Straw Man

by Patrick Logan

  “He’s been here for almost a week.” The ME pointed toward the row of lockers at the back of the room. “He’s been stored in there up until a few hours ago. I was going to get to him before you brought this in.” The woman sounded annoyed and inconvenienced.

  Another similarity between the ME and Lisa Fairchild.

  Gee, sorry for interrupting your workflow by asking for some help with this heinous crime. I’ll tell the psychopath responsible to be more considerate next time.

  “See how gray his skin is?” Dr. Nordmeyer continued. “How pale? That’ll happen naturally with time and speed up following any sort of refrigeration. Gravity will also cause blood to pool at the bottom in a process called lividity, which usually starts within a few hours of death.” Drake cocked his head and saw dark blue-purple swirls extending from the cadaver’s back to his sides. “So, to answer your question, no, I don’t think that these bodies were dug up. As for being fresh? Well, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but bodies don’t tend to just go ‘missing’. I document everything and everyone who comes through here and I have all other MEs across the state do the same.”

  Drake’s headache had started to return.

  “Besides,” Dr. Nordmeyer said, throwing the sheet back over the corpse and returning to the mannequin. “I’m almost positive that these bodies were never in any coroner’s office or morgue in New York or elsewhere.”

  “Why’s that?” Drake asked, trying to keep the tremor from his voice.

  Dr. Nordmeyer looked at him then, staring deep into his eyes when she answered.

  “Because I’m pretty sure that these skins were removed while the women were still alive.”

  Chapter 14

  “Work backward from when we arrived, Dunbar,” Screech suggested as he sipped his coffee. Dunbar pulled his chair up to the computer and began rewinding the security footage obtained from The Royal Art Gallery. There were nearly a dozen cameras inside the building, as well as three outside the gallery, and the detective arranged half of these in a grid pattern on his monitor.

  “You betcha.”

  Screech, who had been late to the party, and turned away even before entering the gallery, took a moment to familiarize himself with the interior of the building. After he’d seen one image, however, he felt as if he’d seen them all. High ceilings, expensive-looking paintings on the walls, floors so clean that they perfectly reflected all the light from the chandeliers shining down on them. Soon, Screech’s thoughts turned more to the man behind the computer than the information on it: Detective Stephen Dunbar. While they shared the same given name, their similarities stopped there. What really concerned Screech was the fact that Dunbar was so willingly teaming up with Drake and the rest of DSLH.

  Following the near disaster that was the unauthorized sting operation to capture Tobin Tomlin, Dunbar had, in no uncertain terms, made it clear that his friendly relationship with Drake had reached its expiration date. This came as no surprise to anyone, least of all Screech.

  Whenever someone got close to Drake, he would do everything and anything in his power to push them away.

  And yet, here they were, Dunbar and Screech, Drake and Yasiv, holding hands and singing kumbaya as they were once again on the hunt for a sadistic murderer.

  Screech took another sip of his coffee, rolling the dark liquid on his tongue before swallowing. It was burnt and acrid, but for someone reason he took great pleasure in the act.

  He slurped more coffee.

  “Easy with the ASMR, would you?” Dunbar said over his shoulder.

  “Mukbang,” Screech corrected.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, whatever it’s called, just stop slurping in my ear.”

  “Okay, okay.” Screech set the Styrofoam cup down on the desk and nodded toward the monitor. “This is when Drake arrived?”

  Dunbar spun back around.

  “Yeah,” he said, disdain hanging on his tongue like the sour coffee on Screech’s.

  The camera in the upper right corner showed Drake hustling across the rear parking lot before being stopped by an officer. Screech let this play out for a few seconds before shaking his head.

  “You know what? Go back further… to before the exhibit was even open.”

  Watching Drake in the gallery would be a waste of time; if there was something to be found after the man had arrived on the scene, he would have already found it.

  Dunbar’s fingers returned to the keyboard and the footage started to run in reverse.

  Even though Screech hadn’t entered the gallery, Dunbar had apprised him of the major players. And it didn’t take long for him to identify Norm and Lisa Fairchild. He watched the woman approach the thirteenth mannequin, watched her reach out and touch it. Even though there was no audio, he knew that she’d screamed. The video didn’t capture much of the mannequin itself; truthfully, if it hadn’t been for Lisa Fairchild’s reaction, Screech doubted that he’d be able to pick it out among the others. Because he knew what it was, however, Screech felt his skin crawl.

  Like the others, his initial reaction was one of hopeful desperation, that this was just a morbid prank. But seeing the woman’s visceral reaction cast doubts on this assumption.

  Screech watched Lisa move in reverse, making her way toward her husband and then out of sight down the hall. They went all the way back to when the first guests noticed the mannequin and bolted, creating a rift of chaos that Norm Fairchild did an admirable job of diffusing. Their relationship seemed odd to Screech; Lisa showed the man no signs of affection—if anything, she seemed disgusted by him—while Norm practically doted on her. And yet, it was clear from their posture alone that Norm was the one who grew up in this environment, the one with the eight-figure bank account. Had Lisa been ten—no, fifteen years younger, and more attractive, their relationship would have made perfect sense. But as it stood, it was confusing.

  “Some of the guests left,” Screech remarked, pointing toward the camera that was aimed at the front doors.

  “Yep,” Dunbar confirmed, not sounding at all concerned. “We’ll find out who they are. All we have to do is compare the guest list to those who were still there after Drake detained them.”

  Screech smirked. Nobody made friends like the ignominious Damien Drake.

  “Keep going back.”

  They watched the guests’ arrival, greeted by Lisa and Norm, then, before that, the waitstaff. The latter were treated with a considerably less cheery disposition, which was almost to be expected. The image stalled with Lisa pointing at some sort of checklist, her eyes locked on the staff.

  “Further.”

  Dunbar shook his head.

  “Can’t—this is the first frame.”

  “What do you mean, the first frame? I thought—”

  “I downloaded all footage from the past seven days.”

  “Well, you made a mistake then, you—”

  Dunbar grunted and Screech picked his coffee up. It was cold now, but he drank it anyway.

  “Sorry… but that doesn’t make sense. This should all be hooked up to the cloud. Shit, even five and dimes have enough storage to last—what? More than a day, at least.”

  Another grunt, but this one was accompanied by an actual sentence. Screech had to remind himself that even though Dunbar was now a detective, like him, he’d earned his chops with computers.

  Maybe they had more in common than just their names, after all.

  “I got this from the cloud. This was all the video footage from the past week.”

  “Maybe it got mislabeled or something?”

  Instead of answering, Dunbar minimized the video feeds and brought up a directory tree. He cycled through several folders then popped open a video file labeled from eight days prior. It was a different exhibit and the time stamp in the corner matched the date on the file. Dunbar repeated this for two other dates that also checked out.

  “No mislabeling here.”

  Screech chewed
the inside of his cheek. Clearly, Dunbar was on this case because he had been told to be on this case.

  He’d been told to listen to Drake.

  And Dunbar was none too happy about it.

  Screech sighed, then said, “Maybe the gallery has local backup in addition to the cloud.”

  “Maybe.”

  That was it.

  “For fuck’s sake, Dunbar. I want to be here—” he checked his phone, “—at one-thirty in the morning on a bullshit job that won’t pay enough to cover the electrical bill as much as you do. But, fuck, we’re here, aren’t we?”

  Dunbar glared at Screech, his hands going to the armrests as he prepared to push himself to his feet.

  Screech stepped back, giving the man the space he needed.

  “Look, let’s just hope that this is a fucked-up joke, and that we can go both home and get some sleep soon.”

  This diffused the situation.

  “But it’s not,” Dunbar remarked, remaining seated for the time being. “If it was, Drake would have sent us home already.”

  Screech exhaled loudly.

  “Fucking Drake.”

  “Fucking Drake,” Dunbar confirmed.

  At last, some common ground. Dunbar got up but instead of instigating something, he stepped by Screech and pulled out his cell phone.

  “I’ll check to see if there are local backups.”

  Screech nodded and took up his familiar spot behind the computer. He re-watched some of the video footage as he waited, paying close attention to those who either saw or came near the thirteenth mannequin. Their reactions, varied as they were, didn’t ring any alarm bells. Even when Lisa was giving her opening speech, everyone seemed rapt. Screech figured that it would be here that someone who was out to get her, the person behind the sabotage, would show their true colors, be unable to hide the disgust on their face.

  But that didn’t seem to be the case. Every one of the plastic guests smiled like the grinning mannequins that they were about to observe in all their glory.

  The only person behaving strangely was Lisa herself. After her speech, the woman led the guests to the display and then… disappeared. If it were anyone else, Screech might have thought she was shy or lacked self-confidence. But not Lisa—not Lisa Fairchild. Even though he’d only seen a few minutes of footage of the woman and had never met her in person, Screech thought he knew who she was.

  Or what she was.

  “Where did you go?” he mumbled, switching between cameras. Norm led the guests through the individual displays after Lisa’s speech, while she slunk away. He brought up other cameras and eventually found her. Moments after the opening, she was speaking with one of the waiters who was holding a tray full of empty champagne glasses.

  She said something that made the man’s expression change—he became serious—and then she left. The waiter stood in the middle of the foyer for just under a minute before he started to move again, traveling in the same direction as Lisa.

  “What the fuck?”

  As he started to cycle between the cameras again, Dunbar returned.

  “No dice, Screech. There are no hard copies; everything is in the cloud.”

  “Was.”

  “Yeah, was in the cloud, I guess.”

  Screech rolled his chair away from the computer.

  “Fuckin’ hate to say it, but Drake was right.”

  Dunbar’s brow knitted.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” Screech indicated the computer monitor. “For a practical joke, they went all out. They knew where the cameras were, and they knew how to delete the footage.”

  “Yeah, and they also knew how to make one hell of a disgusting Halloween costume.”

  Screech shook his head and brought his coffee cup to his lips, then cursed when he found it empty. They were going to be here all night.

  “Fucking Drake,” he grumbled, tossing the empty cup into the trash.

  Chapter 15

  “Alive?” Drake said, his eyes locked on the skins that Dr. Nordmeyer continued to disassemble.

  “I wouldn’t joke about something like this,” the ME shot back. “You can tell by the lack of coagulation in the small capillaries that blood was still being pumped to the outer dermis when the skin was removed, indicating that either the victims were alive or very, very recently deceased when this happened.”

  Drake made a face and looked away. Even though Dr. Nordmeyer’s revelation had been unduly technical, a defense mechanism on her part, no doubt, he’d understood enough.

  “Jesus,” Sergeant Yasiv said with a shudder.

  Hanna said, “What kind of animal would do this?”

  Dr. Nordmeyer carefully unwound the sutures that ran the circumference of the neck.

  “Someone with a fair degree of skill,” she replied.

  “Like a doctor?” Drake asked, collecting himself. Yasiv shot him a look, but he deflected it with a snarl.

  It’s not Beckett. Don’t even think of suggesting that Beckett was behind this.

  Dr. Nordmeyer hesitated.

  “Most likely. Someone with experience, anyway.”

  Drake’s thoughts moved from Beckett to Dr. Alex Cratom, the vet who had performed his fair share of botched surgeries. The same man whom Drake had “convinced” to fund the reconstruction of Patty’s burned down SPCA shelter.

  Then he scolded himself for jumping to such an unfounded conclusion. Dr. Cratom was an asshole but he was no killer. Drake had shackled him to a chair and questioned him, looked deep into the man’s eyes. He was a wannabe alpha, only exploiting those weaker than himself, but just as quick to tuck his micropenis into his own asshole the second he was challenged by a bigger dog.

  “Anything else he can tell us about the skins themselves?” Drake asked, trying to focus his thoughts.

  “At least three different women, no scars, no moles, no tattoos. Not sure if this was done intentionally to slow down identification or not.”

  “Then what’s that?” Hanna asked, elbowing her way between both Yasiv and Drake. She used her index finger to lift part of the skin from the lower back. Dr. Nordmeyer immediately intervened, substituting Hanna’s finger with the blunt end of the scalpel.

  It was faint, but Drake could just make out a crosshatch pattern, the center of which was a perfect two-by-two-inch diamond. Dr. Nordmeyer made a sound that reminded Drake of a mouse sneezing, before completely blocking their view to get a better look.

  “I… I don’t know.” She almost sounded angry.

  “Branding?” Hanna suggested.

  “Definitely not. It looks more like an indentation of some sort. Mild bruising.”

  The woman straightened so quickly that the crown of her head almost smashed into Drake’s chin. He stepped back and Dr. Nordmeyer, oblivious to the fact that she’d nearly rearranged his smile, retreated to her equipment tray. Drake squinted and cocked his head, but his unobstructed view of the pattern was short-lived.

  Dr. Nordmeyer returned with a chunky DSLR camera in hand.

  “Lights.” Nobody moved. “Can someone please get the lights.”

  Drake looked to Hanna, who frowned and glanced at Yasiv. The sergeant’s upper lip curled but he walked over and switched off the main lights. Dr. Nordmeyer proceeded to turn off the overhead spotlight then brought the camera to her face. The room wasn’t completely dark but bathed in a bluish glow from emergency lighting spread throughout the room. Still, when the flash on Dr. Nordmeyer’s camera ignited it was bright enough for them all to squint and cover their eyes. To Drake, it felt like being assaulted by an icepick to the retinas.

  “Lights.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Yasiv grumbled under his breath. He turned the lights back on.

  “I should be able to get a better idea of what it is, how deep the bruising goes after I upload the photograph. Then I can dump it into one of our databases, see if it matches any sort of weapon.”

  Eyes still closed, Drake said, “Anything else you ca
n tell us?”

  As much as he wanted to find whoever was responsible for the skinsuit, the allure of his bed, and Patty waiting in it, was becoming almost irresistible.

  “Well, as you’ve probably noticed, these aren’t your normal run-of-the-mill sutures. I’ve never seen anything like them before.”

  “Are they even sutures?” Yasiv asked.

  “Technically, sutures are any threads or strands used to close wounds, so I bet—”

  “Did you hit your head?” Hanna interrupted.

  Dr. Nordmeyer turned, her eyes bulging.

  “Excuse me?”

  “We’re here to find the sick fuck who did this to three women—at least three women—and you’re here giving us a goddamn medical lecture, arguing linguistics for Christ’s sake.”

  Dr. Nordmeyer gawked and looked to Drake and Yasiv for support. They both raised their hands; even if either of them had authority over Hanna, they valued their soft bits too much to intervene.

  “Is it a fucking suture—you know, stitches for us laypeople—or not?” Hanna spat.

  Mouth still agape, Dr. Nordmeyer answered before things escalated. As out of touch with reality the ME was, she was aware enough not to piss off Hanna any further.

  “Uhh, I think.”

  Hanna looked skyward and sighed.

  “No, wait, I think these are sutures but they’re not ones I’ve ever seen or used. They’re shaped like sutures, tapered, and they have the—” she stopped herself before reciting another lecture. “They might be old-fashioned. Like, really old-fashioned. I’ll take pictures and upload them as well.”

  “Send me a copy of both,” Drake said.

  Dr. Nordmeyer glanced at him but before she could say what was on the tip of her tongue, Yasiv spoke up.

  “Send them to me and I’ll pass them along. Doctor, what about identifying the skins? No birthmarks or tattoos, but what about DNA?”

  “I’ve already submitted samples but as you know, the backlog is considerable.”