“I’ll be forever in your debt. You know that, right?”
She smiled. “That’s my goal.” She nodded at Daniela as she snapped on a pair of purple nitrile gloves. “Do you have a preference?” She gestured across the four tables.
Drexel nodded. “The first one. Brittany.”
Noelle nodded and walked to the far table. She rolled back the white sheet that covered the body. The ME had placed Brittany’s body as close to whole on the table as she could without having the severed parts touch. Noelle tapped the Record button on the voice recorder she used and began talking in the medical lingo. She looked carefully over every cut edge, using a standing magnifying glass.
Drexel listened to her but spent most of the time looking up to a corner of the lab.
The ME confirmed the body was dismembered after death and before freezing. At the cut on the right foot, she discovered a torn piece of plastic wrap between the flexor hallucis longus muscle and tibia. The perp had wrapped the severed parts in plastic wrap, and some of it froze between the muscle and bone. When he removed the wrap, it tore, leaving it to come free only upon thawing. The ME scraped trace evidence from beneath the fingernails on both hands. Noelle thought it was inorganic. The soles of the hands and feet were dirty. Bruising was apparent around the ankles and wrists. On the right wrist, the killer’s cutting had split the bruise in two. Handcuffs, zip ties, rope. Any of those could have made the marks. What was clear was that Brittany had been restrained.
At the neck, Noelle said, “Looks like the killer severed the head where a bruise is. Here. There’s an edge of bruising that looks antemortem. Not what you’d expect to see as a result of the dismemberment.” She brought her magnifying glass closer to the specific area she was looking at. “And an abrasion mark.” She used her thumb and index finger to lift up the eyebrows and hold the eyelids in place. “No petechia.” She sliced open and flipped back the skin from the neck area. “Yeah. More ecchymoses along the trachea and larynx. Nothing broken.”
“What does that suggest?” Drexel pulled back from looking over the ME’s shoulder.
“She was strangled. A ligature of some sort was probably used. The abrasion mark indicates a ligature of some kind. Slowly. Only four pounds of force is needed to block a sufficient flow of blood to the brain. The victim would have lost consciousness in ten, fifteen seconds. If the killer relaxed the ligature, she would’ve regained consciousness in a few seconds. When he applied constant pressure, death would’ve followed in four or five minutes. Because there are no broken bones, I don’t think the killer applied significant force to block the trachea. Just enough to stop the blood flow to the brain.” Noelle stood straight up and shook her head. “I’ll be entering this as death by asphyxia due to ligature strangulation. You know it’s a homicide. I doubt much is going to change but look for the final report.”
Daniela nodded. “Can you tell what type of ligature or anything about it?”
“No. Because he cut across the abrasion, he destroyed any ability to really tell what it was in a general sense. No way to say if it was thick or thin or even if he loosened and reapplied it over time.”
“Forensic countermeasure?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Drexel asked, “Any way to tell how long the body was frozen?”
“Not other than to say it was quickly after death and before full rigor set in. I noticed some rigor occurring as the body thawed. It’s not as prominent, but still there.”
“What about how he dismembered the body? Any ideas there?”
“A saw of some sort. Given the lack of major tearing, I’d guess a finer blade. Probably a power saw. With a hand saw you’d expect to see slips, and I’m not seeing that. Not impossible, but unlikely. With a power saw you’d be less likely to slip. Particularly if it was a table saw.” She place her scalpel in a stainless steel tray. “Plus, a power saw is faster. And I’m keeping to my initial thoughts from the scene. He did the cutting before the freezing.”
Drexel nodded. A power saw would have been loud. Why not wait until the body was frozen? Freezing the body would have greatly eased clean up, but the perp did the sawing before. “Any sexual assault?”
“None. On any of them.”
Drexel nodded. “Can we take a look at the couple quickly? Especially the man.”
Noelle nodded, turned off the recorder, and walked to the table where he lay. She uncovered him and looked at the neck and eyelids. She turned the recorder back on. “He has some petechia. Looks like he was killed in the same way as the other vic, but I’ll have to look more closely. Were you expecting something different?”
“The couple was held together. I’m wondering if they were killed together. If his girlfriend was killed first, I was hoping he had used his credit card or something. Or that he was killed in a different manner. Something that might lead us somewhere, but it doesn’t sound like it.”
Noelle looked at the man’s wrists. “Bruising and abrasions here as well. He was probably restrained.”
“But,” said Daniela, “we have photos where they are unrestrained. They look horrified in the photos as if they knew they were about to die.”
“Maybe they thought that. But he was restrained even in that photo.” Drexel sighed. “Perhaps he unrestrained the woman just before those photos.”
“We need to look at those pictures again.”
To Noelle, he said, “What about the ligature here? Anything to help identify? I’m guessing what he did to Brittany wasn’t a countermeasure since he didn’t do it to these two.”
“Based on what I’m seeing here, you’re looking for a cord of some sort. The abrasions and bruising around the neck are only about—” she bent down and looked, bounced her head back and forth, and continued, “250 millimeters or so. Probably a cylinder. Something like a shoelace, but probably a tad thicker.”
Drexel nodded. And the ME continued through the dreary process from the most recent girl and Jodi Schmidt. The unidentified woman also had petechia and a bruise around her neck, indicating ligature strangulation. No identifying marks on the couple to help ID them. After Noelle had completed her work, Drexel said, “Thanks. You’ll let us know if you find anything that changes or is different on the victims?”
She smiled thinly. “And I’ll get any trace I find to the lab. And the reports ASAP.”
“Thanks. I need those for the profiler too.”
“And what about the items found with the body?”
“Brain matter. Slices of Brittany’s brain to be exact. The killer opened the top of her skull, dug in with a knife, and scooped out some of her brain. Sliced that in two. Left them in the jar. Just water. Almost certainly done before he froze the bodies. And don’t ask me why. I’ll let you figure that out.”
Leaving the ME to her grim duties, Drexel and Daniela walked out of the ME’s office into the bright April day. As he walked to the car, he considered the horror these victims faced in the final moments. He thought about the man watching his wife or girlfriend being strangled. Then allowed to gasp for air. And strangled again. Repeat. Both of them knowing they were going to die. Unable to do anything. Drexel vomited on a grass island near the parked car.
Chapter 18
As Daniela drove them back to the station, Drexel’s phone rang with the default ringtone—the war march from the “Mars” section of Gustav Holst’s The Planets. As he answered, he thought he should change it to the primary theme of the “Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi” section of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. “Detective Pierce.”
“Hello, this is Dr. Cheryl Barber. You left a message.”
“Yes. Yes, thanks for calling back. Are you in your office today? I’d like to ask you a few questions. Research around the case. Your dean said you were the person to talk to about Cathars and Gnosticism? And you indicated you’d like to help out when I saw you at the Day’s house.”
<
br /> A brief pause. Some clicking. “Looking at my calendar to be sure. Yes, I don’t have any appointments. I’m here now until 4:30.”
“Great. I’d like to swing by.”
“Of course.” Cheryl gave him her office location, and they hung up.
Drexel looked at his watch: 1:17. “Jesus, the hours fly by.”
Daniela said, “I’ll drop you off at the university. Meanwhile, I’ll finish reading your friend’s research and see what I can dig up on Kevin Blair. We’ve already got Doggett doing grunt work.” She dropped him off south of Swift Hall.
Walking across the grassy and tree-filled open spaces and into the heart of the campus with its Gothic architecture that resonated with the images of Oxford, Drexel felt the gravitas and the separateness of the university. It brought to mind his college days at Chicago State and forced him to acknowledge the passing years. Not only had he lost the skinny frame of his youth but also the idealistic worldview. He reminded himself that nearly everyone lost that idealism, not just police operating in the darker realms of human behavior. But Zora had retained her idealism, which manifested in indignation whenever elites—political or corporate or cultural—said or did some crass or mindless thing. She had kept at photojournalism for that very reason, for that idealism. As he walked up the steps of Swift Hall and opened its heavy wooden door, he wondered if the recently found photo had something to do with that passion for social justice his wife had. He stopped in the main entrance, pulled out his iPhone, and sent himself an email to look up recent construction at the location of the photo. A couple of students passed him, and he asked them where Cheryl Barber’s office was. They did not know but told him the department’s office was on the third floor and hers was probably there, too.
She was indeed. Drexel stood outside her office door, which was open. She was engrossed in a book, open and flat on her desk on which she rested her arms and leaned over. The orange highlighter in her hand had been generously used on the open pages. A small notebook with a pen slid into the spiral binding sat beside her left elbow. She was dressed in dark blue jeans and a light yellow blouse. Her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He knocked.
She looked up at him, pulling a pair of wire-rimmed glasses off and smiling. “Hello.” Holding the glasses by the end of a temple piece, she bounced them in the air.
He extended his hand.
She shook it and gestured to the chair in the corner next to a precipitous stack of books. “How can I help you?”
Drexel sat and pulled out his notepad from his messenger bag. “When we found Brittany, the scene contained some evidence we normally don’t see, something the killer did.”
“Oh god.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to upset you. She didn’t suffer if that’s any consolation.” He lied. He was convinced without any evidence other than the lack of broken bones in the victims’ necks that this killer strangled them to unconsciousness, let them revive, and repeated the process. He had little doubt that all the victims suffered grotesquely.
She bit her lip. “That’s, that’s comforting.”
“What I wanted to talk to you about was what seems to be some Cathar or Gnostic imagery left at the scene. Your dean said you were the person to talk to.”
She crossed her legs and set her glasses down on the desk. “I understand why you were sent to me. The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade is a particular area of focus for me.”
“So you’re the right person.” He smiled.
“Seems like it. How is it I can help though?”
“I’m looking for a bit more context. Looking for more of what may be going on in the killer’s mind. He’s quoted something called the Interrogatio Johannis.”
“The Questions of John. What do you know of the Cathars?”
Drexel shrugged and held up the folder. “Let’s assume nothing.”
“Where to begin?” She rubbed her nose and then pulled her hand across her face until her chin rested in her palm. After a pause, she dropped her hand. “The Cathars were an essentially Gnostic Christian sect in the south of France and northern Italy in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries. There are two really key aspects about their beliefs. The first is that they were mitigating dualists, which means—basically—they believe in a good god and an evil god—or two opposing principles. The good god created the spirit, heaven. Pure and uncorrupted. The bad and inferior god created the material world—a corrupted world. Light and dark opposed to each other. The corrupt world was associated with Satan, and everything material had a piece of him in it, just as there’s a part of the good principle trapped in all men and women seeking to be released back to god. To do so, humans were required to avoid all earthly temptations. No sex. Vegetarians, and so on.” She scratched her chin. “Because of their Gnostic heritage, an elite is granted divine knowledge. But the Cathars didn’t place special emphasis on gnosis—knowledge of the divine instead of faith in the divine—itself. That wasn’t the point.”
“The Perfects. Those are the ones granted divine knowledge?”
“More correctly, the Parfaits, but they didn’t call themselves that. The Parfaits lived a life of meditation, fasting, poverty, good works. That kind of stuff. They also believed in the ultimate salvation of all humanity. No one would perish in the fires of Hell.”
“They don’t seem that bad.”
“To our eyes, no. But to the medieval Church, they were very dangerous. Incredibly dangerous. The idea that everyone could obtain divine knowledge with enough effort, with only knowledge, challenged the entire idea of the priesthood. The early Church had similar problems with the other Gnostic sects running around in the first and second centuries. The Cathar and like-minded sects’—the Bogomils and Paulicians—beliefs had enormous implications. First, procreative sex was bad, for you were producing more sparks of god entrapped in evil flesh. Marriage was bad. Contraception was good. Non-procreative sex was great. Some Catholics presumed the Cathars encouraged homosexual sex. Second, the less one interacted with material things, the better. The sooner, in fact, that we could abandon the flesh and let the spark of divinity reunite with the spiritual realm, the better. Thus, suicide was fine. Not encouraged, but not discouraged. They even had something close to a rite called the Endura, which was basically voluntary euthanasia. Third, women were equal to men, for the soul was the same though the bodies differed. Finally, having wealth and riches was bad. The Pope and kings and princes tended to be wealthy, so you can imagine their reaction.” She chuckled. “All of this is based on the evidence we have left, which is entirely from the Catholic Church. The Church was ruthless and efficient in wiping out the Cathars. So everything we have is biased against them.”
Drexel leaned back, shook his wrist from taking notes. “I have to go back to my Sunday school days. How does Jesus fit into all this?”
“Ah, an excellent question. Any of those other ideas are certainly cringe-inducing and problematic for medieval society. But the Cathars really get into trouble with theology in regards to Christ. The idea of the Resurrection, of the physical body brought back to life and returned to Heaven, was crazy to the Cathars. The body is bad. No way that the good god would allow that into Heaven. Why even put the spark of god into the pre-crucified Jesus? Thus, the Cathars believed Jesus was a phantom. A spirit walking the world that looked like a man, but was not. Talk about going against the grain of where Catholic theology had developed to that time. They had already argued about the nature of Jesus and the priority of the Trinity centuries before.”
“So what happened?”
“The Albigensian Crusade. The Cathars were already condemned in the Third Lateran Council. After diplomatic attempts to bring them back into the fold, Pope Innocent III declared a crusade in 1208. Its main target was Raymond V of Toulouse. Raymond, tricky devil, joined the crusade though to target some of his enemies. That didn’t hold up too long, th
ough, and he ended up on the defensive. After a series of bloody sieges and pitched battles and massacres that lasted twenty years, the last hold out of the Cathars in Montsegur surrendered. History says that two hundred and twenty Cathar Parfaits refused to renounce their faith and were burned en masse at a place called prats dels cremats. The field of the burned.”
“That’s the end of them, huh?”
“Essentially. Pockets remained. Adherents here and there. But nothing like it had been. The Church was very effective at wiping them out when they put their mind and money to it.” Cheryl stood up and walked to a part of her office where a dozen or so books were piled. “I started studying them because of their views on women. Pretty rare for a European medieval group to see men and women as equal. Ah, here.” She handed Drexel a book. “You can borrow that if you’d like.”
He took A History of Gnosticism from Zoroaster to Rosamonde Miller. The book was thick and heavy. Cheryl’s name emblazoned on the cover. “Thanks.”
She smiled. “Chapters twenty and twenty-one are devoted to the Cathars. I teach a whole semester on them.”
He nodded. “This gives me a lot of food for thought.”
“The Cathars are long dead. I can’t imagine anyone using their ideas for kidnapping and murder.”
“It may be nothing, but it could all be screwed up in the killer’s head. Just hoping to get some clue or insight, no matter how weak the connection.”
“Anything I can do. The Days are a wonderful family and don’t deserve what happened to Brittany.”
He nodded. They shook hands, and Drexel promised to return the book in a few weeks at the latest.
* * *
Drexel swung into Charlie’s a few blocks south of the station. He nursed a local porter while waiting for his Reuben, made with Russian instead of Thousand Island dressing. The title page of A History of Gnosticism had an inscription: “To M, My dearest love. May the passage of time smile on us all. Your Cheryl.” He flipped to chapter 20 and began reading, sliding the book forward when his sandwich piled so high with corned beef and sauerkraut that it nearly toppled over when it arrived. He read and ate. He washed down the last of the sandwich with the beer, paid the bill, put the book in his messenger bag, and walked to the station.
Kill Them All (Drexel Pierce Book 2) Page 15
