Blood Moon argi-9

by M. R. Sellars

  And now, here she was again.

  “So that’s what you were all nervous about?” I finally asked.

  “I told ya’ I wasn’t nervous. What I was, was pissed off about havin’ ta’ lie to you.”

  “That seems to have become a theme lately,” I agreed. “The lying thing I mean.”

  “Tell me about it,” he huffed. “It’s been givin’ me a friggin’ ulcer. But, like I said, you’re the one who blew this all out of proportion.”

  “You’re right,” I said with a nod. “Sorry… It’s been a bad couple of days. And then the whole thing with the FBI… I know that’s not much of an excuse, but it’s all I’ve got.”

  “Yeah, well I probably shoulda just blown off the orders and told ya’ anyway.”

  I pondered the situation for a moment then let out a bemused snort. “So your brass actually thought I was so shallow that I’d refuse to help because of Albright?”

  “Actually, no. She’s the one who thought you would say no.”

  “She knows I’m helping?” I could hear the incredulity woven through my own voice.

  “Yeah, she knows all right,” Ben told me as if he was having trouble believing his own words. “Believe it or not, as soon as her niece went missin’ she started demandin’ you be brought in to consult, even if Major Case had to arrest you ta’ make it happen.”

  “Not exactly subtle, is she?”

  “Listen, Row,” Ben continued. “You won’t have to deal with ‘er. After she threw that fit, the chief put ‘er on administrative leave.”

  “Like that’s going to stop her?” I replied.

  “Yeah, I know, but I’m tellin’ ya’ you won’t have to deal with ‘er. I’ll make sure of it.”

  I waved him off. “It doesn’t matter. You can tell your higher ups I’m not a complete ass. I’m not going to walk away from this just because of my history with Albright.”

  “Yeah, I told ‘em that already, but they wanted to play it safe.”

  “Well be sure to let them know that playing it safe almost did cause me to walk out.”

  “Oh yeah. Believe me, that’s right at the top of the list.”

  “And, do me another favor, okay?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Can we try remembering that we’re friends and stop with the tiptoeing around the truth? I think we’ve established that it’s not helping either of us.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, definitely. I don’t need the stomach problems.”

  “Good. Now that we have that settled why don’t we see if we can find out what’s keeping Doctor Sanders. I’m ready to get this over with…”

  CHAPTER 21:

  “How was lunch?” Ben asked the medical examiner when she finally arrived in the autopsy suite. The acerbic aura surrounding his words was anything but subtle.

  “A little rushed,” she replied, no less caustic in her tone.

  “Yeah, don’t ya’ just hate that?” my friend quipped.

  “How was your wait?” she returned her own verbal stab.

  “Long. And a bit chilly.”

  She nodded and shot him a wry grin. “Really? Don’t you just hate that?”

  “Havin’ a bad day, Doc?”

  “I wasn’t until about twenty minutes ago.”

  “Well then you’re already doin’ better’n me because mine started yesterday.”

  She ignored him and gave me a quick nod. “Mister Gant, Miz…ummm…O’Brien, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Felicity replied.

  “Doctor Sanders,” I said, returning the nod. “Sorry we interrupted your lunch.”

  “No need for you to apologize,” she replied with a quick smile. “Detective Storm, however, is a different story.” Making a half turn, she peered over the top of her glasses at Ben. “You know, we’re still waiting on the labs. Neither of the postmortems is finished yet, so I don’t know exactly what it is you want from me. I already gave you the preliminary findings.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he told her. “I was thinkin’ maybe you could just fill us in on the high points so far to get Row here up ta’ speed, and we’ll take it from there.”

  “Which victim would you like to start with?”

  “Either one is fine. You pick.”

  She shook her head then repositioned her glasses while shuffling a pair of file folders. Flipping open the first one, she turned and started walking toward the far wall. As we followed her across the room she began to recite, “Foster, Emily. Caucasian female, approximately twenty-three years of age. Height one hundred sixty-five centimeters, weight fifty-nine kilograms. As you already know, the apparent mode of death was desanguination. In layman’s terms, she bled to death.”

  The doctor stopped at the bank of stainless steel doors and quietly perused the file in silence, lifting a page, then another, with her free hand. After a moment she closed the folder and tucked it under her arm before quickly donning a pair of latex gloves and inspecting the tags on the doors. Finding the one she sought, she reached out and yanked the shiny rectangle open.

  Before continuing, Doctor Sanders turned to me with a questioning look. “Since you are here, Mister Gant, I assume you intend to do whatever it is you do by way of…”

  As her voice trailed off uncertainly, Ben offered, “Just call it Twilight Zone, Doc.”

  “I was thinking more along the line of unconventional forensics,” she replied.

  I gave her a nod. “I think that’s pretty much why they asked me here.”

  Doctor Sanders was no stranger to my facility. She had witnessed me channeling victims on more than one occasion-in this very autopsy suite, in fact. While she was far more inclined to stick with tangible scientific data as opposed to the supernatural riddles that often came of such episodes, she also wasn’t one to completely dismiss me out of hand.

  “Will you need to touch the body?” she asked.

  “That’s hard to say,” I shrugged. “But, yes, it could happen.”

  She reached into the pocket of her lab coat and withdrew another set of gloves. “Then you’d better put these on.”

  “I might need skin to skin contact for what I do.”

  “Even so, I’m going to have to insist that you put them on.”

  Rather than argue the point, I accepted the gloves and complied, stretching the latex over my chilled skin with much less expert dexterity than she had earlier displayed.

  We stood to the side in a loose semicircle as Doctor Sanders took hold of the handle that was formed into the end of the metal drawer. Before she could start to pull, however, Felicity spoke up.

  “Aye, just a second.” Without offering a single word of explanation, my wife reached into her jacket then withdrew a handful of the salt packets Ben had given her, which she then stuffed into my pocket. Once she was finished with that task, she took my left hand into hers and stripped off the latex glove. “I’ll watch after this one, then,” she told the doctor as she interlaced her fingers with mine and tightly locked her grasp. Then she nodded and said, “Go ahead.”

  “Whoa…” Ben interrupted. “Just a sec… That’s just the salt. Don’tcha need to dance around and say a poem or something?”

  My wife shook her head. “No.”

  “Why not?” he pressed. “Isn’t that what ya’ did last time? I know it’s been a few years but, remember? Didn’t you do that thing where…”

  My wife cut him off with her sharp appeal. “Let me worry about the WitchCraft, then. Okay?”

  “Jeez, yeah, okay,” he surrendered. “I’m just makin’ sure.”

  “And your concern is appreciated,” I told him.

  “Aye, it is,” Felicity added, her tone somewhat softer. “But this situation is different. Trust me.”

  “Yeah, okay. You’re the Witches,” he said with a shrug. “Go ahead, Doc.”

  A few seconds later, the full suspension drawer came outward with a metallic rattle as the doctor held tight and slowly stepped backward. Underscoring the louder noise was
the soft ball-bearing hiss of the rollers beneath. The combination of the sharp and dull sounds joined together in a disharmonious clatter that tried its best to glance from the tile walls but was quickly swallowed by the chilled air as if it had never existed.

  Emily Foster’s corpse lay naked and prone in the shallow, tray-like drawer before us. Her skin was pallid in a way I had never recalled seeing in the past. The hooked loops of the sutures that stitched her torso shut formed stark dotted lines along the oversized Y incision. Subcutaneous ink outlined a stylized black swan tattoo on her upper arm that stood out like a surreal cartoon against the ashen color of her cold flesh. Dark hair framed her expressionless face, supplying yet another harsh contrast for the overall comparison.

  Corpses were always pale. I’d seen more than my share of them, so I knew that. Still, there was something peculiar about Emily Foster’s ghostly complexion. After a long moment of staring, it dawned on me that she was missing the normal markings of lividity I had grown accustomed to seeing on dead bodies-the dark postmortem “stains” left where blood would begin to pool in response to gravity soon after the heart stopped beating. Of course, since she was all but devoid of blood, it only stood to reason they wouldn’t be prevalent.

  “You okay, Row?” Ben asked.

  “Yeah…” I replied. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  Felicity gripped my hand tighter, and I gave her a quick glance. Whether or not I succeeded in reassuring her I couldn’t really tell.

  “Okay, Doc. Give us the rundown,” Ben instructed.

  Doctor Sanders stepped around to the far side of the drawer then drew her index finger along an impression in the dead woman’s ultra-pale flesh. “As you can see there are obvious ligature marks around her ankles.” The medical examiner traced her finger farther down the top of the foot, continuing her recitation. “They bear across the lower ankle and upper foot at an inward slant, continuing into the arch. The depth and angle of the indentations would seem to indicate significant additional stress being applied to whatever was used as a binding. There are also both antemortem and postmortem abrasions as you would expect.”

  An eerie sort of calm had settled over me immediately after the body had been rolled into view. While I still had the makings of a headache taking random shots at the back of my skull, they were nowhere near the intensity to which I had become used to coping with at times like this. Over the years, excruciating pain and deafening screams had become the norms associated with my curse, especially whenever in close proximity to a victim. But, for some reason, such was not the case today.

  I certainly didn’t want for either of those plagues to befall me again. However, the fact that they were strangely AWOL had me more than just a bit unsettled. I actually began to wonder if I had finally been granted my wish to be rid of this bane. But, if that was the case, even I had to admit the universe had certainly picked an inopportune time to smile upon me.

  Doctor Sanders continued, moving up along the body as she spoke. “Examination showed no evidence of vaginal or anal tearing, and the rape kit came back negative. In fact there was no evidence whatsoever of sexual activity either consensual or non-consensual.”

  “That’s because this wasn’t about sex,” I blurted.

  “You gettin’ somethin’?” Ben asked, perking up at my sudden pronouncement.

  “I’m not really sure.”

  “Whaddaya mean you’re not sure? Either ya’ are or ya’ aren’t.”

  “You know better than that,” I explained. “Things don’t seem to be happening for me like they usually do, but I just know this wasn’t about sex.”

  “Do ya’ know, like hinky hocus-pocus know, or are ya’ just speculatin’?”

  “All I can say is that my gut feeling is the killer had no sexual interest in the victims.”

  “Well, for the record the Feebs disagree with ya’ on that.” Ben pulled out his small notebook and thumbed through the pages. “They think our bad guy has…yeah, here it is… Haematophilia, which means blood gets him off.”

  “Well, I think they’re wrong,” I said.

  “Ya’know, just because there’s no evidence of rape doesn’t mean the guy didn’t…you know…”

  “Masturbate?” Doctor Sanders offered to fill in the expanding void where Ben had gone quiet.

  “Yeah, that,” he returned.

  “Why are you always so squeamish about sexual acts?” she asked.

  “I’m not… It just ain’t polite ta’ talk about it in mixed company.”

  “I’m a doctor.”

  “Yeah, you’re female too. Like I said, mixed company.”

  “Come on, Storm… You can be just plain crass at times. Even when women are around you’ll toss the word ‘fuck’ out there like it’s from a grade school vocabulary test, but you’re getting antsy when it comes to talking about sex?”

  “That’s different.”

  She shook her head. “You’re an enigma.”

  “What can I say?”

  “Well, I still say the FBI is wrong,” I announced, trying to bring the conversation back on track. “This wasn’t about sex, including autoeroticism.”

  Ben looked over at me and said, “Okay.” Unfortunately, he didn’t sound as if he was convinced.

  I cast a sideways glance in his direction. “Why do I get the feeling you’re just humoring me?”

  “Sorry, Row.” He shrugged again then shook his head. “Don’t mean it that way… I guess I’m just used to a bit more of a dramatic presentation from ya’.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “Well, since I got ya’ both here how ‘bout a second opinion?” my friend asked, aiming his gaze at my wife. “Whadda you think, Firehair? The killer sexually motivated or no?”

  “I’m concentrating on something else at the moment,” she replied, her voice flat and distant.

  “What?”

  “In your words, keeping my sorry ass safe,” I answered for her. “She’s grounding me.”

  “Well see there?” Ben made a sweeping gesture at the two of us. “Maybe that’s the problem with your ghost radar or whatever. She’s doin’ too good a job and shortin’ you out or somethin’.”

  “I didn’t know there was a problem.”

  “Well, ya’know… You don’t seem to be goin’ ta’ la-la land and all…”

  “So you’re saying that unless I go into a trance or try to swallow my own tongue I’m not credible?”

  “I’m not sayin’ that,” he grumbled. “It’s just… Well, you know what I’m talkin’ about…”

  “Unfortunately, yes, I do,” I replied. “Would it help if I told you I have a headache?”

  “Maybe. Do ya’?”

  “Yes.”

  “But is it…”

  “The Twilight Zone kind? Yes.”

  “See… Yeah… That does help a bit.”

  “Good, I’m glad.” I tried hard to keep the sarcasm out of my voice, but I knew some of it had to have leaked through.

  “If the two of you are finished, shall I continue?” Doctor Sanders asked.

  “Yes, I’m sorry,” I replied.

  “Superficial ligature marks on the wrists indicate her hands were bound at some point prior to death,” she began her recitation anew. “There are several healed scars on both arms that appear to have been inflicted by something small and sharp, such as a razor blade, but the most recent of them is at least several months old. There is, however, a more recent needle puncture in the left arm. From the level of bruising, it occurred probably one to two days before her death. We’re testing the surrounding adipose tissue for any trace of drugs which may have been injected.”

  Taking a pair of steps toward the end of the drawer, she rolled Emily Foster’s head to the side and held it in place while she used the index finger of her other hand to point out a ragged trauma on her neck. “Now, as I said earlier, the mode of death was desanguination. Everything points to her having bled out from this wound on her neck.” She moved h
er finger around to indicate an anomaly straddling the gash. “Notice the indentations here and here. We were able to take an impression, and even though it is only partial, what we have is definitely a bite wound. The profile appears to be human, although due to the degree of tearing, we weren’t able to get much more than the upper incisors and the right cuspid. However, the depth of the impression showed that the cuspid is markedly elongated.”

  “You mean long like a vampire fang?” Ben asked.

  “Yes, like a fang,” she replied. “But I really wouldn’t say ‘vampire’ since there is no such thing.”

  “Yeah, I know, Doc,” he said. “What I mean is like the fruitloops who think they’re vampires.”

  “Well, I suppose,” she assented with a nod. “Since the bite is in fact human, it’s possible the subject might have a removable prosthesis, or even a cosmetic dental veneer. But, I’m afraid that unless you find someone we can match up with a dental record it may be moot. Unfortunately, no saliva was detected, even deep into the wound itself, so we aren’t getting any DNA to run against the database.

  “Also of note, the lack of bruising would seem to indicate that the bite was made postmortem. We’re checking for free histamine levels in the surrounding tissues to verify that.” Doctor Sanders looked up and pointed across the room with her free hand. “Storm, do me a favor. There’s a magnifying glass on the table over there, I need it.”

  Ben strode over to the table and searched for a moment before returning with the instrument.

  Doctor Sanders paused and adjusted the woman’s head to bring more light onto the wound then carefully held a flap of sagging flesh in place with her finger. Holding the lens over the area, she began speaking again, “We’ve actually excised a sample here, but if you look closely you can see that the bite rips through the external jugular vein, which is the point where she bled out.”