The Soul Catcher

by Alex Kava

  Several weeks ago, she’d insisted on accompanying the plumber to fix his leaky faucet. The old woman’s birdlike head pivoted around, trying to take in the African masks on his wall, the bronze fertility goddesses that adorned his bookcase and the other exotic trinkets he had amassed during his travels. That was when the money was flowing in, and there wasn’t a photo he could shoot that someone at Newsweek or Time or National Geographic wouldn’t pay top dollar for. He was the hottest new commodity to hit the photojournalism world. Now he was barely thirty and everyone seemed to consider him a has-been. Well, he’d show them all.

  “I’m actually pretty busy, Mrs. Fowler. I’m working.” He kept his voice pleasant, crossed his arms to stifle his irritation and waited, hoping she could see his impatience through her trifocals.

  “I was checking on Mrs. Stanislov,” she repeated, waving a skeletal arm toward the door at the end of the hall. “She’s been under the weather all week. There’s that flu bug going around, you know.”

  If she was expecting some show of sympathy, they’d be here all night. That was above and beyond his ass-kissing ability, cheap apartment or not. He shifted his weight and waited. His mind wandered back to the print he had left on the kitchen counter. Over thirty exposures to finally capture that one image, that one—

  “Mr. Garrison?”

  Her small pinched face reminded him of the wrinkled kiwi fruit in the back of his fridge.

  “Yes, Mrs. Fowler? I really must get back to my work.”

  She stared at him with eyes magnified three times their size. Her thin lips pursed, wrinkling her skin beyond what he thought possible. Spoiled kiwi. He reminded himself to throw them out.

  “I wondered if it might be important. That you might want to know.”

  “What are you talking about?” His politeness had but one level, and she was pushing it past its limits.

  This time she backed away, and he knew his tone must have frightened her. She simply pointed at the package he hadn’t noticed sitting next to his door. Before he stooped to pick it up, Mrs. Fowler’s tiny bird feet shuffled down the stairs.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Fowler,” he called after her, smiling when he realized he sounded like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Not that she would notice. The old bat probably hadn’t even heard him.

  The package was lightweight and wrapped in ordinary brown paper. Ben flipped it around. Nothing rattled, and there were no labels, only his name scrawled in black marker. Sometimes the photo lab down the street delivered supplies for him, but he couldn’t remember ordering any.

  He set it on the kitchen counter, grabbed a paring knife and started cutting the wrap. When he opened the lid of the box, he noticed the packing material’s strange texture—it looked like brown packing peanuts. He didn’t give it a second thought and stuck his hand into the box, feeling for what was buried inside.

  The packing material began to move.

  Or was it the exhaustion and too many fumes playing tricks on him?

  In seconds the brown peanuts came to life. Shit! The entire contents started crawling out over the sides of the box. Several scurried up his arm. Ben swatted and slapped at them, knocking the box off the counter and releasing hundreds of cockroaches, racing and skittering across his living room floor.

  CHAPTER 26

  “Anything found that could have been used as a ligature? And what about handcuffs?” Maggie showed Tully and Racine the girl’s wrists, but looked to Tully for answers. The bruises and marks on the wrists were undeniably made by handcuffs. She watched Tully’s face, pretending to wait for the answer but really trying to see if he was okay.

  This time Tully didn’t glance at Racine, but Maggie did, and she could tell the detective wanted to answer, but stopped herself. Tully started pulling out his eyeglasses and pieces of paper from somewhere beneath the gown, tangling his hands in the process. Typical Tully, Maggie noted. He put the glasses on and began sorting through his slips of paper, an odd assortment that included some sort of pamphlet, a folded envelope, the back of a store receipt and a cocktail napkin.

  “No handcuffs,” he finally answered, and continued to search his scraps of paper.

  She wished he would relax. Tully was usually the laid-back one. She was the quick-tempered, hotheaded one, the loose cannon. He was the steady, let’s-think-before-we-leap type. It unnerved her how uptight he seemed to be. Something was wrong. Something more than his discomfort with witnessing an autopsy.

  “You know, Tully,” she said, “they make these really cool contraptions with sheets of paper all tacked together. They’re called notebooks, and you can even get them small enough to fit into your pocket.”

  Tully frowned at her over his glasses and went back to his notes.

  “Very funny. My system works just fine.”

  “Of course, it does. As long as you don’t blow your nose.”

  Racine laughed.

  “Humpf.” Stan Wenhoff didn’t have time for a sense of humor. He motioned to Maggie for help, wanting to hoist the body onto its side for a quick search of any other lacerations.

  “Why is her bottom so red?” Racine asked. “The rest of her seems to have this bluish tint, but her ass is all red. Is that weird or what?” Racine attempted a nervous laugh.

  Stan sighed, exhaling what sounded like a day’s worth of sighs. He was not the most patient medical examiner when it came to explanations. Maggie got the impression he would post No Visitors signs if allowed. They eased the body back. And Stan turned around to peel off his gloves and begin his hand-washing ritual again.

  “It’s called livor mortis, or the bruising of death,” Maggie said when it was obvious Stan wasn’t going to answer.

  She watched and waited for him to stop her. Instead, he nodded for her to continue. “When the heart stops pumping, the blood stops circulating. All the red cells are literally pulled by the force of gravity to the lowest area, usually the area of the body that’s in contact with the ground. The blood cells start breaking down and separating into the muscle tissue. After about two hours, the entire area looks like this, sort of one big reddish bruise. That is, if the body hasn’t been moved.”

  “Wow!” Maggie could feel Racine staring at her. “Does that mean she died sitting up?”

  Maggie hadn’t thought about it before, but Racine was probably right. Why would the killer have positioned the girl’s body while she was still alive? Without asking, she looked to Stan for him to confirm or deny Racine’s observation. As the silence stretched out, he finally realized they were waiting for him to respond. He turned around, tugging on a fresh pair of gloves.

  “My early guesstimate would be, yes. I’m curious, though. She has almost a pinkish-red tint to her. I’ll need to have toxicology check for any poisons.”

  “Poisons?” Racine attempted another of her nervous laughs. “Stan, this kid was obviously strangled.”

  “Really, Detective? You believe that to be obvious, do you?”

  “Well, maybe not entirely obvious.”

  Stan took this opportunity to choose a scalpel from the tray of instruments, and Racine’s eyes grew wide. Maggie knew they had reached that moment Racine had been dreading since she arrived. Stan started the Y incision.

  “Wait.” Maggie stopped him, but it wasn’t to save Racine. There was something she wanted to check, now curious. If the girl had still been alive when sitting up, maybe strangulation wasn’t the cause of death. “Do you mind if we take a look at the ligature marks on her neck first?”

  “Fine. Let’s take a look at the ligature marks on her neck first.” Wenhoff sighed again and set the scalpel aside, purposely clanking it against the other metal instruments.

  Maggie knew he was doing his best to restrain his impatience, though his pudgy face betrayed him with its unnatural shade of red. Sweat beads filled his receding hairline. He was used to doing things his own way and his audiences keeping their mouths shut. That he humored her at all, Maggie regarded as Stan’s ultimate show of respec
t. Now he stepped aside, giving her permission to proceed.

  “So there was nothing left at the scene that could have been used as a ligature?” Maggie asked Tully while she searched the countertops.

  This time she saw him check with Racine, and she was the one to answer. “Nothing. The girl wasn’t even wearing panty hose. The purse strap was found intact and clean. Whatever he used, he took with him.”

  Maggie found what she was looking for and grabbed the tape dispenser from a desk in the corner. She peeled off her gloves so she could handle the tape, then ripped off a piece, holding each end carefully.

  “Stan, could you tilt her head, so I can get a better look at her neck?”

  Stan handled the girl’s head as if it belonged to a mannequin. Rigor mortis was fully established and had stiffened the muscles. After about twenty-four more hours, the muscles would become pliable again, but at the moment, Stan had to twist the head in what looked like an irreverent way, but was, in fact, a necessity.

  There were several ligature marks, some overlapping, some deeper than the others. The girl’s neck, which probably hadn’t contained a single age line, now looked like a road map in 3-D. In addition to the tracks were massive bruises, where the killer must have decided to use his hands, as well.

  “Why do you suppose he had such a tough time getting the job done?” Maggie said out loud, not really expecting an answer.

  “Maybe she put up a hell of a fight,” Racine suggested.

  The girl was small, barely sixty-two inches, according to Stan’s measurements. Maggie doubted that she could have managed much of a fight.

  “Maybe he didn’t want to get the job done right away.” Tully surprised her with his hushed remark. She could feel him close by, looking over her shoulder.

  “You mean he just wanted her unconscious?” Racine asked.

  Maggie tried not to get distracted and pressed the transparent tape against the girl’s skin, pushing it into one of the ligature grooves.

  “He might simply have gotten off on watching her pass out,” Tully said, exactly what Maggie had been thinking. “It could have been part of some autoerotic asphyxiation.”

  “That could explain her dying while sitting up,” Maggie said. “Maybe her position was simply a part of his sick game.”

  “What are you doing with the tape?” Racine asked her.

  Ah, so the good detective would finally admit to not knowing something. Maggie lifted the tape while Stan held a slide up for her to attach it to. When it was safely secure, Maggie raised it up to the light.

  “Depending on what the killer used, we can sometimes pick up fibers left in the tracks.”

  “That’s if he used a rope or some kind of clothing,” Tully added.

  “Or any sort of fabric or nylon. Doesn’t look like any fibers here. But there is something odd. Looks like glitter.”

  “Glitter?” Stan was suddenly interested. She handed him the slide and went back to the girl’s throat.

  “He must have used something strong and thin.” Maggie pulled on a fresh pair of gloves. “Probably a cord. Maybe something like a clothesline.” She examined the sides of the neck. “Doesn’t appear to be a knot.”

  “Does that mean anything?” Tully asked.

  “It could help us if he’s done this before. We might be able to match up something already on VICAP. Sometimes killers use the same kind of knot each time. That was one of the identifying factors of the Boston Strangler. He used the same knot on all thirteen of his victims.”

  “O’Dell, you sure know your trivia about serial killers,” Racine jabbed.

  Maggie knew she meant it as an innocent joke, but snapped back, “It wouldn’t hurt you to know some. You can bet the killers know.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them.

  “Maybe I need to come to Quantico and take a couple of your classes.”

  Oh, wonderful, Maggie thought. That was all she needed—to have Julia Racine as a student. Or was that what Racine was hoping for? Did the detective have aspirations of being an FBI agent? Maggie shoved the thought aside and concentrated on the girl’s throat.

  She ran an index finger over the deep, red scars. As she did this, she noticed a bump. Not just a bump, but a swollen area in the soft underside of the girl’s throat. “Wait a minute. Stan, did you check her mouth yet?”

  “Not yet. But we’ll need to get dental prints if there was no ID.”

  “I think there’s something in her throat.”

  She hesitated. Both men and Racine hovered over the body and over Maggie, waiting and watching. As soon as Maggie pried open the mouth, she could smell it, a sweet almond scent. Again, she hesitated and glanced up at Stan.

  “Do you smell that?”

  He sniffed the air. Maggie knew not everyone was capable of smelling the scent, actually about fifty percent of the population. It was Tully who finally answered, “Cyanide?”

  Maggie used an index finger to scoop inside both cheeks and removed a partially dissolved capsule. Stan held up an open plastic bag.

  “What’s with cyanide these days?” Stan said, then noticed the warning look Maggie shot him.

  “What kind of crazy son of a bitch gives his victim a cyanide pill after he’s strangled her? Or is that the cause of death?” Racine sounded impatient. She didn’t seem to notice the exchange between Stan and Maggie, who had both recognized the red-and-white capsule. Enough of it was intact to see that the capsule bore the same brand name they had extracted from the five boys in the cabin just last weekend.

  “I haven’t gotten that far yet,” Stan finally answered.

  He was growing impatient, too, but for the moment he was keeping what he knew quiet. Evidently he had read Maggie’s urgent look accurately. If there was a connection between this girl and those boys, Racine would know soon enough. For the moment, it was one of the few things they had managed to keep from the media, and Maggie wanted it to remain that way.

  “Her mouth was taped shut,” Stan continued. “I bagged the duct tape.”

  “He probably stuck the pill into her mouth and taped it shut while she was unconscious,” Tully said, trying to explain the partially dissolved capsule. The girl’s saliva glands would have still needed to be working for the capsule to have started dissolving.

  Maggie glanced at Tully and could see that he had recognized the capsule, too, and had guessed what was going on. So Racine was the only one in the dark. Not a bad game plan. Maggie refused to feel an ounce of guilt over keeping this from the detective, especially after their last case together.

  “Seems like overkill,” Racine said.

  “Or insurance.” Stan was playing along.

  “I hate to interrupt your brainstorming, everyone,” Maggie said. “But there’s something else in here. Stan, could you hand me those forceps?”

  She opened the woman’s mouth as wide as the rigored jaws allowed, then squinted as she pinched onto an object that was lodged halfway down the girl’s throat. What she extracted was covered with blood, folded and crinkled, but still recognizable.

  “I think I just found her ID,” Maggie told them, holding up what looked like a mangled driver’s license.

  CHAPTER 27

  Tully sipped his Coke, grateful for the break. Wenhoff had taken the seventeen-year-old’s driver’s license and fingerprints upstairs to the lab. But Tully knew they wouldn’t find any priors or runaway reports on Virginia Brier. From the bikini wax and the girl’s mid-November tan lines, Tully knew Virginia was not the typical high-risk victim. She wasn’t a prostitute or some throwaway or a homeless street kid. He guessed she came from a good home, a middle-to upper-class family. Somewhere a father and mother were still waiting for her to come home from last night or going crazy because it was too early to file a missing person’s report. It reminded him of waiting up for Emma last night. She had been only twenty minutes late, but what if…

  “Hey, Tully?”

  He realized O’Dell was staring at him aga
in with a look of concern.

  “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired. Stayed up too late last night.”

  “Oh, really? Hot date?” Racine hoisted herself up onto an empty countertop, her long legs allowing her to do it in one smooth motion.

  “My daughter and I stayed up watching Rear Window.”

  “Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly? I love that movie. I guess I didn’t realize you were married, Tully.”

  “Divorced.”

  “Oh, okay.” The detective smiled at him as if she was glad. Most people automatically mumbled some sort of apology, which he didn’t really understand, either.

  He glanced over at O’Dell, who was pretending to be occupied with some evidence bags instead of paying attention to Racine’s flirting. Or at least, he thought Racine was flirting with him. He’d never been good at it himself or even good at detecting it, for that matter. At least O’Dell was trying to behave herself with Racine, as if being nice to the detective would make up for them keeping her in the dark about the cyanide capsule. He wasn’t sure he agreed that they should be withholding information. This was Racine’s case, after all. Not theirs. They were here only to assist and offer consultation.

  Tully still wondered why Cunningham and BSU had even been called in on this case. Who had made that call and what did they know? Had someone already suggested a connection between this girl and the five young men from the cabin raid? And if so, who was it and how did they know? Evidently, it wasn’t anyone at the District PD, because Racine seemed clueless.

  His stomach still felt queasy, though the Coke was helping. He was fine as long as he concentrated on the case and not the fact that the dead girl could just as easily have been Emma. He found himself wondering what had made this girl different. Why had the killer chosen her?

  “Okay, you two,” Racine said. “Tell me what you know.”