by Glenn Cooper
He didn’t want any of his DNA inside her mouth!
As her lips were about to encircle his soft cock he panicked and pushed her shoulders hard, ramming her against the passenger-side door.
“Hey!” she shouted in alarm and pain. “What’s your goddamn problem?”
He couldn’t think of anything to say.
Instead, his big hands shot out like projectiles but she was too far away for a surprise attack and he failed to get a good purchase on her neck. She wriggled free and unleashed a verbal and physical counterattack that bewildered him with its ferocity. Arms, hands and fingernails moved in eggbeater frenzy. High-pitched screams pierced his ears, an untidy torrent of profanities and animalistic noises.
“Quiet, quiet, quiet,” he implored blindly, his eyes tightly closed to protect his corneas from her razor-sharp nails. He was leaning over the console, pushing off against the driver’s side door for leverage until his hands found their mark again, this time firmly. He felt the flat planes of throat cartilage, hard and satisfying under his thumbs, and began to squeeze. This one would get no narrative to send her off. She was too feisty and determined. No lullabies for—
He didn’t know her name.
Suddenly, the flailing stopped and so did the punches. He tasted warm blood, his own blood. It would be over soon. Then he’d check his watch for time zero and get about his business.
He finally opened his eyes to see what she looked like at the last moments of consciousness. That much he owed her.
She was staring back with hatred.
The burning!
All at once he was enveloped in a cloud of hissing, searing pain.
His eyes smoldered so caustically he had to let her go to rub his stinging eyes.
Through the lachrymose haze he caught something in her fist, an object like a black lipstick.
Mace!
The girl was scrambling for her freedom and before he could react she’d slid over the console onto the rear seat with the alacrity of a big cat slipping its cage.
Coughing and spluttering, he lunged for her. His left hand grabbed onto her bejeweled low-slung belt that had been part of her seductive gear and was now only a liability. The leather held fast over her hips and allowed him to tug her away from the door handle.
He held onto the belt for dear life and used it to pull himself into the backseat where he wiggled his way on top of her. In doing so, his jeans and undershorts curled down to his thighs and if someone had come upon them, the first impression would be of an overheated couple about to make love, doggy-style.
But this wasn’t love.
Alex managed to push his right arm around her neck far enough to get the crook of his elbow into position, surrendering to some primitive part of his brain that instinctively knew how to kill.
He pulled her neck into hyperextension and her screams became guttural. The upward force drove his face into the soft fabric of her jacket and he took advantage of the cloth to blot his stinging eyes.
She began to buck like an angry mare trying to unseat him. It didn’t feel like he was killing her. Too much vitality was coursing through her strong body.
He arched his back to give himself better anchorage. With his free hand he reached over the top of her head and inched his fingers over her forehead, her nose, her clenched mouth until he got to her chin, which was nestled on his elbow. Three of his fingers managed to hook onto the hollow beneath her mandible and pulling with all his might, the combined energy of both arms working in unison set her neck at an unsustainable angle.
There wasn’t so much of a snap as a dull giving way of ligaments. Her body went into spasm. There was a gush of warm urine against his thighs.
He let go and she was still.
His coughing and gagging picked up steam as his arm and shoulder muscles relaxed. He rubbed his eyes again on her jacket then stopped, wondering whether tears carried DNA—and suddenly aghast at being bare-bottomed, he hurriedly pulled his pants up.
He rose to his knees and exhaled hard, wheezy breaths until at last he had the presence to look at his watch.
How many seconds had passed?
Thirty?
He was shaking violently.
There were only two and a half minutes to get his drill from the shelf and collect his samples.
He wanted to vomit, to throw himself into a cleansing shower. He wanted to be far, far away from the backseat of the car.
He closed his eyes for a moment.
Come on, Alex, gather yourself, man!
If you don’t, this girl would have died for nothing.
Fourteen
It was hard to imagine a more beautiful morning.
The air was crisp, frosty and vitalizing. A frozen crust had formed overnight atop several inches of unblemished snow and sunlight made it shimmer as if thousands of gemstones had been carelessly scattered about. Down a slope, the still pond water perfectly reflected bare trees from the surrounding wood. A hawk soared forlornly overhead, resisting migration to warmer climes.
Cyrus was only half watching the forensics team from the New Hampshire State Lab. Mostly he moodily imagined what it would be like to follow a trail beyond them into the thicket, and to wander alone among defoliated stands of birch, maple and oak.
He thought of the Robert Frost poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, and he became sad.
Tara would never know the joy and sorrow of poetry.
She’d never be kissed by a boy, never ride a horse; never dip her toes in the warm green waters of the Caribbean.
The crime scene crew signaled they were done and started packing their equipment and unrolling a body bag. Cyrus removed his glove and extended a hand to help Ivan Himmel up the snowy grade. The old man started to slip anyway and Avakian jumped down into the ditch to push while Cyrus pulled.
“It’s not age,” Himmel offered when he was on level ground. “I was clumsy even when I was young. Can we go back to my car to talk? My feet are cold.”
“So is she or isn’t she?” Avakian demanded.
“She is. Nice little bore hole like the others.”
“Strangulation?” Cyrus asked.
“This one looks like a broken neck. I’d say an extension avulsion at C2 but I’ll let you know when she’s on the table. She was a very attractive young lady, by the way.”
“How long’s she been out here?” Cyrus asked.
“She’s good and frozen,” Himmel answered, trudging toward the highway. “I’ll need to thaw her out first before I can do any calculations—but she wasn’t walking the streets last night, that’s for damn sure. Oh, and her fake fingernails were clearly cut off, not artistically. She was probably a scratcher but we’ll still look for his DNA.”
They were about to step over the police tape and brush past the chattering fishermen who’d found the girl but a man called up from the ditch, summoning them back. “Hey, look at this!” When they lifted the prone body a sheet of snow and ice fell away from her waist-length jacket. A large square of cloth had been neatly excised.
“He contaminated her and cut away the evidence,” Cyrus said, looking down, shielding his eyes from the glare. “That, the fingernails … he’s a careful bastard.”
“We’ll get him eventually,” Avakian said soothingly.
His partner’s benign remark irritated him. It smacked of impotence. He thought of Alex Weller smugly reclining with his feet up on his desk. He had no proof, nothing but his gut, but that was sufficient for now. He felt a terrible urgency to solve the case.
Why—to prevent another hooker from winding up discarded by the side of the road?
Tara’s sweet little face replaced Weller’s in his mind. It revolted him that this man had examined, had touched, his baby.
It dawned on him. He wanted to be able to tell her, “Daddy caught a very bad man today and put him in jail.” He would never tell her it was her doctor, the one with a ponytail. She didn’t need to know that; but he wanted to see her face light up and
hear her giggle with delight at her daddy’s cleverness. He wanted to tell her before it was too late.
“No, we’ll get him soon,” Cyrus snapped back.
There was no need to linger. They had the victim’s identity because the killer was good enough to dump her with her shoulder bag in place, complete with wallet and a spent canister of mace. The cut-away cloth, the clipped nails, the lack of attempt to conceal the body, spoke volumes about the killer’s confidence. As was the case with the others, they weren’t expecting the body to yield anything about him.
“This one fought back,” Avakian noted as they crossed the state line into Massachusetts.
“I hope it hurt like hell,” Cyrus replied. “I hope she got him in the eyes and scratched the shit out of him.”
“You still think it’s Weller?”
“You know I do. I want to see what his face looks like.”
“Can you believe he dumped her back at Pinnacle Pond, what, a hundred feet from the last vic?”
Cyrus ran his tongue over chapped lips. “Killing this girl took him out of his comfort zone. She didn’t go down easily. Maybe he was rushed. Maybe he was exhausted or hurt. Maybe he was scared. He knew the layout up here: path of least resistance, a comfortable place in an uncomfortable night.”
Avakian grunted his acceptance of Cyrus’s theory and turned on his sports station for the remainder of the southbound ride, leaving Cyrus to stare fitfully at the cold white landscape.
There was something therapeutic about the standard British ringtone: beh beh, beh beh, beh beh. It was expectant, not urgent, familiar and welcoming. It tasted of milky tea, smelled of battered cod, sounded like bleating goats on a grassy hill.
Alex heard the tone replaced by a husky voice saying, “This is Joe.”
“Hey, Joe.”
“Unfucking believable! Baby brother!”
“You’re back, eh?”
“With all me fingers and toes and all the dangly bits as well.”
“When’d you get home?”
“A week and a bit.”
“I left you a message.”
“Yeah. I’m not good about returning things. Still have a library book from when I was twelve.”
“How long till they send you over again?”
“I’m out. I told them to shove it. Six bloody tours, man! I’m too old for this shit.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“You’d better. No more third-world shit holes for me. Closest I’ll get to one is Luton.”
“Jesus, it’s good to hear your voice,” Alex said wistfully.
“You okay, Alex? You don’t sound good.”
“I’m fine.”
“Still with what’s her name?”
“Jessie. Yeah, she’s hanging in there.”
“She must be mentally deficient.”
“Come to Boston,” Alex said suddenly.
“Why?”
“Why not? Stay with us. You haven’t been for a dog’s age. You’ve never seen my house.”
“Like I said, I’m just back. I’ve got a lot of sorting out to do.”
“I miss you.”
“Then you’re going to have to come here, mate. I met a lady who’s got loose girlfriends. We’ll get you taken care of.”
“I can’t change your mind?”
“You sure you’re all right?” Joe asked. “You’re not trying to tell me you’ve got two months to live or some bollocks like that.”
“No, I’m good. Really.”
“Well, that’s fine then. You’re good, I’m good, the whole bloody world is good.”
Alex learned the name of the girl from the papers. Bryce. He held the tube up to the light. Bryce’s clear, pure 854.73 fluid, lots of it, thanks to her tender age and refinements he’d made in the purification process.
Every drop was hard fought.
The girl had struggled to hold on to life. And four days after the murder, Cyrus O’Malley wanted to meet again. Alex had listened to the early morning voice mail and rushed into the bathroom to inspect his face. The swelling had gone down but the scratch marks, though healing, were plainly visible. He’d told Jessie he’d slipped on the ice and done a face-plant. She always believed what he told her, cooed in sympathy and gently applied antibiotic ointment with the tip of her finger.
O’Malley wouldn’t be so gullible. He was on his way to Alex’s lab and would be waiting for him.
The bathroom vanity was crowded with Jessie’s tubes and jars. He started working on a particularly long, angry streak on his cheek. First some foundation makeup smeared in, then a twirl of powder, then a few light wipes with a bit of toilet paper: Jessie’s technique. The scar disappeared. The others followed.
The meeting with O’Malley had been brief by the clock, long by perception. He was sure the FBI agent was scrutinizing his face but he’d kept the fluorescent lights off; the natural light of his office and makeup seemed to do the trick. The discussion revolved around Alex’s whereabouts the night Bryce Tomalin was killed. When Alex replied he’d spent all night tending to an experiment in his lab he thought he detected incipient eye rolling from O’Malley. Then came a second request to attend a salon, which he parried by explaining that there wouldn’t be any more till next year. As O’Malley was leaving, Alex politely asked after Tara and received a curt reply: she was fine. And that was it.
It took a quarter of an hour sitting quietly at his desk before he was composed enough to get on with his day.
This time he was sure he had a sufficient quantity to finish his analytical studies—that is, if he restrained himself and didn’t use too much for personal trips. A colleague in a lab across the quadrangle who specialized in protein and peptide chemistry gave him after-hours access to her Applied Bio Voyager system to do peptide fingerprinting.
Once he had good mass data, he plodded ahead toward identification of the elusive structure doing ion trap mass spectroscopy on her Agilent XCTplus machine. One night rolled into another. The data wasn’t making sense, things weren’t fitting together. He needed help but was scared to ask for it. He’d keep pressing forward on his own.
It got dark quickly this time of year. Even though he and Jessie were having an early dinner, it was already black outside. He wasn’t talkative and she followed his lead. They ate in silence like a couple of Trappist monks. Afterward, he helped clear the table.
“Do you have to go back to the lab tonight?”
“Not tonight.”
“What then?” she asked. “You’re in a mood. I can tell.”
“What kind of mood?”
“You’ve got something on your mind.”
“I’ve always got something on my mind.”
She put down the pot scrubber, dried her hands and laid them on his chest. “You’ve got another sample, don’t you? You want to take it again.”
He kissed her. “Does anyone in the world know me as well as you?”
That made her smile. “No, just me. When?”
“Now. The dishes can wait.”
He readied himself on the bed and Jessie obediently lay beside him, her head propped on an elbow. He gently moved strands of hair and secured them behind her ear so he could see her face better. Sometimes, he’d study that face when she didn’t know he was watching. There was a sorrow in her moist green eyes that disappeared whenever he allowed her to dote on him. He filled a deep void, a chasm. Without him, where would she be? How would she get along? It was an abstract question. He needed her as much as she needed him.
He had a pipette in his hand. “I shouldn’t take this,” he said softly.
“Why not?”
“You should.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because I love you.”
She liked hearing him say that but then admitted, “It scares me.”
“Don’t be scared. I want you to know the joy I felt.”
She frowned like a little girl. “Will I be okay?”
“Yes.”
She let
out a sorrowful, dutiful sigh. “Okay.”
He didn’t give her time to change her mind. “Open your mouth for me.” He let the drops slide under her tongue and kissed her when she swallowed. “Here, let me make you comfortable.” He sat her up, unbuttoned her blouse, took it off then unsnapped her bra. After he kissed each breast, he fetched one of his clean T-shirts, the ones she liked to sleep in. She slipped it on. He helped her out of her jeans and laid her back down, her red tresses overflowing a red pillow.
In his most soothing, caring voice, he bade her to close her eyes and breathe slowly and deeply. Then he held her hand, watched, and waited until ten minutes passed and her tight grip relaxed and went slack.
“Jessie?” he whispered.
He gently prodded her, then a stronger shake.
Her breathing was faster, her heart rate accelerated but she looked peaceful. He lifted an eyelid and saw the tranquility of a green eye and normal pupillary reaction to light.
He felt compelled to look at the ceiling: if she was hovering and looking down on the bed, he wanted her to see how calm and happy he was. He said to the ceiling, “I love you,” and returned to tending her physical needs and protecting her during her journey.
At once it dawned on him that he was a scientist and even though this was Jessie, this also was an experiment. He hurriedly checked his watch and began to make time-based entries on a notepad grabbed from the dresser: her runway time, her heart and respiratory rates, her skin color and temperature.
Her fingers were making small grasping movements, which he noted. Her calf muscles were twitching. Each small sound she uttered he captured phonetically, every ahhh, uh, hmmm, phoo.
After a further fifteen minutes of tranquility she became restless and the beatific look on her face replaced with a strong grimace. She thrashed, rather violently. He held and talked to her, telling her everything was all right and that he was there with her.
Where was she in her journey? Was she being sucked off the stepping-stones in reluctant return?
Then, she was back, staring at him through wide green eyes that flooded with tears the moment she recognized his face. “Alex.”
