The Turin Shroud Secret

by Sam Christer

  ‘I can see how that would work. From the looks of her, she didn’t weigh more than eighty pounds. It’d be an easy drop.’ Mitzi gazes out towards the end of the pier with its marine lab and aquarium, a big draw for the rich locals and their kids. Not hers, though. Her twin daughters are allergic to anything academic. They’d rather chase a soccer ball, play video games or bait the boys next door.

  As she and Nic trudge towards the jetty, Mitzi gets a mental flash of the dead woman. ‘You notice our Jane Doe was still wearing jewellery?’ She twists the tiny wedding ring that’s been on her finger for close to two decades and waggles it for Nic to see. ‘She was carrying a rock big enough for boy scouts to camp on.’

  ‘Certainly wasn’t a robbery,’ observes Nic. ‘Given the brutality of the other injuries, our perp wouldn’t hesitate to cut off her finger if he wanted that sparkler.’

  ‘So what then? A kidnapping gone wrong?’

  ‘Maybe, but I would have expected a ransom demand. Even if the husband – presuming there still is one – had been frightened into keeping us out of it.’

  Mitzi thinks back to the corpse. ‘Yeah, it doesn’t follow. Kidnappers stiff their victim when the money talks are over, not before. By then the family’s jumpier than Mexican beans and always come running to us. So if it was an abduction, we’d have heard something.’

  As they climb the last stretch of beach to the pier Nic’s thinking the kill bears the mark of a professional – albeit a crazy one. ‘Last time I saw anything like this, it was Italians out in the valley,’ he says. ‘They cut up one of their own after he crossed them. Revenge, pure and simple.’

  Mitzi frowns. ‘You think she was mixing with organised crime?’

  ‘Could be. Imagine, for a minute, that she’s a mob wife and her old man finds out she’s cheating on him.’ He puts out his hand and pulls Mitzi up. ‘At first she refuses to name the guy banging her, then, finally when she gives it up, said lothario turns out to be hubby’s brother or best friend. Boom.’ Nic slaps his hand. ‘The boss gets all emotional. He feels he has no choice but to have someone mess her up and finish her off.’

  ‘You’ve got one sick imagination.’

  ‘It’s how you taught me.’ He looks beyond her, down the wide pier leading to the red-tiled angular building at the end. A four-bar metal rail runs either side, out over the water. It comes up to his chest. He was right. Drive a car out here, it’d be easy enough to tip a body over the side.

  Mitzi drops into a squat. ‘Lots of tyre treads down here.’ She sweeps an indicative hand over the area just in front of her. ‘And, thank you God, a nice layer of sand that’s printed just about everything that’s recently come and gone.’

  ‘I’ll get uniforms to tape off the pier and have CSI do the treads.’ He pulls a cell phone and sits up on the rail while he makes the call.

  Mitzi takes out the small camera she always carries and snaps off some shots. Sometimes the techies turn up too late and the evidence has gone. Better safe than sorry.

  Ten minutes later a red-faced, overweight cop in a sweat-stained uniform arrives with a young crime scene photographer. While Mitzi briefs them, Nic wanders a few yards away to watch the surf breaking around the legs of the pier. There are pictures in the bubbling white froth. Abstract images, open to interpretation. Some people see galloping horses or Vikings or sea gods.

  Nic sees the wife and baby son he lost.

  They’re lying in a sea of their own blood. Eyes rolled back like rancid scallops.

  And every time he sees them – when their unexpected appearance breaks his heart – he does nothing to block them out, nothing to divert the blame from himself.

  Carolina had wanted him to leave the apartment and push the pram a while. Max was crying and a stroll around the block always seemed to settle him. But Nic got stuck on the phone – a work call on his day off. She’d grown bored waiting and finally gone without him. Two blocks later she stopped at a grocery store. Had Nic been there it would have been different. He’d have known right away what was going down – the crackhead robbing the register, jittery and paranoid, a human timebomb bound to explode; the dope of a store owner playing hero by grabbing a gun taped beneath the counter and the shoppers panicking and screaming, ratcheting up the mayhem.

  It had been Armageddon.

  After the weapon came up from behind the counter, the junkie slaughtered everyone. Then he just stood there in a daze. He was still staring at the carnage when the cops came. One lowlife’s moment of madness ended a dozen good people’s lives and created a lifetime of misery for their families.

  ‘If this was the killer’s drop spot, he’s not a local.’ Mitzi is pacing again.

  ‘What?’ Nic’s thoughts are still three years back.

  ‘The ocean.’ She points over the rail to get his attention. ‘The water here is too shallow. The perp probably thought it was deeper. When he dumped her over the side, he must have believed the body would be gone for ever.’

  ‘The tide might have been in,’ says Nic, his brain and body finally reunited in the same time zone. ‘Or else the guy didn’t care. Could be he was only bothered about her being hidden long enough for him to skip town.’

  ‘You’re good,’ she says with a smile that hints at why ten years ago every cop in the precinct made time to walk by her desk. ‘I’m going to miss you when you’re working as a crabber on Deadliest Catch.’

  He laughs. ‘Does the Discovery Channel have any other shows than that damned thing?’

  ‘Not worth watching.’

  They walk single file down the edge of the pier, close to the rails, so as not to disturb any more tyre tracks. He makes a slow circuit of the aquarium and marine lab, shielding his eyes and looking skyward. Eventually he finds what he’s looking for.

  ‘Surf cams.’ He points out two small cameras at the tip of long poles. ‘You can watch shots from these things online in real time.’

  ‘Kill me before my life becomes so boring that I would even think about doing that.’

  ‘Each to their own, Mitz.’ He points to another steel pole, one topped with a security camera. ‘Now this is more your taste.’ He palm-gestures like a teleshopping host showing off some pile of crap that can only be bought in the next ten minutes. ‘A channel exclusively available to good-looking and talented LAPD cops, featuring – hopefully – all the once-in-a-lifetime footage of Big Rock Lady’s killer.’

  5

  LATE AFTERNOON

  Amy Chang suits up, snaps on latex gloves and enters the newly equipped morgue. It’s a cold vault of stainless steel, illuminated by pools of limpid green and blue lights. Steel body-fridges, sinks, carts, tables and tools crowd the central autopsy table with its inelegant taps and cruel draining holes, portals for the last of the deceased’s blood and body fluids. There’s far too much dull and deathly metal for Amy’s liking. Another world away from the thirty-two-year-old’s elegant bachelorette home, steel-free except for the knives in the pretty picture-window kitchen overlooking a small but well-ordered garden.

  Less than a week old, the morgue already smells of Deodorx and Path Cloud cleansers. Amy looks sympathetically at the flesh and bones laid out on the slab. To her, the remains are still a person, a desperate woman in need of her expert help. ‘So who are you then? What can you tell me, honey? What secrets do you have for us?’

  Even at first glance it’s obvious the victim suffered excruciating pain before she finally died. The injuries are all pre-mortem. Lips are split, teeth are missing and then there’s the awful cavity where her left eye should be – a terrible testament to the level of torture she endured.

  She clears space so she can work. Adjusts the ceiling-mounted dissecting light with its dual beams and slips on a tiny, head-mounted video camera for the close-ups. She wants to capture everything she says and sees during the examination.

  ‘The victim is a well-nourished woman in her late forties or early fifties. She has extensive pre-mortem injuries to her face includin
g the loss of her left eye and two upper middle teeth. There is evidence of recent plastic surgery, nip and tuck scars still healing around the ears and neck.’ Her voice grows more sombre as she realises how the deceased must have hoped a more benign encounter with a blade would keep her looking younger and more desirable. ‘Less cosmetic are the injuries to the left and right cheeks – these are consistent with a series of blows, probably from front- and back-handed slaps. She’s suffered powerful blunt trauma to the left cheek, possibly from a fist. It’s split open and the flesh exposed to the bone.’ Amy moves down to the neck. ‘The deceased has bled out through a horizontal three-inch wound that severed the vessels in the carotid sheath. A fatal cut. She’d have died from an air embolus even if she’d survived the wound.’ Amy can’t help but notice its precision. No hesitant stab. Just a confident and ruthless action.

  She picks up the deceased’s manicured hands. It’s not the first time she’s touched them. Back on the beach she clipped the nails for trace evidence and toxicology and then had fingerprints taken. ‘No signs of major defence wounds but there are marks around the wrists, indicating she may have been tied up.’ Amy uses tape to lift what she’s sure are small fragments of rope twist from the grey skin. She stands back a little and surveys the whole torso, paying particular attention to the feet, knees, elbows and hands. ‘No friction or abrasion marks on normal surface contact points. No indications of the body being dragged across any kind of surface.’

  Next she examines the empty, red, raw eye socket. The killer used something to lever out the victim’s eyeball.

  What?

  There are no gouge marks inside the cavity to indicate where any metal might have been forced in. She realises what has happened. He used his fingers. The attacker pushed his thumb into her eye socket and forced it out. He then cut through the exposed muscle and nerve attachments. It takes a special kind of monster to do something like that. She grimaces – something Amy Chang seldom does. In the corner of the woman’s thin purple lips are abrasion marks, tell-tale signs that a tight gag stifled her screams.

  A phone on the wall rings and flashes – then trips to the message service. Amy moves on. She considers the missing teeth. These probably had been extracted prior to the eye damage. She looks again into the woman’s mouth. There are marks on her back teeth and upper pallet. Something was jammed in there to keep her jaws open while the guy went about his work. Amy angles the deceased’s head back and swings down the overhead light. She uses tweezers to extract small traces of white plastic from the inside of the upper and lower back molars. Unless she’s mistaken the killer forced a golf ball in there to be able to get at the front teeth.

  Amy’s seen a lot of nasty stuff on her table but her tummy turns every time she sees something like this. Something she recognises as the unique work of the worst kind of predator in the world – the serial killer.

  6

  LATE EVENING

  CARSON, LOS ANGELES

  The dark-haired man with thick eyebrows and olive-coloured skin makes sure he’s locked the front and back doors and secured the windows. Burglary is not something he wants to fall victim to – the irony would be unbearable.

  He walks through to the Spartan kitchen and opens an old larder fridge that only ever contains three things: UHT milk – the type that lasts six to nine months – a box of eggs and a tub of low-fat spread. If he’s really hungry, he’ll use everything and make omelettes. Otherwise, like tonight, he just drinks milk. Fish and soup for lunch, milk and eggs for dinner. That’s his entire diet.

  He feels somewhat strange as he moves through the house drinking straight from the carton. Edgy. Off balance. Nervous. Not that any of that surprises him. The day after is always like this – contradictory and confusing. It’s a period of anxiety and elation.

  The mood swings used to throw him but not any more. He’s experienced now – understands that with every kill comes an aftershock. Like the physical recoil of a firearm. The bruising kick of a rifle against a shoulder muscle. Take a life and your psychological muscles take a pounding. The purple bruise of guilt surfaces first, then the yellow fear of capture and finally the ruddy red flush of conquest.

  He’s spent the day like he normally does, holding down a job that’s beneath him, working for people who don’t appreciate or understand him. Not that anyone does. Still, routine is important. A change of habit attracts attention if the police go nosing around. Besides, he’s learned that right after a kill it’s good to be with people, to stay in the stream of mindless fish flowing to and from homes and jobs. He likes the distraction, the filling of time. And he appreciates the camouflage of commonality, the necessary disguise that dreary everyday life gives him.

  But now it’s the night time. And the night is different. He feels different. Is different. It is a time of energy and power. A time when kills can be savoured. Darkness brings with it a justification, a validation of what he does and who he is. Throughout the day he longs for the dipping sun and the rising of the raw energy within him.

  The rented house where he lives is plunged in blackness. It always is. The thick curtains are forever drawn. There are no bulbs in any of the light sockets. No electricity or gas. Instead, he uses an open fire for both warmth and what little cooking he does.

  Pale light flickers from candles in his bedroom, as he strips naked and prepares for sleep. There is no bed. No quilt. No pillow. In the corner of the room are the few things he treasures. He opens up the folded handkerchief and removes the sacred wafer of honed steel and crosses his chest with it, then he criss-crosses the tops of his thighs and arms. Before the blood can really show, he wipes the blade. He kisses it and holds it aloft, like a priest showing the blessed host to his congregation. As his chest fills with red, he returns it to the handkerchief and refolds it in precise squares.

  Flat out on his back, he presses his feet against one skirting board, his left shoulder and arm square to the other. Carefully, he tucks a single bed sheet under his heels and wraps it tight around himself until he’s completely covered from the head to toe.

  Snug. Tight. Secure.

  Like he’s wrapped in a shroud.

  7

  FRIDAY MORNING

  77TH STREET STATION, LOS ANGELES

  The squad room stinks of late-night burritos and looks like a summer-long frat party’s just finshished. Mitzi Fallon’s government-issue metal desk is an OCD island in the endless sea of male debris.

  ‘More coffee.’ Nic puts down the lieutenant’s ‘World’s Best Mom’ mug, bought for her two Mother’s Days ago by her twins. ‘What’s with the hand?’ He nods to the strapping around two fingers.

  ‘Fat oaf of a husband fell on me when we were fooling around.’ She tries to wriggle it. ‘Celibacy might be a good idea after all.’

  ‘Too much detail.’

  She manoeuvres the mug to her lips. ‘This has to be my last caffeine of the morning, don’t let me have any more.’ Her eyes swing back to the surveillance footage running on a flatscreen monitor at thirty-two times normal speed.

  ‘You seen anything yet?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah, my will to live – it went psycho and threw itself off that pier about three hours ago.’

  Nic settles into a chair next to her. ‘I just checked with the uniforms. They came up with diddly squat.’

  ‘And that’s news?’

  ‘Guess not. I swear some of those guys down there are too young to cross the street on their own.’

  She laughs. ‘Listen to you – already the great veteran. You need to mind your manners, you’re still too wet behind the ears to be calling the rookies.’ She glances at the big clock on the wall near the captain’s office. ‘One more tape then I’m going for food. You comin’?’

  ‘Sure, but no pizza. I need to start getting into serious shape for the big trip.’

  ‘You are in serious shape – take a swim when you’re out at sea and those momma whales are gonna come courtin’.’

  ‘Funny ha ha.
’ He slaps the small dome where his six-pack used to be. ‘Cut the carbs, hold the beer, skip pizza and I’ll be okay. Famished and bored but o-kay.’

  ‘O-kay’s not a good place to be. O-kay’s no man’s land. You’re caught in the crossfire between pigged out and happy and starved but gym-body hot. Only settle on o-kay when you’re married.’

  ‘You forgot – I’ve been married.’

  ‘It was good for you once – it’ll be good a second time.’ She looks up at him, eager his old pain doesn’t surface. ‘I’m just jerking your string. You’re still a catch. And not just for the whales. Don’t worry about it.’

  The phone on Nic’s desk rings. He glides his chair back and reaches over an exploded volcano of paperwork to grab the receiver. ‘Karakandez.’

  Mitzi sips her coffee and watches him. Shame he won’t start dating again. He’d make someone a good catch. Kind, modest and as honest as the day comes. Good looking but not so much of a pretty boy that he’s gonna get hung up when things really slide south. She smiles. Yeah, when Nic Karakandez finally drags himself out of his shell some gal’s gonna win the lottery.

  He hangs up, takes the notepad he’s been scribbling on and rolls back to her desk.

  She nods to the pad. ‘What you got?’

  He holds it up. ‘Look who our vic is.’

  Mitzi stares at his spidery scrawl. ‘Tamara Jacobs.’ She shrugs. ‘I’m supposed to know her?’

  ‘Clerk in fingerprints said you might. She’s a film writer. Some kind of a hotshot. Does big historic costume dramas – romantic stuff too, about ancient Romans and British monarchs. Is that your kind of thing?’

  ‘You kidding me? Harry Potter is as close to British costume drama as I get.’ She pulls over her keypad and Googles ‘Tamara Jacobs’.

  A page from the Hollywood Reporter comes up with a head-and-shoulders shot of the deceased and a big block of bold text beneath it.