The Soul Catcher

by Alex Kava

  Tully knew this case would be different. Just the idea that Cunningham would use the words please and fucked in the same day, let alone the same hour, was not a good sign.

  CHAPTER 4

  Maggie accepted the cool, damp towel from Stan and avoided his eyes. With only a quick glance, she could see his concern. He had to be concerned. Judging from the towel’s softness, she could tell it had come from Stan’s own privately laundered stash, unlike the institutional stiff ones that smelled like Clorox. The man had a cleaning obsession, a fetish that seemed contradictory to his profession; a profession that included a weekly, if not daily, dose of blood and body parts. She didn’t question his kindness, however, and without a single word, took the towel and rested her face in its cool, plush texture, waiting for the nausea to pass.

  She hadn’t thrown up at the sight of a dead body since her initiation into the Behavioral Science Unit. She still remembered her first crime scene: spaghetti streaks of blood on the walls of a hot, fly-infested double-wide trailer. The blood’s owner had been decapitated and hanging by a dislocated ankle from a hook in the ceiling like a butchered chicken left to jerk and drain out, which explained the blood-streaked walls. Since then, she had seen comparable, if not worse—body parts in take-out containers and mutilated little boys. But one thing she had never seen, one thing she had never had to do, was look down into a body bag soaked with the blood, cerebral spinal fluid and the brain matter of a friend.

  “Cunningham should have told you,” Stan said, now watching her from across the room, keeping his distance as if her condition might be contagious.

  “I’m sure he didn’t know. He and Agent Tully were just leaving for the scene when he called me.”

  “Well, he’ll certainly understand you not assisting me.” He sounded relieved—no, pleased—with the prospect of not having her shadow him all morning. Maggie smiled into the towel. Good ol’ Stan was back to his normal self.

  “I can have a couple autopsy reports ready for you by noon.” He was washing his hands again, as if preparing the damp towel for her had somehow contaminated his precious hands.

  The urge to escape was overwhelming. Her empty but churning stomach was reason enough to do just that. Yet there was something that nagged at her. She remembered an early morning less than a year ago in a Kansas City hotel room. Special Agent Richard Delaney had been concerned about her mental stability, so much so that he had risked their friendship to make sure she was safe. After almost five months of him and Agent Preston Turner playing her bodyguards, protecting her from a serial killer named Albert Stucky, it had come down to that early morning confrontation, Delaney pitting his stubbornness against hers all because he wanted to protect her.

  However, at the time, she had refused to see it as protection. She had refused to simply see it as his attempt to, once again, play the role of her surrogate big brother. No, at the time, she had been mad as hell at him. In fact, that was the last time she had spoken to him. Now here he lay in a black nylon body bag, unable to accept her apology for being so pigheaded. Perhaps the least she could do was to make certain he received the respect he deserved. Nausea or not, she owed him that.

  “I’ll be okay,” she said.

  Stan glanced at her over his shoulder as he prepared his shiny instruments for the first boy’s autopsy. “Of course you will be.”

  “No, I mean I’m staying.”

  This time he scowled at her over his protective goggles, and she knew she had made the right decision. Now, if only her stomach would agree.

  “Did they find the spent cartridge?” she asked as she put on a fresh pair of gloves.

  “Yes. It’s over on the counter in one of the evidence bags. Looks like a high-powered rifle. I haven’t taken a close look yet.”

  “So we know cause of death beyond a doubt?”

  “Oh, you betcha. No need for a second shot.”

  “And there’s no mistaking the entrance wound or the exit wound?”

  “No. I imagine it won’t be difficult to figure out.”

  “Good. Then we won’t need to cut him. We can make our report from an external examination.”

  This time Stan stopped and turned to stare at her, then said, “Margaret, I hope you’re not suggesting that I stop short of doing a full autopsy?”

  “No, I’m not suggesting that.”

  He relaxed and picked up his instruments before she added, “I’m not suggesting it, Stan. I’m insisting you don’t do a full autopsy. And believe me, you don’t want to fight me on this one.”

  She ignored his glare and unzipped the rest of Agent Delaney’s body bag, praying her knees would hold her up. She needed to think of his wife, Karen, who had always hated Delaney being an FBI agent almost as much as Maggie’s soon-to-be ex-husband, Greg, hated her being one. It was time to think of Karen and the two little girls who would grow up without a daddy. If Maggie could do nothing else, she’d make certain they didn’t have to see him mutilated any more than necessary.

  The thought brought back memories of Maggie’s own father, the image of him lying in the huge mahogany casket, wearing a brown suit Maggie had never seen him in before. And his hair—it had been all wrong—combed in a way he would never have worn it. The mortician had tried to paint over the burned flesh and salvage what pieces of skin were still there, but it wasn’t enough. As a twelve-year-old girl, Maggie had been horrified by the sight and nauseated by the smell of some sort of perfume that couldn’t mask that overpowering odor of ashes and burned flesh. That smell. There was nothing close nor worse than the smell of burned flesh. God! She could smell it now. And the priest’s words hadn’t helped: You are dust and unto dust you shall return, ashes to ashes.

  That smell, those words and the sight of her father’s body had haunted her childhood dreams for weeks as she tried to remember what he looked like before he lay in that casket, before those images of him turned to dust in her memories.

  She remembered how terribly frightened she had been seeing him like that. She remembered the crinkle of plastic under his clothes, his mummy-wrapped hands tucked down at his sides. She remembered being concerned about the blisters on his cheek.

  “Did it hurt, Daddy?” she had whispered to him.

  She had waited until her mother and the others weren’t looking. Then Maggie had gathered all of her child-size strength and courage and reached her small hand over the edge of the smooth, shiny wood and the satin bedding. With her fingertips she had brushed her father’s hair back off his forehead, trying to ignore the plastic feel of his skin and that hideous Frankenstein scar at his scalp. But despite her fear, she had to rearrange his hair. She had to put it back to the way he always liked to wear it, to the way she remembered it. She needed her last image of him to be one she recognized. It was a small, silly thing, but it had made her feel better.

  Now, looking down at Delaney’s peaceful gray face, Maggie knew she needed to do whatever she could, so that two more little girls wouldn’t be horrified to look at their daddy’s face one last time.

  CHAPTER 5

  Suffolk County, Massachusetts

  Eric Pratt stared at the two men, wondering which of them would be the one to kill him. They were seated facing him, so close their knees brushed against his. So close he could see the older man’s jaw muscles clench every time he stopped chewing. Spearmint. It was definitely spearmint gum he was grinding his teeth into.

  Neither looked like Satan. They had introduced themselves as Tully and Cunningham. Eric had been able to hear that much through the fog. Both men looked clean-cut—close-cropped hair, no dirt beneath their fingernails. The older one even wore nerdy wire-rimmed glasses. No, they looked nothing like Eric had expected Satan to look. And just like the others now crawling around the cabin floor and combing the woods outside, these guys wore the navy-blue windbreakers with the yellow letters, FBI.

  The younger one had on a blue tie, pulled loose, his shirt collar unbuttoned. The other wore a red tie, cinched tight at the
buttoned collar of a brilliant white shirt. Red, white and blue, with those government letters emblazoned across their backs. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Of course Satan would come disguised, wrapped in symbolic colors. Father was right. Yes, of course, he was always right. Why had he doubted Father? He should have obeyed, not doubted, not taken his chances with the enemy. What a fool he had been.

  Eric scratched at the lice still digging into his scalp, digging deeper and deeper. Could Satan’s soldiers hear the scratching sounds? Or perhaps they were the ones making the imaginary lice dig into his skull. Satan had powers, after all. Incredible powers he could transmit through his soldiers. Powers that Eric knew could easily inflict pain without so much as a touch.

  The one called Tully was saying something to him, lips moving, eyes burrowing into Eric’s, but Eric had turned down the volume hours ago. Or was it days ago? He couldn’t remember how much time had passed. He couldn’t remember how long he had been in this cabin, how long he had sat in this straight-backed chair with his wrists handcuffed and his feet in shackles, waiting for the inevitable torture to begin. He had no sense of time, but he did know the exact moment his system had begun to shut down. The exact second his mind had gone numb. It was the instant that David dropped to the floor, the thud of his body forcing Eric to risk opening his eyes. That was when he found himself staring directly into David’s eyes, their faces only inches apart.

  Eric had seen his friend’s mouth open. Thought he heard a faint whisper, three words, no more. Maybe it had been Eric’s imagination, because David’s eyes were already empty when the words “He tricked us” left his lips. He must have heard his friend wrong. Satan hadn’t tricked them at all. They had tricked him, instead. Hadn’t they?

  Suddenly, the men were scrambling to their feet. Eric braced himself as best he could, closed fists, shoulders hunched, head down. Only there were no blows, no bullets, no wounds inflicted of any kind. And their voices melted together, the hysteria in them breaking through Eric’s self-imposed barrier.

  “We need to get out of the cabin. Now.”

  Eric twisted around in the chair, just as one of the men pulled him to his feet and started to shove him toward the door. He saw another man, with some weird contraption mounted on top of his head, come up out of the floorboards. Of course, they had found the hidden arsenal. Father would be disappointed. They had needed that stockpile of weapons to fight Satan. Their mission had failed before they could deliver them back to their home camp. Yes, Father would be very disappointed. They had let everyone down. Maybe more lives would be lost, because all the weapons that had taken months to amass would now be confiscated and put under Satan’s control. Precious lives might be lost because they had failed their mission. How could Father protect any of them without these weapons?

  The men shoved and pulled at him, hurrying out the cabin door and down into the woods. Eric didn’t understand. What were they running from? He tried to listen, tried to hear. He wanted to know what could possibly frighten Satan’s soldiers.

  They gathered around the man with the strange headgear, who brought out a metal box with blinking lights and odd wires. Eric had no idea what it was, but it sounded like the man had found it down with the weapons.

  “There’s an arsenal underneath large enough to blow this place to kingdom come.”

  Eric couldn’t help but smile and immediately felt a jab to his kidneys. He wanted to tell Mr. Tully, the owner of the elbow in his back, that he wasn’t smiling about them being blown up, but rather at the idea that any of them believed they would ever be allowed into the Kingdom of God.

  No one else noticed his smile. They focused on the dark-haired man with the crazy gogglelike contraption now pushed up on top of his head, reminding Eric of some life-size insect.

  “Tell us something we don’t already know,” one of the men challenged.

  “Okay. How about this. The entire cabin is wired,” the insect man told them.

  “Shit!”

  “It gets even better. This is only a secondary switch.” He showed them the metal box he held. “The real detonator’s off-site.” Then he pointed to the blinking red button and flipped a switch. The light shut off. Within seconds it snapped back on, blinking again like a pulsing red eye.

  The men turned and twisted, craning their necks and looking around them. Some of them had their guns drawn. Even Eric’s head pivoted, his eyes suddenly clear and squinting into the shadows of the woods. He didn’t understand. He wondered if David had known about the metal box.

  “Where is it?” demanded the big guy with no neck, the one everyone seemed to treat as being in charge, the only one dressed in a navy blazer instead of a windbreaker. “Where’s the goddamn detonator?”

  It took Eric a minute to realize the man was asking him. He met his eyes and stared like he had been taught, looking directly into the black pupils and not blinking, not flinching, not letting the enemy win even one word.

  “Hold on a minute,” the one named Cunningham said. “Why wouldn’t they want the detonator inside the cabin, so they could control when and how to blow it up? We already know they were willing to take their own lives. So why not do it by blowing themselves and the arsenal up?”

  “Maybe they still intend to blow us up.” And there was more shuffling, more worried heads pivoting.

  Eric wanted to tell them Father would never blow up the cabin. He couldn’t sacrifice the weapons. Father needed them to fight, to continue to fight. Instead, he simply transferred his stare to Cunningham, who not only held his gaze but bore into him as if his powers could wrench out the truth with only a look. A knot in Eric’s stomach twisted, but he didn’t blink. He couldn’t show weakness.

  “No, if they wanted to blow us up, we’d already be dead,” Cunningham continued without looking away. “I think the real targets are already dead. I think their leader just wanted to make sure they did the right thing.”

  Eric listened. It was a trick. Satan was testing him. Seeing if he would flinch. Father wanted to save them from being taken alive and tortured. This was simply the beginning of that torture, and Satan’s soldier, this Cunningham, knew his job well. His eyes wouldn’t let Eric go, but he wouldn’t blink. He couldn’t look away. He had to ignore the thunder of his heart in his ears, and the knot tightening in his gut.

  “The detonator,” Cunningham said without a single blink of his own eyes, “may have been a backup plan. If they didn’t swallow their death pills, he was prepared to blow them to pieces. Some leader you have, kid.”

  Eric wouldn’t take the bait. Father would never do such a thing. They had voluntarily given up their lives. No one had forced them. Eric simply hadn’t been strong enough to join them. He was weak. He was a coward. For a moment he had dared to lose faith. He had not been a brave, loyal warrior like the others, but he wouldn’t show weakness now. He wouldn’t give in.

  Then suddenly, Eric remembered David’s last words. “He tricked us.” Eric thought David had meant Satan. But what if he meant…? It wasn’t possible. Father had only wanted to save them from being tortured. Hadn’t he? Father wouldn’t trick them. Would he?

  Cunningham waited, watching and catching Eric as he blinked. That’s when he said, “I wonder if your precious leader knows you’re still alive? Do you suppose he’ll come to your rescue, just like he did last night?”

  But Eric was no longer sure of anything as he stared at the metal box flashing its strange lights, red and green, stop and go, life and death, heaven and hell. Maybe David and the others were not only the brave ones; now Eric wondered if perhaps they were also the lucky ones.

  CHAPTER 6

  SATURDAY

  November 23

  Arlington National Cemetery

  Maggie O’Dell gripped the lapels of her jacket into a fist, bracing herself for another gust of wind. She regretted leaving her trench coat in the car. She’d ripped it off in the church, blaming the stupid coat for her feeling of suffocation. Now, here in the cemetery, a
mid the black-clad mourners and stone tombstones, she wished she had something, anything, from which she could draw warmth.

  She stood back and watched the group huddle together, surrounding the family under the canopy, intent on protecting them from the wind, as though compensating for the mistakes that had brought them all here today. She recognized many of them in their standard dark suits and their trained solemn faces. Except in the middle of this graveyard, even those bulges under their jackets couldn’t prevent them from looking vulnerable, stripped by the wind of their government-issue, straight-backed posture.

  Watching from the fringes, Maggie was grateful for her colleagues’ protective instincts. Grateful they prevented her from seeing the faces of Karen and the two little girls who would grow up without their daddy. She didn’t want to witness any more of their grief, their pain; a pain so palpable it threatened to demolish years of protective layers she had carefully constructed to hide and stifle her own grief, her own pain. Standing back here, she hoped to stay safe.

  Despite the crisp autumn gusts attacking her bare legs and snapping at her skirt, her palms were sweaty. Her knees wavered. Some invisible force knocked at her heart. Jesus! What the hell was wrong with her? Ever since she opened that body bag and saw Delaney’s lifeless face, she had been a wreck of nerves, conjuring up ghosts from the past—images and words better left buried. She sucked in deep breaths, despite the cold air stinging her lungs. This sting, this discomfort, was preferable to the sting the memories could bring.

  After twenty-one years, it annoyed her that funerals could still reduce her to that twelve-year-old girl. Without will or warning, she remembered it all as though it had happened yesterday. She could see her father’s casket lowered into the ground. She could feel her mother tugging at her arm, demanding that Maggie toss a handful of dirt on top of the casket’s shiny surface. And now, in a matter of minutes, she knew the lone bugler’s version of taps would be enough to knot her stomach.