Never Fear

by Heather Graham

  The doctor's words trailed off in Jeff's ears as he began to realize the gravity of what he had just agreed to. A four count in, hold for a four count, and out for a four count.

  May

  “Asshole's not even trying to hide the bodies anymore,” Teddy said as he held up the crime scene tape for Jeff to duck under. Five months with no new cases, but it was also five months with no new leads.

  The bank and furniture store had no surveillance coverage of the taco shop's dumpster area and cars were in and out of the shopping center's parking lot non-stop from the time the cook took the trash out midday until he took the last bags out after closing.

  The demographics on the victims perplexed them the most. Three of the four female victims were strippers and Sasha Donnelly had been posting ads all over the nether parts of the internet offering to let a john put it wherever he wanted if he had the right amount of money.

  The males were where things made it confusing. The first victim had been a doctor, the second a tax lawyer, the third owned a few pool stores, and the one found in the dumpster had been a corporate accountant. Besides all of them being successful professionals in their late thirties to early-forties, there was nothing to relate them. One Jew, two Protestants, and one with no religious affiliation whatsoever. Three were white and the tax lawyer was black. Two were San Diego natives, one was from Boston, and the other from Montana. None of the male victims had any relationship with each other and it was a daunting task just to find the next of kin to notify for the female victims. Between the victims and methods, even the psychologists were having trouble putting anything together.

  “Who called in on this guy?” Jeff asked.

  “Some woman out walking her dog for the morning,” Special Agent Morgan answered. The feds had been called in to help out on the case and Assistant Sheriff Thompson was pissed. Luckily for Teddy and Jeff, they didn't get in on the case until after Christmas.

  “Good thing she found him, I guess. Could you imagine if some family on their way to Sea World stumbled across this shit?” Jeff said. With the weather warming up, tourists started their annual flock to Mission Beach. Another month and the beach would be full of tourists, surfers, sorority girls, and all the bums there wasn't enough room for in Ocean Beach.

  “The media's going to have a shit storm either way with this one,” Sergeant Campbell answered with his heavy Kentucky accent. “What kind of sick fuck ties a guy up with duct tape, slices his throat open, and then lays him on a fold-out chair on the beach, toes in the sand, and a piña colada in the cup holder?”

  “That's the question we've been trying to answer for almost a year now, Sarge,” Teddy said.

  “There's got to be surveillance footage on this one. Has to be with all these hotels around,” Jeff said.

  “No drag marks either. Son of a bitch must've pulled him out of the trunk and carried him all the way from the parking lot. Victim's no Tiny Tim either,” Morgan said.

  “You get a look at him?” Jeff asked.

  “Yeah. Lab took pictures, but not a whole lot to process until mortuary gets him down to the coroner. Go ahead and take a look, no shoe prints to fuck up anyways.”

  Jeff nodded and plodded into Mission Beach's soft sand, hoping he wouldn't wind up in any of the cellphone pictures all the looky-lou's standing outside the crime scene tape were taking. The patrol cops had taped off a large part of the beach, but there was only so far back you could push the public before taking over the whole beach.

  Sure enough, a piña colada sat in the chair's cup holder; paper umbrella, pink straw, and all. Jeff walked around the beach umbrella to study the wound. There was one precise, razor-thin slash right across the throat, severing the trachea and carotid arteries. Their killer had done a better job draining out all the blood here than back at the taco shop. The crook had even tried to clean his victim off a little before sitting him out for a day on the beach, but the human body held a lot of blood and Jeff knew their bad guy was smart enough not to load a body in the back of a pick-up and run it through the car wash.

  The arteries had sucked into the flesh as a last ditch effort to preserve themselves, but with how much blood those arteries pushed out, it would do little help. Wherever the killer did his dirty work, there had to be a wall freshly painted in bright red arterial blood. The head of the wound, the part where the cut was deepest because the killer had to apply more pressure to initially cut through the skin, was on the left side of the throat and had the biggest mess of half-cleaned blood from the initial bleeding. That helped confirm their suspect was probably right-handed, which didn't help them much at all. The victim had no bruises or signs of struggle and Jeff already knew what the toxicology was going to find: just enough propofol intravenous to keep the victim from screaming as their throat was cut open.

  One would think the sedative's presence in every victim's bloodstream would give the investigators a place to start, but it was so common and the list of people authorized to be around the stuff was too long for one homicide section to sift through. That list also didn't include all the junkies and kleptomaniacs who took whatever they could get their hands on when they went for a stroll through emergency rooms. There wasn't even a guarantee their bad guy was getting the stuff from within San Diego county.

  Special Agent Morgan was right. The victim wasn't small by any means. A pot belly hung over a pair of Hawaiian flower-print swim trunks; arms and legs that hadn't seen a gym since college days were laid out like the victim had just gone out for a day at the beach, which Jeff guessed he had… just not willingly. Duct tape bound the victim's hands to the chair's arms. He was sure the guy had been dead well before being put into the chair, but the suspect apparently didn't want to change his calling card too much for the morning's display. Jeff eyed the victim's body once more and then went on to study his facial expression, looking first into Dr. Rosenthal's open, lifeless eyes.

  Jeff didn't get to count to two on his breathing exercises before he was doubled over in the sand, vomiting up the coconut yogurt and oatmeal he had sucked down for breakfast after getting the phone call. Teddy steadied his partner by the shoulder. His partner was probably asking what was wrong, but Jeff couldn't make out any of the words. A few minutes later, Jeff found himself once more in the back of an ambulance.

  ***

  “We're going to have to move surgery up, Jeff. We can't take any chances. I'm going to clear some space up and get you in next week.” Dr. Henry slammed Jeff's chart closed with his beefy arms and dropped it back into the slot on the end of the hospital bed. Judging by the high and tight haircut he still carried since retiring from the Army Medical Department a decade ago and his straight-shooting, Dr. Henry wasn't about to fuck around. Despite everything going on, Jeff actually kind of liked the doctor's no-nonsense approach. Jeff figured there probably wasn't much room for nonsense treating soldiers in a tent on the Iraq/Kuwait border as a battlefield surgeon during the opening days of the war.

  Jeff didn't answer at first. He breathed in, held it, and let it out. Dr. Rosenthal, along with Lisa's prodding, had finally put Jeff's fears of having the same mishap that had taken place on his ankle happen to his heart. Jeff had never bought much into Lisa's catholic practices, showing up for Christmas and Easter so she could prove to the priest she did in fact have a family. However, seeing Dr. Rosenthal there on the beach, Jeff had a sudden realization that there were forces at work in the universe and those forces did not want Jeff to have a healthy heart.

  “You tell us when, Doctor,” Lisa said with no regard for the fact it wasn't her heart that was about to have fingers and scalpels shoved into it by some complete stranger.

  “Next Wednesday. We'll do it at Scripp's like you all intended to from the get go. Same instructions as before, nothing to eat twelve hours prior and pack an overnight bag. I have us marked down to start prepping at 10am, so be there an hour prior to check in.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Henry,” Lisa said.

  The doctor nodde
d and walked off to check on his next patient, and just like that, Lisa had once again made the big decision for Jeff before he ever got to say a word.

  ***

  “Jeff, go the fuck home,” Sergeant Campbell ordered as he threw his blazer around his shoulders and headed out the door himself.

  Jeff didn't look up and kept dragging icons around the screen while Agent Morgan looked over his shoulder. Lines connected all the icons, pictures of the slain victims, like tire spokes to a big question mark in the center. Morgan and Jeff had been working all day on a link analysis for all the victims’ relatives and close friends.

  “All this crap will still be here when you get back,” Teddy said as he plopped into chair next to Jeff's desk.

  “We just got the subpoena approved to dig up the records for one degree of separation from the victims,” Morgan said.

  “I faxed it over to the county recorder and they're going to dig everything up and send it over next week,” Jeff said.

  “One degree? We might as well have swung for the fences on this one and just ‘deep dived’ everybody on their social media and phone contacts,” Teddy said.

  “You really think any of these liberal-fuck 9th Circuit judges are going to approve anything more than immediate family and close friends?” Morgan asked.

  “If we asked for any more than that, we'd wind up making case law legalizing recreational heroin somehow,” Jeff said as he continued to create icons of the persons whose records they had subpoenaed and attach them to the victims. He would copy their driver’s license photos from the DMV's database and paste them to the link chart. Juries loved pictures, probably because most jury members never made it past the second grade.

  “Hey, imagine all the caseloads that would clear up if the heroin addicts could pump themselves up with all the shit they wanted.” Teddy reached over and took the mouse from Jeff. He dragged the cursor up to the save icon, clicked, and then logged Jeff off the computer.

  “Go home,” Teddy told his partner. “You just got out of the hospital yesterday and you're going back in on Wednesday. Sarge and L.T. gave you the rest of the week off and you start FMLA next week. Morgan and I can handle the case until you get back, and I assure you it will still be here when you get back.”

  “I'm going to be out for a month,” Jeff said, conceding and grabbing his car keys from the desk. “You guys better give me a call if something big pops up. And, if you do get this asshole ID'd, you better have someone pick me up before you have S.E.D. (Special Enforcement Detail) pick him up.”

  “Why's it got to be a guy? How do you know it's not some hooker taking out her competition and some johns who didn't tip enough?” Morgan joked.

  “Because we already worked that angle before you got on the case,” Jeff called over his shoulder as he walked out the door.

  Wednesday, 8:30am

  Teddy’s desk looked like the Enola Gay had done a fly-by, dropping the Library of Congress instead of a nuclear weapon out of its bomb-bay doors. Jeff had subpoenaed the records of twenty-nine individuals. The recorder's office needed to borrow a van from the department to transport all the files.

  “Where do you want to start?” Agent Morgan asked as he loosened his tie.

  “I'll take the first victim. You take the second?”

  “That was Christine Johnson?”

  “Yeah. That stack right there,” Teddy pointed.

  Morgan grabbed up a stack of manila folders stuffed to capacity and carried them over to his desk. Then he came back for the rest of the stack and an oversized three-ring binder. Teddy grabbed the first folder from Dr. Jeremy Pitter's stack.

  Dr. Pitters had a private optometry clinic in Solana Beach. He had almost lost his license on one occasion when he had been stopped by Carlsbad PD with an unnecessary amount of medicinal cocaine in his convertible. Lucky for him, he had gotten the blood test thrown out of the criminal court and the state medical board lost the grounds to strip him of his license to practice, although it did keep a closer eye on the medications he was ordering.

  Dr. Pitters had three children with his first wife. Two were grown and the ex-wife had custody of the fifteen year-old. His second wife had had a messy divorce of her own from her first husband. Andrea Pitters, formerly Andrea Henry with a maiden last name of Filipov, her father having emigrated from Bulgaria during the opening days of the Cold War.

  Andrea Pitters' first husband had deployed to Kuwait as a trauma surgeon in early 2003, treating soldiers wounded during the Iraq invasion before they were evacuated out of theater. It must have been those Eastern European good looks that kept landing her in the arms of doctors. She had taken to various internet pages to find the company of other men while Lieutenant Colonel Henry was deployed. He came home earlier than expected and found she was in San Francisco with one of her liaisons. The internet browsing history was all Dr. Henry needed to secure a swift and secure divorce with no alimony. A month after the judge signed the divorce decree, Andrea married Dr. Pitters. It didn't take any of Teddy's years of investigative experience to figure out the two had probably had several romantic encounters prior to her husband discovering what she had been up to.

  ***

  The anesthesiologist shook his head as the heart monitor beeped rapidly.

  “Jeff, listen to me, I know you're scared, but I need you to trust me,” Dr. Henry said as he leaned over his patient.

  “I'm sorry, Doc,” Jeff said in between his fast breaths.

  “Jeff, take my hand.” Jeff reached up and took hold of the cardiologist's hand. “Lisa is right outside. I know you have some reservations and worries because of what happened to Dr. Rosenthal. It's tragic and terrible, but for the sake of your health, I need you to trust me like you trusted him.”

  Jeff's heart rate dropped slightly and the anesthesiologist kept an eye on the numbers displayed on the heart monitor.

  “Do the breathing exercises for me, Jeff. I'll count for you. In, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four. There you go, just like that.” The beeping slowed.

  Jeff had told Lisa they would go have a steak dinner at one of the fancy places in Hillcrest once he recovered and got the thumbs up to eat whatever he wanted. Lisa was ecstatic at the idea of being able to leave the house for the first time in years and not have to worry about whether or not there was kale or black-bean burger patties on the menu.

  The anesthesiologist nodded and handed the respirator mask to Dr. Henry while he checked the gas levels.

  “Keep it up, Jeff. Just listen to the sound of my voice and keep up the breathing. As soon as I put the mask on, I want you to count backwards from ten with me. Okay?”

  Jeff nodded.

  “Are you ready?”

  Jeff nodded again as he held his breath for a final four count.

  Dr. Henry placed the respirator mask over Jeff's mouth and nose.

  “There we go. Now count with me,” the doctor whispered into Jeff's ear. “Ten. Nine. I killed Dr. Pitters. I killed Christine Johnson. I killed Joseph Washington. I killed Sasha Donnelly. I killed…” Jeff's eye's fluttered shut. He tried to understand Dr. Henry's words, but the whole world felt heavy as his body forced itself to sleep. The drowsiness overcame him so suddenly he could barely comprehend where he was, let alone where he had heard those names before.

  “…And now, I've killed you,” the doctor whispered an instant before Jeff drifted off to sleep.

  19

  Toxiphobia

  Fear of Poisons

  Heather Graham

  I knew that the woman hated me.

  I knew she meant to kill me.

  I knew it the moment she laid eyes on me.

  Really. I’m not mean in any way, but, the way that she looked at me, mouth pursed in a knot, eyes bulging out--all I could think was, wow! What a paranoid bitch!

  Killer-crazy bitch!

  We shared living space, you see, and she should have appreciated the wonderful things I could do to help her around the c
omplex and even her apartment.

  She didn’t. She was oblivious.

  I did my best to stay out of her way, to be entirely obscure. I went about my life and my business being almost completely silent, staying out of her way at all times. I was alone; the love of my life had died young, and it was just me.

  And I was afraid.

  If she was headed to the laundry room, I made sure that I was not.

  If she came out to the front steps, I kept far away!

  The thing is, the house was now an apartment complex. There were four apartments, two upstairs, and two downstairs. It was an unusual and charming place, once a gracious old plantation, and now a home owned by a man named Stephen Lee. Stephen as a nice guy; I was a kid when he renovated the place. He lived upstairs and rented out the three apartments he had created--a great way for him to maintain the expensive property.

  The house was out in the country; beyond the sweeping lawn were rolling green hills and beautiful forests. The house itself had fabulous gardens--he often worked outside, to Stephen Lee’s delight. She was, I must admit, an excellent gardener.

  Stephen Lee himself worked in the garden, growing things. He was huge on the ecology and passionate about growing his own vegetables.

  So, there were flowers and what-not, beautiful neat rows of growing vegetables, and then, beyond, beautiful grasses and forests with lovely thick trees.

  In short, it was all perfect and breathtaking. And the house was delightfully old; it was filled with dark crannies and secret corners and wonderful and mysterious trunks. It was historic and perfect for me.