THE DEAD SOUL: A Thriller

by M. William Phelps

  They entered Lisa’s room. The odor was far more pronounced inside. Rotten eggs and spoiled meat—that empty Dumpster odor in the summer. Maybe a funeral home.

  All of them combined.

  “Holy shit,” Jake said under his breath, covering his nose and mouth.

  Amid posters of Paris and Rome and a Pulp Fiction Uma Thurman, the smell made Jake’s nose wrinkle. Acclimating himself to it, Jake noticed it was mixed with a fake air freshener perfume. Lavender and evergreen. Since he’d stopped smoking, Jake had his smell back. One of the perks.

  “This air freshener, where’s it coming from?” Jake asked. He looked up at the ceiling. Around the room.

  “We have it pumped in,” the father said, “through the air ducts.”

  Must be nice being that rich. Geesh. “You have perfumed air pumped in. Oh … K.”

  “You don’t smell that?”

  “Our maid is not the most efficient, Detective.”

  “No, not a laundry basket smell. Rotting flesh. Like meat that’s gone bad. How have you and Mrs. Taylor managed to avoid it?”

  “Now I do,” Taylor tipped his head up in the air like a dog. Took in a few quick whiffs through his nose.

  “What the hell? Hasn’t anyone said anything about this?”

  “We haven’t been in here, Detective, since that first day Lisa went missing. My wife told you that. Ever since Lisa ran off, there was no need to come in here. The door has been closed. She’s run off before. We never look through her things. She always comes back. When the house stinks, we turn the air freshener volume up and scold the maid.”

  The smell was stronger by the closet. Jake approached the door, but decided against opening it in front of Mr. Taylor.

  “Why don’t you wait out there?” Jake pointed to the hallway. Whatever was in the closet was something the father didn’t need to see.

  Once he was alone, Jake opened the door with caution, walked in. It was a large room, the size of Jake’s bedroom back in Southie. Dark, too. He found one of those bulb lights hanging from the ceiling, pulled the chain. Lisa Marie’s shoes were on one side, clothes on the other.

  Jake walked toward the back of the closet.

  What?

  The source of the smell came from what hung off two large hooks clipped to the clothes pole.

  “Sonofabitch.”

  Mr. Taylor came up from behind. “What is it, Detective?”

  “Get out of here,” Jake yelled, pushing him out the door. “Go—”

  A pair of legs, lopped off below the knees, hung there, bloated and dripping fluids—a piece of meat in a butcher’s freezer. The toe nails were painted Barbie pink, same shade as Lisa’s room.

  Jake Cooper guessed he was staring at the remains of Lisa Marie Taylor’s legs.

  Dickie heard the commotion, ran up the stairs and into the room. He stood next to Jake, lost in surrealistic nature of such a horrific sight. After a moment, “Hey, kid,” Dickie said, “your phone got an app for that?”

  13

  Friday, September 5 - 4:36 P.M.

  Gregorian chants reverberated throughout the house. The booming voices of the choir made for an ominous, enchanting late afternoon. He loved the spiritual mood it put him in. Being a Friday, he got off work, then rushed home to see if that Web order from policesupplies.com had arrived. To his delightful surprise, he saw the brown package on the front steps after getting out of his Jeep.

  He hummed with the music as he stood in front of a pan of photo developer mixed with 200 Solution. This, too, he had ordered online. The combination gave him the best bang for his Kodak buck. Developing photos at home, watching the images he snapped emerge from a solution that smelled of turpentine and chemistry class, was comforting and nauseating. The pictures in the solution were snapshots of dreams coming into focus. Amazing, he thought. A few simple ingredients—film, paper, and feigned darkness—unleashed a life frozen in time.

  Lisa Marie’s killer loved this.

  He hung the photos from a clothes line in the room. When he finished, he inched his way backward, staring at each one.

  I hate you. Leave me alone.

  Memories attacked him like angry bees.

  The first photo was of Lisa Marie’s face, before he thrashed her. Lisa was completely thawed by that point. He tried to make her smile, but rigor had set in, her cheeks hard as a mound of clay left out overnight, not cooperating. Frustrated, he hit her one last time and gave up.

  Next to the shot of Lisa’s face were photos of pairs upon pairs of legs.

  He looked down at his forearms. Those scars, the skinny bead welds. He relished in how good it felt to cut himself with a razor blade. How entirely in control of those moments in the basement he was when he cut his own skin open. The sluggishness of the blood oozing. The sense of power. There was no pain.

  I alone adore you.

  Out of those childhood memories, he was back focusing on the photographs of the legs—but whose were they?

  One was of that young woman he had killed before Lisa. He’d recognize those legs anywhere. He had taken the photo before dismembering Alyssa, keeping her legs and heart, tossing the rest of her body to the sharks, easily fascinated by the swirling commotion of body parts and sea water before him.

  An ocean of blood.

  Same as he did after cutting himself, he tasted Alyssa’s blood before scrubbing the deck of her remains and tossing everything overboard. He thought he’d had the boat entirely cleaned. Then turned, walked to the aft, and almost stepped on the girl’s liver. Like a placenta, it slapped back and forth against the sides of the boat.

  Alyssa …

  She was now a woman, same as Lisa, without a worry in the world. In heaven, for certain. He knew this. The deacon—that bastard who had started this madness—assured him that all murder victims go to heaven.

  The keepers of secrets.

  He walked into the kitchen. Unfolded the morning’s paper to see what they had written about him today. He had one wall in the living room dedicated to and covered with articles about his crimes. How Alyssa, “the college co-ed,” went missing. How Lisa “vanished after leaving the library.” How her body was found mutilated and dumped in the Garden. How Lisa’s parents were offering some stupid reward in her name.

  Pathetic. People with money think they can buy their daughter back.

  He had made today’s front page:

  BODY IN GARDEN THAT OF ALE HEIR

  AND PROFESSOR’S DAUGHTER

  Whistling, he took out the scissors, cut it out. Made sure the cuts were straight, taking his time. There could be no mistakes. He’d have to buy another paper and start all over.

  Finished, he held it up.

  “Now, look at that.” He smiled. “Faking all of you bastards out. None of you can touch me.”

  He slipped back. Those bees again. He saw the menacing shadow coming at him.

  “This is for your own good, Randy.”

  I don’t hear you …

  He turned the page and fastened his attention on another article. The Globe had given him a name.

  THE OPTIMIST: Detective Says Killer Running Out of Options

  What did that mean?

  Optimist?

  Every serial killer needed a name. Was he supposed to be proud? Delighted? Where’d they get that from, anyway?

  He taped the articles to the wall next to the others. Then walked back into the dark room. All those legs hanging before him. They were so vital now to his point. He started collecting them out of fascination, hoping to throw off the cops. But now he pictured his next victim begging for mercy on his boat. Struggling, crying, as he told her what he was going to do.

  The CD skipped on a particular chant.

  “Fede … fede … fede … fede …”

  He didn’t realize a chorus of monks were chanting faith, faith, faith as he walked out of his dark room and packed an overnight bag.

  Camera.

  Check.

  Film, clothes, maps, t
oothbrush.

  Check, check, check. Check.

  Rope, flex cuffs, gauze, chloroform.

  Check.

  The Comfort Inn was just outside South Boston off I-93. “When you coming into town?” the desk clerk asked over the phone.

  “Should be there before six, depending on traffic.”

  “Okay then. We’ll see you at six, Mr. … didn’t get your full name, sir.”

  He thought about it. What would it hurt? “Howard. Mr. Charles Nelsen Howard.” He added Nelsen for effect.

  “Like Charles Nelson Reilly from Match Game,” the clerk said, brightening up. “Loved the show. Hated Gene Rayburn’s corduroy suits and that long microphone.”

  “Not really. But yes. I believe you have what you need, then?”

  He hung up.

  The Optimist made sure the back door to his house was locked. He snapped the deadbolt four times, counting each one. Then did the same to the turnstile lock below it, again counting off.

  Confident, he walked over and stopped at the mantel above the fireplace. He brushed the closed petals of the Queen of the Night flowers, taking a deep breath in through his nose, letting it out his mouth.

  “Won’t be here tonight to see you open,” he whispered to the flowers, as if talking to a person, “but I will be back soon enough. A little boat ride is in order.”

  When he got to his jeep, he felt he should go back and check the locked doors once more. Just to be certain.

  14

  Friday, September 5 - 6:11 P.M.

  Ever since discovering the legs in the Taylor kid’s closet, a question nagged at Jake. How had this serial managed to transport Lisa’s body down into the park, either the night before or that day, without being seen? Getting into the Taylor house to leave those legs made the guy a pro, for sure. But how had he staged such a scene in the Garden? Had he cut her up to lighten the load, or were the legs the guy’s signature?

  The answer was somewhere.

  On his way home, Jake stopped by the Garden scene. He heard they were about to release it. He wanted one more crack.

  The sun was still burning bright and hot, a fuzzy, unfocused ball of fire in an evening sky airbrushed with a perfect fusion of blue rouge and cranberry red.

  Jake took off his jacket, left it in the car.

  There was a safety-cone-orange outline spray-painted on the grass where Lisa had been found. White chalk lines were for Hollywood.

  Lisa’s death shape looked odd without her lower half.

  When the sun fell out of view and behind the staggered skyline around Boston Common, a chill kicked up and Jake wished he’d taken his jacket with him. He pulled up his collar, bent down—a baseball catcher behind the plate—and stared at the empty sketch on the grass. Leaves had fallen all around, broken branches littered about the area. Jake watched as people passed by the park going about their average lives. Talking. Laughing. Holding hands.

  He looked through them, thinking.

  Find his frame of mind.

  He tapped on the side of his temple with a forefinger.

  It wasn’t hard to picture the madman at work. Follow him walking around the scene, planning to stage Lisa’s corpse.

  Where is she?

  There were two types of killers, Jake knew. One enjoyed putting the rope around the woman’s neck, relishing in watching her face turn a zombielike hue of powder-blue. The other was more interested in the act itself. The technique. The methodical (and spiritual) nature of what went into taking a life. He was focused more on his own trauma while going about his business of torture, each moment a reflection of what he had gone through.

  That’s my guy.

  Jake stood. As it got darker and the sounds of city life disappeared, it occurred to him how his mother used to demand he be in the house by early afternoon. He played by Columbia Point Project in Southie. At night, the place was a war zone of junkies and thugs. The thing was, Jake walked to and from school with his metal lunch box in hand, ready to strike at the kids looking to take it. Heading up Broadway once, the main shopping district in the all-white section of Southie, a gang of older kids surrounded him. Made him take off his pants and run home naked. All those Southie inbreeds drinking on their stoops, hanging out on the corners, screaming at one another up to the windows of row apartments, laughed at him.

  There was an indentation in the mud by the pond. It was off the beaten path. Jake noticed it as he walked toward the scummy water. It was small, but noticeable, and looked as though someone had dropped a basketball and the claylike earth had recorded its imprint. He wondered how SIX-U had missed it. Jake reached inside his back pocket, took out his iPhone and double-clicked the scanning option app. “Teleforensics, Cooper,” he heard the geek from tech say. “It’s the latest thing. Give it a shot.” The guy showed him how to operate the scanner option. “An app and two screens, you’re done.” Easy as taking a photograph. “Only now, you can send the scanned image into a database and get results in minutes.”

  Jake moved the lens of the phone over the ground. He hit SCAN and slowly ran the phone’s rays over the imprint as a fluorescent-green light glided over the outline of the shape.

  He heard a chime. Hit the enter key. The image was now traveling through cyberspace, heading into the general database.

  Jake copied Dickie and Anastasia on the send to keep them in the loop, with an added message to Anastasia, asking her how in the hell her team had missed this.

  As Jake walked back up toward the body outline, the computer searched the system for a match, scrolling through thousands of images in seconds, much like it would for a fingerprint.

  The hourglass turned as Jake stared at the screen.

  Then came the e-report:

  No data available.

  Shit.

  Then another chime. Jake looked at the screen again. No match, but there was a hit on the type of fabric. The scan had picked up on a crisscross pattern of material, fairly common. The main computer had compared its distinctive blueprint to thousands it had in storage.

  Consistent with canvas. Military green in color.

  Duffel bag.

  Jake stood over the outline of Lisa. Checked his watch, pictured himself once again in the killer’s shoes.

  Duffel bag in hand—no … bag on some sort of a cart—I stop here. He stared back toward the indentation. Drop my bag. Unzip it. Take a look around. Make sure the coast is clear. Take her out and stage the scene.

  He tapped the glass on his watch, then looked up.

  Forty-five seconds.

  But where were his footprints? Anastasia would have found them.

  He looked closely. Brush marks. The killer had used some sort of rake or tree branch to clear his footprints. How had the killer not seen the scallop?

  Left it on purpose?

  Jake keyed his radio ON. Called a blue standing guard at the entrance. “Don’t allow this scene to be released.”

  “That you, Cooper? Shit, I didn’t even frickin’ see you go down there.”

  Jake shook his head. “Just do what I said.”

  “You got it.”

  Jake sat in his car on Boylston. “Rossi,” he said into her voicemail. “I want the Garden scene reprocessed. We’re looking for a professional—FedEx or UPS driver. A delivery person of some sort. Maintenance man. Maybe a cop. Or some ex-military nut.” He paused. “Add security guard in there somewhere.”

  Jake looked at the city of Boston before him. A taxi whizzed by, honking his horn. A woman jogger bounced along the sidewalk to the song in her earbuds. A guy behind her talked on his cellphone, using his hands to make points. A horse-and-buggy driver took a drag from a cigarette and read the Globe while waiting for a customer. Jake got lost in the swirling blue smoke hovering around the guy. He could taste the nicotine sting his throat, the tar burn his lungs as he inhaled. He popped a piece of nicotine gum. Chewed it once and then spit it out. A card Father John once gave him, congratulating Jake on his return to the church after get
ting out of the hospital, came in a wave as he drove away. The verse the card quoted was hard to forget.

  “ ‘This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.’ ”

  Jake walked over to the horse-and-buggy guy. “You got an extra smoke?”

  15

  Friday, September 5 - 7:21 P.M.

  CSI Anastasia Rossi sat behind her metal desk examining several photos spread out in front of her. It was late to be at work. But Anastasia had nowhere to go tonight. Cardio kickboxing class was on Mondays and Wednesdays. Her East Boston apartment, the one-bedroom overlooking Constitution Beach and Logan Airport, was not a place Anastasia wanted to be. Not tonight, with this case eating at her. What good was sitting home watching reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond and Seinfeld?

  The break-up from her boyfriend, Todd Sacks, was still bothering Anastasia. Yet something kept telling her it was for the best. Long-distance relationships were doomed. Todd had left her, but had been there when her father died. Todd was one of those hard-bodied FDNY firemen, “Mr. July.” When it came down to it, the guy was sincere, usually willing to drop everything and listen. Anastasia still called him once a week. Well, maybe a little more than that. Mostly on Sunday nights and Wednesday mornings before his shift. Last week they chatted for two hours. Talked about how Anastasia was faring in Boston. How she missed her father. How her goal was to make Grade One by the end of the year. Come to think of it, none of the conversation was about Todd.

  Anastasia was promoted six months ago to Boston’s A-list forensic team, Crime Scene Unit Six (or, as the team called itself in-house, SIX-U). They worked out of D-15. By far, SIX-U was the unit with the most credibility. D-15’s unprecedented conviction rate among the precincts made it the squad to work for. Anastasia had testified in four trials already. Each led to a conviction.