Picture Me Dead

by Heather Graham

  “Mandy, good to see you here.”

  They had worked together many times. She was thin as a wraith, with steel gray, close-cropped hair, and a strong, Native-American facial structure that defied age entirely. She was quick and efficient, careful to snap a crime scene in its entirety, to make sure that she not only got excellent photographs of the body but of the surrounding elements as well.

  “Thanks, Jake. I’ll be out of your way in just a second.”

  “Take your time, Mandy,” he told her. “There’s no hurry for this one now.”

  “I think I’ve gotten just about everything I can and everything that Dr. Gannet specified,” she assured them, squatting low to focus on a last photograph. “I’ll be over with Pentillo, hanging around ’til the M.E. moves the body and I can take the rest of the shots,” she told them.

  “Thanks, Mandy.”

  She nodded. “I think Dr. Gannet knows you’re here. I’ll send him right over.”

  Jake hunkered down on the balls of his feet to study the body in the position in which it had been found.

  He didn’t need the medical examiner to tell him that the woman had been dead for some time. She had been exposed to the elements and to the small animals that called the area home. There were places where she was down to no more than bone, and places where flesh clung precariously to the body. It appeared that she had been left without clothing of any kind. A quick look, using his pen to shift fallen foliage for a better view, showed that unfortunately the hands had decomposed almost fully, as had much of the face.

  Another murder in the county. It happened. Put millions of people together, and murder happened.

  But he knew exactly why Martin had been so tense when he had called him, urging him to reach the scene as quickly as possible.

  The face, though maintaining few of the qualities that marked men and women as human, had apparently not taken the same abuse as the hands.

  And it was apparent that what had once been the ears had been slashed.

  A chill crept through him, along with a bitterness he could actually taste.

  Déjà vu.

  Peter Bordon, also known as Papa Pierre, had been locked up for a long time now. Five years. But even a seconds-long, cursory inspection of this body was eerily reminiscent of the victims that had been discovered during Bordon’s reign as leader of the bizarre cult called People for Principle.

  “Yes, he’s still in prison,” Martin said, reading his partner’s mind.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah. I called and checked the moment I saw the body, right after I called you,” Martin said. “He’s in prison—whether it really matters or not, that’s where he is.”

  “Sorry,” Jake murmured. He couldn’t quite help having a tense attitude on this one. Peter Bordon had garnered a group around him as if he had been a true modern-day prophet. He had preached about community, working for the benefit of all mankind and giving up the luxuries of a sinful life. For most of his followers, that had meant donating everything they had ever worked for to Bordon’s own bank account.

  Three of his alleged followers had wound up dead. Discovered in fields and canals.

  With their ears slashed.

  No weapons had ever been found. No real leads had ever been discovered. Bordon had been the only suspect, but there had been nothing whatsoever to prove he might be guilty. The police had managed to obtain a search warrant for his holdings, but nothing had been found except for some illegal financial activity, which in the end had been enough to earn him jail time.

  Late one night, an itinerant man had come bursting into one of the small precinct stations, confessing to the murders.

  While homicide was being notified of his arrival and confession, the young man had hanged himself with his belt in his cell.

  And that should have been it.

  But Jake and most of his task force hadn’t believed that one crazed man had been responsible for a series of killings that had been so meticulously carried out. The case had never been officially closed, but with the death of the man who had confessed, the imprisonment of Bordon based on what they were able to bring into court, and the fact that no more bodies had been discovered, they had been forced to move on to new investigations.

  Jake had never been satisfied, though. For him, it had never ended.

  They hadn’t gotten Bordon on murder.

  Bordon had been involved. He was sure of it. But there was no proof. Jake had never thought that Bordon had physically carried out the crimes; they had been done at his command.

  Now he was in prison, but there was no reason in hell why he couldn’t be calling the shots from his cell.

  Bordon had a power far greater than strength or any material weapon. He had the ability to manipulate men and women. To get into their minds.

  He didn’t need to dirty his own hands with the blood of others.

  Planning a murder, however, could bring the same penalties as the act of carrying out the deed. But complicity had to be proven.

  Five years ago, the task force had plowed through Bordon’s records, desperate to get him on something. They had never gotten him for ordering the killings, but just as, decades ago, the law had managed to put away the infamous Al Capone, they had at last gotten him on tax evasion and fraud.

  Unsatisfactory, but at least he’d been locked away.

  The murders had stopped. Most people seemed to assume that had been because the man who had confessed to the killings had committed suicide in a jail cell.

  But now it seemed that the killings hadn’t stopped.

  There had just been a hiatus, because here was another body, jarringly reminiscent of those they had found in the past.

  “Jesus, Jake, don’t look like that,” Martin said softly. “Maybe you shouldn’t even be on this case.”

  Jake stared at him, dark eyes hard as coal.

  “All right, all right. Sorry.”

  “Gentlemen, may I get back in there? I’ll give you my initial findings.”

  Jake turned. Dr. Tristan Gannet made his way back over to them. Jake was glad that it was Gannet on the case. He had been with the M.E.’s office almost twenty years and had had experience with the previous murders.

  “Glad to see you, Gannet,” Jake said. He quickly scanned the scene again himself before joining Gannet down by the body. No apparent materials or fabrics. No sign of footprints, but if they were right and the body had washed down here with the rain, there wouldn’t be. No obvious sign of cause of death, most likely because the body was so decomposed. Victim was most probably a young woman, a few strands of long dark hair remaining. The first patrolman to arrive on the scene had done a damned good job of taping the scene off and keeping it untainted. This was no instance of a dozen officers arriving and contaminating the area. There was just so little to be found when a body had been given time to decompose. Of course, there was always the hope that the specialized crime scene investigators could find a clue that wasn’t visible to the naked eye.

  Jake had a feeling this one would be hard work for the crime scene investigators. When a murderer was careful and knew that minuscule clues could give his or her identity away, there was often little to go on.

  There was still hope, of course. His associates might find a hair, a fiber, trace evidence. Doc Gannet might find a microscopic clue on the pathetic remains.

  No chance of finding flesh beneath the fingernails, though. The fingernails were gone. For that matter, there would be no identification through fingerprints—no flesh remained on a single finger or on the thumbs.

  “And no one will recognize her from her face,” he murmured.

  “Dental records are usually our best bet anyway, often,” Gannet said. “We’re lucky here, I think. I’m willing to bet the flesh was cut from the fingers, before the animals and the environment had a chance to do their work.” He looked at Jake for a moment, and he knew they were both thinking along the same line.

  In the previous mur
ders, the ears had been slashed, and the flesh had been cut from the fingers. Why bother destroying fingerprints, then leaving the head and teeth so that an identity could be culled from dental records?

  Were they back to where they had started?

  Or was there a copycat killer out there?

  “Could be a copycat,” Gannet said, as if Jake had actually voiced his thoughts.

  “Yeah,” Jake said.

  Gannet stared down at the remains, sorrow in his face. Real emotion, but under complete control. That was another thing Jake liked about Gannet. He did his work well. And though he didn’t take every single case to heart so that he couldn’t sleep at night, he had never, in all his years of work, lost compassion for the victims, whether of accident or violence. “We’ll find out who she is,” he assured Jake.

  “I need your findings on this as fast as possible,” Jake said.

  Gannet nodded. “Naturally,” he said, a slight touch of sarcasm in his voice. Unfortunately, untimely deaths occurred with a certain frequency in the county. He looked up at Jake again. “Don’t worry. I intend to get right on this one.” He stared at Jake a moment longer. Maybe he knew Gannet too well, Jake thought.

  During the last spate of similar murders, Jake had worked the case aggressively on behalf of the victims. Even after the suicide of the “confessed” killer. And even after Bordon’s incarceration.

  For the victims.

  And because he’d suspected that Bordon had been involved in another death, as well.

  Another death…Nothing like this. But far too close to home. Nancy’s death.

  Not too many others on the force had agreed with him on that one. They’d thought he was creating scenarios of Bordon’s guilt because he had to find a guilty party and couldn’t accept a verdict of accidental death in the case of a fellow cop.

  Or even suicide, as some had suggested.

  Suicide. Never. It was a theory to be rejected entirely. No one who’d known her could ever even begin to accept such a possibility.

  “Are you going to be all right with this?” Gannet asked softly.

  “You bet. I’m a professional, Gannet. And if we do need to make comparisons to past cases, there’s no one out there who knows both the facts and the theories better than I do.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Gannet said. Gloves on, he looked over the remains. Two assistants from the morgue had arrived to take the body when Gannet and the scene-of-crime investigators had finished their site inspection. Gannet nodded an acknowledgment to the others and quietly asked them to make sure they included the dirt and scrub around the body when they removed it from the site.

  “Any idea on the actual cause of death?” Jake asked.

  “Not natural,” Gannet said.

  “Wow. I don’t have a medical degree, and I knew that.”

  Gannet grimaced at him. “Knife…big knife. Maybe a machete.”

  Jake looked at him in surprise. “There’s not enough flesh—”

  “A few courses in forensics and you’d see this just fine.”

  “I’ve had a few forensics courses,” Jake reminded him dryly.

  “Maybe. But the condition of the corpse makes it hard to see the forest for the trees. Almost literally. Shift this foliage and filth around a little and you get a good look at the bone. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s covered with dirt. But see? If you look really closely…the scratch there? I have to do a full autopsy, but I’d bet we’re talking a very large blade. And you’d need a blade to do that to the ears…and the features. The animals have been at her, but still…those aren’t teeth marks. Definitely made by a blade. And, as we’ve both seen, the flesh was removed from the fingers. You’ve been at this a while, and you seem to know more than you let on most of the time, because you want me to make what you’re already pretty damned sure you do know, official. Yeah, animals have been at her. But the flesh from her fingers was cut off, not gnawed away, or simply decomposed.”

  “Hell. This is more than déjà vu. We could definitely be talking the same—” Jake began.

  “From what I see so far, yes, but don’t go taking anything as absolute yet. Let me get her down to the morgue. And don’t forget, Jake, what we both already know, as well. There can be copycats out there. There have been cases where murders have been researched and studied and duplicated almost perfectly. There are victims assumed to have been murdered by one serial killer who in reality were killed by someone else entirely.”

  Jake arched a brow to him.

  “Hey,” Gannet said with a grin. “You learn more about autopsies every year, and I learn about cop work.” He was quiet again for a moment, eyes on the victim. When he spoke again, his tone was serious and flat. “Like I said, I’ll get right on it. You can meet me at the morgue. Hey, I heard you’re moving your houseboat.”

  “I moved it. Yesterday.”

  Gannet was watching him carefully. “Well, I’m glad to hear that. A change of scenery is always good.”

  “It’s still the same old boat,” Jake said dryly.

  “Still…a new marina. You wake up to a different view.”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t say more. He had the feeling that Gannet—like others around him—believed he’d shared more than a patrol car with Nancy, so, a change of pace now was a good thing. Even if it had been almost five years since Nancy’s death.

  He could have said something, he supposed, could have come to his own defense, though he wasn’t being attacked, he knew.

  And he had no need to excuse or defend himself to anyone. The inquest had cleared him—as far as that night went, anyway. The general and even logical consensus had been that Nancy, feeling desperate over the disintegration of her marriage and the pressures of her job, had just gone wild for a night. She’d met someone, done some drinking, popped a few pills…and found her way into the canal. But there was one factor he and Brian had in common—they’d both known Nancy well. The year after her death, even with the breakup of Bordon’s cult, had been a bitch for Jake. He’d been like a dog with a bone, determined to connect the two. He’d come close to crossing the line between investigation and harassment, and he’d been called on it. He’d resented his time with the police psychiatrist, though it was common practice for cops to receive such counseling after the death of a partner. He’d realized after a while that he would have to take a step back. Outwardly, he’d become a practical and methodical cop again, following the rules as closely as he could.

  But he’d never changed his mind about the truth of the situation. Or his determination to see it come out one day.

  “I’d like to live on the water,” Gannet said. “Maybe one day.”

  “You should come by on a Sunday sometime. I keep a little motorboat, as well. Fishing is good for the soul.”

  “Yeah, I’d like that.” Gannet grimaced. “Maybe my wife will let me come.”

  “Bring her.”

  “She’s not big on beer.”

  “We’ll get her a bottle of wine.”

  “I’ll take you up on it, one way or the other, soon enough,” Gannet assured him.

  “Dr. Gannet, Detective Dilessio?”

  Jake turned. Mandy Nightingale was back. “Are you ready to move the body and let me get the rest of the scene?”

  “I’m good to go, Mandy,” Gannet said.

  “Jake?” she inquired.

  He nodded. “If Gannet’s ready, so am I.”

  “Good. You should know then, Jake,” she said softly, “that they’re holding back a slew of reporters over there.”

  “Want me to handle them?” Marty asked Jake.

  Jake shook his head. “No, it’s all right. Get some of our men started on a door-to-door. I know the doors are pretty far apart around here, but someone might have seen something. I’ll take care of the press.”

  “Are you sure? I saw your eyes. It’s all coming back, and you took the entire thing way too personally before—”

  “Martin, I’m all right. We’re talking about s
omething that happened five years ago. I’m a cop, this is my job. Just keep an eye on things here, Marty. We can’t let anything, not the most minute clue, slip away.”

  Martin nodded. Jake walked from the scene and across the road, where the uniformed officers were holding the onslaught of reporters at bay.

  “A murder, right? A young woman?” Jayne Gray, from one of the local stations, called to him.

  “Jayne, I’m afraid there’s not too much we can say right now. We’ve got the body of a woman who has apparently been dead several weeks, even a few months. We’ve yet to determine anything else as fact, but as soon as the M.E.’s office has further information, I know they’ll share it. And when that happens, you know that a police spokesperson will be telling you all that they can. There’s nothing else you can learn here right now, folks.”

  “But, Detective Dilessio, there must be more you can give us.” Bryan Jay, an obnoxious, heavy-set man from the local paper, called out. “It’s a murder, right? You’ve found the victim of a murder, in the mud, off the side of the road.”

  He was tempted to give Jay a real wise-ass reply. Hell, no. She decided to drop herself off there, lie down and die.

  “Mr. Jay, give the medical examiner time to do his work,” Jake said firmly.

  “Right,” Jay replied dryly. “Come on, Jake, give us something.”

  “I’ve already explained that we have the body of a woman, Mr. Jay.”

  “Think we have a single crime here, or do we have a serial killer on the loose? Isn’t this the way the first victim was found in those serial killings years ago? Are there any mutilations?”

  Leave it to Jay to home in on an uncomfortable suspicion of his own, Jake thought.

  “Unfortunately, this is a big city. We have a lot of murders every year.”

  “Still, this seems awfully similar to me. The kid who supposedly did the killing back then is dead though, right?”

  “A man who claimed to have committed the murders committed suicide, yes.”

  “But the case was never officially closed, right?”

  “No, Mr. Jay, it was not.”

  “The police cracked down on the local cults back then. Papa Pierre, alias Peter Bordon, was a suspect, right? But he’s been locked up for years now, right?”