Each of the victim’s fingers now resembled a bloated snake, the fat thumbs like turtles. Little wonder a shark, even a small one, might find such parts of the floater an appealing strike. The hands were like pillow-sized jellyfish, squishy to the touch.
Jessica mentally placed the time in the water at between twenty and twenty-five days, something shorter than that of earlier victims, and she wondered about the difference, whether it was significant or simply a fluke. Jessica stowed away the second of the two nails she’d recovered into a vial which contained a pink gel fixative. She placed this deep into her valise and felt the pontoon platform bang against her ribs, as if the sea were upset with her for taking that which belonged to it.
She considered the stroke of luck she’d had when the right cop had come along and kept the gung-ho Rescue 911 paramedics from wading out here and dragging the unfortunate victim to shore. All her nails would’ve been gone had that taken place, not to mention another layer of skin. She alone would give the body the care and attention required, like a marine archeologist with an ancient artifact.
Jessica heard someone shouting from behind onshore, and this noise made her look over her shoulder. She saw Santiva arguing with one of the medics, on the verge of a fistfight, it appeared, when suddenly the medic’s partner intervened and pulled his coworker away, the two of them backing off like a giant crab, kicking up sugar-white sand as they danced together until the first man finally threw up his hands in what Jessica understood to be part of that male sign language that meant control had been regained.
No doubt Eriq was protecting her honor, she thought; no doubt the medic had called Jessica a witchy ghoul woman, but in far more unappealing language. No doubt she presented a strange picture to the people ashore, to curious onlookers from hotel windows and joggers who’d stopped to stare, what with her out here performing some sort of weird travesty of a baptism to send the deceased over to the other side.
But baptisms were celebrations of life, not death. Here the recipient of the baptism was the color and texture of Styrofoam, bloodless in appearance. At the slightest touch pieces of it—pieces of her—sloughed off, floated away, marrying with the sea, dissolving, and with it precious evidence was lost. But evidence of what? she wondered while staring into the intricate pattern created against the water by the woman’s floating strands of hair.
Still, Jessica’s medical examination, this antibaptismal ritual, was absolutely necessary. Even so, few could realize or understand that such an indignant Eucharist might be needed. Something in people wanted to protect the body from the foul elements—including foul people—to snatch it from the water’s grasp, shade it from the sun’s glare, cover it with a blanket to give the corpse some semblance of modesty and dignity and consecration. She understood the impulse, but she also knew that in a capital case such as this, with a repeat offender on the loose, people like herself were rare and must be allowed to do their jobs.
She turned her entire attention back to the body. The corpse was like a plank gone pulpy with water, like plasterboard after flood damage. However, Jessica had come to the body prepared, her vials, fixatives, tweezers, bags, pliers, scalpel and more at her disposal on the floating mini- barge attached to her arm. It was a contraption she had developed with her mentor, Dr. Asa Holecraft, many years before for just such occasions as this. Beneath the still platform upon which her valise rested was a swivel that took the brunt of the mild surf here in the protected bay, and beneath the entire structure, which measured sixteen by sixteen inches, were two small pontoons.
Knowing that the victim had been in the water for as long as she had told Jessica that not one moment’s delay could be tolerated for certain tests. She drew a sample of the victim’s blood here and now. She took a splotch of skin, a swatch of hair. DNA testing could begin immediately on these samples alone, along with tests for blood alcohol level at the time of death and for whether or not certain poisons could be ruled out. Any delay now could mean that Jessica might not be able to exact from the body who she was, precisely how old she was, and if she had been drugged or abused either physically or sexually or both before her death.
“How old is the kid?” someone from shore called. It was one of the cops, and from the size of his gut and the mileage on his weary and worn face, she guessed him to be the man who had preserved her evidence, such as it was.
When she didn’t readily answer, he said, “We got a missing persons report on a thirteen-year-old runaway. Any chance it’s her?”
“Rest easy, officer,” Jessica replied. “This one’s in her late teens, maybe early twenties. More suitable to our profile than yours.”
He waved a thanks and returned to the ranks of others waiting for Jessica to finish so that they could do their jobs. She saw that Santiva had stripped off his shoes and had rolled up his pants and was preparing to join her. The jetty had seen some erosion and a large barricade had been erected where it met land, so no one could safely come out along the rocks.
Santiva waded toward her, his pants and pockets and shirt filling with water, the weave of the fabric drinking it in. When Eriq got to her, he looked over the body and watched Jessica’s hands at work, curiously silent for the moment.
Jessica could not help but have the impression he was sent out by the others to report on what she was doing. Either that or he couldn’t stand being with the others another second and actually preferred the company of the body and the M.E. to those ashore. He finally asked, “How’s it coming, Jess?”
“The natives getting restless?” I think Quincey’s going to chew his fingers off. His captain’s chewed his head off already over his partner’s being a no-show and—”
“Yeah, well... some things can’t be helped. But where the hell’s Coudriet and his boys?”
“What exactly happened with Samernow?” he stubbornly pressed. “I saw Quincey pull over and put him out. Started to pick him up myself, but decided I’d best steer clear of that one.”
“I’d say the case is... has gotten to him...”
“Quincey or Samernow? Or both?”
“Samernow for certain.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.”
“A case like this, Eriq... it’s enough to get to anybody, so go easy on him.”
“None of my concern until it gets in the way.”
“Far more important, where in hell’s Coudriet’s brigade? I’d expected him to come sloshing out to me a good twenty or thirty minutes ago.”
“There was another call, Jess.”
“Another call. Well, that figures, a city the size of Miami...” She continued to work over the body, snipping at loose tissue and filling vials.
Santiva was having a hard time of it now, looking at the body, turning a shade of green to rival the waters.
“I mean another call’s come in on another floater...”
“Another floater?”
“Yeah, what are the odds, huh?”
Jessica continued to work. “Well, this is water country ...”
“It was in another section of beach south of here. In fact, there’ve been two additional bodies located, three in all this morning.”
She looked up at him from her work and found Eriq’s eyes now pinned on the open sea and horizon, his mouth mumbling something about how each of the bodies must have come in from a northwesterly direction, this one having gotten caught up on the jetty, the other two released elsewhere, but all within close proximity and along a straight line with the coast. As he mumbled, she kept repeating the single-word question: “Three? Three?”
“‘Fraid so.”
“Are you telling me—”
“All quite possibly related, yes.”
“Three... He gives us three in one bloody day?”
“Coudriet is overseeing one of the others and his two assistants are taking care of number three. It would appear that our man has stepped up his timetable considerably.”
She nodded her dismayed agreement, cursing the monste
r under her breath. Eriq turned, stared into her eyes and then at the corpse over Jessica’s shoulder and said, “He’s decided to really rub our faces in it, hasn’t he?”
“You sure you want to be this close to the corpse, Eriq?” she asked. “I’m going to need help any minute now to roll the body. You want to get those medics out here?”
Santiva shook his head and donned a smug look that told her he was macho enough to take whatever she could. He looked down once more at the blowfish corpse and suddenly Eriq’s large chest heaved like a machine, pulsating in staccato rhythm to the pump that was now in control of his stomach and spewing forth bile into his throat. He lurched away and vomited into the ocean.
“Aww, damnit, Eriq, can’t I take you anywhere?” she asked, half smiling. “Maybe you had better wait onshore with the others. I’m near about done here, anyway. You can tell the others to come ahead with their ropes and nets.”
“I’m all right, damnit. Whatever assistance you need...”
“Eriq, you ever roll a floater before?”
“One or two...”
“This long in the water?”
“No, but it’s time I got my hands wet, so to speak. Let’s get on with it, Doctor.”
“Got a bit more here to finish up on first, so hold on, Eriq.”
“Do you know any more than when you began?” he wondered aloud. “Will I ever know all the answers you seek, Eriq?” She bagged and labeled a strand of soggy hair. “Yes, I’d say so.”
“How much longer, Jess? Out here like this, I mean?” She breathed in the sea air. “I want enough for my collection, Eriq.”
“Cute...”
“I’ll be done in five, maybe ten minutes. Takes time collecting fibers, skin, embedded minerals, chemicals, trace elements, all that good stuff.”
Eriq guffawed, repeating her words. “Good stuff...”
“I don’t exactly have time to train you in the ways of forensic medicine here and now, Chief.”
Eriq pointed to the body and said, “Look at this... It’s like a parade balloon. How can you tell the age from this?”
“I’d like to get a look at her throat and face now, Eriq, if that’s possible. Will you gently help me to turn her in the water onto her back? ”His mortified expression said, Jesus, Jess... I didn ‘t come out here for this, but if it’ll help speed up matters, while his voice said, “That’s what I’m here for...”
“Good, it’ll speed up matters.”
He extended his hands in a gesture to indicate they were there for her bidding. “Just tell me what to do.”
“Just follow my lead; grab on to her right forearm, not the wrist, and her right ankle. With her hands still tied, that’s going to help turn her. I’ll keep her steady.”
He tentatively touched the spongy flesh until it was no longer quite so disturbing to him, but this took some time.
“Got hold?” she asked.
“Some date,” he muttered.
“Now begin to turn her with the tide on my count. One, two... three and go.”
Each layer of skin was like a soggy pastry crust, more water than flesh. Tissue came off the bloated corpse like cream at the top of curdled milk as the dead girl was twirled in the water, and now the FBI agents looked into a pair of empty eye sockets, like mirrors removed from frames, the soft tissue of the eyes having been first to disintegrate or become a meal for feeding microbes, fish, crabs and the like. Nose, chin, cheeks, ears and forehead had all congealed into one puffy, featureless putty mask. No one could safely or routinely identify what the sea had sculpted from flesh. Santiva looked as if he were ready again to lose it, but he obviously had nothing left to chuck.
“The body has had long exposure to the air as well as the water,” she informed him. “If it’d remained underwater, at some depth, the decay would have been forestalled to a greater degree than we see here, pressure at greater depths being equal on all sides. The flesh would’ve remained firmer, more intact. As it is, with the slightest touch, the skin sloughs off.”
Santiva watched as a piece of the dead girl curled away with the outgoing tide, like oil spilling into the water. “What does that say ... ahh, tell you about the body, about how it came to be here like this?”
It was a good question. “Come back at me with that one when I know more, will you, Eriq?” she asked.
“Can’t get over what water does to flesh,” he said, even his words creep-crawling as he spoke.
“Kinda like centuries-old books,” Jessica replied. “You know, how they crumble at the slightest touch, even at the threat of a touch,” she added, both fascinated and pitying at once.
“How can you be so damned clinical?” he said, and immediately regretted it, apologized and fell silent again.
She shrugged both the remark and the apology off, searching the bloated rolls of skin about the throat and trying a peek below the rope for what she might find there. Santiva, perhaps in an attempt to further mask his earlier remark, now asked, “How can you be so sure of the age, or even the sex for that matter?” The woman’s torso, stomach to sternum, was one large blimp, swallowing the breasts in bloated mimicry of the female form. The crotch area, too, was inflated beyond recognition. What they had was hardly human. Jessica dared not, at this time and place, attempt to remove the tightly twisted rope from the bloated neck to reveal what awful bruises lived beneath. “The other bodies before Jane Doe here were discovered without rope around their necks.”
Santiva blinked and nodded. “That’s exactly right.”
“Did Coudriet say anything about ropes on his victim of this morning?”
“No, no... but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any. I’ll check when we get back ashore.”
Jessica loosened the rope about the neck with some care, looking to find the bruises she had come to expect about the Adam’s apple, the thumb impressions of the murderer. They were clearly present, and so she mystified Santiva once again by saying, “This is no copycat killing, Eriq.
This is the real thing; all the marks of our boy.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“I am.”
“Then why the ropes left on the neck and why’d he leave the hands tied? You think he did on the others, too, maybe, but then the rope came loose and was claimed by the sea?”
Her most doubtful glance told him she didn’t believe that theory for a moment.
Santiva tried to salvage the question. “Or do you think the bastard is taunting us with the rope?”
“Probably... yes, I’d guess he intentionally left the rope for us to find.”
“Then he damned sure is starting to play games with us. Three bodies in one day, intentional clues left behind. He’s grown bored with the game as it was being played and has changed the rules, hasn’t he?”
She quietly said, “I put my fingers in her mouth.”
“What?”
“You asked me how I can be sure of her age.”
“You can tell by putting your fingers in her mouth?”
“Earlier, I placed my fingers into what’s left of her mouth; actually, it’s easier to do with her face down if you want the top molars. I felt out the dental work.”
“And?”
“She’s got a full set of wisdom teeth, very few caps and fewer spaces. She’s a young woman, in her late teens or early twenties.”
“Wisdom teeth, huh?”
“They usually emerge between sixteen and seventeen years of age. It follows that since hers are fully formed that—”
“All right….. I get it...”
“I can also tell by the skeletal size and makeup, but this is all guesswork, as you know. It’ll take a complete autopsy to be certain of anything. ”She looks much older... so damned large.”
“How many floaters have you seen, Eriq?” she asked again. “I confess... not many who’ve been in the water this long, obviously “
“The tissues expand far beyond normal.”
The skin tone was bleac
hed, stark, bloodless, albino in nature. Santiva couldn’t rise above the awful hue, the bloating, the sloughing away of skin, as if the sea owned her now and was not willing to allow her to be taken, at least not wholly.
Jessica began helping Eriq understand what was going through his mind. “It’s the glue... the bond between the outermost layer of flesh and the corium below. It has weakened so much that the blood has seeped out through the corium, escaping a trace bit at a time.”
Eriq shivered in the blistering sun and the warm water. “You mean like osmosis?”
She nodded. “Precisely, osmosis and diffusion... just like in a high school chemistry class experiment, except this one’s due to murder.”
“You just enjoy grossing me out, don’t you, Jess?” She managed a wane smile. “Let’s say you make it too easy for me. Eriq.”
“I need a drink.”
“You’d only spew it up, Eriq.”
“I hope you’re not forgetting that I am your superior, Agent Coran. Talk like that could get you into trouble. No Cuban can be told he can’t hold his liquor.”
“A thousand pardons. Chief.”
“How much longer?” he asked again.
“Okay …… Okay, you win. Let’s get her bagged, but please, please see to it that those clowns on shore don’t drag her out using the damned ropes or her hair, so her hands or her head doesn’t pop off.”
“They’ll take every precaution. I’ll see to that.”
“I mean it. The ropes have cut and burned their way near through the wrists and neck, and there’s really not much holding them on.”
“I’ll make them apprised of it.”
She stopped him with a hand on his forearm. “Eriq, this bastard takes delight in dragging his victims’ bodies through the water at high speeds.”
Eriq gulped at the image this notion once again caused inside his head. “I recall you saying as much the other night over dinner.”
“It’s pure conjecture, but I think one, maybe two of the victims weren’t so much victims of shark attack as victims of the ropes, which cut off their heads and hands, allowing them to pull free of their moorings unbeknownst even to the killer. I think that’s why some have come undone, as it were.”
Darkest Instinct Page 15
