Killer Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “What?”

  “This crime is not sex related, not in the usual sense, anyway.”

  “What? But she was strung up nude, and there was evidence of... of semen in her, wasn't there?”

  “All right, all right.” She realized she shouldn't have challenged him. “Go ahead with your search. Arrest everyone in your files who's ever flashed an eleven-year-old.”

  “But you think we'd be wasting our time?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Just the same, we've got to work on every possibility.”

  “Understood. Now, can we have a little quiet in here?” Jessica said in a harsher tone than she meant. “This is an autopsy, and we are taping for transcripts later, I presume, my dear Dr. Stadtler?”

  Stadtler frowned at this and said, “Of course,” as he flicked the recorder on.

  The autopsy proceeded quickly now, and a few old track marks were found on the girl's arms, indicating drugs, but without blood, it would take very sophisticated equipment and tests to secure readings from the pancreas, the liver and other organs to show the necessary trace elements to say whether she was or was not drugged. Jessica took a sliver from each of the organs; these would go in formaldehyde-filled vials all the way to Quantico for expert eyes there. Stadtler took his own specimens, saying that he could get them examined in Milwaukee. Most of the girl's scars, other than the mutilation on the night of her death, told her biography, one of wounds and scars gathered over her lifetime. There were old, healed-over burns, stitch marks, an indication she once had had a C-section, likely giving birth or death in an unwanted pregnancy. She'd led a tortured life, and she had died a torturous death. So sad, Jessica thought.

  While she couldn't yet know the identity of the monster who had killed Candy, she could see what the victim had eaten, breathed and injected. A lot of medical people became hardened like cops, having seen it all time and again, and they'd often say that the way a person died was a reflection of the way she lived. That some people lived in such a way as to attract violence; that most murder victims unintentionally courted death by placing themselves in high-risk situations. Doctors working on a dying gunshot victim frequently found remnants of other bullets in the body. Most successful suicides had scars from previous adventures. But what life-style exacted the kind of price this abused child and young woman had suffered?

  Much of the autopsy was done in silence until the doctors agreed or disagreed on one thing and another. Stadtler thought the liver a bit jaundiced, while Jessica thought it had the look of pate, indicating alcoholism and the road to cirrhosis. They agreed on the condition of the kidneys, that one was underweight—scales don't lie—and due again to alcohol abuse, it had prematurely shriveled in size. Her ovaries, like the kidneys, had become wrinkled and smaller. Rough living showed through.

  There were no indications whatever that she was struck in the head, the brain sustaining no injuries other than an excessive amount of fluids, including some pockets of blood which were prized by the doctors. Now a useful blood test could be accomplished, and poisons ruled out.

  They were almost finished with the autopsy when Jessica's attention was caught by some bluish coloration about the throat and neck wound. She blinked. Maybe it was the blue fluorescent lighting. The natural blue of the wound itself when blood gushed up from the severed arteries? Still, she brought a large magnifying glass on a swing arm to bear on the wound.

  “What is it?” asked Stadtler, instantly curious. “Didn't you already do that?” He was asking about the depth and length measurement of the wound itself.

  She replied with a question. “Have you checked the condition of the windpipe?”

  “What for?”

  She instantly ran her hand into the open chest cavity and up through the throat, massaging the layers of gristle that form the upper part of the windpipe, the cricoid cartilage, and she knew in an instant that the blue coloration around the throat was not due to the blue light or to the slash. She knew for a fact that the killer had also strangled his victim; but he had done so with so gentle a touch that it was not obvious, or likely provable.

  Her confusion gave her away. The three men stared at her. “Just curious,” she lied.

  “Anyone can see she's not been strangled,” said Stadtler. “May we get on with it?”

  “I'm going to have to take a section here,” she said, indicating the throat.

  “What? What for? We were praying we'd save something of her for burial,” Stadtler said sarcastically.

  “Sorry, Doctor.”

  “Okay, I'm sorry. I was out of line on that,” he replied. “But what are you getting at here?”

  “I won't know until I get back to Quantico. I need electron microscopic photography on this.” With her scalpel she sliced a deep square of skin around the pale jugular section, her eyes intent on the area of the clean, deep cut that was necessary. She then realized yet another hidden message below the surface. “Oh, God,” she moaned.

  “What is it?” Stadtler was now crazy, and he all but pushed her aside. “What?”

  “Here, and here.” She pointed with her scalpel, which fit neatly into the cut on either side of the jugular, and each went deep, but there were two cuts and they did not connect. The long slash that connected each was superficial at the center. Something else had penetrated the jugular, and the scar from this wound was near invisible below the larger throat slash that hid it.

  She explained this to Stadtler.

  He was shaken. “I... I thought you examined this last night.”

  “Obviously not close enough.”

  “What... does it mean?”

  “It means that a second instrument was used at the jugular, and this large laceration is just a cosmetic masking of that fact.”

  “What other instrument?”

  “I don't know, and I won't know unless I take part of her throat back with me to Virginia.”

  He stared long at her. “I suppose it's... necessary.”

  “Absolutely.”

  He stepped away and then turned. “Gets worse every moment, doesn't it? Maybe I'm getting too old for this business. This world, perhaps.”

  “Given the dismemberment, it'll be a closed casket, of course.”

  “Yes, well, what's one more missing part?” said Stadtler. “No one will miss it.”

  Jessica finished removing the square cake of flesh from the throat, and Stadtler's silent, able assistant held out a small jar filled with preserving fluids for the pulpy, layered section. “This information remains in this room, gentlemen,” she told them. “We've got to keep this to ourselves. Not a word.”

  The estimate of time of death was made the more precise by a combination of items: livor mortis, the dark discoloration of death, and the degree of that coloration; algor mortis, the cold touch of death; and rigor mortis, the degree of stiffness or limberness told them much. Annie “Candy” Copeland had died between midnight and 2 A.M., the night before her discovery. According to Stadtler, the last man to see her alive was a swinish, small-town pimp who used her and put her on the street, a man named Scarborough, known locally as Scar. The man was under arrest for suspicion of murdering Annie Copeland.

  Finished with Copeland's corpse at last, Jessica stepped away from the autopsy table, the hum of the A.C. drumming in her ears. She peeled away her rubber gloves and the mask, depositing both in the bins provided at the door. “Please have a copy of your report, along with the samples I've taken, ready to leave with me for Virginia. We'll be leaving the municipal airport sometime this afternoon. If there's a problem getting everything to me by fourteen—ah, two o'clock—please contact me, either at the inn or at the airport.

  Stadtler nodded, and their eyes met, and in the silence between them, she came to realize that somewhere along the way, she'd gained his respect. He said, “Dr. Coran, I'll see to it personally.” She breathed deeply, licked her lips, and in a near feline expression of gratitude, she said, “Dr. Stadtler, it has been a very wor
thwhile experience working with you and your staff.” She was grateful that she was no longer his “dear Dr. Coran.”

  She peeled away the green garments of her trade just outside the autopsy room in an anteroom where more bins stood, and where she could wash up. She splashed some water on her face and glanced into the mirror, taking her reflection in. She felt that she looked as if she'd been on a week's binge, and somewhere in the back of her head she heard the wafting music of a Jimmy Buffet tune strike up.

  ' 'Wasting away in Wekoshaville,'' she said to her reflection. Fieldwork was tough. Maybe she should've stayed in the lab.

  She tamped her face with a clean, white linen, straightened her outfit, fixed her lipstick and then pushed through the door, going for the nearest exit. She needed the one thing Wekosha was good for—fresh air.

  SIX

  Outside the university hospital, she saw the campus filled with young people, most well dressed and energetic and rushing to someplace of importance. She wondered what had gone wrong in Candy Copeland's life, why she wasn't here, or in a similar school, working and alive and looking toward a bright future. She wondered how many of the young men rushing between classes had known Candy, and how many had used her.

  A car pulled up that she recognized and Otto got out and went to the rear to help out a man in handcuffs. He cursed Otto's rough handling of him. She guessed it to be Scarborough from both his dress and his foul mouth.

  “Someone I want you to meet, Thomas,” he told Scarborough, towing him toward Jessica.

  Boutine found a pair of stone benches, where he parked Thomas Scarborough below the warm sun and the crisp leaves of a white oak. Where he sat, the shadows creased his rough features. He was called Scar for good reason. He had three scars on his face from what looked like knife wounds suffered at an early age. She guessed him to be little older than Candy had been.

  “How many times I got to tell you people, I loved Candy! I'd never harm her. She... she was my best girl. I loved her. We even talked about... about getting married someday.”

  “Cut the crap, Thomas, and shut up, and just tell Dr. Coran what you told me about your goddamned pig farm.” Otto stood over him like an angry father. Scarborough's head was forward, his eyes on the earth in the learned position of those beaten and intimidated all their lives. He hadn't so much as glanced at Jessica until she spoke to Otto, his eyes sneaking to one side, rolling like a snake's to take her in, all without lifting the head.

  “What's this all about, Otto?” she asked.

  Otto poked the kid in response.

  Tommy “Scar” Scarborough spit on the ground in response. The young man was unclean, unshaven, and he smelled both of bad breath and booze, not to mention body odor. Jessica chose the bench across from him to sit, rather than get too close. Even handcuffed, he made her flesh crawl. His eyes were deep, black cinders, smoldering with rage, his complexion pockmarked from terrible years of bouts with acne and perhaps chicken pox and other diseases. His long-sleeved, unkempt shirt did little to hide the needle marks, both old and recent. It looked as if the cops had nabbed him while he was sleeping in his clothes and his own filth, and he hadn't had a bath in days.

  He now lifted his square-jawed face to her and said, “You're a doctor? You saw what they... they did to Candy?”

  “Yes,” replied Jessica to both questions.

  “You're the one that the cops say has found my semen in her, aren't you?”

  She looked at Otto, who shrugged and said, “Tell him what you will, Dr. Coran.”

  “Until tests prove it, Mr. Scarborough, no one knows whose semen it is. Is it yours? You may's well tell us if it is, because with the sophisticated tests we run, we'll know in a matter of—”

  “I ain't slept with her for over a month. We... we weren't gettin' along, you know. Started to get at each other like an old married couple. She kept pushing me for things, for this, that... to get married... that kind of shit. I cut loose on her. Left her. Otto frowned. “Wekosha police say otherwise, Thomas. Now, if you help us, maybe we can help you. Tell the nice FBI lady what you came here to tell her.”

  “All right... all right.”

  Jessica was curious now. “Do you know who was last with her?”

  “No, not really. He wasn't from around here.”

  “Then you saw him?”

  “No, I didn't see him.”

  “What did you see?”

  Otto broke in. “He says he saw the van, that the guy drove a van, and that she got in voluntarily. Got no plate numbers, but claims it might have been Illinois plates. Van was gray or beige—”

  “Hard to tell colors at night. I'm color-blind.”

  “—and had some lettering on the side.”

  “Not bold lettering, just small, and I don't read good from a distance, so... but this guy... he's the one killed her.”

  Jessica spoke to Otto. “How many suspects have Stowell and Chief Wright placed in custody?”

  “Six, working on more, all perverts.”

  “Hey, I'm no fuckin' pervert!” shouted Scarborough.

  “Shut up! And watch your mouth around Dr. Coran.”

  “Just tellin' the truth.”

  “Just tell her about your daddy's pig farm.”

  “Swine farm,” he corrected Otto. He looked again at Jessica, saying, “I grew up on a farm, ma'am... ahhhh, Doctor.”

  Below the grunge, she saw the farm boy in him clearly now. Perhaps some of the scars came from working around farm machinery, or at the hand of a dictatorial, Bible-thumping father with a nasty technique for disciplining an unruly child.

  “Go on,” she coaxed.

  “Well, we slaughtered a lot of swine. My daddy'd be covered in blood by day's end... and so would I. My daddy would first cut the heel tendons when he'd get the pig ready—first thing—so's it couldn't get off. You know how a pig'11 run at the least thing. I swear, the pig knows when you're standing there with a butcher's knife behind your back. Anyway... second thing my daddy'd do would tie the thing up by its hind quarters... and... and—”

  He stopped, looked at Boutine, who nodded for him to go on. “And drain out all the blood into a big caldron of boiling water. He'd drop the swine into the caldron to boil off the fine hair then. Anyhow... well, the way they told me I was supposed to have killed Candy... Christ, it sounded like something my daddy would do. Scared hell out of me.”

  She caught something of the fear deep in the dark eyes. “Your father, Thomas, he would threaten to do to you what he did to the pigs, if you didn't do what he told you to do... wouldn't he?”

  His mouth fell open slowly. “I... I never told anyone what... that he... what that man did to me.”

  “See why he's such a likable suspect for Vaughn Wright and Stowell, Jessica?”

  “Fits... all too very neatly...”

  “They don't have anything on me. I wasn't anywhere near her when it happened!” shouted Scarborough. “Christ, I ain't no murderer!”

  “His alibi is a boyfriend he sleeps with,” said Otto.

  Scarborough never again looked into Jessica's face, and he became belligerent and nasty again. “Lady like you, I could do a lot with, if you ever wanted to sell it.”

  Otto grabbed him up in a rage and forced him back to the car. She stared after them, her insides tugged at by the horror that a parent could create of a child's psyche, yet convinced along with Otto that this young man was not their killer. Still, she'd order specimen samples from him along with all the other suspects rounded up by Stowell and Wright, to check against what they'd found at the scene. It all might be one dead end after another, but by the same token, no rock could be left unturned, and poor Scar definitely had crawled from beneath a pretty large rock.

  With Scarborough put away in the car, Otto returned to her and said, “He told us about a knot his father used on the swine, too.”

  “A sailor's knot?”

  “Farmers use it a lot in this area, a sling knot. No way to break it so long as it is count
ering a... a dead weight.”

  She stared at the blindingly bright blue Wisconsin sky and fought back the fatigue and pain and memory of Candy Copeland trussed up like a swine for the slaughter. It had been an image that had come to her during the evidence gathering, and this fact was not lost on her now. In the rustle of the leaves overhead, she heard the sharp twitter of birds and she glanced a jay chase another off.

  “I know this creep's as unreliable as hell, but you said something yourself the other night about how it looked, and what he said was so close to what you said... Well, I just thought you ought to hear it straight from the guy. Sorry if it's upset you.”

  She only half heard Otto's apology. She was listening to the voice in her head which had belonged to her father, saying, “You might wish to remember, child: it doesn't matter from whom you learn, only that you do learn.''

  She repeated the favorite aphorism to Otto now and this calmed him a good deal. “You sure got mettle, Doc.” Otto's compliment was, as usual, understated.

  She laughed lightly. “Then why do I feel like my spine is made of Jell-O?”

  “You get everything you want inside?” He indicated the hospital.

  She nodded. “Yeah, all prepared to leave as soon as the results and the reports catch up to us at the airport. And you?”

  “Some loose ends downtown, like this creep.” He indicated Scarborough, who sat brooding in the back of the car. “He needs psychiatric help, you know,” she told him. “He was victimized and brutalized by his father.”

  Otto frowned and nodded. ' 'The stuff of which murderers are made, I know.”

  “In his case, he seems to have stopped at degrading women and using them. I think he's too weak to kill.”

  “Agreed. All right, I'll meet you at the airport. You need a ride back to the inn?”

  “I'll get a cab.”

  “Great, fine. And on the plane you can tell me all about the autopsy.”

  She halted him. “Not much else to add, really.”

  “That right?”

  She didn't wish to lie outright, but without lab proof, and that would take time, she didn't want to discuss what she'd found, and she was through making half-assed guesses, even for Otto. “Yeah, 'fraid so.”