The Soul Catcher

by Alex Kava

  He sat back and waited. He knew he could count on the exotic concoction’s special effects, its healing magic, its hidden strength. Already he was using almost twice the original dosage. But right now, none of that mattered. Right now, all he wanted to do was sit quietly and enjoy the psychedelic light show that always occurred afterward. Yes. After he accessed the strength and the rush of adrenaline, then came the light show. It flashed behind his eyes and caused the zinging inside his head. The flashes looked like tiny little angels shaped like stars, flitting from one side of the room to the other. It was absolutely beautiful.

  He grasped the book and caressed the smooth leather. The book. How could he have done any of this without it? It had inspired the heat, the passion, the anger, the need, the justification. And it would provide the validation, as well.

  He took deep breaths and closed his eyes, enjoying the warm, calm sweep through him. Yes, now he was prepared for the next step.

  CHAPTER 40

  The moon peeked over the District skyline just as Maggie pulled her Toyota into the empty parking lot. She could see the yellow crime scene tape, flapping in the wind, blocking off the entrance to the viaduct. Several officers paced and waited, but she couldn’t see Racine. A mobile crime scene lab passed by as Maggie finished the last bite of her drive-thru dinner, a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder and fries. She got out of the car and brushed the excess salt from her knit shirt, then exchanged her suit jacket for her navy FBI windbreaker.

  She dug under the front seat and pulled out a pair of rubber boots, low-tops that she slipped over her leather shoes. Out of habit, she started to reach for her forensic kit, too, then stopped. The medical examiner’s station wagon was already parked alongside the concrete wall, next to the opening of the viaduct. No sense in ticking off Stan any more than she already had.

  However, as Maggie walked toward the scene, she wasn’t surprised to see Wayne Prashard emerging from the viaduct entrance instead of Stan. Not only had Stan probably had his share of after-hours call-ins for one week, but he certainly wouldn’t make the trip himself for some homeless woman. Maggie wasn’t quite sure why Racine was so certain she should be here, either. She hoped it wasn’t some ploy. Who knew what Racine could be up to.

  Prashard nodded at Maggie as he opened the back of the wagon. “She won’t let me touch a goddamn thing until you take a look.”

  “Good to see you, too, Wayne.”

  “Sorry.” He surrendered a smile and his normal bulldog face creased into friendly lines. “It’s just that sometimes she can be such a pain in the ass, you know what I mean?”

  Yes, she knew exactly what he meant, but she only smiled. Prashard wasn’t finished, though. “She never used to be that way.”

  “Really?” Maggie couldn’t imagine Racine any other way.

  “All she cares about now is making sure everyone knows she’s in charge. But before she made detective she was actually nice,” he said while he brought out a body bag from the back of the wagon. “Maybe a little too nice, if you know what I mean.” He glanced at Maggie and winked.

  She ignored his invitation to join in trashing the detective. She might not like Racine, but she had never resorted to idle gossip about other law enforcement officers. She wasn’t about to start now. And it did look as if Prashard had a story or two he wanted to share. Instead, she turned to leave. “I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I didn’t know Racine before she made detective.” And she left it at that.

  As she continued toward the entrance, she checked the area, aware of the noisy traffic overhead, flashes of headlights between six-foot guardrails. The smell of diesel emanated from the bus terminal on the other side of the small empty parking lot where engines were left running and several mechanics climbed in and around the Greyhound buses. About a half-dozen broken-down buses lined the chain-link fence, blocking a direct view of the viaduct’s entrance.

  Except for where the mechanics worked, the place was badly lit. It was dark and noisy, but deserted, and Maggie wondered why anyone would come here voluntarily. Except that the arch of concrete—more a tunnel than an arch—would provide shelter from the wind, if not some warmth. She could understand why it might be an enticing spot for someone looking to set up her cardboard home. Also an enticing spot for someone looking for a victim.

  “Oh, good! You’re here.” Racine appeared and held up a section of crime scene tape for Maggie to crawl under.

  Maggie could smell the body as soon as she walked into the tunnel. Racine led the way, carefully stepping around two crime lab technicians, one crawling the grid pattern with a flashlight, brush and plastic bags while the other set up several spotlights.

  At the other opening, leaning against the cold concrete wall, sat a naked woman, stark and gray in the sharp glare of a spotlight. Her eyes were wide open, the corners already filled with white clusters of maggot larvae. Her head lolled to one side, revealing several ligature marks across her neck. Her dirty-and-smudged face was bloated, her mouth duct-taped shut. Her hands were folded into her lap, the wrists facing forward as if to show off the welts from where handcuffs had restrained her. Maggie noticed the insides of her elbows were clean, no track marks from needles. She hadn’t been lured here by the promise of drugs. There was no cardboard box, no shopping cart, no other personal belongings, other than the carefully folded rags stacked about a yard away.

  “What do you think?”

  She realized Racine was watching her and waiting while Maggie examined the scene, careful where she stepped and letting her eyes collect the evidence.

  “The posing of the body looks very similar.”

  “Looks fucking identical,” Racine said. “Although I get the idea we won’t find any ID stuffed down her throat.”

  “She certainly doesn’t fit the victimology of our guy,” Maggie said, squatting in front of the body to get a better look. She was staring directly into the corpse’s empty eyes. The woman had been dead for more than thirty-six hours, the rigor mortis already leaving the body pliable again. Maggie could tell this by gently lifting one hand and carefully letting it fall back into place.

  “I wish the hell you wouldn’t touch the stiff,” Prashard said from the entrance, making his way inside, staying close to the concrete wall.

  “But she’s not stiff anymore. She’s been dead for a while. You have any estimates?” Maggie asked without getting up.

  “I’m guessing forty-eight hours, but it’s a major guess since I haven’t been able to touch a fucking thing yet.” He shot a look at Racine, but she wasn’t paying attention. Instead, she was still watching Maggie.

  “Check this out,” Racine said, bringing out a penlight and shining it at the dirt floor of the tunnel.

  Maggie got up and went to Racine’s side. About five feet in front of the body was what looked like a circular indent in the dirt, although it and the area around it looked scuffed on purpose as if in an attempt to erase it and possibly other marks like it.

  “Tully’s signature,” Racine said. “I don’t know what the hell it is, but tell me that’s not the exact weird imprint we found at the monument yesterday morning.”

  Maggie looked around the tunnel again. The scene looked too similar to be a coincidence. “Forty-eight hours ago would put time of death at Saturday night. Why in the world would he target and kill a senator’s daughter and then some random homeless woman?”

  “Maybe the guy’s just really fucked up?” Racine suggested.

  “No. Both scenes are much too organized.” Maggie looked to Prashard. “Wayne, would you mind checking the victim’s mouth?”

  “Out here?”

  “Yes. It would be helpful and speed things up if we can check to see if anything is left inside her mouth.”

  “I don’t know.” Prashard shrugged and scratched his head as though Maggie was asking him to do the autopsy out in the field. “It’s highly unusual.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Prashard,” Racine yelled at him. “Just do it.”


  To Maggie’s stunned surprise, Prashard started getting out latex gloves and a pair of forceps from his bag. Then he took position over the body, bending stiffly at the waist instead of getting down on his knees.

  Maggie glanced at Racine, who seemed neither pleased nor angry with the assistant medical examiner. Instead, the detective came in closer, crossed her arms over her chest and waited, pointing the penlight, ready to peek inside. Suddenly moonlight streamed into the exit, just above the arch, and illuminating the woman’s whole face, making her eyes glitter.

  “Jesus!” Racine said. “That’s pretty freaky.” She glanced back at Maggie, and Maggie tried to remember when there had been a full moon, or if it was still to come. And did it mean anything?

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Prashard asked, ignoring Racine and the sudden moonlight as he continued to peel back the gray duct tape, inch by inch, taking care to not lift away any skin. Maggie grabbed a plastic evidence bag from Prashard’s case and held it open for him to put the tape in.

  “Should be a capsule,” Racine answered. “Check the inside of her cheeks.”

  “You mean like poison?”

  “Just check, Prashard. Jesus!” The detective seemed a bit unnerved and impatient.

  Prashard finally opened the woman’s mouth, but before he could insert a gloved finger, quarters came spilling out.

  “What the hell?” Racine shone the penlight, so that even standing over Racine’s shoulder, Maggie could see quite clearly. The woman’s mouth looked like a black, decaying slot machine filled with shiny coins, spilling out like she’d just hit the jackpot.

  CHAPTER 41

  TUESDAY

  November 26

  Boston, Massachusetts

  From his corner suite at the Ritz-Carlton, Ben Garrison could see the Boston Common in one direction and the Charles River in the other. The lush suite was a long-overdue reward to himself and hopefully a good-luck charm for more good things to come. Not that he was superstitious, but he did believe that attitude could be a powerful tool. There was no harm in a few rewards and props now and then to boost that attitude. It made all the crap he had to deal with worthwhile; crap like crank phone calls and cockroaches. Small stuff compared to what he had dealt with in the past.

  He remembered several years ago living out of a leaky one-man tent in a smelly, rat-infested warehouse in Kampala, Uganda. It had taken him months to learn Swahili and gain the locals’ trust. But it paid off. In no time, he had enough explicit photographs to break the story about a mad scientist luring homeless people from the streets of Kampala for his radical experiments.

  Ben still had several of those photos tacked up on the walls of his darkroom. In order to feed her family of five kids, one woman had allowed the so-called scientist to remove her perfectly healthy breast, leaving a scar that looked like the asshole had chopped it off with a machete. An old man had sold the use of his right ear, now mutilated beyond repair, for a carton of cigarettes.

  Ben had chosen a slow-speed black-and-white film to bring out the textures and details with natural side lighting. When he developed the prints, he had used high-contrast-grade paper to accentuate the dramatic effect, making the blacks dense and silky and the whites blindingly bright. Through his magic, he had managed to transform those hideous scars into art.

  He was a genius when it came to catching hopelessness, that flicker of despair that, if he waited long enough, would always reveal itself in his subjects’ eyes. All it took was patience. Yes, he was truly a master at capturing on film the whole spectrum of emotions, from terror to jealousy to fear and evil. After all, the eyes were the window to the soul, and Ben knew he could one day capture the image of the soul on film. Patience.

  At the time, both Newsweek and Time had been working on the mad scientist story, but neither of them had photos, not ones like Ben’s. His reward to himself after selling those photos for a nice chunk of change had been a week on a yacht with some waitress whose name he couldn’t remember. He did, however, still remember the cute rose tattoo on her tight little ass. Even had a photo of her on his darkroom wall, or rather a photo of her tattoo.

  That was back in the days when kinky sex gave him a rush and kept him satisfied for a while. But there wasn’t anything that could equal the rush of these past several weeks.

  Of course, the best rush of all would be to see the Reverend fucking Everett’s smug face when he finally got a visit from the FBI. Surely, even Racine and her bunch of Keystone Kops would make the connection and soon. Although if and when the feebies attempted to raid Everett’s precious compound, there probably wouldn’t be much left to investigate. If Everett truly believed he was in danger of being arrested, Ben knew the good reverend’s blind little sheep would be prepared for a suicide drill, like during the raid on that shitty little cabin on the Neponset River.

  He had heard about the cyanide capsules from an ATF agent who had been on the scene. Couple more drinks and the guy probably would have given Ben more details. But mentioning the capsules had been enough. Besides, he had seen them firsthand when he spent two days inside Everett’s little compound, that concrete barricade that looked more like a prison than the utopia Everett professed it to be.

  He’d also discovered that Everett had enough explosives to blow a nice-size hole in the Appalachian Mountains. The crazy thing was, Everett didn’t have the explosives for some terrorist attack. Just like the stockpile at that cabin in the woods—no complex, intricate conspiracy takeover. No, not at all. Instead, it was all for protection, all to protect his fucking fortress if anyone dared try to come in and take away his flock. It would be sort of a cross between Jim Jones’s purple Kool-Aid and Timothy McVeigh’s fertilizer bomb. What a mess the feebies would have to clean up. And boy, would they have some explaining to do. Probably make Waco look like a cakewalk.

  That’s if the FBI even made it past all of Everett’s booby traps. The asshole had the entire woods filled with Viet Cong-like surprises. Ben couldn’t help wondering if his making shingle-nail pipe bombs and chemical-burn grass rags were a few of the reasons the guy had gotten kicked out of the military. Oh, but for good measure, the thoughtful reverend had posted what he probably believed to be disclaimer signs outside the area. Signs that said stuff like Survivors Will Be Prosecuted and Step Beyond This Point Only at Your Own Risk.

  It was when Ben had seen the signs that he’d made the decision to gain entrance as a pathetic lost soul rather than as a renegade journalist sneaking through the woods. Weeks before he began his pathetic lost soul’s charade, he had muddied himself up like the Three Hills tribe of Mozambique had shown him, covering every inch of his body with a paste mixture, surprised that he could still remember its basic recipe. Even Everett’s ex-World Wrestling Federation bodyguards hadn’t seen him sliding through the tall grass and blending in with the tree bark. He had learned a lot that visit. The main thing had been that no one could sneak in—or out, for that matter—without getting his fucking head or leg blown off.

  Ben checked his wristwatch. He had plenty of time. From what he had overheard at the District rally Saturday night, Everett’s boys wouldn’t be ready yet for a few hours. He decided to call down to room service. Maybe even check out the whirlpool bath. He’d enjoy himself, reward himself for a short time, then get back to work.

  CHAPTER 42

  John F. Kennedy Federal Building

  Boston, Massachusetts

  Gwen Patterson watched Agent Tully wrestle their suitcases out of the taxi cab’s trunk while the driver stood beside him. He was directing Tully, just as he had when he picked them up at the airport in Boston, pointing with a gnarled right hand, his excuse for not lifting the cases himself. Tully didn’t seem to mind. Instead, he simply asked for a receipt while he dug in his trench coat’s pockets, pulling out a wad and separating dollar bills from other crumpled receipts and a couple of McDonald’s napkins.

  Gwen waited, her patience wearing thin. She wanted to snap open her handbag and pay
the fare herself. It would be quicker. It was bad enough she was wasting two days, volunteering her services to the bureau and to Kyle Cunningham. Why was it that her colleagues wrote books and garnered interviews with Matt Laurer and Katie Couric? She wrote a book and what did she get? An interview with an adolescent killer.

  She reached for her overnight case, but Tully snatched it away.

  “No, I’ve got it,” he insisted, tucking it under his arm while he wrapped the strap of her laptop computer’s case around his other shoulder and grabbed his duffel bag.

  Rather than argue with him, she led the way up the steps, letting him pass her at the last stretch so he could shuffle the bags and still open the heavy door. She wondered if he was overcompensating after Maggie had pointed out that perhaps the two of them couldn’t do this trip without being at each other’s throats the entire time. Whatever his reason for all the chivalry, Tully had been nothing but polite since they boarded their flight for Boston.

  Maggie had assured Gwen time and again that Tully was one of the good guys, a smart, decent agent who wanted to do the right thing. Maggie always added that he was simply a little green, having spent much of his short time with the bureau behind a desk in Cleveland. But that his instincts and his motives were genuine. Yet, there was still something about the tall, lanky agent that rubbed Gwen the wrong way.

  What she did know was that his polite, Midwestern manner grated on her. Perhaps he seemed too good to be real. Too honest. Too much of a Boy Scout. The kind of guy who would never drive over the speed limit or have one too many drinks. The kind of guy who went out of his way to open doors for women, but couldn’t remember to keep his dollar bills in a money clip or take time to shine his shoes. Maybe that was why she insisted on ruffling his feathers, pushing his buttons. Maybe she wanted to expose that calm, polite, naive Boy Scout’s facade, rip it just a bit and see what was underneath, discover what he was really made of. Had too many years as a psychologist made her cynical?