerator. Just have him nuke it in the microwave for a minute or two, but warn him that it probably won’t taste so great the second time around.”

  “Liv, you’re too much. You didn’t have to give up your bed.”

  I didn’t really want to hear what arrangements she’d prefer, and they could make whatever decisions they chose, which is why I opted for the basement. Away from it all.

  I ignored her and added, “Help yourself to anything in the fridge and whatever else you find in the cabinets. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  It took me all of five minutes to brush my teeth, put on my pajamas, and crawl onto the couch under the comforter. I’ve been accused of falling asleep before my head ever hits the pillow and tonight was certainly no exception. Maybe it was a defense mechanism learned while living among eight other siblings.

  I could have sworn I heard a noise at two o’clock in the morning and that I saw what I thought were two legs standing at my basement window. The windows in my basement are at ground level, allowing me in this instance to see just a pair of shoes and halfway up the shins. I blinked, rubbed my eyes, and looked again, only to see the silver light of the moon casting shadows on my neighbor’s yard. I must have been dreaming, but something good came of it later on, as it turned out.

  Those slivers of moonlight gave me a tether into the deep recesses of my mind, and I suddenly remembered where I had seen incisions like those on Jill’s torso before.

  I dreamed I was Velma, adorned in an unflattering turtleneck, knee-highs, pixie haircut, and glasses—the best birth control a girl could ever use—staring up at the ghost hanging from hooks on the ceiling, Scooby Doo and Shaggy by my side. I was one of those pesky kids who foiled the Swiss Cheese Specter’s million-dollar scheme, the Specter being Mr. Jenkins in a rubber mask.

  As to Velma’s other sidekicks, Daphne’s last name was Henry and Fred’s was Pierce.

  GENEVIEVE L. BERGEN.

  He had found her name on the Larimer County website, specifically the page that listed the owner, the purchase price, and the date of purchase and showed the property boundaries. Everything anyone wanted to know about a particular piece of property at any address in the county. They had made it so easy for him. What made it even better for him was that the local commerce directory allowed him to find out what Genevieve Bergen, aka Liv Bergen, did for a living. It was all right there, at his fingertips, in no time. All he had needed to do was log onto the library’s computer using a false identity and then he was surfing the Internet anonymously.

  Liv, he thought. How appropriate. At first he thought it was a typo. But then he realized Genevieve L. Bergen must be Genevieve Liv Bergen. To Liv, or not to Liv: that is the question.

  Liv Bergen had been the chairperson of the local chamber of commerce the year before and was division manager of a mining and mineral processing company north of Fort Collins.

  Small world, he thought after putting two and two together.

  Jill had worked at a mining company. How many mining companies could there possibly be in one area like this? He realized Liv Bergen must have been Jill’s boss. Interesting.

  But what connection did Awakening or William Tell have to Liv Bergen besides the dead Jill Brannigan? Why would the three of them be hanging out together sipping hot toddies and singing “Kumbaya”?

  Liv was the woman Jill had told him and the gang about that night back in April when she had first heard she’d landed a summer internship. Jill had been so excited. Her eyes had sparkled; her dimples had deepened. On reflection, it was the moment he had realized he was going to have her—one way or another.

  But sadly, she had refused him, rebuffed his advances. Who did she think she was? He could have any woman he wanted. Didn’t she know that? She should feel lucky that he had directed any attention her way. She was nothing more than a jock. A stupid one at that. She had said no, so he took control of the situation. And it had been wonderfully magical for him.

  Ah, Nutrition.

  He admitted to himself that he had made one mistake, however. He had written that letter, thinking Jill would see the error of her ways and apologize to him. He had poured his heart out to her, shared his deepest thoughts—something he had not done for his four other creations. He hadn’t found the letter. She didn’t have it with her, and it wasn’t in her car or in her dorm room. He had checked both places, naturally.

  Jill had told him she had thrown it away, along with the book, even after he had threatened to cut her while they were in his garage, demanding the truth or he’d inflict more pain than she could imagine. He’d had to sacrifice his neighbor’s cat to make his point, taking the nozzle from the back of his truck and showing Jill what he was capable of doing with it. Her Mona Lisa smile, the smile that belied her insistence that the letter and book were gone for good, had so infuriated him he had made quick work of her on that shoreline. It was better that way.

  It didn’t really matter if she had lied about disposing of the letter.

  So few people knew his real name, but he had shared it with his sweet Jill. He was almost positive she had not revealed it to anyone else. He had simply asked her not to, and she was a person of her word. He liked the simplicity in her approach to life. Why couldn’t all women be so uncomplicated, he thought. But why couldn’t she have been smart enough to see they were meant for each other? It was her fault Nutrition had been added to his gallery. It was all Jill’s fault.

  He enjoyed a double cheeseburger from the drive-through and chased it with a fistful of fries after returning to Genevieve L. Bergen’s house
at ten. Awakening’s rental car was still parked out front. William Tell’s Jeep was gone. He could see Awakening sitting at the desk in the living room, working at the computer. She was a vision: an ever-present calmness; kind, bright eyes like Jill’s; raven black hair. She truly was stunning. A bit on the lean side to be playing the role of Awakening, but she would do.

  No sign of the other woman he’d seen earlier. She must have been Genevieve Liv Bergen, he supposed, but he would need to confirm that.

  Around midnight, Awakening went to the back of the house, and he did not see her again. He was about to head home when headlights appeared down the street and headed his way. He ducked down as the headlights swept across his windshield. When the vehicle had passed, he sat up again in time to see William Tell emerge from his Jeep and step into the house. He didn’t use a key, so they had left the door unlocked for him. That will make things easy, he thought.

  He didn’t see Tell for a few minutes until he entered the living room from the left, carrying a plate of food. So, the kitchen was on the left, the bedrooms and bathrooms at the back of the house. A split-level, the front door and garage were midway between the living room—visible in the windows—and presumably the basement.

  William Tell walked to where Awakening had been sitting, picked up some papers from the desk, sat down in an armchair, and began to read. He ate and read for what seemed like fifteen or twenty minutes. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning now. He imagined Tell was reading a profile about him that Awakening had composed. He couldn’t afford to give them time to figure out much more.

  Finally, the SAC retreated to the back of the house after turning off all the lights. He was heading to bed too. The stalker quietly opened his door, thankful he had dismantled the overhead light last year, and climbed out of the truck, being careful not to let the door slam. He crossed the street, hopped the small fence, and walked around the blue house to find out which room William Tell was staying in. The light was on in a room at the back of the house on the southwest corner. Two lights, actually. A bedroom and a bathroom. He walked around the house twice, noting the second room in the northwest corner of the house. Probably the bedroom where Awakening, Bergen, or both women slept. He noted that the basement had two small windows on the downhill side of the building, to the west. He also noted the feel of the grass beneath his boots, realizing that Genevieve L. Bergen likely didn’t own a dog or was impeccably neat about it. No squishy mess. No odor from his shoes. She was making this so easy for him.