The Christopher Killer

by Alane Ferguson

It was time, yet nobody moved. Dr. Moore waved his hand through the air. “Go ahead, Mahoney,” he said, “the gang’s all here. By all means, get started.”

  Her father cleared his throat. To the others in the room he looked confident, but Cameryn knew him well enough to tell he was nervous. “All right, Cammie, the first thing we do is move the deceased from the bag to the autopsy table. The second thing—and this is important—is we check the bag. There’s probably nothing in it, but we search anyway, just to be sure.”

  “If the body was wrapped properly at the scene, then the bag should be clean,” Moore interjected.

  “The point is, no matter how careful you try to be, mistakes happen. Always check.” Patrick aimed his comments directly at her, as if they were the only two people in the room. On the count of three, Ben, Cameryn, and her father pulled Rachel, still wrapped in the sheet, onto the perforated table, after which they examined the bag, which was empty. Cameryn felt her stomach turn as they unwrapped the sheet from Rachel’s body. The skin on her nose, cheeks, and chin was rose-colored, like mottled sunburn, while the skin around her hairline remained ghostly white. Her nose had flattened. Bits of leaves were stuck in her hair, fragile as butterfly wings; a small twig was entangled in one of her locks. They pulled the rest of the sheet from under her and she lay prone on the table. With her hands beneath her back, the body rocked awkwardly, but her feet remained on pointe.

  “The color on her face’s from postmortem lividity,” her father explained.

  “I know—blood pools at the lowest point. It means she was put on her stomach right after he killed her.” Cameryn kept her voice low.

  Her father pulled a twist of hair from Rachel’s face. The tongue protruded from Rachel’s mouth like a turtle’s head, dry and leathery. Eyes, now sunken, stared vacantly, as blank as stone. Although there was no smell, there was no mistaking the look of death, especially in those large, expressionless eyes. Who did this to you? Cameryn asked silently, but Rachel only stared in reply.

  Suddenly Cameryn remembered a movie she’d seen, where the detective had been able to take a picture from the victim’s eyes of the last thing she saw and place the image on a screen, and right then she would have given anything to be able to have that power. She moved closer, wanting to touch Rachel but at the same time wanting to recoil. Soon her fingers floated over Rachel’s forearm until finally her fingertips drifted to the bare, freckled skin, cool and hard beneath Cameryn’s latex gloves. Why you? she asked silently. It could have been any of us in Silverton. It could have been me. Bending closer, she saw her own pale reflection in the iris of Rachel’s eye.

  “Cammie!”

  Cameryn snapped her head up. Her father had been speaking to her. “What?”

  “Time for pictures.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  The photographs began again, this time using a small L-shaped ruler Ben called an ABFO scale that he placed on various points on Rachel’s body before shooting the pictures. Everyone seemed to have a camera—Sheriff Jacobs had his Polaroid, Cameryn her color digital, her father the black-and-white.

  “ABFO stands for American Board of Forensic Odontology,” her father translated. “It’s so we can tell how large or small things are when we look at the images.”

  When they were done, Moore moved to the collection of trace evidence. “Watch how he works from head to foot,” Patrick told her. “Everything has a method to it.”

  Dr. Moore frowned. “I suppose you’re going to keep this running commentary going the entire time?”

  Her father ignored him, but Cameryn found herself intrigued as she watched the pathologist’s sure motions: First he ran a black, six-inch plastic comb through Rachel’s hair and then folded the strands in a small piece of tissue paper. His strokes were gentler than she had expected, but still mechanical. Moore placed the tissue, plus the comb, in a paper coin envelope and handed it to her father. “Seal and sign,” he said.

  Ben held Rachel’s head between his hands while Moore moved forceps over her scalp, his steel pincers yanking away tiny clumps of her hair first from the front, then from the back, finally from the nape of the neck. Once again he placed the strands on a tissue and dropped the folded sheet into a coin envelope. This, too, he passed to her father, who busily wrote Rachel’s name, the date, the coroner case number, and the fact that it was collected by Dr. Moore. He then initialed the envelope and sealed the top with red evidence tape. That, too, was initialed.

  “Now for the eyes,” Moore said. He paused for a moment, his arm cocked, forceps poised in his hand like a conductor’s baton. Music from La Bohème rose and fell in the background as he murmured, “My, she was a pretty girl, wasn’t she?”

  “Yeah, very pretty,” Ben agreed. Ben’s muscled body was planted solidly on the floor as if he grew there. His dark hands still cradled Rachel’s head. “And way too young to die.”

  Moore sighed in agreement. Cameryn tried not to wince when the doctor plucked fifteen hairs from Rachel’s left eyebrow. “Don’t know why it’s always the left side, but that’s the way we do it,” Moore said to no one in particular. “Here, Mahoney.” He handed her father another coin envelope with the eyebrow hairs. “You know the drill—seal and sign. Now, let’s see what we’ve got here….” Pinching Rachel’s lower eyelid with his forceps, he pulled it down toward her cheek, then pushed on Rachel’s eyeball with a finger until the lower lid bulged out. The inside lid and white of the eye was stippled with deep red dots, as though bits of scarlet confetti had been sprinkled inside. “There’s the petechial hemorrhaging. Usually, but not always, petechial hemorrhaging’s a sign of strangulation. Cameryn, hand me that syringe there—no, the one with the short needle. That’s right,” he said when Cameryn had located it from a row of instruments. With a sure movement he jabbed the needle through the white of Rachel’s eye and withdrew fluid, and Rachel’s eye sank farther still. Something must have shown on Cameryn’s face, because Dr. Moore said, “Don’t worry, the mortuary’ll fix her up again. Lots of times they rehydrate the eye to plump it back up. They just take a syringe of saline and…presto—instant eye.” The vitreous fluid was placed into a tube with a red cap and then in one topped in gray. He handed the tubes to Patrick, who labeled them without a word.

  One grim procedure followed another. Cameryn, her father, and Ben rolled the body on its side so Dr. Moore could cut off the tape binding her hands, which he placed into a large, inside-out Ziploc bag. He tacked down the tape at three points and then flipped the bag right-side out, sealed it, then dropped it into another, larger bag.

  “Unfortunately,” he said, “I’ve done this before. I’ve learned from past mistakes not to press the sticky side directly onto the plastic. The lab can never get it off. Criminals have a penchant for using duct tape, so…” He didn’t finish his thought, and Cameryn didn’t ask.

  At every step there were more photographs, which she snapped woodenly. We’ll catch him, she promised Rachel, over and over, one time for each click of the camera. We’ll get whoever did this to you. Her promise sounded hollow, even to herself. Forensics had become cutting-edge, but there was still a cold, hard, statistical fact: Many murders, no matter how good the forensics, remained unsolved. Killers vanished every day. Cases went cold. Not if I can help it, she told herself fiercely.

  Dr. Moore clipped Rachel’s nails, folded them into a tissue, and dropped them into another coin envelope while Ben removed Rachel’s four hoop earrings, each one laced with a small green bead. Seal and sign, seal and sign—over and over again the routine was followed. It was as if Rachel was a field to be harvested. In some ways the repetitive motion helped; every step was part of a script, every move preordained. But Cameryn couldn’t help but notice how Rachel had ceased to be. Not just the fact that her soul was gone from her flesh, but the way her nobility as a human being had been taken. There was no dignity in death.

  “Now we undress the victim,” Dr. Moore announced.

  Cameryn was unable to meet D
r. Moore’s gaze. She was beginning to feel very uncomfortable.

  “Every single item goes into a separate paper bag,” he said. “Why do we use paper, Ms. Mahoney?”

  “Because plastic can degrade the evidence?” She didn’t mean for it to sound like a question, but it did. Still, she knew her answer was accurate and Moore nodded.

  “Correct. Ah, listen to this part—it’s Rodolfo singing. ‘Ed i miei sogni usati, e i bei sogni miei, tosto son dileguar.’ ‘Now all my past dreams, my beautiful dreams, have melted at once into thin air.’ Ben, why don’t you get Deputy Crowley there to help you. It’s time for the new man to get his feet wet. You up to it, Crowley?”

  “Yes, sir,” Justin said.

  “Good.” Dr. Moore held out a scalpel and placed it along a row of instruments for later. It caught the light and cast a small reflection along the pale green wall.

  Justin helped Ben push Rachel into a seated position while Cameryn unbuttoned Rachel’s shirt. It’s no different from working in an emergency room, she told herself. Professional people get used to seeing the human body naked. Now that Rachel’s hands were free they dangled stiffly at her sides, and the two men struggled to pull the shirt off her wooden arms. Her father reached in to help, and soon the shirt was in a paper bag, sealed and signed.

  “Now the bra,” her father said.

  Ben was reaching behind to unhook the clasp when a strange shape caught Cameryn’s eye. “Wait!” she said.

  There was a small, oval shape in the top of Rachel’s right cup. The outline was tiny, no bigger than a dime. Reaching inside, Cameryn felt along Rachel’s right breast.

  “What is it?” her father asked.

  “I don’t know. I saw it and I didn’t want whatever it is to drop onto the ground when we take her bra off. Hold on, I’ve got it….”

  With gloved fingers, Cameryn held up the small, pewter medal.

  Saint Christopher, fingers raised in benediction, silently blessed her.

  Chapter Eight

  “OH, MY LORD, THE PSYCHIC was right.” Ben breathed out the words as though he couldn’t believe them himself.

  “Well, well, well, what have we here? A medal of Saint Christopher, is it?” Dr. Moore clucked, leaning in close. He’d put on a pair of reading glasses, and the lenses winked in the fluorescent light. Shaking his head, he said, “Unbelievable.”

  Justin stared, wide-eyed, while Sheriff Jacobs made a feral sound in his throat. Her father pulled his chin back toward his neck and frowned. Cameryn slowly returned her gaze to the medal pinched between her gloved fingers. For a moment it seemed as though she couldn’t move her eyes away from it, as if, by concentrating, she could make Saint Christopher open his tiny mouth and explain how he came to be in Rachel’s lace-covered bra. The words SAINT CHRISTOPHER PROTECT US encircled an image of the saint, who, fording a stream, clutched a mighty staff in his hands. The saint’s back was bent by the weight of the Christ child perched on his shoulders.

  The medal cast off light like a pewter star, and Cameryn realized the scene in front of her made no sense. Here was the body, found beside a stream, the evidence of a serial killer, just as Dr. Jewel had said. But how could he have known? Her head roiled with thoughts she couldn’t line up: her Catholic faith, which professed the power of medals but not clairvoyants, and her scientific training that reported only fact, the proof she held in her hand.

  “Ms. Mahoney, you’re holding a piece of evidence.” Dr. Moor’s sharp voice cut into her thoughts. “Put it in the envelope and get on with it.”

  “Oh, yes—I’m sorry.” With shaking hands, Cameryn dropped the medal into the coin envelope her father had extended toward her.

  “I have no idea,” her father said, although Cameryn hadn’t even asked the question.

  “Any more medals in there?” Dr. Moore asked, pointing to the bra.

  She could see no other bumps, so Cameryn shook her head no. “I can’t believe we found it…just like Jewel said.”

  Dr. Moore’s glasses had slipped farther down his thick nose, and he peered at Cameryn over the half-moon edges. “I realize a couple of you in this room have been thrown by this discovery, but finding the medal means nothing,” he said. “Except perhaps your crazy psychic is the killer of this unfortunate child.”

  Justin cleared his throat. He crossed his arms over his chest, shaking his head slowly. “I already checked with the police in Santa Fe, and he’s not our man. Dr. Jewel was the main event at the Shadow of Death conference down there—witnesses can vouch for him the whole time. It was the same in all the other Christopher killings where Jewel saw the victims. He’s been at his conferences, on camera. He couldn’t have been the killer.”

  “Dr. Jewel,” Moore said, snorting. “Just what is he a ‘doctor’ of? All of those nut-jobs are bamboozlers and frauds—”

  But the other men in the room weren’t listening. “You called down to Santa Fe, Deputy?” Sheriff Jacobs broke in, obviously impressed.

  “Yes, sir,” Justin answered. “I checked around while you were with the Geller family.”

  “Have you ever actually seen Jewel’s program, Justin?” Cameryn asked. “My friend loves it and swears he’s for real, but I don’t see how it could be.”

  “I’ve watched Shadow of Death before. Jewel has some amazing hits, but he’s had some amazing misses, too. When he’s off, though, Jewel tells his audience that if there was a problem it’s not because the spirits were wrong—it’s because he didn’t read their messages from the other side correctly.”

  “Balderdash,” Moore said.

  “Not necessarily,” Justin retorted. “The police call on psychics every day. Dr. Jewel has proven himself with the Christopher killings and in other cases, too. I’m trying to keep an open mind.”

  “And I’m trying to get my job done,” said Moore. He rapped his knuckles on the autopsy table like a teacher with a ruler. “All right, people, enough hocus-pocus. Let’s get back to work.” Raising his hands, Dr. Moore stood directly over Rachel, as if he were a priest preparing to consecrate the host.

  “I’m going to help you out here, Ms. Mahoney. Now, as you can see, the victim’s coming out of the rigor, which means her limbs are beginning to get more pliable. The rule of thumb is eight hours to get into rigor, eight hours in rigor, and then eight hours to get out of rigor, for a total of twenty-four hours. The victim’s been dead—how long do you think, Pat?”

  Her father rubbed the back of his neck. “I took a liver temp at the scene, which read about eighty-one degrees. A rough estimate would be that she died sometime around midnight, Saturday.”

  “So at this point she’s been dead roughly forty-plus hours. See,” he said, picking up one of Rachel’s arms and letting it drop to the table, “she’s getting softer. But no matter what the state of decomposition, it’s always a challenge to get the underthings off. Watch me.” With one hand Dr. Moore rolled the body on its side and with the other he deftly unsnapped the bra, removing it as casually as he would a piece of tissue from a gift bag. Cameryn winced to see her friend half-naked, to watch the galaxy of freckles exploding across her milky skin, but once again she reminded herself there was no privacy in death. Still, she was still embarrassed for her friend. From the corners of her eyes she glanced to see if anyone in the room reacted to the sight; they all seemed to respond to Rachel clinically, as though she were a specimen to be examined and no longer a person. Even Justin’s face didn’t register more than official interest.

  “Bag it,” Moore said, handing off the bra. “Shoes are next.”

  As they went on, Cameryn began to understand the rhythm of forensics. It became almost a dance set to its own music. Take pictures, remove a piece of clothing, bag it, seal and sign. The shoes, still bearing the checkerboard boxes Rachel had drawn with her ballpoint pen, were taken off, one to a bag, followed by the cotton athletic socks, the grass-stained jeans, and finally the pink thong with the candy hearts printed on the front. Dr. Moore placed a blue cloth over
Rachel’s hips while he worked, and Cameryn mentally thanked him, since no matter how many times she repeated that it was just medical procedure, the fact remained she was still the only female in the room while the shell of her friend was being stripped bare. When the rape kit was pulled out Cameryn turned away, suddenly interested in the row of instruments laid out on the steel cart. Justin, too, had turned his back. He lined up a row of head blocks that had been set out by the sink. He seemed intent on placing them up in a perfect row, so he nudged the end of one, then the other, like a child playing with blocks. A moment later his eyes caught hers. “You okay?” he mouthed.

  Cameryn took a wavering breath. “Fine,” she mouthed back.

  Justin nodded.

  “I don’t see any sign of trauma,” she heard Dr. Moore murmur as he swabbed Rachel’s body, “although that in itself is puzzling. You’d think the perp would have wanted something more for his trouble.”

  Sheriff Jacobs leaned against the wall with one leg propped, stork-like, and answered him as though he were delivering a weather report. “The FBI told me none of the Christopher victims were raped. They haven’t released that detail to the media, so keep it under your hat. It’s been this guy’s MO—kill and turn facedown, but no funny business.”

  At least she didn’t have to suffer that, Cameryn thought. At least he just killed her. But even that seemed empty, because Rachel was still dead. Dr. Moore squirted more fixative on a slide, and heard her father take it from him, still in the rhythm.

  “All right, Ms. Mahoney, we’re done with that part of the exam,” Dr. Moore said, which let her know she hadn’t fooled him at all. She drifted back to the table, to where Rachel lay white and bare and vulnerable.

  Next, Dr. Moore fired up a blue light that he passed over Rachel’s skin like a sapphire eye, looking, he said, for microscopic evidence. A pair of tweezers were poised in his other hand, ready to swoop and pluck. It was after one of the passes that Cameryn spotted it, although she wasn’t sure if what she was seeing was real or not. She squinted and moved closer.