The Brain Vault (Stephanie Chalice Thrillers Book 3)

by Lawrence Kelter

  He no longer thought about escaping. He now truly understood the curse of his vanity. His once youthful body had been scarred and burnt. He had been tortured with cigarettes, leaving scars on his face and body. The more he resisted, the more pain was inflicted on him. His captor would stick needles into his back and face and turn the needle slowly, painfully enlarging the hole. But the most horrible disfigurement had taken place in Doe’s mind—he had been turned into a pathetic freak, a blind, mute, deformed gargoyle. He would wake in the middle of the night to his friends’ horrified expressions—in his mind, he had become the elephant man, a circus sideshow attraction. He had lived his life striving for physical perfection. Doe no longer hungered for the outside world. His wish was to die in this white room and to be buried anonymously. He hoped that death was not long off.

  What Doe did not remember of the room was that the captor kept a cabinet by the door where he maintained the tools he used to incarcerate and torture. The locked cabinet was white Formica with glass doors. There were bottles of sedatives stored on the shelves: alprazolam, diazepam, Versed, morphine, and Triavil. He kept an assortment of hypodermic needles of varying sizes there too; some were used to administer medication, others were used for torture. An unopened bottle of Drano had several small pinholes in the plastic container where the bottle had been pierced with a hypodermic needle to draw out the corrosive material that had been injected into Doe’s eyes and throat. And there was the photographic equipment: Polaroid cameras, packs of film, digital cameras, and video cameras capable of being remotely operated. There was a large assortment of batteries and an unopened brick of VHS tapes. The drawers were filled with restraints: heavy gauge single-strand piano wire, nylon rope, and bungee cords. One drawer contained cartons of unfiltered cigarettes and matches.

  Doe lay silently on the bed, allowing his body to forget the torment it had just endured. The bedding stunk from the embedded odor of cigarette smoke. He focused on the raw flesh on his wrists, convincing himself that the wounds could be magically healed. He remembered a scene from a horror film where a vampire’s wounds shrunk and closed before his eyes. Doe pretended that he possessed the same supernatural power—before his mind’s eye, the cigarette burns healed, the scars faded, and his muscles, once again, swelled and rippled with vitality.

  It was easier for him to doze these days. The spring air was intoxicating. He found that blindness acted as a sedative, making his mind less active. He was almost out when he heard the sound of an intense struggle from the room next door.

  A bud popped open in Doe’s mind, and from it sprang the first glimmer of hope Doe had felt in a very long while. He was not alone.

  Nine

  It was after eleven when I got the call from Ambler, putting an abrupt end to my plans for a good night’s sleep. He was calling to ask Lido and I down to FBI headquarters in lower Manhattan. Our crime lab had been all over our skull and had then transferred it to the FBI, who was now ready to share its findings, if any, with us. I was hopeful that they had found something before the case went cold again. No information had come from our medical examination of the comatose John Doe. Amazingly, no one had seen a wretched, half-naked man drag his battered body into Central Park. Stuff like that just drives me wild.

  We were meeting Ambler at the FBI’s crime lab. The night receptionist led Lido and me to the conference room to wait for Ambler and Evans Jack, the department chief. There were still a few technicians working; cases I assumed that could not wait for morning and the next business day. On our way to the conference room, we passed the skull preparation unit. I stopped for a moment to watch a heavyset woman working on a small object, meticulously picking away at it with what looked like a dentist’s curette. I took a step closer as she placed the object into a small sink, which was set into her workstation. She began to irrigate with water flowing through a brown rubber tube. The breath caught in my lungs when I saw what she was working on. She used compressed air to dry the moisture from an infant’s skull.

  I heard Madonna’s voice whispering in my ear, “Naponu still needs a mother. That little girl and thousands like her need someone’s help, your help.” So there I was, Stephanie Chalice, titanium-clad, invulnerable, and cool as a proverbial cucumber, standing on the floor of the FBI’s crime lab, pushing back tears.

  Lido noticed that I was lagging behind. He stopped and turned. “Hey, what’s the matter?”

  I turned away from the child’s skull and caught up with him.

  Lido took my arm. “What’s going on?”

  “I just needed to catch my breath.”

  Lido had an incredulous look on his face. “You, the same woman who did a wind sprint in an evening gown the other night? You’re out of breath?”

  “Just let it go. I’m fine.”

  “You sure?”

  The impenetrable shield was back up. I was no longer Lido’s girlfriend. I was no longer a woman with a soul that could be touched. I was back on the job and pushing past Lido before someone else saw the breach in my armor. God knows what kind of insane dream I’d have tonight. Would tonight’s reverie see the return of Madonna, Batman ... Brad Pitt? Any and all were possible and were among the visitors that frequented my subconscious hallucinations. Only time would tell. For now, though, it was time to get busy. “Time’s wasting. Let’s see what Ambler’s got for us.”

  Ambler was seated at the head of the conference table. The skull was on the table in front of him, facing us. Absent the white Persian cat, with skull before him, Ambler smacked of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE, and James Bond’s number one nemesis. At his side was Evans Jack, the department head. Jack was a huge man with short hair and a full beard. He looked odd wearing a suit. Except for the Gibson SG, he looked a lot like Billy Gibbons, ZZ Top’s lead guitarist and longtime oddball; but who am I to judge. He also looked like he could have been Blofeld’s, Number One, in any number of James Bond movies. Evans Jack jumped up to welcome us as soon as we entered the room. I shook his huge paw, and then sat down off the corner of the table, close to Ambler.

  Ambler turned toward Lido and me, cool as ice, looking at us as if he had never seen us before and didn’t care if we’d ever meet again—the man was good.

  “Make my day,” I said to Ambler. “Give me something we can sink our teeth into.”

  “It’s the skull we’ve been looking for,” Ambler said. “There was a one hundred percent allele match to the remains of Kevin Lee—no question.”

  “That sounds promising,” Lido said.

  Ambler picked up a container of Starbucks coffee and sipped. “Promising in so far as we haven’t hit the wall, yes. Our UNSUB isn’t perfect. He lost one of his prized possessions, this skull. We had thought that he was meticulous because the trail has gone cold for so long, but by allowing John Doe’s escape, he has shown us that he’s capable of making mistakes.”

  “Not to mention that he captures and tortures people. Have you had a chance to look in on our John Doe?”

  “Not yet, Chalice.” Ambler replied. “I hear he’s a mess.”

  “You have no idea. His body is covered with scars and burns from head to toe. He’s been blinded and restrained. God knows what that poor man has been through.”

  “Any chance he’ll regain consciousness?” Ambler asked.

  “Slim. We’re circulating his photo on the street. We think that’s our best chance for determining his identity.”

  “You’ll make his photos available to The Bureau?”

  “Already done,” Lido said.

  “Was there anything found on the skull that will lead us to the UNSUB?” UNSUB was Bureau lingo for unidentified suspect.

  “It’s clean,” Ambler said, with disappointment in his voice. “Jack’s people have been over it top to bottom. They found Doe’s fingerprints, which unfortunately are not on file. They found common household dust, some cigarette ash…that’s about it.”

  “How’s that possible?” Lido asked.

  Evan
s Jack picked up the skull. It looked like a baseball cradled in his huge hands. “It’s no small job to make a skull look like this. An adult skull articulates with blood, cartilage, membranes, sinew—you know what I’m talking about, yes?”

  Lido and I nodded. Ambler pulled out his Blackberry and began scrolling through his emails.

  Jack continued, “So now that we understand that human bones are not pure white as found in nature, it begs the question, how and why was this skull cleaned? Typically, a specimen like this has been prepared for anatomical study. You find them at universities, teaching hospitals, museums—you get the picture.”

  “So you think our UNSUB is using his victim’s skulls to perform anatomical studies? That’s a wild one.”

  “You’d think he’d just take an evening class at NYU,” Lido quipped.

  “I’m sure the UNSUB’s interest in the human skull goes way beyond the ordinary,” Ambler said.

  “He doesn’t want anyone to know what he’s doing. This is very private work he’s performing,” I said. “Why he’s doing it, that’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question.”

  “How hard is it to prepare a skull in this way?” Lido asked.

  “It really takes a lot of work, but it doesn’t require much training,” Jack said, “All it really requires is a strong stomach and a great deal of determination. I’m sure your UNSUB has both.”

  “So you think he did this himself?” Lido asked.

  “Most likely,” Jack replied. “There are signs in the finished product that point to the work of an accomplished amateur. There are several shops out there; some are very advanced and others are just slightly more than butchers. I don’t think this example falls into either category.”

  “Butchers, how so?” I asked.

  “If you picture Uncle Jed and Granny sitting around the still, the image wouldn’t be too far from wrong. Remember, bone cleaning is a very primitive art form. Professional operations have refined it to a much higher level, but the nitty-gritty is that it was first performed by savages: tribal medicine men, shamans, head hunters—picture a shrunken head. We’re not exactly talking elite company.”

  “I’m intrigued, repulsed, but intrigued. Tell me how you know so much about the way this skull was cleaned.”

  “There are three ways to clean a bone like this: bug cleaning, boiling, and maceration. Our technicians said that tiny particles of sinew were found on the articulating surfaces of the middle nasal concha, which leads us to believe this specimen was bug cleaned because the beetles were too big to get into those really small crevices.”

  “And how did you rule out the other two techniques?”

  “Boiling makes a mess, warps the bone, and dissolves all the cartilage—shrinks just about everything. Even if you’re very careful, all the articulating fiber is destroyed. No, I’m sure it wasn’t boiled. That leaves bacterial maceration, which is just fancy talk for rotting the meat off the carcass. It’s the equivalent of throwing the specimen in a cesspool. Darn thing usually smells so bad afterward that you can’t get rid of the stench.” Jack sniffed the skull and winked at us. “Odor free. Another thing, your specimen was chlorine bleached, that’s why it’s so white. Professionals don’t do that. It looks good but there’s too much chance the chlorine will damage the bone.”

  “How should it be whitened?” Lido asked.

  I knew where Lido was going with his line of questioning, way back to his adolescence. This was no longer a detective’s line of questioning, but more of a twelve-year-old’s curiosity. He had an eager partner in Evans Jack. I could tell that at any moment now they’d lay down their peashooters and start trading baseball cards.

  “Mostly peroxide,” Jack replied.

  “Ordinary household peroxide?” Lido asked.

  “Pretty much. It does the job and it doesn’t mess with the bones too much. Cheap too—a four percent solution’s all you need, and it can be reused two or three times.”

  Neat!

  Lido seemed surprised. Apparently he had used peroxide on a booboo before and was surprised that it could be used to bleach something as cool as a human skull. “Really, I didn’t think peroxide was strong enough to do that kind of work—I mean if you pour it on a cut, it just sits there and bubbles, kind of like soda pop.”

  “And after a few seconds, your skin turns white and puffy, doesn’t it?” Jack asked.

  Lido nodded. “Now that you mention it.”

  “Well, how do you think your skin would look after a good twenty-four hour soak?”

  “I get the picture,” Lido said.

  “Good old H2O2 does the trick ninety-five percent of the time. For real tough stains they use Biotex.”

  “What’s that?” Lido asked.

  “A product that comes out of the UK,” Jack said. “It’s not alkaline, so you don’t have to worry about it turning your bones to jelly. We maintain a small bug cleaning room on premises. Care to have a look?”

  Oh dear God, is he kidding? Ambler looked up from his Blackberry and shot me a stealthy snicker. I had less than no interest in Jack’s bug room and was about to tell him so when Lido jumped eagerly out of his chair. What is it with boys? They love all that stuff: dinosaurs, bugs, the Discovery Channel. I have to go celibate once a year when they air Shark Week. I can’t get Lido away from the stupid TV.

  We went merrily on our way into Evans Jack’s bug room. I looked back at Ambler who hadn’t budged from his seat.

  “Been there,” Ambler said. “You enjoy.”

  No one was looking, so I flipped Ambler the bird. He grinned and turned back to his Blackberry.

  You could see how much Evan’s Jack loved his work. He was like a tour guide at Disney World. Stay close together, keep your hands out of the bug boxes—no one under fifty-four inches admitted. “We keep the bugs separate from everything else because if these critters get hungry enough, they’ll eat anything, bones, gristle, your lunch, and your clothes—almost anything. We take added precaution in the bug room. I’ll explain as we go along.” Jack handed us dust masks. “The beetles produce lots of dust. I’m allergic to it, so I’m gonna do this one, two, three, alright?”

  By all means.

  The room was divided by long tables, with Formica tops on metal frames. Glass aquarium tanks resided on the tables. They were of varying sizes. A large air scrubber was mounted on the ceiling. The room was dead silent.

  “This is where it happens,” Jack said. “The butcher shops use any kind of crap that’s handy to house the beetles, but we rely solely on steel reinforced glass aquariums. We visually inspect each colony at least twice a day.”

  “Different sized tanks for different sized specimens?” Lido asked.

  “Exactly right,” Jack was glowing with pride as he walked over to a twenty-gallon aquarium. “A large bone, like a human tibia might go into a tank this size. We try to make the tanks no bigger than necessary because you’ve got to keep these hungry bastards fed.”

  “You’re kidding,” Lido said.

  Lido peered into one of the tanks. He closed his eyes and reared backwards, away from it. “What’s going on in there?” I could see that he found the bugs repulsive and yet intriguing at the same time.

  Jack walked over to the tank that Lido had asked about. A log sheet was taped to the side of the tank. “Adult male skull, found in the New Jersey Swamp.”

  “Jimmy Hoffa?”

  Jack chuckled, “You never know.” He tapped the tank gently, where the beetles could be seen crawling through the eye sockets. “Not for everyone, is it?”

  “How long does it take for these things to eat the meat off a skull?” Lido asked.

  All right, Gus, it’s time to go—no more questions, please. I was starting to get the willies.

  “Depends on conditions, Detective. You’ve got to control their environment. Dermestes maculatus like it warm, moist, and dark, about eighty degrees Fahrenheit. There are four stages in the beetle’s life cycle: egg, larva, pupae, and adult. A g
ood hot colony of larva could clean a large bone in a couple of days, maybe less.”

  “How about an entire human body?” Lido asked, showing a macabre interest in all things icky and dorky.

  “About a week if prepared properly.”

  “How much prep work do you have to do?” Lido asked.

  I was about to run screaming from the room. I yawned dramatically, hoping Lido would pick up on it. He didn’t. Another two minutes and I’d have to start popping buttons off my blouse.

  Evans Jack laughed. “It’s not like throwing the specimen into a vat of boiling acid, for God’s sake; you’ve got to remove the skin and all the hair. Most of the flesh gets trimmed away before the specimen is ever introduced into the tanks. You’ve got to take out the eyes, the tongue, and the brain—all the internal organs. As voracious as Dermestes beetles are, they can be very discriminating. For example, they will not eat the flesh off the feet unless you remove all the skin and split the toe pads.”

  “Such discerning palates. Gus, it’s time to go. It’s past midnight and I make it a point to only study entomology during the daylight hours.”

  Evans Jack laughed and then thankfully, he sneezed, signaling that his allergy was kicking in. He sneezed again, this time so loudly that it reverberated through the bug room. “Allergies,” Jack reminded us. “What do you say we get some fresh air?”

  “My thoughts exactly. Thanks for the tour.”

  Evans Jack took us back to the conference room. Ambler thanked him for staying so late, and then he left, which thrilled me as Lido looked like he wanted to hang out and talk bugs all night long. I really wasn't not up for a stimulating all-nighter on the subject of earthworms and centipedes.

  Ambler had finished his coffee and had placed the skull in a brown paper evidence bag.

  “I guess we’ll take that back with us. Where’s the chain of evidence receipt?” I said.