Terrorbyte

by Cat Connor

  “Can you smell chlorine?”

  Lee leaned closer to the body and sniffed. “I can now.”

  He clenched his teeth and frowned but made no further comment.

  “You got pictures for us?” I asked.

  The crime scene photographer would get all the evidential pictures needed. I wanted something we could peruse now, without waiting for the actual photographs to be processed. That’s why we carry digital cameras.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Swap memory sticks with the camera.”

  “Sure.”

  I removed a spare memory stick from a small plastic case on my key ring and handed it to him, then slid the one containing our crime scene photographs back into the case. It was so much easier working with memory sticks and thumb drives – we didn’t need to find a secure line to transfer information. The twenty-first century was full of great inventions and I embraced every single one as soon as it became available.

  “Will you let the local police know we are interested in this? Have them copy me on the forensic reports from the scene. Let them know I am especially interested in the writing, the ribbon, plus the placement of the body.” Until I said it, I had done well not to acknowledge what we were looking at. My mind had carefully blurred most of what was in front of me and reduced it to a professional context: nothing more than another case. I knew I had to do it, so I took a breath and scrutinized the body in front of me.

  Female aged between twenty-five and thirty, shoulder-length blonde hair, wearing a red tee shirt. The woman was lying on her back, naked from the waist down. Knees bent, legs apart. A bottle of bourbon lay by her right thigh. It still contained some of its contents although the top was off. I could see no obvious wounds but there was a great deal of blood on the floor, mingled with bourbon. Bloodied handprints, smudged on the woman’s inner thigh, partially concealed bruising. I pulled back, stopping my thought processes before they fixated on the pain suffered by this victim.

  I indicated the bottle. “I want to know the significance of that.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  “How long ago do you suppose she died?”

  “Maybe as long as eighteen-to-twenty hours. She was last seen yesterday morning.”

  “Any thoughts on the cause of death?”

  He shook his head. “We got a lot of blood but no obvious wounds. She could’ve bled out from penetrating wounds we can’t see,” Lee said. As an afterthought and thinking out loud rather than imparting vital information, he added, “Feels like murder to me.”

  It sure didn’t look like an accident or natural causes. “Yeah, I’m figuring she didn’t do this to herself. Any weapons found?”

  “Not yet.”

  “My money is on stab wounds in her back. This pose bothers me, feels staged and I suspect it was done after death.”

  My eyes roamed the countertop and stopped on two plates with toast, partly eaten. Behind the plates were two glasses, half-full of milk.

  “Where are her kids?” A chill ran up my spine as someone walked across my grave. I looked over my shoulder expecting to see a person standing behind me. There was no one there, yet eyes drilled holes into my back.

  “We don’t know.”

  I saw a ripped bag of some kind of animal feed leaning up against a wall. I lifted a handful of pellets and let them fall through my fingers, back into the bag. Chicken feed. Why would she have chicken feed?

  “You seen any chickens?” I asked Lee.

  His puzzled expression suggested not. “Should there be chickens?”

  I indicated the bag by my foot. “Well, something must eat this.”

  “Strange thing to have in an apartment.”

  I changed the subject. “Who found the body?”

  “Neighbor found her. Sam is next door with the neighbor.”

  “Well, that explains why I haven’t seen him yet. I’ll have a quick look through the rest of this place then head over to Sam. Which apartment?”

  I was struggling not to puke and wishing I were Samantha from Bewitched. One good twitch from my nose and everything would disappear. I wouldn’t even mind having Endora as my mother. I doubt I could stand being married to Derwood though.

  “Fifteen, back one.”

  “Thanks.”

  I skirted the body and left the room. It didn’t take me long to find out what ate the chicken feed. In a back bedroom, I found a small cage and a bedraggled bantam hen. Poor thing didn’t have much of a life. The water dish was empty. I filled it in the cluttered bathroom next door. The hen stared at me with beady black eyes.

  I stopped at the kitchen on my way out.

  “Hey, Lee, there’s a sorry-looking chicken in a cage back there. Please get it taken to the animal shelter.”

  “Will do.”

  I glanced at my watch – it was nearly morning proper. The watery yellow stuff leaking in through the ragged curtains must be sun. Damn, it got late fast. I chuckled to myself. My mind sent out a warning that this was all too unnatural and it was ready to snap at any moment. But no time for fractured minds; we had a sicko bastard to track down.

  This was no copycat killer. Admittedly, when I first heard about a murder with a poem it was easy to let my imagination be carried away and even propel me back in time. But Jack Griffin didn’t pose bodies like this. He got his thrills by chopping them up and leaving them for me to find. I let go of an internal sigh of relief; at least I think it was internal. I glanced around quickly. No one near me reacted. Jack Griffin wasn’t his real name, but I never thought of him as Charles Boyd. He was Jack Griffin, the invisible killer. A bad poet who wanted to be Shakespeare.

  It was damn sucky that the sicko used my poem. I shuddered at the thought that some psycho had bought our book. I wasn’t exactly bursting with joy about a Post-it note addressed to me, either.

  That was all it took for me to find myself back in the kitchen confronting Lee. I remembered the look on his face when he smelled the chlorine; him not telling me what the note said. There was something he didn’t want to tell me and I’d nearly let him get away with it.

  “What did it say?” I asked, from the doorway.

  He flipped back a page or two in his notebook and read aloud, “ ‘Special Agent Conway, Gabrielle – We need more chlorine.’ ”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Chlorine … So I’m thinking that it’s no coincidence that I could smell chlorine on the body.”

  “I’d say not.”

  “It’s not concentrated; it smells more like she’s been swimming recently. Let’s find out if she liked to swim and where.”

  “On it,” Lee replied.

  “I’ll see you later.”

  I left the apartment, no happier and no closer to knowing what had happened inside.

  Standing alone in the hallway outside number fifteen, images of the dead woman swirled through my mind. Vomit rose in my throat as I forced the images back into context, but I held it down. I clicked on Sam’s number in the contacts list of my cell phone.

  He answered on the second ring. “Hello, Ellie.”

  Caller ID was one of my favorite inventions. “Do you want me?”

  “At the risk of losing my job … you mean that in a professional way?” Sam quipped.

  My eyebrows shot up. I was glad there was no one there to witness my surprise. “Yes, I do.”

  “Too bad.”

  It was hard not to laugh. “Yeah, yeah … do ya?” I really enjoyed working with Sam and Lee. They had a way of maintaining a sense of balance and clarity no matter what was happening around them. Somehow it turned out that we always got the worst cases. I remembered my father dishing out wisdom when I mentioned a tough case once, ‘We’re not given anything on this earth that we can’t handle.’

  “No, I got this.” He paused. I swear I could hear his mind working. Sam eventually said, “Unless of course you’re still wearing that little silvery dress you wore to dinner.”

 
; “Jesus, Sam! It was platinum and that’s Supervising Special Agent Chicky Babe to you.”

  “Is there anything you want me to do, SSA Chicky Babe?”

  “Find out if the neighbor knows where the victim’s children are.”

  “They went to their father yesterday for the week. Parents split over a year ago.”

  “Send someone to interview the father and the kids.” I leaned back on the wall behind me. “Do we have a name for our victim yet?”

  “Christine Campbell.”

  “I want to know if there are any prior police callouts to this address: domestic violence, loud arguments, anything in the backgrounds of either Christine or her ex-partner.”

  “Will do.”

  “Thanks, Sam.”

  “No worries, Chicky Babe.”

  “Sam,” I warned, then laughed.

  He struggled to keep his voice even. “We’ll call you if we need you, Supervising Special Agent Chicky Babe. Go home. Tell Mac I said ‘hey’.”

  “Will do.”

  “This has the potential to be a shitty investigation. Go back to bed, and get some sleep.”

  We had a murder to solve, which meant there wouldn’t be any sleeping, not yet anyway. It was sweet of him to care.

  I slipped the phone back onto my belt and headed out into the weak daylight beyond the oppressive structure. More happened here than this murder. The building, with its once-beautiful stained-glass atrium windows, hid more violence than one attack. It had history. I wondered if the ex-partner knew anything about that history. That was certainly something I would be finding out.

  My mind considered the lines of the poem as I drove home and took little notice of the emerging day as the words played in my head, as if on a looped video:

  When the world has done

  Lost in time too tired to run.

  A safe place came to be.

  Feeling your words surround me.

  I wished I could remember the rest of the poem. I think it was called Stolen.

  Mac’s red Toyota Tacoma double-cab truck was still in the driveway when I arrived home. I was pleased to see it and happy to know he hadn’t decided to go out. One glance at the time on the dash told me it was very early; apart from the gas stations and convenience stores nothing much was open, and where would he go? I sat in the car for a few minutes, resting my head on the steering wheel, while I tried to convince my face it wanted to smile.

  Slowly I lifted my head, flicked my hair back over my shoulders and checked my reflection in the rearview mirror. Satisfied that I had something resembling a smile on my face, I slid out from behind the wheel.

  I gave the car door a kick and it clicked shut. Another Monarch flew by and landed on the back of Mac’s truck, then flittered away into the woods. I felt eyes upon me and looked up expecting to see Mac watching me. A random sunbeam bounced off the house windows obscuring everything beyond. I could’ve sworn someone was watching. It had to be Mac.

  Again, I checked the smile on my face. It felt okay; in a few minutes, it would settle and become real. Mac opened the back door as I climbed the steps and voilà, my smile was real.

  “Didn’t think I’d see you till tonight.” He pulled me into his arms.

  “Me neither.”

  “You okay?”

  “Of course.” Silly question! Anyway, he knew the answer already; when was I not okay?

  “I’ve gotta do some stuff.” I leaned back in his arms and looked up into his eyes.

  “Want a hand?”

  I shook my head vehemently, ensuring a hair sandwich for Mac. He extracted several strands from his mouth then smoothed my hair, sweeping it behind my shoulders again. “I’m home today. Let me know if you need help.”

  Unlike me, Mac usually had weekends off. We tried to make Sunday our day. It wasn’t going to happen this Sunday.

  “Is there coffee?”

  “Damn straight there’s coffee; go settle yourself. I’ll bring it.” He kissed me and gave me a gentle push towards our shared home office.

  I slipped off my jacket and hung it on the back of my chair then leaned across the desk and pressed the power button on the computer tower.

  I yawned.

  It’d been a long night; would be a longer day. I heard a muffled noise and recognized it as the kitchen phone ringing. A few minutes passed while the computer ran through its start-up sequence and I readied myself for work.

  Coffee arrived with soft footsteps. “Here you go.” Mac placed the steaming mug on the desk beyond my keyboard.

  “Thank you.”

  “Mom called, she’ll call back any second.”

  I glanced sideways at him. “Printer problems? Computer problems? The second coming of Christ at hand?”

  Mac crowed. “No, this time she wants me to come over and string Christmas lights.”

  “O-k-a-a-a-y.” His statement sank in, revolved around, and jumped back out. Nope, not even I could rationalize that. “In August?”

  “It’s mom.”

  “Silly me. That now makes perfect sense and that’s all I needed to know. You going?”

  He was quick to reply, “No. I said I was home today. It’s Sunday, Ellie, and I will be home.”

  I saw something in his eyes, something I hadn’t seen before. There was something he wasn’t telling me. Whatever it was he had going on in his head was nagging at him.

  “Mac?” I could hear that little voice, warning me against asking questions when maybe I didn’t want to hear the answer but, as usual, I plowed on anyway. “Is there something you want to say?”

  “It can wait, Ellie.”

  Obviously, it couldn’t wait or he wouldn’t look like he did. He was sad. That’s it. I found the look deep in my memory bank: he looked sad.

  “Just tell me.”

  “I’d like us to discuss the possibility of having our own children.”

  He obviously wasn’t joking last night. At that moment, I saw right into his soul and I saw Mac as a child. I saw the vacuum cleaner pipe strike his head and heard his mother screaming obscenely as she brought the metal pipe down on his skull a second time. Damn! I pushed the vision away and looked up at Mac. “Okay, we’ll talk once this case is over.” No harm talking about it later. Much later. By then I was sure I could come up with clever and irrefutable evidence to dissuade this line of thought.

  Mac smiled and pulled his chair over to mine. “So what have you got?”

  “A nut job on the loose is a distinct possibility.”

  Mac’s fingertips ran down my spine, distracting me with tingles of pleasure.

  “I don’t know what I have, not yet anyway,” I said, taking the memory stick off my key ring. I plugged the stick into a USB card reader and opened all the pictures, one on top of the other. The last picture was a shot of the victim’s face.

  “Damn,” Mac said.

  “Yeah. This is Christine Campbell. And this is not how she thought her day would go.”

  “Damn,” he uttered again. It wasn’t like him to be lost for words.

  “Check there is photo paper in the printer, will you?”

  Mac scooted to the far end of the desk. He removed the plain paper from the printer and replaced it with photo paper from the drawer underneath the desk.

  “You’re good to go.”

  The printer hummed and whirred and the machine began to print.

  Ten minutes later, we were studying the gruesome pile of photographs in silence. Twenty minutes later, my phone rang.

  It was Sam.

  “We have another similar crime scene. It’s possible it’s the same killer.”

  The edge in his voice told me it was more feasible than he intimated.

  “I’m on it. Where?”

  “Herndon. I’m sending the map to your phone.”

  “Thanks. Sam, notify local law enforcement. They invited us in on the other case, but now we need to direct this investigation. Let them know we’re taking point on these murders. I think we have a se
xual predator out there. Get someone to liaise with us from the local police. I want to make sure we keep everyone in the loop. We’re going to need somewhere to work close to the scene. I want somewhere visible for anyone in the neighborhood to drop in with information.” What was I searching for? The words I needed: what were they? From the blank hole where they should’ve been, they emerged. Mobile command. “Set up a mobile command center.”

  I leapt to my feet, dragging my jacket with me. By the time I’d struggled into it and was at the door I realized Mac was waiting with keys in his hand. “I’m driving.”

  I didn’t argue. The prospect of driving in the morning rush hour traffic wasn’t a pleasant one.

  “You got your cell phone?” I asked, as I passed him in the doorway.

  “Nope.”

  “But your mom …”

  Mac smiled. “What? Won’t be able to reach me?” He smacked himself lightly on the forehead with the heel of his hand. “Duh!”

  I had to smile. “Just tell me she doesn’t have my new number.”

  Mac locked the door behind us. Spits of rain flew in the wind.

  Chapter Six

  Gotta Have A Reason

  Revulsion washed over me, leaving a prickling sensation in my eyes. Mac turned slowly. His mouth opened then closed. His expression was one of horror, which he couldn’t hide.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, both to curb the sensation and to blur my vision. The smell of bourbon mingled with blood was overpowering and fresher than the last scene. The same spine-tingling feeling crawled over me. I looked at the deceased – maybe she was watching me. Kneeling on one knee next to the body, I breathed in. Chlorine again.

  I whispered to the deceased woman, “Who did this to you?”

  Gold ribbon was wrapped around her neck and tied in a pretty bow under her chin.

  “Special Agent Conway?”

  Startled, violently, I jumped to my feet. I stared at the woman’s lifeless face, not convinced that she hadn’t spoken. I half expected to see her mouth move as the voice repeated, “Special Agent Conway?”

  As my heart thumped loudly I realized that the voice came from behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw a uniformed officer. Not a ghost.

  “Yes.”