by Jeff Gunhus
Maurice pressed the scalpel against the cadaver, then looked up at Allison. “Are you sure? Usually we just do this on John Does and the low-income people whose families would rather we just take care of the bodies. This is an active investigation, isn’t it?”
Allison hesitated. She wondered how whoever was in charge of the actual investigation would react when he discovered an off-duty FBI agent had instructed an unlicensed morgue orderly to perform an unauthorized dissection. Even though she had Mason’s blessing to do whatever it took to do her job, he also wanted it done quietly. She didn’t think this was what he had in mind. Not only that, but the tattoo might be nothing more than a seahorse blowing bubbles for all she knew. There was only a small chance it would give her any clue at all about the girl’s true identity.
“Go ahead,” she said, the words seeming to come out all on their own. “On my authority.”
Maurice gave her a crooked smile, as if to say he knew she didn’t have the authority…and that he really didn’t care. The scalpel was pressed against soft flesh and there was no going back for him. She felt a chill as she considered the knife’s edge the young man walked, his traits matching so many of those she found in the killers she hunted. She wondered if Maurice Hunt might one day be a name in a dossier on her desk in the Criminal Investigations Unit.
As she watched him sink the scalpel into the flesh with a feverish excitement, she considered that the idea wasn’t too far-fetched. But for right now, she just hoped the weird little man wasn’t full of shit and that she hadn’t just let him cut into this poor woman’s body for no good reason.
14
Maurice glanced up at the FBI agent leaning over the body as he cut into it, savoring the way her breasts hung forward, her blouse coming open just a little so he could see the top of her white bra against her tan skin. A shudder passed through him. It wasn’t that he didn’t see beautiful women very often, Washington DC was full of them, but it wasn’t that often that one spent an entire hour alone in the same room with him. She wasn’t quite a ten in his book, more like a solid nine. He liked girls with a bigger chest. The bigger the better as far as he was concerned. Like the girls down at the Rhino who invested their dancing money in massive tits that looked like skin balloons tied off with a nipple. Now that was awesome.
Still, he had to admit that the agent had it going on. Killer body, amazing supermodel face and wicked smart. Usually that turned him off. Smarts usually came with all that bitchy pretension. Like those lawyers and political women who wouldn’t even talk to him at the bars, even when he sent them a ten-dollar drink from the end of the bar like they did in the movies. One look at him and they immediately decided they were too good for him. Not that it ever stopped them from slurping down the drink he sent them. But this was different. She had been nice to him the whole time. He hoped the tattoo delivered what she wanted. If it did, he thought she might be willing to show him some gratitude and go out on a date with him. And if that happened, he saw no reason they wouldn’t end up in bed together. Maurice silently rooted for the tattoo to be something important.
He worked his way all around the edge of the area of light-colored skin, leaving an extra two inches around it. Then he peeled back one side and sliced the slab of flesh from the torso.
“Is it that deep?” the FBI agent asked. Maurice was terrible at names and had already forgotten hers. Something Irish, he thought. She didn’t even need a name as far as he was concerned. She was just the hot FBI agent.
“You’ll see,” he said.
He turned the chunk of meat sideways, using Catherine Fews’s rib cage as a cutting board. It looked like a New York Strip steak, one of those thick ones from an expensive restaurant; only the meat was grey and spoiled.
“Are you ready for the big reveal?” Maurice asked. He was getting off slow-playing the whole thing, adding to the drama. He felt like a bad ass.
The agent, Allison McNeil, that was her name, damn if he didn’t just remember it, nodded for him to continue.
He sliced the hunk of meat about three quarters of an inch below the skin, making a clean cross-section incision. After he got through the first two inches of extra border, he saw black ink in the flesh.
“Houston, we have a winner,” Maurice said.
He sliced through the rest, exposing more black ink.
“What is it?” Allison asked.
Maurice purposefully covered the image with his hand as he cut, just because he could. He liked the feeling of this beautiful woman needing something from him.
He finished his cut and turned the result toward him and away from Allison. The image was a little blurry but clear enough to read. He threw it back on the cadaver’s rib cage so that it landed facing the FBI agent.
“You might want to play the lottery today,” Maurice said, “because it’s your lucky day.”
He watched as her face lit up. She pulled out her cell phone and snapped pictures of the tattoo.
A graduation cap, the name Harlow High and the year two thousand and six.
He was no fancy FBI agent but it seemed like a trained monkey would be able to track the girl down with that information. He was bound to get at least dinner out of the deal. And probably a blowie.
But when he looked up, Allison was packing up her things, her demeanor clearly showing she’d gotten what she wanted and now she was getting the hell out of there. He had to take his shot.
“So, I was thinking,” he said. “Maybe we could get a drink sometime? Talk about the case, you know. That kind of stuff.”
Allison smiled the same smile Maurice had seen from countless attractive women in his life. It was the Go eat shit smile that he returned through gritted teeth.
“I’m sure you’re a great guy,” Allison said. “But this isn’t a really good time for me.”
She looked like she was being nice about it, but Maurice knew she was laughing at him on the inside. He looked away, hoping she didn’t see the anger flash across his face. “Sure,” he said. “I get it.”
He flinched as she put her hand on his forearm.
“Thanks,” she said. “You really helped me out today. I appreciate it.”
The words felt great. A sudden warmth spread up from his chest to his face. He realized he was probably blushing bright red. “It was nothing,” he said, ready to take another shot at asking her out.
Her hand gripped his arm tighter. Her eyes narrowed and there was a flash of anger that he hadn’t seen there before. “But you and your buddies can’t do this anymore. You got that? It’s not a game. These people deserve better than to be cut up and laughed at. You seem like a good guy. I think you know they deserve better.”
Maurice hung his head, feeling the same way he did when his mom caught him whacking off in the bathroom as a grown man. Embarrassed for being caught. But more angry at the way she stood there judging him, all pissed off and self-righteous.
“You hear me, Maurice?”
He nodded, refusing to make eye contact. She let go of his arm and stepped back. “Thanks again. I couldn’t have done this without you.”
And, just like that, she turned and headed toward the door. No goodbye. No phone numbers exchanged. Not even the courtesy of lying about grabbing a drink with him in the future. Nothing at all.
He stole a sideways glance and watched her ass for as long as he could, until the door closed behind her.
Maurice pulled out his phone, his fingers dancing over the screen even before he was looking at it.
FBI just left. Allison McNeil. Found tat on CF. Said Harlow 2006 w grad caps. U owe me 200$.
At least her being a bitch at the end made selling her out that much easier. He’d let the guy know when Allison had first gotten there, so if she’d gone out with him, he probably would have had to eventually come clean with her. It was better this way. Less complicated. And with his two hundred bucks he could have a pretty good night at the Rhino. At least down there, the girls were always nice to him.
He picked up the slabs of flesh, layered them back on top of one another and put them back in Catherine Fews’s torso. He liked the way they fit like the last pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He didn’t think he would take the FBI agent’s advice about stopping his little hobby. It was just too much damn fun.
15
Allison felt like she needed a shower after her experience with oddball Maurice. The trip had paid off, but she felt dirty from being in the same room with the guy. She had no doubt that the orderly and his buddies would keep up their practice of carving into the unclaimed bodies, having chuckles over their bad tattoos. She felt the violation even more than if they were cutting into the dead flesh for fun or just out of boredom. A tattoo someone paid to have erased was too personal, a mistake someone went to lengths to hide from the world. For private reasons, it was something they didn’t want exposed for everyone to see. But, like most mistakes, they lingered, literally just under the surface, never really gone.
The psychiatrist the Bureau had made her see after the Arnie Milhouse case would have told her she was internalizing this tattoo thing. Making it about herself. About her past mistakes that she hoped to keep hidden from the world. The outrage she felt toward Maurice’s macabre practice wasn’t just for the dignity of strangers in a morgue who deserved better, but the idea that her own mistakes could be dredged up just as easily. A few layers stripped away and there she would be, exposed to the world, fodder for others to laugh at and shake their heads in condemnation.
She didn’t want to raise awareness of her visit just yet, but she decided that once the case was over she’d make a return visit to Maurice and make sure the practice stopped once and for all.
Allison exited the building, the sun already high overhead. Even so, there was a chill in the air and a breeze that rustled the leaves on the trees. She pulled her jacket tight around her and pulled out the burner phone Mason had given her. She hesitated and pulled out her other phone and sent the image of the tattoo over to Jordi. She added the text: If you find her with this, we can call it a tie. Free pizza AND the gym.
She powered up the burner phone and searched the contact list. True to his word, there was one number stored there, the word home listed as the name. Allison smirked at Mason’s choice of name, ostensibly as in “home base” but it also carried connotations of safety and protection. Clarence Mason was not a man who made idle choices and she figured this small word had been a conscious decision.
She dialed the phone. There was a series of clicks as if the call was rerouted several times. Finally, it rang once and then was picked up immediately.
“Any progress to report?” Mason said. The soft paternal tone from their meeting was gone, replaced by a clipped speech that told her to keep things short.
“I rechecked the body. I believe the killer was left-handed,” she said.
The sounds of paper on the other end. “That’s not in the original report. Are you sure?”
“Ninety percent,” Allison replied. It was a joke in the BAU: ninety percent was as good as it ever got. There was always an out-of-the-box possibility that could prove any conclusion false. What if the killer had faked being left-handed to throw investigators off the trail? What if he simply had a blister on his right hand and used the left hand for convenience? There were a thousand variations of this idea. Still, in chasing bad guys, the principle of Occam’s razor was fully in force. In the face of competing hypotheses, the most simple solution is the most likely to be correct. In this case, that the killer was left-handed carried the fewest assumptions, so she was going with it.
“Anything else?” Mason asked.
“I have a lead on Fews’s real identity,” she said. “She had a tattoo from her high school that the coroner missed.” She was about to tell Mason what the tattoo said, but something held her back. She decided to keep the information to herself.
“Sounds like we need to fire the pathologist who did this work-up,” Mason grumbled.
“I’d take it easy on him,” Allison said. “It was easy to miss. I’ll explain later. I’m going to track down the lead to this girl’s hometown. See what I can find.”
Allison felt the prickle of her hair standing up on her neck, that unsettling feeling that someone was watching her. She spun around. A man in a black overcoat stood right behind her, only five or six feet away. While that would be giving her a wide berth on a busy sidewalk, on the deserted steps of the city morgue, it was practically in her face.
She whispered into the phone while she kept her eyes on the man. “I’ve got to go.” She slid the phone back into her pocket. “Can I help you?”
The man held up his hands, an acknowledgement that he had taken her by surprise. “Sorry, I was just waiting until you were off the phone.”
Allison relaxed a bit. The man’s voice was deep and smooth, using perfect inflection to add reassurance to the words. She knew better than to trust it, though. Some of the most successful killers in history were known to be smooth talkers.
The man was handsome, which didn’t hurt. Short, well-groomed black hair with neatly trimmed sideburns framed a rugged face with fine lines that made the man look like he’d not only seen the world, but had actually lived in it. He was clean-shaven, tan and flashed her a wide smile. She felt a nagging sense that she ought to know his name. An FBI colleague? Some long ago blind date?
“I’m afraid I overheard a little of your conversation,” the man admitted. “But please know that I didn’t mean to and I won’t use it unless you give me permission.”
Use it? she thought. Permission?
Then she placed the face and her stomach turned over. Mike Carrel. Reporter for the Washington Herald. Covered the FBI, especially the serial killer stories. He had a knack for getting information that wasn’t ready for public consumption. Based on the number of stories featuring Garret Morrison in the Herald, there were rumors that Carrel’s access was a quid pro quo for making Garret look good. Even more rumors were that an internal investigation had looked into the matter but that no disciplinary action had been taken. However, the flow of information slowed considerably for a while. But the fact that he was on the steps talking to her showed the information certainly hadn’t dried up completely.
He held out his hand. “Mike Carrel. With the Herald. You’re Special Agent Allison McNeil, right?”
Allison ignored his outstretched hand. “That was a private call. Anything you heard––”
“I told you, I won’t use anything I heard,” Mike said, pulling his hand back. “Although, technically, I could.”
Allison turned and walked away. She knew there was zero upside to talking with a reporter, especially someone like Mike Carrel. She just needed to get some space between them before she said something stupid.
“However,” Mike called out, “if I get the same information from other sources, I’ll have to use it. I’m sure you understand.”
Allison kept walking.
“So, where is Harlow, anyway?” Mike called out. “Is that Virginia or West Virginia?”
Allison stopped in her tracks, her blood suddenly throbbing at her temples. It was the feeling she got right before she threw something or cussed someone out. She turned and looked back at Mike Carrel, the smug son of a bitch grinning like a fool down at her. He must have guessed from her expression that she wanted an explanation of how the hell he knew.
He sang his answer, doing the song considerably more justice than Maurice had done. “I’m a joker, I’m a smoker, I’m a midnight toker, I sure don’t want to hurt no one. Whooo-whoooo.”
Allison fought the urge to march back into the morgue, find Maurice and pummel the little weasel for selling her out. Instead, she walked slowly back to Mike.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Just a cup of coffee and a chat,” he said.
“Off the record?”
“Deep background. No attribution,” he offered.
She shook her head. “Completely off the record. You print
a word and SWAT guys come and break your legs.”
“And in return?” he asked.
“If we talk, then you don’t print anything you learned from the goddamn space cowboy,” she said.
He looked away, making a show of thinking it over. A move she knew to be complete bullshit, but telling in its own way. Hopefully he would continue to make the mistake of misjudging her.
“Tell you what,” Mike said, smiling. “Why don’t you try to convince me that I shouldn’t run it and we’ll see where it leads?”
She matched his smile. “I always thought you looked like an asshole in the photo next to your byline. I guess the photographer really captured your essence.”
Mike’s smile evaporated as Allison turned on her heel and marched away.
“Come on, then,” she called over her shoulder. “Let’s get this over with.”
16
Libby sat across from Summerhays in the limo even though the seat next to his boss was unoccupied. He told himself it was a more comfortable position to have a conversation, but part of him just didn’t want to be any nearer to the man than he needed to be. It was a childish reaction, but Libby didn’t care. Summerhays had looked him right in the eye and lied to him about contacting Scott Harris. It was an inconsequential lie, something Summerhays could have easily admitted to. That’s what made the lie all the worse. Something was off. Libby was pretty sure that Harris had lied to him too.
“Right, Libby?” Summerhays asked.
Libby snapped back from his thoughts and tried to pick up the trail of the conversation. The man had been prattling on about the fundraiser he had that night with the Teacher’s Union, how he wished he could tell the teachers to kiss off and stop their complaining. Libby had heard the whining before so figured he hadn’t missed much.
“If you say so, sir,” Libby said, not bothering to feign interest.
