Dead, Without a Stone to Tell It

by Jen J. Danna

  Paul elbowed Juka. “Did you hear that?” he asked in a clearly discernible whisper as he shed his lab coat. “ ‘Her team.’ ”

  Juka grinned back. “I’m quite happy to be a part of her ‘team’ if we get paid in coffee and fresh baked goods.”

  “All right you two,” Matt interrupted, shaking his head at their antics. “If you’re done fawning, why don’t you take this stuff down to the lounge? We’ll be right there.”

  Paul grabbed the tray of coffees from Matt and headed out the door. Juka followed behind, neatly snagging the bags from Leigh’s hands.

  Kiko followed more slowly. “Don’t take too long. You know those two—they’ll eat everything if left alone too long.” She grinned as she went out the door.

  “No eating in the lab,” Matt clarified, seeing Leigh’s questioning look as her gaze followed Kiko out of the lab. She started for the door, only to stop when she realized that Matt wasn’t following her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to thank you.”

  She cocked her head slightly in confusion. “For what?”

  “For being so fair with my students during this case. They’re young and they’re just learning how science works in the real world. But you made this experience a satisfying one for them. You accepted them onto your team, you listened to what they had to say, and you never belittled any of their ideas. And you were patient and let me use this opportunity to show them what we can really do. There aren’t many cops that would have allowed me that kind of latitude, especially on a case that exploded into such a high high-profile media circus.”

  “The San Marcos detective you worked with obviously didn’t give you that kind of freedom, did he?”

  “No,” he said shortly.

  “You know who showed me how to interact with them? You did. You don’t treat them as equals, because they aren’t. They know and you know they still have to grow into that role. But you treat them with respect. You draw out their opinions because they know it’s a safe forum for discussion and because they know you’ll listen. You don’t belittle them either. Instead, you guide and encourage them. You’re a very good teacher, Matt. I was simply following your lead at the beginning until I found my footing with them.”

  “A week ago, I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to follow my lead anywhere,” he muttered quietly under his breath.

  But not quietly enough as she let out a quiet chuckle. “Okay, so we got off to a rough start. But we got to the end together and that’s what counts.” Her gaze tracked up and into his hair. “How’s the head?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “Can I see?”

  He bent his head toward her and, reaching up, she gently swept his hair to the side, revealing the neat line of dark stitches that marched over the angry wound. “The doctor did a nice job. You’ll hardly notice it’s there once it heals.”

  Matt straightened, pulling away from her hands. “It’s under my hair—and it’s hardly noticeable now.”

  “Yes, but it’s another scar for you. Two more if we count your arm. And that’s added to what you already had before this case started.” His eyes went wide when she boldly stepped forward to lay her hand against his scarred side. His breath caught in his lungs and hot color flooded his face. Please don’t do this … To his surprise, he felt her fingertips stroke soothingly over him once … twice. She met his eyes unwaveringly. “Do you remember what I said before about battle scars and the fact that they mean something?” He clenched his jaw and gave a single jerk of his head. “Never, ever, be ashamed of them. They speak volumes about the kind of man you are. And no woman worth your time would ever think any less of you because of them.” She let her hand drop from his side but didn’t break eye contact. “I was surprised, Matt. Nothing more.”

  He stared at her intently, but when he saw nothing but honesty in her direct gaze, his body relaxed. His gaze dropped from her eyes to the dark smudge that marred her jaw. It had blossomed into a dark blackish-purple abrasion with an angry red border. He started to reach out to run his fingers over the mark, but suddenly felt awkward and unsure and instead jammed his hand into his jeans pocket. “How’s your jaw?”

  “Sore, but it’s nothing serious. It’s not going to look good tonight though. I’ll have to try to cover it up.”

  “Tonight?”

  Leigh sighed heavily, and her shoulders slumped fractionally as she turned away to pace toward his desk. “There’s another press conference at seven-thirty tonight. It will be our official announcement that we’ve caught the man responsible for all these deaths.”

  “Did he confess?”

  “Yes, once he realized that we’d found his blog and he was backed into a corner. Then, his whole attitude changed.”

  Matt cocked his head slightly. “In what way?”

  “Suddenly he was trying to play the sympathetic victim. I’ll tell you all about it when we brief the whole group, but we’ve got him nailed. Did you fill your students in on the blog?”

  “I told them this morning so they’re up to date as of last night. I hope that was okay.”

  “They’ve worked hard on this case. They deserve to know what happened. Come on, let’s go join them before they eat all the cookies.”

  They started down the hallway toward the lounge. “By the way,” Matt said, “that knife you used to defend yourself against Bradford? It’s a perfect match for some of the injuries we’ve found on the victims. The kerf marks confused us at first but then we realized that it was a single-edged knife with a combination of straight and serrated edges on the front of the blade and an extra row of small even teeth near the handle along the back of the blade. So you could see three separate kerf mark patterns all from the same blade and sometimes the straight blade defects were obscured by the marks left by the serrated portion of the blade. That’s going to help us identify a large number of the wounds since that seemed to be his weapon of choice.”

  They turned into the lounge. Paul and Juka were sprawled on the sofa directly under the window, their feet propped up on the same coffee table that held the tray with the two remaining coffees and two open paper bags. Kiko sat beside them in an armchair. After Leigh entered the room, Matt closed the door behind them and followed her over to the seating area.

  Bending over, Matt looked into the cookie bag before glancing at Paul and Juka. “If you two ate all of the chocolate chip cookies, you’re going to re-catalog every bone sample I have. Twice. That should take until the end of next month for you to finish.”

  Paul grinned. “Do you think we have a death wish? Of course we left the chocolate chips for you.” He took another bite from the large, golden cookie in his hand and then spoke through the crumbs in his mouth. “Besides, I’m a peanut butter man myself.” He grinned at Leigh. “Thanks.”

  Leigh smiled in return and positioned herself on the couch across from them. “You’re welcome.” She took a coffee, adding cream and sugar. Matt added cream to his before selecting a large cookie generously studded with thick chunks of dark chocolate and sitting down beside her. He took a bite and made an involuntary hum of pleasure in the back of his throat. She cast him an amused sidelong glance. He silently toasted her with his cookie and leaned back comfortably against the arm of the couch.

  “I wanted to let you know where we are with the case currently,” Leigh began. “You all have more than pulled your weight, so I wanted you to hear the outcome from me.”

  “We want to know one thing first,” Paul interrupted, “because Matt’s being really vague. Who took Bradford down?”

  Leigh looked at Matt as if asking permission. He gave her a silent shrug. Go ahead; you tell them.

  She turned back to the students. “We did it together.”

  Both men groaned and immediately dug into their pockets, pulling out crumpled five-dollar bills in unison and handing them to Kiko. She tried not to look overly smug as she neatly smoothed them and folded them in half before sliding them into her
pocket.

  Leigh glanced at Matt. “Are they always like this?”

  “Always.” But there was amusement in his tone.

  Leigh shook her head, bemused at their antics. “Matt tells me that you’re up to speed on Bradford’s blog and its contents.”

  “I can’t believe he was that cocky,” Kiko said, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “After talking to him today, I’m not sure ‘cocky’ even covers it,” Leigh said. “But yes, he was. Let me give you a little background on him so you know who we’re dealing with. Neil Bradford is thirty-three years old and was born and raised on Cape Ann. He lived with his mother, and they moved around a lot. He never knew his father. We know the father’s identity because there was a restraining order out against him by Bradford’s mother before Bradford was even born. So we suspect an abusive relationship there. Either way, Bradford was raised by his mother. He tells the story that she worked two and sometimes three jobs at a time to support them. As a result, he spent most of his childhood alone because once his mother felt that he was old enough to look after himself, he was on his own. That was not at an age that the state would consider appropriate, but there was simply no money to pay for daycare. Because she wanted to avoid Child Protective Services, he was kept very isolated as a child. If the neighbors didn’t know he was there, then no one could report her. He started school late as a result, because she wanted to keep him out of sight.”

  Sympathy flitted across Kiko’s face, but only for an instant. “So he was a neglected child.”

  “It’s certainly the story he’s trying to sell because he’s in damage-control mode right now,” Leigh said dryly. “You can rest assured that his lawyer is going to try to use it to reduce his culpability for these crimes, so we need to confirm his story. Anyway, his mother died shortly after he graduated from high school. Bradford had already enrolled at Salem State College in Computer Science and he finished out the year, but his marks were anything but stellar. He completed his sophomore year there as well, but left after that. He wasn’t forthcoming as to whether it was because of his marks or because of a lack of money, but I suspect the former because he would have been eligible for financial aid since he was on his own.”

  “He’s clearly not stupid,” Matt said grudgingly. “He’s planned and murdered for years. That level of organization indicates a minimum intelligence level that would be well above what was needed to graduate if he’d actually applied himself.”

  “I agree. But if you look at his personality, I’d say that he could be labeled as having Antisocial Personality Disorder.” One of Matt’s eyebrows cocked upwards in interest. “I took a course on personality disorders in order to better understand some of the suspects I might have to deal with. Bradford was classic Antisocial Personality Disorder in several ways—he was deceitful, he used charm to manipulate the people around him, he had no qualms about violating the rights of others, and he had a tendency toward violent behavior. He also showed absolutely no remorse.” She glanced over at Matt. “Yesterday, he referred to ‘testing’ the men, like it was all a game to him.”

  “The next level of ‘Death Orgy,’ perhaps?” he suggested.

  “Possibly. But what he may not have anticipated was how much he would enjoy the game. The power of selecting the perfect target, bending that vulnerable mind to do his bidding, assisting in the torture of the victim, and then the thrill of getting away with it. So he decided to do it again, but he decided to make one very important change.”

  “That one’s obvious,” Matt said scornfully. “Take out the target once he helped dig his own grave. That explains all three ‘B’ graves. It became a truly disposable and repeatable process for him this way and there was never anyone left who could directly link him to the crimes.”

  “And since he enjoyed the process, he could repeat it over and over again,” Kiko added.

  “He did do it over and over again. He would select one target at a time, training and molding them until he felt that they were ready. He was also careful to make sure that he only killed during warm weather when the burial conditions were right. He didn’t want to have to store a body until spring thaw. He noted in his blog that he was careful to always use a silencer when he was killing his accomplices out on the marsh.”

  “Because a gunshot would echo in open air and he wouldn’t want anyone getting curious and coming out to find a fresh grave.” Matt lightly tapped his temple with his index finger. “He thought through every detail.”

  “Right down to the ketamine,” Leigh said. “He confirmed that he used ketamine injections to disable his victims during the kidnappings. We saw that at John Hershey’s death scene too. There was a discarded syringe on the floor.”

  “But where did the anesthetic come from?” Kiko asked. “That’s not something that’s going to be left out on a counter at the Health Center.”

  “That’s a controlled substance,” Matt said. “They would stock some parenterals at the community clinic, sure, but they wouldn’t be allowed a controlled substance like that there. It would open them up to potentially dangerous drug seekers looking for a hit of ‘Special K.’ ”

  “It’s still widely used in veterinary practices though,” Leigh interjected. “He broke into a vet clinic in Salem and stole both the ketamine and the syringes. I still need to look into that because a report must have been filed from the break-in.”

  Matt nodded. “Smart plan. Much lower security at a vet clinic and the break-in would be automatically blamed on the drug community. And ketamine would be perfect for their needs. It’s a dissociative anesthetic but at lower doses it has sedative effects that make it a useful date rape drug. They just needed the victim to be sedated long enough to be restrained, preferably until they got her back to the fallout shelter. A sufficient dose of ketamine would accomplish that and would likely also have the added bonus of giving their victim some horrific hallucinations that would only add to her terror.”

  “Bradford said it would never knock the victim out all the way, but that she simply couldn’t move to fight them or to escape. They gagged the women to ensure any screaming couldn’t be heard, as sound like that might carry over the open water.”

  “Because of the ventilation system, the fallout shelter could never be totally soundproof,” Matt said with disgust. “Just mostly.”

  “They waited until the victim was awake to get started. That was part of the fun and part of the challenge—to torture and kill while she was still conscious. They tortured her for several hours, stopping if she lost consciousness and then starting again when she came to.” She glanced over at Matt. “From reading the blog, we know that what would normally happen is that when Bradford sensed that the end was near but that their victim was still aware of what was happening to her, he’d let the target carry out the final coup de grace as the victim was manually strangled.”

  “Smart guy,” Paul commented. “If he was ever caught, he was never actually responsible for the death of the victim.”

  “Not directly, but indirectly he’s still guilty as sin.” Leigh took another sip of her coffee before setting it down on the table. “What Bradford personally did with each one was to carve the signature while the victim was still alive but weak enough not to struggle. That’s why it’s the only consistent marker on all the female remains. It was his possession of the act. Now, normally, once the victim was dead, they’d wait for nightfall, then they’d wrap the body in plastic sheeting and move it under cover of darkness to the boat. Then he and his partner would go up to the Essex coast for the burial.”

  “Why that particular spot?” Matt interrupted. “Why move the body so far away?”

  “I wondered that too. But it makes sense when you know that Bradford was born in Essex and he grew up as a young child knowing that area and those salt marshes. They lived in an isolated house near the marsh, and Bradford used to roam for hours at a time because no one was there to wonder where he was. For him, the marsh was a place of safety an
d he chose that particular location because he knew it was close to a branch of the Essex River and because it was so isolated from the mainland.”

  “He was right,” Paul muttered. “Those bodies remained undiscovered for years.”

  “And still would be if it wasn’t for that storm surge,” Juka added. “It does make one wonder though, why he didn’t just unload all the bodies into the ocean. Matt told us about how he killed his first partner and the body never washed ashore.”

  “No guarantee it would work the next time though,” said Kiko. “Tides can be unpredictable and bodies can wash up on shore months later and in another area altogether. If he was born and raised on the coast, he would likely know this and wouldn’t want to take the chance. He probably considered burial safer.”

  “But what happened the last time?” Matt asked. “Not only did he not kill the target, he didn’t bury the victim immediately. That body was days old.”

  “Everything went to hell for him the last time.” She glanced at Matt. “As you saw last night, the entries stopped after they had taken Tracy Kingston but before they had killed her. We questioned him in detail about Tracy, so this is all right from Bradford once he knew we had him and he understood if he was helpful he might get a mitigated sentence.”

  “Mitigated from what?” Matt asked sarcastically. “Ten life sentences down to nine?”

  Leigh smiled. “You’re thinking more clearly than he is right now. We’ve got him, no matter what he tells us. But we didn’t feel the need to tell him that and he never asked for a lawyer even after he was Mirandized again and one was offered to him.”

  “That was stupid. Does he think he’s too smart to need a lawyer?” Paul asked.

  “Possibly. He’s definitely not short on arrogance. Or maybe he was afraid his assigned counsel would be a woman. Anyway, the problem that last time was John Hershey, his selected target. He was on board right up until the end. But then he fell apart when it came to the actual killing. Hershey found out that torture in real life is actually a little different from a video game. According to Bradford, he couldn’t take Tracy’s muffled screams of agony and he bolted, leaving Bradford with a hysterical, half-dead woman on his hands. Bradford was so furious that he silenced her screams with a baseball bat to the head and then finished her by strangling her like the rest, leaving her on the table to go after Hershey. But Hershey disappeared and Bradford couldn’t track him down at any of the spots where he thought he might have gone, including his house. Then he had the bad luck to come back and discover that there was a regatta taking place at the Heron Way Marina just upriver. There were boats moored all over so he couldn’t risk being seen putting the body in the boat. They also blocked his way out to the main branch of the Annisquam. He had to wait three more days for the regatta to finish and for all the participants to clear out so he could transport the body without risk of being seen.”