The Echo Man jbakb-5

by Richard Montanari

  In a given day, each room attendant had fourteen rooms to clean. If you were fast — and Lucy, at nineteen, had energy to burn — you could buy 'credits,' or other rooms to clean. Lucy often did. She was good at her job. She did not engage the guests in a lot of small talk in the hallways, she was always courteous and polite, and with a little make-up she was not that hard to look at. With her cornflower-blue eyes, her butterscotch hair and slender figure, she never had a problem fitting into her uniform and more than once had caught the male guests following her movement down the long hallways at the hotel.

  Although the work was not particularly demanding, it was mentally taxing. The difference between a three-and-a-half-star and a four-star hotel was often in the attitude and the details.

  Some things were out of the control of the employees — the quality of the linens and towels, for instance, or whether or not to include mouthwash in the bathroom, or services like an evening turn-down — while other things were clearly in the purview of the 'ladies' in housekeeping.

  Today there was a convention checking into the hotel, booked for three days. Something called Sociйtй Poursuite, a group of people, as Lucy understood it, who looked into unsolved murders as some sort of strange hobby. They had purchased a third of all the rooms, including the entire twelfth floor.

  Using her finely tuned sense of logic, Lucy deduced that the word Sociйtй meant Society. She just hoped the other word didn't stand for Pig.

  As she finished Room 1210, Lucy thought about her lunchtime appointment that day.

  She had seen so many so-called professionals in the past nine years, so many people who thought they knew what was wrong with her. She had even taken part in a pilot program on regression therapy at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. Despite Lucy having no money to pay for the treatment, after three separate interviews they had agreed to take her. It hadn't gone well. For five straight days she'd sat in a group of eight people who'd pretty much talked about how, in previous lives, they were raped by Attila the Hun or played footsie with Marie Antoinette, or swapped spit with John the Baptist's severed head. Yuck. They had not really understood her problem. Lucy had yet to meet anyone who did.

  She did meet some nice people there. The man who died and was brought back to life. The woman who was hit in the head and wandered around the city for three whole months, not knowing who she was.

  Lucy had also been to a behavioral psychologist — exactly ten times. Her medical benefits at the hotel allowed her to see someone in the mental health field ten times in a calendar year, paying only her co- pay, which was twenty-five dollars. She could barely afford that.

  Today, if she was lucky, all that was going to change. Today she was going to see the Dreamweaver.

  She had found his card just sitting on her cart one day, probably tossed there by a passing guest. For some reason she had put it in her pocket and kept it. Just a week earlier she'd called the number out of the blue and had a brief conversation with the man, who had told her what he did.

  He said he helped people explore their dreams. He claimed he could make her nightmares go away. She had made an appointment with him, an appointment for today at noon.

  Lucy smoothed the top of the bedspread, scanned the room. Perfect. But while the room was finished, she was not.

  She walked to the closet, stepped inside, and closed the door. She sat down, took the blindfold out of her pocket, wrapped it around her eyes, and tied it at the back of her head.

  The darkness drew silently around her, and she welcomed it.

  It had been this way for nine years, ever since the ground trembled beneath her feet, the devil had taken her hand, and three days of her life had been stolen.

  While Lucy Doucette sat in the closet, the ghosts of her past swirling around her, a man entered the hotel lobby, twelve floors below.

  As with many who were on their way to Le Jardin this day, his interests ran to the morbid, the darker sides of human nature, the bleak and terrifying landscapes of the sociopathic mind. His specific interests were the kidnapping and murder of young girls, the mindset of the pedophile.

  He would be renting Room 1208. The room had a history, a sinister fable with which the man was intimate.

  Room 1208 was, of course, on the twelfth floor.

  Lucinda Doucette's floor.

  Chapter 16

  At just after ten o'clock Jessica and Byrne got a call from the Medical Examiner's office. The Kenneth Beckman autopsy had been scheduled for nine o'clock that morning, but Tom Weyrich's message said there was something he wanted the detectives to see before the doctor started the cut.

  On the way to the ME's office Jessica made a call to the Department of Human Services. She was told that Carlos had slept through the night — for the first time in two weeks — and was up and playing. Jessica hung up, revisited by the feeling of paralysis, the feeling that, if she didn't make a move on this, Carlos would slip into the system. She had wanted to discuss adoption with Vincent but with the upcoming move on top of them and all the stress involved with that, she had not seen an opening.

  Maybe she would bring it up tonight, she thought. Maybe she would soften Vincent up with a night of inebriated, lamp-smashing sex.

  The Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office was located on University Avenue. The purview of the office, among other things, was to investigate and determine the cause in all sudden, violent deaths in Philadelphia County, including homicides, suicides, accidents, and drug-related deaths.

  In recent years, the MEO had investigated an average of six thousand cases of death annually, of which almost fifty percent required a post-mortem examination. Other functions of the MEO included positive identification, preparation of autopsy reports, and expert testimony in court, as well as grief assistance for family members.

  While Jessica and Byrne waited in the intake room next to the autopsy theaters, they were serenaded by the constant zap of insects, courtesy of the large rectangular blue bug light on the wall. The continuous drone of bugs, mostly blowflies, being flash-fried was maddening.

  Jessica checked the schedule on the wall. It included the autopsies performed the previous week. Tom Weyrich approached them.

  'I don't get it, Tom,' Jessica said. 'There're twelve autopsies and only eleven names.'

  'You don't want to know,' Weyrich said.

  'See, now I have to know,' Jessica said. 'It's my naturally curious nature.'

  Weyrich ran his hand over his chin. Jessica noticed that he had cut himself no fewer than four times while shaving that morning. 'You sure?'

  'Dish it.'

  'Okay, last week we get a call from Penn. It seems someone threw an internal organ onto the front steps of Tanenbaum Hall.'

  The Nicole E. Tanenbaum Hall was on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania and contained, among other things, the Biddle Law Library.

  'Somebody threw body parts?'

  Weyrich nodded. 'What a world, huh?'

  'What a city.''

  'We still had to treat it like normal John Doe remains. We ran all our standard pathology tests, did a standard cut.'

  'I still don't understand why there's no name on the sheet. Is it because you haven't been able to make an ID on the remains?' Jessica asked.

  'Yes and no.'

  'Tom.'

  'It was a cow stomach.'

  Jessica looked at Byrne. Byrne smiled, shook his head.

  'One question,' Jessica said.

  'Sure.'

  'Is it still a John Doe, or is it now an Elsie Doe?'

  'Laugh it up,' Weyrich said. 'This job put both my kids through Villanova.'

  Jessica lifted both hands in surrender.

  'I have something to show you,' Weyrich said.

  He wheeled a body into the center of the intake room.

  The body of Kenneth Arnold Beckman rested on the gleaming stainless steel table, face up, covered to just below the chest with a sheet.

  Weyrich directed the overhead light to the v
ictim's right hand. He slipped on a glove, gently pried back the fingers.

  'I wanted you to see this,' he said.

  There, on the pad of the right index finger, was a small drawing, measuring approximately half an inch by one inch.

  'What is that?' Jessica asked.

  'It's a tattoo, believe it or not.'

  'On his finger?'

  'On his finger,' Weyrich said. 'When they cleaned him up to print him they found it.'

  Jessica berated herself for not seeing it at the scene. She put on her glasses, looked closely. It looked like a highly stylized drawing of a lion. The colors were bright and primary, the outlines thick, the overall effect not unlike that of an illustration in a child's coloring book.

  'I've read this guy's sheet,' Jessica said. 'He didn't strike me as the cartoon type.'

  'It takes all types,' Weyrich said. 'I've taken a sample and sent it to the lab. They should be able to tell us the type of ink fairly soon.'

  'You took a sample?' Jessica asked. 'A skin sample?'

  'This is not a regular tattoo. It's a temporary tattoo.'

  Jessica looked again. At this distance, and with skin art this size, she really couldn't tell the difference.

  Weyrich handed her a large magnifying glass. Jessica looked again at the image of the lion. The ink, and its rich color, stood in bright contrast to the blood-leached pallor of the dead man's skin.

  'It's not still wet, is it?'

  'No,' Weyrich said. 'But it is new. I'd say it's been there less than seventy-two hours.'

  When Jessica had been small, she used to go to a variety store in South Philly and buy little tattoos that she could apply simply by getting wet and pressing them on her skin. They usually washed off with one or two runs through the sprinkler, or a single dip in a pool.

  'Does he have any other tattoos?'

  'Surprisingly, no,' Weyrich said.

  'Why do you think this is relevant?'

  Weyrich directed Jessica to look with the magnifying glass at an area on the victim's left shoulder. Jessica repositioned the glass and saw a slight smudge there, a smear no more than a quarter-inch square or so in size. It was the same color as the yellow in the lion tattoo.

  'I think this was done at the same time,' Weyrich said. 'I think the doer may have applied the tattoo, then made this smudge when he turned the body over.'

  Jessica looked closely There were no ridge marks. It was not a fingerprint, indicating that the killer might have worn gloves.

  'Which brings us to the two other pieces of artwork on the body,' Weyrich said. He pulled down the sheet to reveal a section just above the rib cage on the right side. There were the two unmistakable marks left by a Taser, deep purple bruises looking like a vampire's bite.

  'He was Tasered,' Jessica said.

  Weyrich nodded. Jessica calculated the planning involved in this homicide. The cutting of the man's forehead, the measured puncture wound, the shaving of the entire body. It removed the crime from any heat of passion, certainly. This was cold, deliberate, calculated.

  'What about the shaving?' Jessica asked.

  'I think it was done pre-mortem, without benefit of any emollient or shaving cream.' Weyrich pointed to a few areas where the skin was deeply abraded. 'I believe it was done quickly with a hair trimmer, as opposed to a rotary-style shaver, which means he had to press a little harder. Still, he didn't get it all.'

  Jessica made notes. Byrne just listened. This was their usual routine at the ME's office.

  Weyrich then moved the glass to the victim's forehead. He pointed to the lateral laceration at the top. In the brutal light it looked like a mortal wound, as though the killer had been attempting to take off the top of Kenneth Beckman's head.

  'This was done with a straight razor or a scalpel,' he said. 'Our guy took care not to cut too deeply. There is some level of skill here. The cut on the right ear was not nearly so clean.'

  Jessica looked at the victim's ear. It had congealed into a scabrous brown mass. 'Can we tell if the cutter is right-handed or left-handed?' she asked.

  'Not from this wound, I'm afraid. If he is right-handed, he would most likely start at the left side and draw right. That would be the most natural movement. But only if he was straddling the body.' Weyrich leaned over the cadaver and mimicked the motion of drawing a blade over the victim's forehead from left to right. 'Now, if he was up here…' Weyrich moved to the head of the table, putting the top of the victim's head near his waist. 'He could achieve the same result as a left-hander, drawing the blade right to left.'

  'And this was done while the victim was still alive?' Byrne said.

  'Yes.'

  'How did he keep him still?'

  'As well you might ask.' Weyrich pointed out four areas where there were small plum-colored bruises. On either side of the forehead, just above the temple, were contact marks in a circular shape, about a half-inch in diameter. There were also marks on either side of the lower jaw. 'His head was held in place at these four points.'

  'With some kind of vice grip?' Byrne asked.

  'A little more finesse than that, I believe. And a lot more expensive. I think it may have been a device similar to a surgical clamp. Whenever there is any cranial surgery performed, it is imperative, of course, that the patient be immobilized. Fortunately, we do not have that problem in this office. Our patients tend not to fidget much.'

  'Do you think our boy has some medical training?'

  'Could be.'

  Jessica studied the bruises, thought about the horror of having one's head locked into a device. 'Where do you get an item like that?'

  'It's pretty specialized. And expensive. I'll get you a list of medical suppliers.'

  Jessica made a note to follow up.

  'One other thing,' Weyrich said. He pointed at the puncture wound in the forehead. He handed back the magnifying glass to Jessica. She looked at the wound. 'What am I looking for?'

  'See the area right around the puncture? The coloration?'

  Under magnification the puncture did not look like such a clean wound, but rather twisted, shredded tissue, exploding outward like a tiny lava eruption. Jessica saw a small ring around the puncture that appeared to be red. An unnaturally bright shade of red. 'This is not dried blood, I take it.'

  'No,' Weyrich said. 'That would be much darker. This was made with a Magic Marker of some sort. Maybe a felt-tip marker.'

  Jessica looked up at Byrne, then back. 'A Magic Marker?'

  Weyrich nodded.

  'You're saying the killer marked the spot first?'

  Weyrich nodded, politely smug in his findings. 'I've seen stranger things.'

  'Why would he do something like that?'

  Weyrich took the magnifying glass back, pulled the sheet over the body. 'That's above my pay grade, detective,' he said. 'You are the chef de partie here. I'm only the commis.'

  When they stepped out of the MEO, David Albrecht was waiting for them. For any number of reasons he had not been allowed inside the morgue.

  'What did I miss?' Albrecht asked.

  'Bunch of dead people,' Byrne said. 'I yelled "action," but nobody moved.'

  David Albrecht soon dialed into the fact that he wasn't going to get anything out of Kevin Byrne on this matter. He turned to Jessica.

  'Where to?' he asked.

  'We're going to grab some coffee,' Jessica said. 'You're welcome to join us.'

  'Thanks.'

  'You can get some shots of us looking at a menu, putting cream in coffee, fighting over the check,' Byrne said.

  Albrecht laughed. 'Okay, okay. I'll just ramp up the suspense in post.'

  Byrne smiled, winked at Jessica. It wasn't a thaw, but it was a start. Jessica knew that Byrne was not particularly keen on being followed around with a camera. Neither was she.

  Albrecht left his van at the ME's office and traveled with the detectives. They drove down University Avenue.

  'So, are you getting what you want?' Jessica asked.

  'P
retty much,' Albrecht said. 'I was at the district attorney's office earlier this morning. I'm running two story lines at the same time. I'm shooting two of the DAs at work as well. I don't think it's ever been done before.'

  'You mean following both police detectives and district attorneys?' Byrne asked.

  'Exactly.'

  'You mean like every episode of Law and Order?'

  Albrecht went quiet.

  'I'm sure you'll put your own stamp on it,' Jessica said, shooting Byrne a look.

  They stopped at a coffee shop on Spruce Street. Albrecht, sitting two booths away, really did get footage of them looking at menus. On the second cup, he put down the camera and pulled up a chair to the booth.

  'So we're not your only stars?' Byrne asked.

  'No,' Albrecht said, smiling. 'I am painting a vast and varied canvas.'

  'I've been meaning to ask you,' Byrne said. 'Did you shoot any footage of the crowd at the Federal Street scene?'

  'Yeah,' Albrecht said. 'It came out good.'

  'We'd like to take a look at it, if you don't mind. Maybe our bad guy showed up to gloat.'

  'Right, right,' Albrecht said, nodding. 'I'll get that on a disk right away.'

  'We'd appreciate it.'

  The waitress came over with three cups of espresso. They weren't for the table. They were all for Albrecht. Jessica and Byrne exchanged a glance.

  Albrecht saw the look, shrugged. 'Well, you know the old saying. Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation.' He knocked back one of the small cups in a single gulp.

  Byrne tapped the DV camera on the seat next to him. 'So tell me, how did you get into this?'

  Albrecht stirred sugar into his second cup of espresso. 'Well, it was probably my dad. He used to take me to the movies a lot when I was a kid. He was big in the arts, you know. For some reason I gravitated to documentaries at a young age.'

  'Do you remember the film you liked the most?'

  'I think the movie that did it for me was called In the Shadow of the Stars.' He looked between Jessica and Byrne. 'Did either of you ever see it?'

  Jessica had not. She told him so.

  'That was the documentary on the choristers in the opera?' Byrne asked.