So Close the Hand of Death

by J. T. Ellison

  The past was meant to be forgotten.

  There were still one or two wives who would send her a note every once in a while, trying to include her in recipe exchanges and the like. She just wasn’t interested in those things anymore. Being a part of a family was very different than being the sole head of a family, especially one reduced to the remaining survivors. If you could call them that. No matter what they said, she couldn’t shake the feeling that people dealt with her out of guilt rather than a true desire for friendship. It was tiring.

  She took a sip of wine. Alone was better. Alone was safe. Alone was…lonely. The blog kept her sane, at least.

  Colleen’s normal habit at night, before unwinding in front of the television and heading to bed to sort of sleep, was to run through the comments on the previous day’s posts. She knew how important habit was, how far behind she could get after missing just a couple of days, so she took another sip of wine, opened her content management system and started. If they were all counted, across the multiple daily postings, she garnered thousands of comments a day from hundreds of unique individuals. Sometimes more, if a conversation started in the comments, which happened most days.

  Yesterday’s posts contained nothing unusual. She read through them looking for trolls, but all seemed in order. As she was about to exit the program, she noticed that the comment count on the first Zodiac post from this morning was exponentially high, so, yawning, she went ahead and opened it, just for kicks. She usually liked to wait a full twenty-four hours before checking comments, giving people from all times zones a chance to get into the fray, but there were already seven hundred entries. She clicked the link and glanced through them.

  One leaped out at her immediately.

  I know who you are.

  She felt her heart begin to race. She set the computer down, and got up to check the doors and windows. They were all locked up, just the way she left them. She was being silly. There were plenty of freaking whack jobs out there online, always taking a chance to poke at her. She couldn’t help herself, she was totally creeped out.

  Just to be extra safe, she reset the alarm system, this time on the highest security setting she had, the one that would send a silent alarm to the police station the second someone even touched her door or window. She secured the drapes, checked on Flynn, who’d finally tired himself out and was sound asleep, breathing deeply, his little chest rhythmically rising and falling. Her heart filled with love and dread watching him, so innocent, so pure. She closed his door almost all the way, leaving a crack so she could hear him if he cried out in the night, then went back to the laptop.

  I know who you are.

  She started scrolling through the messages, fear choking her. There must have been a hundred entries, all with those five words. All left anonymously, between half past noon and 1:30 p.m. today.

  She opened her web stats and looked up the IP address associated with the comments. Nashville, Tennessee.

  A few more clicks showed her it had come from a private server at a temporary internet hot spot, but that was as far as she could get.

  She chewed on her thumb, teeth catching on a hangnail. She worried it until the skin tore away, leaving a fresh bloom of red blood across the bed of her nail. She sucked on the cut until the pain forced her to stop. She’d received threats before, but they’d always been silly, empty, designed to piss her off more than anything else. Always diatribes, rants against her and her purpose. Sometimes family who hated what she was doing, or an irate fan. But nothing like this. For some reason, this felt real.

  She checked the other posts she’d done today. It was there. On every post, the same five words, so seemingly innocuous, that made sweat break out on her neck and her flesh crawl.

  I know who you are.

  No one knew she was Felon E. No one. She’d been so careful to protect her identity. She’d even started completely separate mail and phone systems for contacts that were meant for the blog. The cell was disposable, only charged when she used it, which was never, and the P.O. Box was registered under a completely different name. Nothing that could be traced back to her, Colleen Keck. Neither the phone company nor the post office had the capability to put two and two together. The only way was if someone followed her to the post office and caught her checking the Felon E mailbox, then followed her home.

  Unless there was someone in her system checking her phone bills against her IP address. That was a true long shot; she routed through multiple servers so she wasn’t easily traced back and created new IP addresses every time she logged in. She clicked a few keys and engaged a search, was relieved to see that wasn’t the case. No one had been in her system. There were no tracks.

  So why did she get the feeling that this crackpot wasn’t lying?

  I know who you are.

  She started looking frantically through the rest of the comments, and found something even more disturbing.

  A short exchange, buried in the middle of the mess, from one of her regulars, @texasmassacre. It read:

  “Hey, did you hear about @kittycrime and @chaosmaster? They got themselves shot out in San Francisco.”

  The responses varied from horror to smug nastiness. Colleen felt the fear tear at her stomach, a gnawing, aching terror. She checked the forum, saw the conversations going on about the two regular commenters who’d been gunned down last night. She fished through the forum’s registration information until she found their real names: @chaosmaster was Ike Sharp and @kittycrime was named Vivi Waters.

  She didn’t have to check her notes. She knew the names. They matched the names of the victims in this morning’s Zodiac killing in San Francisco.

  I know who you are.

  Colleen didn’t know whether to panic or stay calm, but two words escaped her lips with utter sincerity. “Oh, shit.”

  She couldn’t keep this to herself anymore. She needed to go public. Not on the blog, not speculation and reporting. She needed to go to the cops.

  Twenty

  The dark water lapped languorously at the bank, and Taylor could hear the small stirrings of animals in the surrounding woods. It was quiet on this boat dock, isolated. That was why the killer chose this place. It was out of the way. Off the beaten path. Private.

  A familiar chirping noise came to her ears, playing in the background behind the murmurs and joking conversations of the crime scene techs.

  Crickets. Crickets in winter. Surely there was some old wives’ tale that addressed that phenomenon? The world was probably going to stop spinning on its axis, or Sam was sure to have a boy, or a cat was going to walk over her grave. She should ask Ariadne, the witch would have the answer. She always did.

  Taylor watched Sam get the body into the M.E.’s van, her instructions reverential yet efficient. Marcus was handling the investigation; Taylor didn’t need to be at the scene anymore. She decided to stay a few more minutes anyway, feeling a false sense of responsibility. More guilt, if she was being honest. That was crazy, she wasn’t responsible, for the Schechter boy’s death or for this case, but the simple fact that another kid had died was too much for her.

  When was this going to stop? Was it something she’d done, some wrong she’d committed? And why, if the Pretender was so fucking omniscient, wasn’t he taking his chance? He’d get off on the thrill of having cops around. She’d walked the perimeter of the crime scene alone purposefully. If he was watching, maybe he’d take a chance. From a distance, in the dark, the best he could do would be a body shot, her vest would stop that in a heartbeat.

  She realized she was assuming that the Schechter boy was just a ploy designed to distract her, and sharpened her senses even further. Death was not a finite commodity.

  Anger burned through her. Come on, you motherfucker. Let’s go. The dark greeted her with silence, broken only by crickets and the grunts of the investigators behind her.

  Over the past few months, the murder rate on the whole had risen in Nashville. While her team’s close rate was still in th
e eighty to eighty-three percent range, much higher than anyone else’s in Metro and across the country, too, the fact that there were more murders to solve meant resources were stretched thin, and emotions running high. She knew the Pretender had contributed to the mess, amplifying the murder rate almost fifteen percent all on his own, but she’d had other cases this year that contributed. Nashville was much more likely to see an uptick in lowbrow crime—drugs, prostitution, gangs—than these unique serial cases. Yet the crazies kept finding her.

  Another reason she needed to resolve the problem, and soon. If she eliminated the Pretender, the crime rates would drop. The chief would be happy with her, Delores Norris, the head of the Office of Professional Accountability, would quit breathing down her neck, Fitz would come back to work and her whole team would be back together, and life would go on.

  Yes, elimination was the key.

  Sam interrupted her reverie. “We’re ready to take off. Tabor will meet us there.”

  Taylor turned to her best friend. “You look tired. You could hand it off to one of the other M.E.’s.”

  Sam was almost eight weeks pregnant, dark circles riding under her eyes, her face drawn with exhaustion.

  “I’m okay. Simon’s got the twins, and I’m feeling all right now. I’m on the late shift this week, so that works good. It’s the mornings that are getting to me. I’m much sicker with this one than the twins. Hell, I didn’t even know I was pregnant with them for a couple of months.”

  “All the more reason to rest. But I understand. I saw a couple of the guys on their phones. I hope this hasn’t leaked out just yet. Keep an eye on that, will you?”

  “Sure thing. I’ll see you later.”

  “Wait, Sam. Mind if I join you?”

  Surprise etched Sam’s face, but she shook her head. “Not at all. I could use the company. I’ll see you over there.”

  Taylor watched Sam stride away and get into the plain white van that served Forensic Medical. She found Marcus, let him know she was leaving, then climbed in her own car. She picked up her cell to call Baldwin again, tell him she was heading to the morgue, and realized the battery was dead. Careless. She never let that happen. But with the quick trip to North Carolina, Fitz, the murders this morning, she’d just spaced out. Baldwin would be furious with her, she’d get a lecture. She didn’t blame him, it was a stupid mistake.

  She got out of the car and went to borrow Marcus’s cell. She didn’t need her flashlight, not with the crime scene fully illuminated. She scooted around the edge of one of the light stands, turning her body to slip past the contraption. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something orange. She halted, looked closer. The tree closest to her had a pentacle painted on the wood.

  She shouted to the nearest crime scene tech. “Hey, Iles, come here for a second.”

  Iles was capable, smart. Quiet and businesslike. She liked him. He came over to her, smiling, his teeth flashing white against his tanned face. She wondered if he went to a salon or spray tanned, or both. Really, a tan at the beginning of winter? Metrosexual men, she never knew what to think about them. She usually didn’t trust guys who spent more time in the bathroom getting ready than she did—with the exception of Lincoln, of course. His fascination with clothes was actually fascinating to her. That man had taste, and style. He wasn’t a poseur.

  “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”

  She pointed to the tree. “Has anyone looked at this?”

  Iles shined a Maglite on the bark, the fluorescent orange practically leaped out in 3-D. Eerie. It had been spray-painted, little drips of orange had run down the tree, puddling in the bark and on the ground below. She leaned in close and sniffed deeply, the acrid scent of acetone filled her nostrils. Not totally fresh, but not entirely dry either.

  “No, I don’t think we have. You think this has something to do with the crime scene?”

  “A teenager dead, and a pentacle at the scene? Either it does, or someone has a very sick sense of humor.”

  She called to Marcus. He joined them, eyebrows tight.

  “What’s up, LT? They just found a bag under the tree branch, looks like the kid’s backpack. I think we’re going to be at this for another couple of hours, at least.”

  “Did you see this?”

  Marcus stared at the tree.

  “No, I didn’t.” He turned to Iles, voice tight. “Get pictures of this, now.”

  “Why would someone paint a pentacle on the tree out here?” Iles asked. “I thought you shot the kid who ran the Halloween massacre, and locked the rest of them away.”

  Taylor tried not to flinch in the face of Iles’s words.

  “Let’s just pray it’s someone playing a very bad joke,” she said.

  She drove in silence to Forensic Medical, planning to use the phone as soon as she arrived. It was after hours and the lobby was dark. She used her key card to enter. She was doing her damndest here. From the outside, it looked like another strike against her, running around alone in the dark. She was becoming more aware of her vulnerabilities. It wasn’t so hard to lay herself out in the open, ripe for the taking. She needed it to look like she wasn’t aware of her surroundings, that she was comfortable enough to let her guard down. And that meant walking a thin line, close to the ones she loved, to draw the bastard out.

  She’d been alone for a couple of hours now. Why hadn’t he made a play? What in the name of God was he waiting for?

  The door unlocked with a snap, and she entered the building. The reception desk was deserted, of course. Kris, the bubbly, vivacious girl who handled the day-to-day management of calls, requests, family visits, was home for the night.

  Taylor pulled out Kris’s chair and sat at the desk. She reached for the phone, and a picture taped to the top of Kris’s computer caught her eye. Kris and Barclay Iles, in bathing suits, hugging, tan and happy. Ah. That explained Iles’s tan. She didn’t know they were dating. Kris had always seemed to like bad boys; Iles was, well, benign, if she were to be honest. Hmm.

  She dialed home, but Baldwin didn’t answer, the phone went directly to voice mail. That only happened when he was on the other line, so she left a message detailing where she was, the random pentacle at the Peter Schechter scene and that she loved him. All told, a good message, she thought. At least it ended well.

  After taking one last glance at the picture of Kris and Barclay Iles, she crossed the lobby and swiped her card again to enter Forensic Medical’s inner sanctum. A long hallway led to the autopsy suite, and she smiled as she passed Sam’s office. The door was ajar, a small red Chinese lamp filled the room with soft light. Everything was in its place. Sam was a neat freak, had more than a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Just enough that details were always sewn up, her office never looked like a bomb had gone off in it. It was what made her such a good medical examiner—there weren’t too many things that she didn’t notice.

  Taylor entered the women’s locker room, put her hair up in a bun and changed into a pair of scrubs. She didn’t want her street clothes anywhere near the autopsy suite tonight—floaters were the worst, and she’d stink for days if she miscalculated.

  Sam was already at work, sipping a cup of green tea just inside the door, wearing a full-length lead apron. She wasn’t alone. Dr. Michael Tabor, the forensic odontologist for the state of Tennessee, was staring at the illuminated x-ray window box. Stuart Charisse, Sam’s perpetual lab assistant, was taking new radiographs of the body, which was still clothed.

  Tabor greeted Taylor with a hug. She’d always enjoyed working with him. A regular dentist by trade, he was also one of the most experienced forensic odontologists in the country. His ties to Los Angeles and New York had garnered him nationwide respect, and enabled him to work cases outside of Tennessee. He’d been called to New York after 9/11 to work on identifications. He had spent weeks in New York naming the firefighters, police and other innocent men and women lost in the collapse. Taylor knew the experience had changed him, and she couldn’t hel
p but respect how difficult a job that had been.

  While Stuart prepped and x-rayed the floater’s teeth, Tabor went through the National Dental Image Repository worksheet on his laptop. Though he could look at the two sets of radiographs and tell almost immediately if they had a match, this was an official case, and the procedures must be followed.

  On paper, the law enforcement dental identification process seemed simple. Match antemortem dental records to postmortem records through the use of the FBI’s huge nationwide NDIR computer database. In reality, the NDIR didn’t have much luck making matches. The dental database should have been basic protocol all over the country. But many of the rural police departments found it difficult to populate their databases simply because their victims weren’t commonly seen by dentists. The big-city guys were too busy with their caseloads to follow through. It just hadn’t gotten to the point that it worked smoothly.

  The idea behind it was easy. When a missing persons report came in, the investigator who talks with the family asks if the missing person has been to a dentist in the past several years. If they existed, antemortem radiographs and dental charts would be retrieved, charted and inputted into the database.

  If a likely victim surfaced, a forensic odontologist would examine the body, then create a postmortem dental chart using plain sight and postmortem radiographs. The database would work its magic, spit out a match, and notification would be made to the family that their loved one had been found. If it worked.

  Peter Schechter’s case was a bit easier. Missing for five days, his parents had submitted his radiographs to the police over the weekend. They were in the NDIR system. Tabor already had the comparison radiographs prepped.

  Taylor watched Stuart and Tabor work together, Tabor nodding and clucking. He had a good poker face, so she couldn’t tell if there was a match yet or not. Sam was filling out some preliminary paperwork. Taylor went to her.