The Trees Beyond the Grass (A Cole Mouzon Thriller)

by Reeves, Robert

  Leas continued, “It was a week ago, Wednesday. The body was found a day later…after a photo surfaced on the internet. Facebook. Evidence of a struggle, no forced entry, but a square patch was removed from the body.”

  The captain lifted one brow and looked up slightly as if peering over a pair of glasses. “Are you saying someone is hopping planes and killing people? TSA stops a granny for carrying a butter knife on a plane, but can’t stop a cut-happy doctor from jumping on and slashing all over the country? A waste of my taxes, again.” The captain looked away with that last statement; he clearly didn’t like the fact that he paid taxes.

  “You said doctor… Where did you get that?” Leas was surprised; there were suggestions of surgical precision in the Havex case in New York.

  The captain twisted at the hips to look over at the door where the young officer who had met Leas upon arriving now stood. “Hendrix, get over here.” With his large, worn hands he waved the man over. The skinny, bony-framed man of maybe five and a half feet scurried over, grasping his camera in one hand. “Yes, Captain?”

  “Show the FBI guy those fancy pictures you get paid to take.” Hendrix moved between the two towering men and flicked on the black Nikon d600 that hung around his neck. The screen glowed in the dimly lit room. Elbowing the short detective in the shoulder, the captain barked, “No, no. Go to the injuries to the back.” Hendrix flicked through as the captain had ordered and then twisted the screen towards Leas.

  ON THE SCREEN was a photo of someone’s bloody back. The body was face down on brown carpet, its arms spread to either side. A small swath of skin on the right hip had been removed, forming a perfect square. Lifting his head, Leas looked around the room and noted the same carpet in the living room where they were standing. “See there, Mr. FBI Agent, that cut is too precise to be some fool’s deer knife, or even a steak knife. Look at those edges. You mentioned the Charles Albright case. I learned in that case that when someone uses a very sharp, surgical-grade blade, like that crazy did on those poor woman’s eyes, the edge of the cut is smooth and crisp. When I look at the cut on this guy’s back, I see Albright all over again. Whoever cut Mr. Patrick here used a scalpel. I’ll bet on it.”

  Looking back down at the camera’s screen, Leas nodded his head in agreement. The captain was as good as his reputation back at Quantico suggested. Indeed, from the picture at least, it looked like someone had used a scalpel to remove the skin patch. Of course, that did not mean a doctor was the killer. But it certainly narrowed the field.

  Leas said, “You got any pictures of the front of the body?” Hendrix leaned the camera closer to Leas after first locating the frontal shots. Mr. Patrick was on what appeared to be clear poly plastic from the police crew’s processing team. His hands had been cut off with a much rougher blade, an act that would have taken considerable time and patience. The contusions around the edges of severed wrists suggested he was still alive when the sawing commenced. The hands were missing from the picture of the body. A close-up of the face showed several deep cuts, suggesting a knife fight. Several shots later the hands were displayed, resting on some table, palms down, as if they were waiting for dinner to be served.

  Leas took a deep swallow and looked over to the captain. “Yeah, that looks like the work of a scalpel on the cut, but not on the hands. But I’ll wait to confirm when I see the body. Have you estimated time of death?”

  BUSY AGAIN WITH another officer, the captain spoke without eye contact, “My people say sometime last night. From the looks of things, he knew the lady.”

  “Lady?” Leas was twisting his head around to gain access to the captain’s eyes.

  Feeling the gaze, he looked back to Leas. “Yeah, some kids down the street say a white Toyota pulled in right after this guy sometime around nine last night and a woman got out. Couldn’t really describe her other than to say she was tall and slender. White or Hispanic, with long hair. Other than that it was dark, and them being under a streetlight made it difficult to see two blocks over.”

  Leas knew what he was talking about. The phenomenon of light pollution turns people into silhouettes when the viewer is in an area lit more brightly than the area being looked into. The eyes get overloaded and can’t adjust to see the details in the dark area. Leas had been taught the principle using the example of trying to see stars in the city versus the country. Lots of stars versus little to none. They’re there; the viewer just can’t see them because of all the other light. All the kids could likely see was the person’s outline.

  The captain was good, bowling strikes left and right. First the scalpel, now a woman. Detective Lefler had seen the same signs of a female being involved in the Havex case. The captain continued, “He must be six-four, two-hundred pounds at least. We suspect from the puncture in this guy’s neck that she drugged him or something to be able to deal with him.”

  “Tranquilizers? Poison?” Leas pinched his eyes, causing a furrowing of his brow as he processed this information.

  “No clue yet, that’s in the coroner’s hands. I’m just here to coordinate and investigate once we figure that out.”

  Leas looked back down at the white outline on the floor as he pondered this information. The use of poison was usually a dead giveaway of a woman’s involvement. Men tended to be violent in their killing, using brute force and weapons to take down their victims. Woman almost always used poison. Here they had a hybrid, poison with violent force to finish them off.

  There were tons of theories for the disparity of methods between the sexes, but Leas had come to find that with the rare occurrence of a female serial killer, she needed an advantage over the muscle and bulk a man usually possessed. Women also tended to murder for money, not passion or control like men. The rare exceptions included Aileen Wuornos, made famous by Charlize Theron’s portrayal in the 2003 movie “Monster,” and the couple, Gwendolyn Graham and Cathy Wood, who killed for sexual pleasure. All three came out of Florida. But Leas wasn’t in Florida, and statistics suggested it was highly unlikely he was dealing with a female passion killer.

  CHAPTER 8

  “AND THEN WE HAVE THIS…” Officer Hendrix motioned Leas over to an old Gateway tube-monitored computer sitting on a yellow table being used as a desk. Its screen was dark.

  Walking over, the captain interjected, “Yeah, we don’t know what to make of this yet. It appears the vic was on the computer at the time of the murder. But we aren’t quite sure. The evidence is conflicting at this point. The hands were found on either side of this, placed there after their removal. Like the killer was trying to send a message.”

  Leas looked down and saw the evidence markers placed in dried puddles of blood to the left and right of a worn keyboard and then looked at the computer. “What do you have?”

  Hendrix pushed his small frame between the two men to stand facing the screen. It was obvious to Leas that Hendrix was used to having to push his way around the world to compensate for his height. With his slightly squeaky voice, Hendrix said, “Well, we know someone typed on the keyboard at the time the first blow was struck or during a struggle thereafter. Look at the keyboard—there’s a small amount of blood on the back side of the “z” key. We are all but certain the ultimate stabbing took place over near the door, some eight feet away. So it’s highly unlikely it’s splatter from that. So, either the first cut occurred over here, or the perp used the computer after the vic was down. We think Mr. Patrick lingered for a good thirty to forty minutes before ultimately dying of his injuries, bleeding out and all.”

  Leas pulled his black half-frame glasses out from the inside pocket of his loose blazer and then slipped on a pair of latex gloves offered by Hendrix.

  At forty-three, his sight had long since started to diminish from all those years with his head buried in murder books. The keyboard was dirty from being used by greasy fingers. Years of dirt and oil left a paste of black smudged on the tops of the most frequently used keys. The standard QWERTY design used in America and most of the Englis
h-speaking world placed the “z” key on the lower left row of the keyboard. Leas examined it closely. The area was dim even with the ceiling fan light in the center of the room on, its loose ticking echoing throughout the room. On the side of the table there was a cheap black desk lamp and a pile of what appeared to be bills. They were free of blood splatter. Leas grabbed the lamp, clicked the button on the base and it came on with its yellow light. He lifted the lamp and turned it toward the keyboard.

  The captain and Hendrix watched in silence as Leas completed his inspection, clicking off the light, returning it to its spot and standing back up to face the two men.

  Impatient for his insight, Hendrix pushed, “Well? What do you think? Perp or vic?”

  Leas was careful to speak. This wasn’t his turf and he didn’t want to intrude. Bloodstain pattern analysis, known as “BPA,” used physics, biology, and other fields to determine what blood spatter shapes and sizes can tell about the violent event that caused their release. Leas had seen enough of the reports to understand that experts in the field can determine from the shape of a splatter mark everything from velocity, angle of impact, and source. If you have enough of these blood markers the experts can determine the “Area of Origin,” a fancy term for where the murder occurred in a space and possibly how it went down. Undisturbed splatter has relatively clean outlines on hard surfaces like the keyboard. When it doesn’t it means someone has disturbed it after being deposited. “Have you had a blood splatter analyst look at this yet?”

  The captain responded, “Not yet. He got called out on another investigation around lunch and is due to hit here first thing in the morning.”

  “I’m no expert but, and Captain I’m sure you’ll back me up on this, you learn some things when you’ve been at this game long enough.” The captain nodded his head in agreement with what Leas had just said as he took a glance behind him where there was a loud distracting conversation between officers occurring.

  Leas continued, “From what I see, that isn’t blood splatter. Rather, it looks like a smear, as though the blood was on the user’s hands and accidently wiped off onto the key while typing.” Leas motioned the captain over to the keyboard and pointed. “See those edges? Splatter would not present that way; they’re too rough. Also, notice the top edge, there’s a ‘tail’ on the left-most top. Someone tried to wipe off the blood. They probably didn’t see that they missed a spot because this bit was on the back side of the key. If you don’t mind?”

  Leas walked across the room to grab a photo evidence marker and placed it on the keyboard. Hendrix instinctively took several shots from different angles and then stepped back for Leas to finish. Withdrawing a white pen with some random hotel name stamped on it, he removed its plastic cap and placed its clip under the “z” key. A flick of the wrist and the key face popped off the keyboard. Leas carefully grabbed it as he clicked back on the lamp used earlier. Inspecting it for a moment under the light, he raised to face the two men waiting for him to speak.

  “I’d say that the perp used the computer after stabbing Mr. Perkins, over there. So, the question is, what was the perp looking for? What did she want us to see?” Leas looked pensively at the computer’s black screen.

  The screen had been dark since he arrived. Hendrix nudged in again, grabbing the mouse with his gloved hand and moving it around its worn pad. The computer popped and crackled as it awoke. Slowly the tube warmed up and revealed its yellowing screen.

  In the center was an internet browser open to Facebook. It was on a man’s profile page, not the vic’s newsfeed. The profile was for ‘Cole Mouzon.’ From the looks of the page, the vic and Mouzon weren’t Facebook friends. The profile was locked, only showing his picture and name. Who is this Mouzon guy and how is he related?

  CHAPTER 9

  SURROUNDED BY SEVERAL other lookers-on to the crime scene across the street, Poinsett thought the computer was a nice touch. And cutting off Tony’s hands was deserved, after he touched her. No one touches me. She already knew Mouzon lived in Denver and that was her next stop.

  Focusing back on the crowd of officers across the street, the presence of the man in a black blazer suggested the FBI had finally gotten involved. She didn’t care if they tried to stop her. They wouldn’t, couldn’t stop Mouzon from dying next. She needed the police and FBI to spread the word, to announce the deaths, if she was to ever get the Taker’s attention. He had lain quiet for almost thirty years and she needed him to reveal himself if she was to ever get answers. If that meant killing his prizes, she would kill all of them. Mouzon was the last, her last chance to draw him out. She salivated at the thought of her next kill. It was like dousing herself in scalding hot water, causing her skin to burn. She loved it.

  She walked by the taped-off roadside like an innocent on-looker, to an area outside Tony’s house. It looked like an even bigger dump to her in the daylight. He was so excited to get her into his home that he never thought about whether he deserved it. She suspected he knew in the end that he deserved to die like the rest of them. Mouzon would soon have that reality, too.

  She would return to her life in due time, but for now, she couldn’t avoid the deep need to kill them all, each and every one of them. What she would do when they were all dead, she didn’t know. That was to be figured out once retribution for the pain they had caused her as a young girl was delivered. She dreaded the idea of stepping back into her old life.

  Why did it take me so long to come to this wonderful place where I am in control, not them?

  She asked herself that every time she saw the fear in their beady little eyes and felt the last pump of their heart through her blade.

  I have sacrificed too many years of my life being captive, submissive to what they had caused. But no longer. It was their turn to feel what pain truly was, to fear their last breath escaping from their mouths.

  She watched as the boys under the streetlight from the night before walked over to the officers. I’ve been careful, right? She’d covered her face that night, only allowing them to see her silhouette. She wanted them all to know it was a woman, not a man, who had taken down Tony. They looked around as Poinsett hid behind another spectator, acting as though she was talking to a nondescript woman in a red tee, jeans, and baseball cap. Poinsett had ‘dressed down,’ now wearing khaki capris and a yellow V-neck fitted tee, the sundress burned in a dumpster behind a warehouse. The blonde wig was still affixed to her head, just in case, and large Jackie-O sunglasses covered her gaze. She didn’t look like anyone surrounding her, but she didn’t care.

  A few minutes later the boys were gone, apparently unhelpful in the officer’s investigation.

  The FBI agent working the scene was Latino, and looked like he should be operating a bar in some Western town rather than managing the federal government’s response to what Poinsett had just done. Is he going to figure out my next step? She had all but written it out for him and the others. The large bags under his eyes told her he lived his work.

  As she jumped in her rental and headed to the airport, she wondered. Perhaps things are about to get more interesting.

  CHAPTER 10

  LEAS HEADED STRAIGHT from the crime scene to the medical examiner’s office, located at Dallas’s Institute of Forensic Sciences off North Stemmons Freeway. Dr. Grant had already performed an autopsy and sent fluid samples to the office’s toxicology lab by the time Leas arrived. Waiting on the results, Leas inspected the body with the doctor.

  As suspected, the bruising along the wrists was consistent with the removal occurring while Mr. Patrick was still alive. Why didn’t he fight?

  The doctor picked up on Leas’ suspicion. “I suspect some type of drug, possibly a very strong muscle relaxant or sedative. I can think of no other way in which the killer could have held down this man and removed the hands while he was alive.” The pudgy man had a strong widow’s peak across his white hairline and rubbed the back side of his wrist across his forehead as he talked. Though the air could be heard rushing i
nto the room, it was still steamy-hot. The white lab coat was clinging to the doctor and worked to enhance the man’s poor girth-to-height ratio, making him resemble an awkward ghost. A slight limp could be detected as he waddled around the sparse brushed-steel and white-tiled room.

  Overlooking the body, Leas asked, “Doctor, have you seen any signs of bondage or injuries beyond the obvious?”

  The doctor waved him over toward Tony’s head before responding. “Come here. See that? That’s a needle prick. He was injected with something. This was not voluntary drug use here. Someone took this man down and I suspect with something that worked fast. We are talking about a six-four, two hundred and twelve-pound man here.”

  Leas eyed the slight purple pin-point mark to the back of Tony’s right ear. He didn’t recall any injection site in the Havex or San Diego cases.

  Leas wondered if the cases were linked at all or was this just a very similar case by accident. “When is that toxicity report due back, did you say?”

  Pulling the crisp white sheet back over Tony’s body, the doctor said, “Anytime now. Let me go check.”

  Leas felt the twitch of whiskey hunger deep inside. It had been almost a day since his lips had tasted its amber sting and he felt the sudden need for a drink. Shit, let’s get this on, doctor.

  Trying to distract his hunger, he focused on the sheet-covered corpse that lay in the middle of the room, wondering who the killer could be. Three bodies. Three types of killings. The last two missing a swath of skin from their lower backs placed there as children when they were all kidnapped. They are linked, but not in death at this point.

  Halfway through his analysis, the doctor slowly wobbled back into the room, looking down at several sheets of paper that looked more like computer printouts then any report. As suspected, Mr. Patrick had been poisoned. Something called curare.