The Memory of Trees (Kate Gardener mysteries Book 1)

by Gabriella Messina

  Hagen offered her a hand and a smile. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Gardener. How are you fitting in?”

  “It’s different. Thank God, I’ve watched a lot of PBS and BBC America so I’m not a complete duck out of water.” Kate caught a movement out of the corner of her eye.

  “Oh, and this is Detective Sergeant Pierce.”

  Kate turned to Pierce and offered her hand, waiting awkwardly as Pierce remained focused on his mobile device.

  “Rick. Unplug.” Hagen’s clipped words startled Pierce. He looked up quickly, seeing first Kate’s hand, and then Kate as a whole.

  The young woman standing in front of him was extraordinarily pretty, her dark haired bound-up at the back of her head in a messy bun. Her large blue eyes were carefully made-up, the contrast between the dark liner on her upper lid and the pale earth tones of her eye shadows making her eyes even more blue. Her lashes were thick and dark, as were her eyebrows. Her skin was porcelain fair, smooth and slightly flushed. She smiled, glancing down at the hand that was still extended between them.

  “Call me Kate.”

  Jesus, Rick, MOVE! Pierce did move, too quickly, and he felt his mobile slipping from his hand as he reached out and took her hand. Kate moved quickly, her free hand reaching down and catching the mobile before it hit the ground. She stood up again, her hand still in Pierce’s hand, and held out his mobile.

  Pierce took the mobile and pocketed it quickly. “Thanks for that. You have, uh, good reflexes.”

  Kate shook her head. “Not really. Just a lot closer to the ground, you know?” She released Pierce’s hand and started to back away from the group. “It was really nice to meet you both, but if I don’t run, I may soon be the former new forensic photographer.” Kate broke into a jog and hurried away toward the Land Rover.

  “Well, she is certainly energetic, isn’t she?” Hagen glanced at Pierce. The younger detective was still watching Kate. “And quite pretty as well.” Pierce’s lips turned in a small smile as he looked at Kate in the distance, his attention so focused that he was completely oblivious to Hagen, Monaghan, and to the melodic ringing of the mobile in his pocket.

  “Rick? I’ll venture that’s Paul phoning. You might want to answer it.”

  Pierce turned to Hagen, his expression puzzled. “Sir?”

  “Rick, plug in.” Realization dawned and Pierce quickly reached into his pocket and answered his mobile.

  Hagen shared an amused look with Monaghan. “Never underestimate the power,” Monaghan murmured.

  Hagen smiled broadly. Anyone that could disconnect Richard Pierce from his mobile with her mere presence wielded great power indeed.

  ***

  Forensic Photography Supervisor Neville Crane leaned against the side of the blue Land Rover, his corduroy jacket hanging loose on his well-muscled torso and open to the waist. He started to reach up with his right arm, wincing as the sling pulled, preventing him from doing so. Instead, he reached up with his left index finger, the digital camera in that hand brushing against his shirt collar and his shaggy brown hair as he carefully scratched along his jawline. He’d been growing the beard for several weeks now, trimming and tending, and the effort was definitely paying off. Even if Katie said he looked like he’d been traveling with the Grateful Dead.

  Crane frowned as he lowered his hand and studied the screen on the back of the camera. His eyebrows suddenly shot up, giving his boyish face an even more youthful look.

  Kate stopped beside him, turning quickly and leaning against the Land Rover.

  Crane glanced at her, a fresh frown furrowing his forehead. “I do hope that lateness is not a habit of yours.”

  “Sorry, sorry. The subway… And I ran… But I…”

  Crane raised his hand to stop her from continuing. He looked up, struggling to deepen his frown and failing miserably. Instead, he smiled. “Since this is your first official day, I’m going to let this go. Just don’t let it happen again.”

  “It won’t.” Kate gestured to the sling. “What happened to your arm?”

  “The truth or the story that makes me seem romantic and masculine?” Crane raised his arm, wincing with discomfort.

  “You’re already romantic and masculine, Neville, let’s go with the truth.”

  Crane sighed. “I fell while blading on the Embankment. Sad and pathetic, isn’t it?”

  “No,” Kate answered. She hesitated, then grinned. “Well, yeah, actually.”

  Crane turned the camera screen toward her.

  “Take a look at these. I took as many as I was able to. Someone cut his Crown Jewels off. All the way off,” he said, smirking. His smile faded as he continued. “You’ve got the eye, Katie. What do you see?”

  Kate took the camera from him and looked at the screen for a moment. Crane watched her face closely as she studied the crime scene photo, squinted at it, then looked again.

  “What do you see, Katie?”

  Kate sighed, exasperated. “I need my glasses.” She opened the flap of her messenger bag and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. Large lenses with a very dark tint.

  Kate slipped the glasses on and turned to the camera screen again. Crane watched her, her blue eyes visible through the sides of the glasses as they darted back and forth.

  Kate waited for her eyes to adjust to the dimmer lighter, a matter of seconds, then looked closely at the photo on the screen. Her pupils dilated as she took in the picture of the crime scene: the naked body of the male victim laying face-down; the signs of restraint and bruising on the body, especially around the wrists and ankles; the smatterings of blood on the ground near him; the broken foliage on the bush closest to the body and the signs of disturbed soil and leaves below it; and the dry patch of ground near the body.

  “Well?” Crane looked on expectantly.

  “It’s hard to fathom someone hating this much.” Kate handed him the camera and slowly took off her sunglasses.

  Crane smirked. “Not that hard.” He leaned into the passenger side of the Land Rover, carefully packing the camera away. His voice changed, taking on a deeper, even darker, tone as he continued. “Everyone’s known at least one bastard they hated that much. Or someone they loved even more.”

  “So you’re saying there is a justification for cutting off a guy’s package and letting him bleed to death?”

  Crane shrugged. “It could be a just punishment in some cases. Rapists. Child molesters. I’m sure their loved ones dream of this kind of vengeance. Most never realize the dream.”

  “You are a sick and twisted man, Neville,” Kate responded, shaking her head.

  Crane smiled. “Do you want to be cited for lateness?”

  Kate arched one of her shapely eyebrows. “What happened to letting it go, huh?”

  Suddenly, several of the remaining uniformed constables started running toward the canal and St. Mark’s Bridge. Crane and Kate turned to watch as Hagen and Pierce hurried to join the officers. As the two detectives reached the entrance to the bridge, a constable stepped into view, an evidence bag held out in front of him. He held it up for Hagen and Pierce to see before handing it over to a scene-of-crime officer (SOCO).

  “Looks like they found the rest,” Crane said with a smirk. “I’m sure he’ll be relieved.”

  Kate rubbed the back of her neck and grinned. “Sick and twisted, Neville. Sick and twisted.” She watched as the scene began to quickly clear, her gaze lingering on the attractive detective walking toward the blue BMW, his attention on his mobile once again.

  Pierce paused outside the passenger side of the car, his index finger moving quickly across the touch-screen to read the message from Paul. The missing person searches Hagen had ordered were yielding nothing so far. Pierce sighed and pocketed his mobile. As he opened the car door, he glanced up and saw… her. She was looking at him, watching him rather pointedly. Pierce felt an involuntary pull in his stomach… God, she was beautiful.

  Then she smiled at him.

  “Rick? Let’s go!” Pierce snapped o
ut of his reverie and looked down at the partially open passenger window. Hagen was leaning over the passenger seat, his fingers poised on the automatic window button.

  “Sorry, sir.” Pierce quickly got in to the car, closing the door as Hagen started the car. Pierce pressed the button to raise the window and, as the glass moved upward into place, he looked out again, looked for Kate.

  She was still there. Still smiling. At him.

  3

  5 September, 2011

  Forensic Science Services (FSS), 109 Lambeth Road

  Assistant Forensic Scientist Jimi Khan leaned against the door to the DNA Lab, her reading glasses perched on her nose. The pretty East Asian woman’s choppy black hair was tousled to the point of spikiness, its darkness streaked with several brilliant shots of purple. When she went to the salon, she had pointedly asked for a very punk-slash-metal sort of look. Jimi glanced at her reflection in the glass wall across from her, and sighed. Unfortunately, instead of Joan Jett, she’d come out looking more like Nymphadora Tonks.

  The chime of the lift drew her attention away from her reflection. She squinted over the top of her glasses at the two detectives coming down the hallway.

  “You’re here for the preliminary, Superintendent?”

  Hagen and Pierce stopped beside her and Hagen nodded quickly in response.

  “Doctor M will be with you in a moment. She’s just cleaning him up a bit.” Jimi pursed her lips, then shook her head solemnly. “They must have killed him four or five times, at least.”

  “That isn’t very far from the truth.”

  Monaghan strolled toward them down the hallway, drying her hands on a surgical towel as she continued. “Jimi, would you pick up the toxicology screen from the lab for me, please?”

  Jimi gave a small salute and walked away down the hallway. Monaghan motioned for Hagen and Pierce to follow her.

  “Thankfully, the criminal masses of London have refrained from any significant activity in the past 48 hours, leaving me free to complete this so quickly.” Monaghan pulled open the door marked “mortuary” and held it open for Hagen and Pierce. She tossed the surgical towel into a nearby bin and grabbed a file from the counter. “This way, gentlemen. Grab gloves on your way.”

  The smell of cleaning chemicals, alcohol and bleach filled the air, hitting them like a fist as they entered the autopsy area. The room was all steel, concrete floors and tiled walls. A cold, sterile room. Varying stages of autopsies were underway at other tables with pathologists and technicians in attendance, the plastic sheeting surrounding each area spattered with blood stains and unidentifiable debris. The overhead ventilation hummed, circulating the air but doing little to dissipate the odor.

  Hagen, Pierce, and Monaghan quickly donned scrubs and shoe coverings then stepped behind the plastic sheeting surrounding the autopsy area at the far end of the room. Hagen’s curiosity got the better of him and he lifted the white drape.

  The young male victim, now face-up, was an attractive specimen, or at least he had been in life. In death, the beauty of his face and physique were marred by violence. Dark circles hollowed his eyes. Bruises, scratches, and stab wounds covered his torso and the classic Y-shaped autopsy incision and broad sutures split his chest and extend down to his pubic area.

  Hagen let the drape fall. “What can you tell us?”

  Monaghan flipped through the post-mortem paperwork before responding.

  “The victim’s family had a missing persons report filed when he didn’t return phone calls. His name is Daniel Norton, age 28. No evidence of natural disease that could have caused or contributed to death.”

  Monaghan set down the file then folded back the drape to the waist.

  “He tried to put up a fight. Defensive injuries on the hands and arms and bruising to the face. A large bruise on the upper left abdomen, perhaps from being held forcefully from behind, causing minor damage to the spleen.”

  She folded the drape back again, smoothing it down well below the waist, and watched the reaction of the two detectives. Hagen’s jaw clenched and, though he blinked a few times rapidly, he looked on. Pierce, on the other hand, swallowed hard and took several steps back, his eyes averted.

  Monaghan took a deep breath then pointed to the gaping wound in the pubic area of the body. “The genitals were removed with a bladed weapon, a knife or scalpel. The same weapon may have been used to inflict the stab wounds in the chest and abdomen. There are similarities to the blade edge here below the collarbone and in the wounds directly below the left floating rib.”

  Monaghan paused as Jimi entered, file in-hand. Jimi’s eyes widened as she briefly saw the victim’s body, but she quickly raised the file up to shield her eyes from the sight.

  Monaghan stifled a smile, and then continued with the autopsy results.

  “Of course, until we have the weapon, we cannot be sure, but I have photographs of the wounds running through the system and, if we have anything similar in there, we will find it. The near absence of bleeding along the wound tracks indicates that death occurred very rapidly following the castration. There was something else.” She points to a small puncture wound on the right upper thigh. “An injection site on the right upper thigh. A hard injection, pieces of his clothing were embedded in the wound.”

  She pulled the drape back up, re-covering the body to the mid-torso.

  “Any questions?”

  “That’s quite enough for the moment,” responded Hagen as he headed for the door, Pierce ducking out right behind him.

  Jimi handed Monaghan the toxicology report, which the older woman quickly glanced over.

  “Oh, my, my, my…,” she murmured, flipping through several more pages. Then, Monaghan raised her voice. “Superintendent Hagen?” She looked up toward the exit.

  Hagen and Pierce were stripping out of their scrubs and shoe coverings. They stopped and looked up expectantly.

  Monaghan left the autopsy area and moved briskly toward them. She held up the file. “Toxicology. The victim had a chemical substance in his body at the time of death. Pancuronium bromide. It is a potent intravenous muscle relaxant, used in hospital to facilitate intubation or when placing a patient on to a respirator. It is also used in surgery with general anesthesia.”

  “So, not a medication you would pick up at your local chemist,” Pierce ventured.

  Monaghan shook her head. “Not at all. Pancuronium is a part of the euthanasia protocols in Belgium and the Netherlands. And in the United States, it is one of the components of lethal injection in some death penalty states.”

  “A muscle relaxant?” Hagen queried.

  “Well, more accurately a paralytic,” Monaghan replied.

  Hagen nodded. “So the poor lad never knew what hit him.”

  “I’m afraid he did. Pancuronium does not have a sedative or hypnotic effect. It simply paralyses. When used for anesthesia or lethal injection, it is combined with other medications to achieve unconsciousness and to relieve pain. But Mister Norton did not have any of those substances in his system, only the pancuronium. Castration likely began very soon after administration of the drug. Mister Norton would have felt every moment of pain until he expired, and would have been completely helpless, unable to cry out or move in any way.” Monaghan sighed. “A horribly violent death.”

  Hagen jaw was tight, a frown creasing his weathered forehead. His voice was strained and low as he spoke. “What could any man possibly have done to deserve that?”

  It was a rhetorical question, of course, but Monaghan’s response was quick and surprisingly terse. “No one deserves to die like this, Doug. No matter what they may have done.” She gestured toward the autopsy area behind them. “That boy was tortured. A lot of thought was put into this murder, a lot of planning. Male or female, you have a person or persons out there who are extraordinarily dangerous, and about whom we know absolutely nothing.”

  4

  6 September, 2011

  Murder Squad, New Scotland Yard

  De
tective Constable Paul Owens stared at his computer’s screen, his dark eyes flitting here and there as he took in the contents of the screen before him. He typed rapidly… “mail-order injectable medication, pancuronium bromide”, then hit enter.

  The dreaded small circle began to swirl in the center of the screen. Round and round and round it went, like debris circling a drain. Owens frowned. “Bullocks,” he swore, his lilting Glaswegian accent giving the expletive a lyrical sound. He scratched at the light growth of beard covering his jawline. It was supposed to make him look older, but all it was succeeding in doing was driving him completely mad.

  Owens leaned back in his chair and glanced around the room at the other detectives. Male and female, they were all bent over their desks, eyes focused firmly on their computer screens or on paperwork in front of them. Most were older than him, some by as much as a decade. Owens’ gaze finally rested on the desk nearest to Hagen’s office.

  Detective Sergeant Pierce sat there, his mobile resting beside his laptop, his fingers moving deftly between the two. Owens watched the older detective thoughtfully. Pierce was one of the few in the Murder Squad that didn’t treat him like a youth, even if he did look like one. Owens looked back to his computer screen. Still nothing. Owens sighed.

  Pierce looked up from his electronic devices. “Everything all right, Paul?”

  “Damn computer’s too slow. I’m looking for suppliers, you know, sources for the drugs used in the Norton murder, but I’m not getting anywhere.”

  Pierce tapped the screen of his mobile, then picked it up as he stood. “Here. Use mine.”

  Owens couldn’t keep the startled look from his face. “Use yours?” Pierce was rather notorious in the Murder Squad for not letting anyone use his equipment, even the electronics issued by the Met. This was… unprecedented. “Are you sure?”

  Pierce gestured to his chair. “Go ahead.” He grabbed the cup of coffee sitting beside his laptop and stepped away, making room for Owens.