by Rick Murcer
Atrocities like the one in front of her.
Any thoughts of an organized psychopath evaporated like water on a hot Chicago sidewalk. These murders appeared to be born of pure rage.
The two victims were of similar age. They’d been staged only a few feet apart, facing away from each other in the lush grass. They had obviously been dumped there and there didn’t seem to be any attempt to display them in a concise array. They appeared to be discarded like pieces of trash.
She fought the boiling that had begun in her veins. Oscar, her old partner’s voice echoed in her head, telling her to stay calm and not let her anger get the best of her. Emotion caused mistakes. She refocused on the two people in front of her.
Their bloodied bodies were in heaps of different shapes, but related in their state. Like circles and ovals were related. They were still clothed, somewhat, but each set of clothes were torn and riddled, as well as covered in dirt and blood. She’d have to test the biological DNA but she suspected the blood she could see was their own, however. She also made a mental note to test for touch DNA on any untainted clothing and any bare skin areas. Both would be hard to find.
Looking down, making sure she didn’t disturb anything that could be important, Ellen scooted a foot closer. The woman on the left had lost a large portion of her face, her throat slit from one ear to the other. Her black hair matted in dark crimson, one eye open, seemingly staring at Ellen. The other focused somewhere else. She fought the shiver.
The woman’s left elbow rested at an odd angle over her side, her right leg displaying two horrific compound fractures. The worst of the two breaks was the broken fibula that rose an inch through the skin of her thigh. There was no telling how many other injuries she’d suffered until they got her to the ME’s office, but to Ellen, it looked as if she’d been beaten almost to death before the killer or killers had cut her throat.
Exhaling, she moved closer to examine the other red-haired woman. She had large bruises on her upper arm and down the full length of her right leg. Because of the discoloration patterns, she suspected the bruises were perimortem.
It appeared, however, that the woman’s death may have been a bit easier. Her face was scraped and it looked as if her nose had been broken, but her features were not disfigured like her companions. Most of her face was still attached to her skull.
She’d been a fairly pretty woman, Ellen guessed. Not that it mattered, but the mind goes where it goes, and it had mattered to this dead woman. Maybe to her boyfriend or husband as well.
These were living, breathing women a few hours ago. Their lives had been theirs, but not anymore. Someone had stolen them away. But why?
She continued her exam, knowing she’d talk with Brice and Bella and Aaron about the why, when the time was right. Right now, these two needed her to do her job.
Moving closer to second woman, she could smell urine, but shoved that odor aside. It wasn’t like Ellen hadn’t been there before. Still, the idea of that situation was appalling to most women. Dead or alive, women wanted to keep their dignity intact. This poor victim had that dignity torn away on several levels. Was that part of what the killer was trying to convey? Disrespect? Embarrassment? She thought she might be right.
Ellen found herself tugging at her earring while trying to push away just how much pain these two victims had endured before their times of death. Much like Ben Castle. More than most could bear, she suspected.
There didn’t seem any broken bones or dislocated joints so far, but the amount of dried blood running from her once-yellow blouse down to the waist of her tattered yoga pants suggested she’d been stabbed in or near the heart, causing massive loss of blood.
Ellen tilted her head, then frowned. She touched the bottom of the blouse. It was still semi-wet and sticky, but the volume of blood wasn’t what it should have been.
Usually that kind of blood loss runs down then away from the body, no matter how the victim would have been positioned. There was no stopping gravity. Yet, this woman’s clothes were soaked. After glancing back at the other victim, she turned her eyes back to the red-haired woman.
If she were to guess, she’d say they were killed at about the same time and by the same killer or killers because of the pattern of injuries even though the dark-haired woman had suffered more damage.
She pulled out her notepad, made a few quick scribbles, then put it back in her back pocket. She snapped several more shots of each body, then swung the camera to her side.
Standing, she stepped to the first vic and examined the wrist and hands, then the small section of her lower lip that remained. Then worked down the body to her chest, making mental notes as she completed the preliminary exam. Turning, she repeated the process with the other woman.
She then stood, moving in a slow circle around them.
Ligature marks on the dark-haired woman, but not on the redhead. They both appeared to have tape residue over their mouths. She frowned again. Why would someone remove the tape after they were dead?
Fingerprints? DNA possibilities? Something else?
She allowed her mind to run a logical course as to what could have transpired, her mind going away from science and into investigation arenas.
“Maybe they didn’t,” she whispered to herself. “Maybe there was another reason the tape is missing.”
Had he kissed them after they were dead?
She pulled the distilled water from her case and a fresh, sealed bundle of swaps and swabbed both victim’s lips. Then both necks. Then a few other spots that the killer or killers may have touched the bodies, like around the ankles and under the armpits. She then placed the cylinders in her kit. She’d test them at the lab when she returned there.
She made more notes as she hoped to make four and four add up to eight instead of six. It didn’t happen, but she knew how to get closer to the right answer. Science never lied.
Turning the page on her notebook, she listed three extra tests to have performed on selected samples from the scene and the bodies that she wanted Marci to have Aaron begin before Ellen got back to the lab.
Exhaling again, she flipped the page and wrote a couple of more comments to discuss with Brice and Bella, wondering at the same time if she should have done something else with her life.
Maybe a chef, or pursue her painting more seriously. Maybe even a lifeguard on Lake Michigan.
She sighed as that familiar uneasiness rose up in her. It appeared every time her thoughts rambled in this direction. The convicting kind that said she was where she was supposed to be so stop whining.
If people like her didn’t do what they did, then who would help people find justice and their families closure?
She remembered something that FBI Special Agent, Manny Williams, had said in that conference a few months back about not choosing what we did in life. About our deep calling. The one we’re on the planet to perform. It chose us. He called it a blessing and a curse. He’d been right.
Twenty minutes later, Ellen removed her gloves and began to return more samples to her kit, when she saw it. Just a brief glint reflecting from the late afternoon sun, but it grabbed her eye.
At first it appeared to be a shard of aluminum or reflective glass. She bent closer. She was wrong. No piece of glass or metal could cause her heart to jump the way this one had.
What the hell?
Dropping to her knees, she moved the second victim’s long hair carefully away from her neck, wondering why she hadn’t noticed the object before.
After one more shock of hair had been shifted, she could only stare.
The silver cross with the odd sheep, identical to the ones she and Aaron had found at the river, stared back at her.
CHAPTER-18
Joel Harper faltered near the front door. He reached for the rusted mailbox attached to the faded wall to steady himself. It took a few moments but eventually he raised his head high, discovering a dignity that had grown scarce over the last few months.
“I can d
o this,” he whispered.
Pulling his hand from the wall, he stepped through the faded wooden entrance of the mission.
Three steps in he stopped, his eyes squinting as they fought to adjust to the dark contrast of the late afternoon Chicago sun. That simple act brought about another wave of nausea.
He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall.
God help me get through this.
The irony of asking for God’s help now wasn’t lost on his agnostic nature, but he knew he couldn’t do this alone. Yet, who else did he have? Who better than God, if He were real?
Ellen wasn’t going to come running to his side. She was trying to erase him from her mind. Who could blame her? Hell, he would too. And forget the twit he’d left her for those long months ago. That sorry excuse for a woman was long gone.
What an asshole you were, Joel Harper.
“I’m not here to relive that nightmare again. Not now,” he whispered, allowing all of his weight to be supported by the wall or risk falling on his face again.
A few moments later, the nausea had dissipated to the point that he could focus and move forward, but he didn’t. Joel stood motionless. The subsiding dizziness hadn’t been the only reason he’d hesitated.
Admitting you had a problem was one thing, but walking into a place like this, this small mission on a side street in West Chicago, and asking for help, was quite another.
Even though the man in charge had a reputation for helping people like him, that fact didn’t make his desperation any easier. Then again, he hadn’t exactly made great choices over the last few years, had he? That was in the past, though and it was time to make better decisions. Starting today.
Exhaling part of his demons away, Joel shuffled the rest of the way inside and sat down in the last rickety folding chair in the back row, the one closest to the door. Always a good plan when one wanted to run. He knew a few things about running.
The thin, sixtyish-looking man with the silver mane for hair suddenly appeared beneath the wooden six-foot cross nailed to the wall, looked up, raised his hand, then strolled toward the ancient looking pulpit set in front of the rows of chairs.
Joel wouldn’t have guessed that this many people, some twenty-five or thirty, would show up at four in the afternoon to see and hear this man, yet he knew drug addictions didn’t wear watches nor did the people who lived in that world.
*****
The Father looked over the small room doubling as a holy sanctuary, cleared his throat, and began.
“Friends. I’m not here this afternoon to dodge the disgraceful issues present in our society. Or to sugar-coat the true state of affairs displayed like an Egyptian plague. Putrid depravity runs hotly through the veins of virtually sinner on this planet. Certainly you can see the ungodly mess we’re in. Our most urgent, inescapable predicament is this world’s self-indulgent, sexually-oriented lifestyle. That alone has put us in a position to apologize to the likes of Sodom and Gomorra.”
He leaned over the unsteady pulpit, eyes on fire. “CAN I GET AN AMEN?”
The response was enthusiastic, if not thunderous.
That was adequate, for now. It would take some time to build what had been begun here in this old building on Chicago’s west side. He’d been patient for most of his sixty-plus years. No reason to change that approach now. And patience could be a reward within itself, could it not?
He smiled a perfect smile.
Rewards were for believers who did what God told them. He knew that, too.
He loved people, but rewards, especially the divine kind, were extra topping on the cake.
Raising his large hand, the modest crowd grew quiet. It was not difficult to see that virtually all of the listeners were awestruck. What was he if not striking? Hadn’t God lifted him up and given him power beyond normal men? Normal preachers? All the others were posing as modern day charlatans with agenda’s meant to further their pockets. Not so with him. Not his pockets, but God’s kingdom. He would continue to do that, and with love. Like the love God had shown him.
His eyes scanned each person in a chair and the two who stood in the back. Their reactions were similar as they bowed their heads in shame. All but one.
The gangly man in the back, an obvious drug addict, and make no mistake, he knew one sinner’s heavy chain from another’s, tilted his head and gazed back at him.
The man’s pain was palpable, his determination shone through that pain, however.
The Father nodded, the sinner nodded back. They would talk afterwards. God had ordained it.
Looking back to the rest of his audience, he reached for the glass of muddy water sitting on the makeshift pulpit.
Ever so slowly, he stretched his arm toward the make-shift congregation, turning the crystal tumbler in his long fingers.
Waiting for a full minute, he bent toward his new-found flock.
“But those sins, those perversions are not why you’re here today. You are here for a different reason, aren’t you? You’re here because Satan has you wrapped around his finger, doing his bidding, allowing drugs to have inescapable power over your lives. You have no choices. No freedom, no life, no rest. You know only wanton need and will stop at nothing to satisfy that need.”
He slammed his other hand down on the pulpit.
“Am I right? Answer me.”
The conviction of a guilty silence stole its way into the room. He’d been through it a thousand times and knew what would follow. He waited.
Slowly, like a gentle wave to the shore, he heard the shallow echo of tortured amens escape from their individual and collective mouths until it rose higher, each and every one of them agreeing with him, even the man who’d held his stare was nodding and speaking.
After a few more moments, the Father raised his hand and the voices ceased.
He lifted the glass high.
“Our lives are like this glass. We’re born empty, incomplete vessels, waiting for the proper ingredients to fill our worthless, transparent lives with substance, with purpose. We search, my friends, oh we search. We try all that life has to offer. Money, power, sex, possessions, and unhealthy relationships that lead to more fornication and adultery. Those debaucheries never lead to happiness but lead to more sorrow. That sorrow leads to seeking the solace of drugs and alcohol to hide the pain. But where has that taken you?”
His voice grew more intense, with just the right amount of control. “Let me tell you, friends, it has taken you down the road of loathsome one-night stands, homosexuality, pornography, impure fantasies, perversions of every type fill your thoughts like the wretched, dirty water in this glass.”
His hand rose higher, the glass more visible.
“All of your wayward efforts are intended to help hide your pain. But these harbingers of impurity can’t hide what can’t be hidden. Never.”
In one motion, he threw the glass to the hardwood floor. He heard a few scattered screams as it disintegrated into a hundred shards.
Stepping from the pulpit, he strode to within inches of the first row, gazing at them. Burning holes into their souls.
“I’m here to help you resist temptation, to abandon the drug-induced sensuality of this world and embrace a truth you’ve never imagined. The real truth.” he said, moving ever closer to the small gathering.
He raised his hand, turning it into a fist. “To become pure as the driven snow, to cleanse yourselves, and, of course, to be one of my flock. God’s flock. You must forsake yourselves and seek the greater good.”
The sobs were beginning to crawl from the crowd. Conviction sent many of them on a guilt-ridden ride they’d not anticipated when this gathering had begun. He knew every earmark of such conviction. Knew them well.
One young woman, her dark eyes glistening, stood with her hands in the air. “I’m such a sinner. I need to change my filthy ways. To get clean. What do I need to do, Father?”
He moved deeper into the midst of them. “Yes! This is what is desired. This is prudent
. It is necessary. Confession, repentance, a new beginning is the essence of a renewed journey. There is no substitute for these humble actions of contrition.”
His face grew soft as he reached out his hand to the young woman. “You’ve been coming here for some time, have you not?”
“Yes,” she whispered, her head bowed in perfect submission.
“Your name is Cheryl?”
“It is.”
“What a lovely name. Are you now willing to do what it takes, Cheryl, to be what you were created to be?”
“I-I am, Father. Finally, after these weeks. I am.”
Gently, he lifted her head. “I can see that you are.”
He spun suddenly to face the rest. “Are there others who would trust this message I’ve given on redemption?”
Three hands, four, twelve, and then all twenty-six attenders held their hands high. All but one.
The man who had not flinched when their eyes had met stood beside his chair, taking in the scene and wearing a confused expression. His gaze moved from one standing sinner to the next.
The Father knew what he needed to do and did it.
Striding toward the man, he stopped a foot away from him with just the right amount of dramatic flair. Once again, the tall man with the gaunt face held his ground, watching The Father with interest.
“What’s your name son?”
“Joel,” he answered quietly.
“Joel. A great biblical name. That’s a sign.”
He put his hand on Joel’s shoulder. This time, Joel flinched, but allowed it just the same. All did. The craving for human touch is strong, especially for those who think they deserve something less.
“Joel, why haven’t you raised your hand? Why haven’t you asked for the Lord’s help?”
Joel stared at the floor. “I-I’m not sure anyone can help.”
“Then why did you come here?”
Joel didn’t answer as the tears swelled in his eyes. The Father pulled him close. “I know why you’re here and I can help. Are you ready to make the step?”
