“ All right, let’s speculate on why the bodies are always found so far from the victim’s last known sighting. Hundreds of miles, in some cases.”
Thorn said, “We found her lungs bursting with water, so we know she was alive at the time of drowning.”
“ You ever hear of a pump?” she replied more sarcastically than she’d meant to. Still, she wondered at his use of the term bursting. It sounded like an exaggeration.
“ What?” Thorn replied.
“ The kind of monster we’re after, gentlemen, would be capable of killing her with his bare hands and then, using a mechanical device, pump her lungs full of water just to throw us off.”
Powers’s eyebrows rose appreciably as he asked, “Really?”
“ I know-I’ve hunted this type before.”
“ Do you really think-” began Thorn, but Powers put a hand against his chest, reminding him to keep his mouth shut.
Powers then sarcastically added, “If Dr. Coudriet says she was drowned, then she was drowned. He’s only handled ninety-two drownings this year. Do you really want to call his judgment into question?”
“ Killers sometimes mask their moves. You… we… can’t be too careful.”
“ The autopsy report faxed to you at Quantico was premature, but that wasn’t our fault; there wasn’t time,” explained Powers, his hands in the air.
“ Your superiors were on our necks,” added Thorn.
“ So it was a hurried report?”
“ Well, yes. It was hurried, I’m afraid. At the request of your FBI field office chief here-DeVries?”
DeVries was the first man to alert Eriq Santiva to the trouble brewing in Florida. Plagued by health problems, he’d since taken an extended leave. “Dr. Coudriet had wanted more time with the victim, but this one’s red hot, politically speaking.”
“ Understood-a senator’s girl.” And she did understand. She’d been in the same predicament on several occasions.
She stared closely again at the force-injury at the throat. She brought a more powerful magnifying glass on a swivel arm to bear on the wound, and found only collaboration for what she had originally theorized. “She was repeatedly strangled, gentlemen.”
“ Repeatedly?” asked Thorn, his eyeglasses bobbing.
“ Whoever did this took his own sweet time with her. Brought her to near death with his hands more than once before he threw her into the water. My guess? The rope burns came afterwards, and it’s also my guess that she was in the water when the rope burns did their work on her neck. She drowned from exhaustion in the water, possibly from blacking out and going under repeatedly-after considerable strangulation by hand.”
Thorn tore off his glasses and wiped his brow with a cloth; Powers, though more stoical, looked perturbed by this news as well. Each of them, Jessica included, tried to picture the type of killing ground-liquid, it appeared- that the killer worked out of. It had to be controlled; it had to be all his for the long hours he needed it.
Still Powers defended his boss, saying, “Dr. Coudriet must’ve wished to spare us the details.”
“ I’m sure,” she replied. “Look, what we’ve got here is a high-level torture victim, gentlemen: a young woman who didn’t go quietly into that gentle night…”
Thorn and Powers looked across at one another, most likely still unconverted by Jessica’s version of the truth, disbelieving that Dr. Coran or anyone else could deduce so much from so little.
She didn’t mind their skepticism, half expected it; furthermore, Jessica Coran didn’t care. What they thought mattered little. She had to tell Santiva what she had, but she wanted time to run some tests, to be certain of her deductions and to have some science to back her up. She wasn’t Kim Desinor, the psychic detective. No one was going to take her “vision/version” of the crime at face value, especially one so horrible as the image that now threatened to make her as ill as Thorn looked to be.
She intended to send some items connected to the various bodies and crime scenes back to headquarters at Quantico for Kim Desinor’s special brand of inspection, but what was there to send? Like Allison Norris’s partially dismembered body, all the others were without clothing, or rings, chains or bracelets. They wouldn’t have had Allison’s bracelet either if a certain shark hadn’t taken a certain tournament fisherman’s hooked bait below a certain boat off Key Largo some forty nautical miles south of Miami during a once-a- year fishing event sponsored by the very people who crusade to save the sharks.
She had reminded Santiva of what she’d said on the plane coming down about murder victims stamping their wills on the evidence, how a body placed in the ocean would find a way to shore, by hook or by crook. Now, with the message stamped clearly in the metal artifact found inside a dissected shark, Santiva had appreciatively agreed with her. What better evidence of this strange phenomenon than the bizarre fate of Allison Norris’s engraved bracelet. Had she, before death, hidden the bracelet away somewhere and somehow on her nude body, say in her mouth, only to later replace it? Or had the killer intended to send another “poetic” message by way of the bracelet, allowing it to remain on Allison’s wrist? Either way, the story of Precious had made a believer out of Eriq Santiva.
It may well have been that the killer was in such a state of excitement that he had somehow overlooked the bracelet. No doubt he had collected many such items of jewelry from his victims, likely used the trinket to fondle and to place around his genitals, to reanimate the lost moments leading up to the victim’s horrid death again and again, or until he struck again, taking another life, adding to his head count and the grisly paraphernalia of his murderer’s museum. “Find that museum,” Jessica had told Santiva on the helicopter ride back to Miami, “and you have his head on a platter.”
But for now, Jessica wondered what she might send back to Quantico for Kim Desinor’s inspection. A goddamn tissue culture, a strip of DNA? A hair sample, what little was left of the arm? Forget about the girl’s nails or fingerprints-there weren’t any, as nothing was left of them, the epidermal layer of skin and nails having long since sloughed off into the ocean along with the lower layers of skin. The body had to have been in the water at least three and a half to four weeks. So where in the ocean had it slumbered in the meantime? she continued to wonder.
She momentarily wondered what Kim, her colleague and friend at the Psychic Detection Unit of the FBI, would think of her forwarding a package of samples and body parts; wondered if Kim wouldn’t be better off with one of the internal organs, or at least a sliver of the heart. Kim had done wonders with the hearts in New Orleans the previous year when they’d tracked down the Queen of Hearts Killer, the maniac who terrorized the French Quarter and ripped the hearts from victims.
Jessica doubted that such forensic matter as organ tissue from the victims of the Night Crawler would be of any use to the psychic in this case. Would it not be better to fly Kim down, to provide her with the means to perform one of her patented psychometric readings over the body itself? Maybe the magician-sorceress-could pull something out of the collective and to-date bare hat.
Jessica made a mental note to discuss the possibilities with Santiva.
“ How can you be certain she was strangled more than once?” asked an interested Thorn, breaking into her thoughts, his beaked nose twitching. She frowned at first, then clicked the recording camera and audio back on before she began to explain. “Look closely here at the center of the wound. The way he did her, well, it’s certain that it was done with a direct, blunt force, and not as the result of a cord or rope about the neck. But there are two distinct circular marks as well, so he used a favored cord or rope during part of his party time-before he got to the larger, thicker rope that was the last to be tied about her neck. The wider strip, if you look closely, is actually newer, fresher than the smaller choking device used. In fact, the wider strip is the freshest mark on the entire body except for those cuts and slashes which were determined to be from the coral reef as her body drifted t
oward shore.”
“ We looked at those cuts carefully, yes,” agreed Powers, “and they didn’t fit the contours of any knife blade. They were all the doing of Mother Nature.”
“ I guess if there’s anything to be grateful for-and believe me, there’s not much here-it’s that this creep doesn’t get off on blood. Frankly, gentlemen, I’m sick to death of butchers who have some craving for mutilating dead bodies into unrecognizable cuts of meat.”
“ What’re you thinking?” asked Thorn. “You think this guy is some sort of gentleman killer who doesn’t want to destroy the beauty of the bodily form? If so, think again. He just lets the sea do his dirty work for him.”
Owen Powers snapped off his gloves and, nodding his agreement, added, “I think this bastard’s a momma’s boy, afraid of the sight of blood, afraid to get his hands really dirty. He probably vomits at the sight of blood. So he chokes and drowns them instead.”
“ You may be right, but I’m not so sure he doesn’t just prefer that their deaths be more lingering and painful. A single knife wound can send a victim into paralysis and shock and the fun’s over. I think this guy just likes to have long-lasting fun.” Jessica stared across at Thorn, who looked the picture of Buddy Holly minus the guitar, his studious air and overbite marking him as having been a sure whipping boy for bullies during his childhood. Powers, by comparison, was muscular and handsome, sporting a full beard and deep-set, penetrating eyes. He hadn’t totally ignored Jessica’s conjecture, although he pretended otherwise.
“ So, whoever this guy is, he likes to use his hands,” Powers now said.
“ Rather than a meat cleaver,” agreed Thorn, pushing his glasses back up on his nose with his rubbered fingers and looking away from the body, regaining his composure again.
Jessica pushed the swivel-arm magniscope out of her way and replied, “The bastard also likes rope, and plenty of it. He enjoys trussing up his victims. He likes to touch his victims, a hands-on kind of guy. And while he’s not particularly fond of blood, it’s only because it doesn’t excite his libido.”
A booming voice through a magnified electronic filter made them all jump. “Are you saying he gets off on this, sexually?” asked Dr. Andrew Coudriet from over her shoulder and above, looking down on the scene from a viewing tower where students usually gathered to watch an autopsy. He spoke through an intercom, and Jessica wondered just how eccentric the red-haired M.E. had become over the ensuing years since she’d last seen him lecturing on a stage at George Washington State University.
One thing was obvious-the world hadn’t been particularly kind to Coudriet. Besides the white-gray pallor of his skin and the thinned-out patch of red hair dusting his cranium, there was a decided limp and arthritic gait as he found the stairs and came toward her. She decided to answer the man. “What excites this bastard is the draining, the feel of death as it moves through his fingertips, as death washes over his chosen victim. In fact, he likes it so damned much that once is not enough for this SOB. He wants to feel her life drain from her once, twice, three times, maybe four before the night and the fun comes to an end. And I’ll tell you something else, Dr. Coudriet… gentlemen… this body’s been stashed in the water somehow for just about as long as this young woman has gone missing.”
“ So I gathered,” Coudriet replied, his amplified voice like that of God, his eyes daring her. “Makes you wonder where the cadaver has been all this time; you suppose our killer maintains a Davy Jones locker somewhere out there at sea?”
She’d wondered the same thing-how was this creep keeping the bodies from surfacing sooner?
Thorn muttered across at his male colleague, “I tried to tell you that, Owen.”
Powers bridled at this, as if the other man had slapped him with a pair of wet, heavy gloves, showing him up in front of a woman. “I’ve never worked with floaters before, Ted. So what do I know.”
“ There are ligature marks on each ankle where I surmise ankle weights were used, the marks having been caused by metal as you might see with handcuffs, but no such weights came in with the body-or any of the earlier bodies either, Dr. Coran,” the Miami M.E. stated.
“ And as for the ligature marks about the wrists?”
“ Well, I’m inclined to believe they’re due to rope and not metal as in cuffs.”
She hadn’t yet gotten to the marks on the ankles, but she took a cursory look and replied, “I must agree, Dr. Coudriet.”
“ Bravo!” pealed the booming voice of Dr. Coudriet. “But, still, the cuts from both the weights and the ropes are so deep, like knife wounds.” Coudriet pushed through the door now and entered the autopsy room, with Jessica wondering just how long he’d been standing overhead. The older man, sporting an Armani suit, continued speaking. “It’s as if the rope grew tighter and tighter around the skin over a period of days, weeks even. How do you account for that?”
“ Leather thongs,” she suggested. “Possibly…”
“ But you don’t think so?”
“ No more than you.” Coudriet moved closer, extending his hand to her, and they shook, with smiles all around. “Lotta pressure on those wrists and the neck, and a great deal of moisture buildup in those wounds, too. The single intact wrist was near severed as a result.”
“ Not unlike the neck,” concurred Jessica.
“ Well, it does sound as if we’re pretty much in agreement as to how this unfortunate young woman came to be in this state.”
“ We are,” she replied, liking Coudriet instantly.
“ So do you wish me to tell you, or will you tell me what we have here?”
“ I would like very much for you to tell me whatever suspicions you harbor about our killer, Dr. Coudriet. I think you’ve already heard my own theories.”Coudriet looked at each of his assistants in turn, took a deep breath and paced before her, saying, “They were all dragged.”
“ Dragged?” asked Powers.
“ Maliciously, through the water, at relatively high speeds,” Coudriet continued.
Jessica nodded her agreement, saying, “Frankly, Doctor, I was beginning to suspect as much.”
“ Wanted verification, did you? That’s quite understandable,” he said, nodding. “Intelligent, I daresay. It’s what I want, too.”
“ Thank you, Doctor.” She said it both for the compliment and for the implication that he wanted full cooperation and give-and-take to reign here. She just wasn’t certain she could trust him to actually carry through on such promises.
“ You realize that we’ve all heard about your exploits, Dr. Coran, especially with respect to one Mad Matthew Matisak, and your daring on Hawaii with the Kowona case, not to mention the heart-taker-in New Orleans, was it?” Now Coudriet went to the monitor and shut down the camera and audio.
“ Yes, well, thank you. I do my best, and I’m sure we can work together, Doctor. I have the utmost respect for your work. I’ve read every paper you’ve ever presented at the Forensics Institute for Medical Advancement and in the Medical Examiner’s Eye.”
The mention of the newsletter for the Medical Examiner’s International Association brought a smile to Andrew Coudriet’s broad, passionate lips, and well it should have. Only the top men in the field were published in the prestigious and eclectic newsletter. But the old M.E.’s smile was quickly extinguished and replaced with a grim frown when Jessica turned to Owen Powers and asked, “Dr. Powers, can you get a close-up shot of the wrist? Follow that up with a close-up of the severed wrist. I know we have some, but the lighting here is far superior to what we had in Islamorada.”
Powers momentarily looked to Dr. Coudriet as if for permission, then snapped to it. “Ahh… yes, certainly, Dr. Coran.”
“ These close-ups of the wrists and throat will be helpful. I want to compare them to what we found in Islamorada.”
“ But Powers has already done a full set of photos,” protested Ted Thorn. “They’re in Dr. Coudriet’s portfolio on the corpse.”
“ I’m starting my own FBI
collection, for the record.” She looked over to Dr. Coudriet now and added, “I believe we’re done here, Doctor.”
“ Good, and thank you…” he impishly replied.
“ For what?”
“ Showing my boys here a good time, and teaching them something in the bargain, Doctor.”
“ Well… thank you,” she replied, surprised at his courteous remark, and knowing also that her having further disfigured the body by opening up the throat took him off the hook with the senator from Florida, Allison’s bereaved father. She sensed that the elder M.E. would have no difficulty in passing information along to the senator. No wonder he’d worked it so that he would not even be in the room when she took to the body.
Coudriet walked her toward the changing room. “You’ll have to pardon my young assistants. We’re all on edge for many reasons, not the least being that we’ve had to stare into the bowels of a demon the likes of which no one truly wants to deal with, yet we are in no position to walk away, either.”
“ I can appreciate that.” She started to push through the door, but he quickly grabbed it and held it open for her.
“ I have since heard about what was found at the shark research center in the Keys. You will share what you have found there with us?”
“ Absolutely, and not to worry about Thorn and Powers. Floaters are the worst kinds of corpses to work on, even worse than burn victims. I understand their reluctance to work on the same floater twice,” Jessica tried to assure him. “Kinda like double jeopardy in the emotions department.”
“ And dealing with this floater on this table was particularly difficult work, because the Norris girl is… was, rather, the granddaughter of Congressman Bill Norris, and the niece of a former governor of the state as well as… well, you already know all that, now don’t you.”
Actually, she had not known the girl was quite so well- connected; still, beyond this indisputably political fact, the corpse was so damnably mannequinlike in appearance that it no longer resembled anything human, but rather a gelatin mold in places, a slick of albino tar in others. Strong political ties could no longer help her.
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