The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.
Rainbow Heaven Beach Resort
Dr. Andrew Coudriet, like Jessica Coran before him, stood now in an alcove of the cathedral of the saltwater Atlantic, up to his calves after having removed shoes and socks and rolled up his pants. His own near-alabaster skin was not so far removed from that of the corpse, and the sight before him was beginning to be too damned common, angering as well as disgusting him. Neither statistical data on suicides nor accidental drownings could account for the sheer number of bodies washing up on Florida shores this season.
And all this bleached-white death was so damnably stark by contrast to this brilliant, lovely morning with its heady sea breeze that whispered tales of immortality in the air. The ocean swells were mere curious creatures this morning, rising only a soft few inches in this estuary where the land developers had placed their pinnacle of a resort, which shone in the sun like something out of Oz, but the swells, like persistent, hungry dogs, kept up a constant begging at his calves, soaking the fabric of his pants in ever-higher increments, even as the water cradled the body in a rocking, back-and-forth fashion.
“ To and fro, lullaby and good night,” he murmured to the dead as the next swell hit and then moved away from him, trying to take the too-heavy body back with it.
He had taken most of what he wanted from the dead girl as other officials waited to do their jobs, each looking on from afar. One of the hotel guests, looking down from his window, had that morning stepped from his shower to a balcony and spotted the corpse as it washed ashore here. He’d immediately dialed 911 and everyone was put on alert. Coudriet was on his way to another crime scene when he was diverted here by the call.
The slightest pressure on the water-soaked corpse stripped off such vital portions as the nails and epidermal skin layer, some of which had miraculously held. He believed that if he were extremely careful fingerprints could be had from one or both hands, since the next layer of skin below the epidermis had miraculously remained intact- soupy, but intact. If he could cut away the fingertips and drop them into a preservative now, he’d have them. But it would take everything he had and another pair of hands. Unfortunately, his two assistants were on yet a third drowning victim call, likely just that-a drowning victim. Perhaps even the body which Coran and Santiva had surrounded was a simple drowning victim. He dared not think that they had three murder victims in one bright morning here. He knew for certain that door number two-this victim-was like those murdered before her. The rope burns about the wrists and neck would no doubt become evident when, back at the crime lab, Coudriet removed the ropes which still clung to the deceased, trailing ribbons of torture and abuse.
He had at first considered this a copycat killing because of the thick nylon ropes dangling about the body’s throat and tied hands, but closer examination had determined this to be the work of the Night Crawler. Of this, he was certain.
The tail ends of the ropes at both neck and hands floated in serpentine loops, two trapped black vipers.
Removing the ropes here and now would only cause a further loss of tissue, and coloration with it, to the water. Best to leave well enough alone. Still, the cause of death was as evident to him as the glare of the sun over the water’s sparkling surface, despite the bloating and the folds of tissue which worked so hard at masking the features and the facts.
“ I’ll need another man here!” he shouted over his shoulder. “A volunteer, someone experienced and capable.” Even as he shouted it, he wondered who was experienced in such horror.
One of the paramedics didn’t hesitate, wading out into the water in a pair of boots she’d donned earlier, announcing, “I’m your woman, Dr. Coudriet.”
Coudriet found himself staring back at a woman who looked like a housewife in a Pillsbury doughboy ad, her plump form and chubby cheeks offset by the stern and steely gaze of a woman who meant business despite her pleasant, white-toothed smile. “Serena Hoytler, Dr. Coudriet. I’ve hauled a few corpses to you over the years. I’ll be happy to assist in any way I can.”
He didn’t recognize her, but then he seldom mixed with the paramedics, and certainly not a woman paramedic, although he wondered how he had not noticed her before. Then again, at a distance, given her dress, she looked like a heavyset male paramedic. Still, she had a grace about her, the way she carried her weight, and how her eyes sparkled, he thought now.
“ You see these surgical scissors?”
“ Yes, sir.”
“ I want you to know what you’re in for. We can have no mistake here.”
“ Yes, sir.”
“ I’m about to cut off her-the fingertips at the joint.”
Serena swallowed hard but simply nodded.
He was delighted that she didn’t ask him why he was going to take the fingertips.
“ They will pop free and the water will eat them up if we don’t do this correctly,” he continued.
“ Just tell me what to do, sir.” He stared at her, nodding, saying, “Good… good. Now just take one of the large plastic bags from my right coat pocket and hold it around the woman’s hands.”
Serena saw that the dead girl’s hands were tied together with thick, black nylon rope in what appeared an unyielding knot. Saying nothing, she reached into Coudriet’s lab coat pocket, jerked out one of the large plastic bags and pried open its lip. She next cautiously took the dead girl’s hands without the slightest recoil and slipped them into the poly- urethane bag.
Coudriet closely watched the paramedic’s hands, and saw that Serena Hoytler was not trembling in the slightest. “I’ll make the cuts inside the bag. That way, we catch what we need, you understand?”
“ Affirmative, sir.”
“ Good… good…” He had to hand it to her. She had grit, unlike many of the other paramedics-male and female-he’d employed over the years.
They went to work, Serena looking away whenever the scissors closed around a joint; but she couldn’t close her ears to the little crunch each cut made, and she could feel the weight in the bag around the bloated hand increase with each cut.
“ There, done,” he finally said. “We have them all.”
“ Do we do the other hand now?” she asked, her voice steady.
“ You lost count. I’ve done both hands; I’ve got all the useful tips I’ll be taking. What few are left would prove a useless exercise.”
Serena Hoytler breathed in her relief. “Glad I could help, Doctor.”
“ I couldn’t’ve done it without you. Thank you, Mrs. Hotler.”
“ Hoytler, sir, Miss… Ms., actually. I divorced my husband six years ago, returned to school, got my two-year degree, finished the medic program at State, and I’ve been working the meat wagon ever since.”
Coudriet saw that she was pretty, despite her size; her eyes were filled with a radiance he hadn’t seen in a woman in a long time, and this radiance seemed to be for him, directed at him. Now, staring at her, he found her reddening up, actually blushing.
As he worked to place the dismembered little pieces of the victim into small vials of a preservative which the salesman had called WonderPlus Glow 19, Coudriet said, “I’ve been a widower for about as long as you’ve been single. And how old are you, if you don’t mind my asking.”
“ I’ll be twenty-nine soon enough.”
“ I’m old enough to be your father.”
“ Yes, sir, Doctor. I know, but personally I… I like older men.”
He looked up from what he was doing to see that she was blushing even more, yet staring deeply into his eyes. He managed a smile and was instantly kicked at the same time by the body so near-as if it were vying for his full attention-the water having heaved it into his leg. His wife of so many years was gone now; still, he was a grandfather, an old buzzard, set in his ways. What could this… this child see in him? Is that why you so readily volunteered to wade out here and hold hands with a corpse for me? he wondered but dared not ask. Flirting here like this, over the body, was wrong, he told himself. He opted for what he felt was a soft joke instead. ‘ ‘Where does it say in your job description that you have to help cut off fingers?” He’d had outrageous thoughts all his life come full-blown and unbidden into his head, but this… thoughts of making a date with the paramedic over the body: No, he couldn’t, he told himself now.
“ My job is to assist my superiors and officials of this city as best I can, where I can and when I can, sir, and I would never, ever allow my personal life to get in the way of that, sir.”
He smiled, enjoying her now immensely, loving her paramilitary bearing and speech. “Tell you what, Ms. Hoyt-Hoytler, is it?”
“ Serena, yes.”
“ Serena, a lovely name… Listen, how would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”
She smiled now, the sunlight dimming amid clouds as if on cue. She was so cheery, so delightful… perhaps just what he needed, he silently told himself, although a deep- seated voice also said, No fool like an old fool, and then a third voice interceded, saying. Nobody’s a fool like the fool who lets her get away…
“ You just tell me when and where to be, Doctor.”
“ Andrew… call me, Andrew.”
“ All right, Andrew. You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to speak your name aloud to you.”
“ That’s… that’s sweet,” he replied, thinking that it was also a bit extreme. He wondered just how intense she might become, welcoming her intensity, and a bit fearful of it as well.
“ Do you need me for anything else, Ann-drew?” A fresh twinkle shimmered in her strikingly green eyes.
“ Sure, sure… yes, help me bring the body onto shore.”
“ Well, I’ve got my partner for that. We’ll take it from here, sir. Around the others, I’ll continue to call you sir and Doctor, sir.”
“ Thank you very much, Serena, and if you’ll leave me your number, I’ll call you later and we’ll get together.”
She whipped out a card with her address and telephone number clearly printed, handed it to him and said, “Funny, huh… How an ugly, awful thing like these brutal killings can bring two people together. Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve called her ugly.” She indicated the bloated body bobbing inches from them. “It’s just so… so ghastly to see…”
“ The one kind of death they don’t even like to discuss in medical school, even in M.E. training, my dear Serena, is the floater. A floater is an ugly travesty of the human form. Don’t feel ashamed.”
“ But it’s so horrible that I should gain from so tragic a loss…”
“ Just be thankful you still have feelings at all. In our business, it’s hard to hold on to honest feelings, believe me. She instantly agreed with a nod. “I know drivers, paramedics like me, who’re so burned out. Why this one guy, Stover-” She realized she was carrying on too long for here and now, so she closed down.
Coudriet turned and waded back to shore as Serena’s burly partner came out toward the body, the two men nodding vigorously to one another as they exchanged elements. Coudriet clutched the small medical pouch, stuffed now with the evidence of the crime, where it dangled about his neck on leather thongs. He had all the evidence the body could give him here in the field. The rest would have to wait for a thorough examination in the morgue, in dry conditions, below bright lights and under the microscope in his lab, where he might turn for a warm cup of coffee and listen to classical music as he worked, anything to lessen the abomination of the moment.
“ Take love when and where you can find it,” Coudriet muttered to himself when he had arrived ashore. He turned to watch how Serena manfully hauled the body toward land, her partner hardly helping or keeping abreast. She appeared to be quite a woman, perhaps too much of a woman for him. She was intriguing, but he worried about what might become of them if they were to get involved. Perhaps it’d been wrong of him to encourage the young woman, but something in Serena stirred him even now, as he watched her wade ashore. Something deep within told him it was a feeling he should pursue, if for no other reason than to experience some much-needed excitement in his life, to feel again. It seemed a selfish reason, but he was too old anymore to fall back on falsities, to deny that he was selfish.
“ There’s a call for you, Dr. Coudriet,” said a uniformed cop in his ear, bringing the M.E. out of his reverie. “You can take it in my unit. Follow me.”
Coudriet climbed into the front seat of the man’s squad car and took up the nicely contoured, modern police receiver, barking into it, “Coudriet here. What is it?”
“ It’s me, Dr. Coudriet, Powers.”
“ Oh, yes, Owen, good of you to call. Now tell me, what’ve you and Thorn got out at Lighthouse Point?” Coudriet pictured the lively little Coconut Grove park where the historical monument-one of Florida’s most ancient and prestigious lighthouses-looked out over luscious palmettos, native cacti and other vegetation along the riverside, and the sugar-sand beach, cerulean waters and distant Atlantic horizon on the other. There was also nearby Peacock Park and the oldest building in Miami, the Barnacle, an historic home built in 1908 which had long since become a museum offering a glimpse into Florida’s past, the grounds overlooking the ocean, ideal for strolling and spotting the occasional native armadillo and raccoon. He imagined how crowded the entire area would be even at an early hour, it being a favorite haunt of both locals and tourists, with cafe, gift shop and beach all in one place. The red-brick lighthouse, while no longer operational, still acted as a beacon, a magnet, for people to come and visit, whether it was to climb her 320-odd spiraling steps or to party amid the seascape.
What an awful foil against which to examine a body in the water, he thought, even worse than doing so below the thousand or so windows of the Flamingo Hilton Beach Resort. At the lighthouse, there would be little children about, dogs and Frisbees, sand castles and sea urchins to chase. But looking around now, he saw children already locating the pool at the resort while others impatiently waited with sand buckets and colorful shovels in hand so they might hit the beach.
“ So, tell me… what exactly do you have out there, Owen?”
He silently prayed for a stabbing victim, a drowned surfer, anything but another sampling of the work of the Night Crawler.
“ Ted and I both concur, sir, that it’s the work of the Night Crawler.”
“ Goddamn it all! Are you absolutely certain?”
“ Absolutely, yes. Unfortunately, all the signs, sir.”
“ Were the hands bound in front with a black nylon boating rope?”
“ As a matter of fact, they were, and the same rope was tied about her throat.”
“ Sounds like we’ve got the makings of a… a hat trick…”
“ A hat trick, sir?”
“ Hockey, Doctor… You remember hockey, don’t you? I’m talking about mass murder, possibly three victims in a single day, if Coran’s victim is also one of his.”
“ Oh, yeah, ice hockey… hat trick, sure… gotcha, Dr. Coudriet.”
“ Damn… damn…”
“ So your victim, sir… was a bound female, nude except for the ropes with the same ligature marks, same time in the water, sir?”
“ One and the same, but not so long in the water as previous victims, no…”
“ That is unusual, isn’t it?” Powers was a master of the obvious.
“ Two victims, a possible third, all given to us on the same day, yes, Powers, damn you… damned unusual. Have you gotten what you may from the body at this point?”
“ Wasn’t really much to get. The usual samples were impossible to take, but yes, sir, we did what we could with what little we had.” “How’re you doing with it, Powers?”
“ Sir?” He sounded confused. “Are you and Thorn holding up?”
“ Well… yes, sir, but I gotta tell you, I really hate these floater bodies, sir, and Thorn about came unglued when we turned her in the water.”
“ Get everything into the lab; I’ll see both of you back there. Tell the press nothing at this point, and especially nothing about the ropes, do you understand? This will have to be handled delicately. Leave it to our PR guys.” He cut off communication with the younger doctor and asked the waiting officer just outside the car if he’d call in and have him patched through to the first crime scene. “I want that FBI guru, Jessica Coran, or her boss, Santiva.”
The officer got him patched through to Santiva. “What’s the word there, Agent Santiva? Does Coran think it’s the work of the Night Crawler?” Coudriet feared the answer.
“ She does indeed. And your location? What’s going on there?”
“ I’d say we’re being courted by this bastard, Santiva. I mean, we’re given three gifts from the bastard, Santiva… three all at once. He’s like a fucking cat now, bringing his dead to us as prizes for show.”
“ Three? And that’s a lock? We’re sure that all three are victims of the same killer?”
“ Think he’s trying to tell us something?”
News of the triple-sightings of bodies by civilians and the confirmed triple-slaying by the Night Crawler, all along Miami’s seashore resorts, left a burning trail of curiosity- seekers and media sharks from one end of the city to the other, one insensitive radio talk show host likening it to “beached whales-only now we got beached babes!” He didn’t seem to care that the victims’ families might be listening. The Chamber of Commerce, the mayor and his deputies were hastily applying Band-Aid measures to shore up the image of their beautiful city, but too late. The damage was done.
TV and newsprint media saturated viewers and readers with whatever few details had made it past the police PR team assigned to minimize the deaths and maximize the appearance that everything humanly possible was being done to end the nasty little career of the Night Crawler.
The triple murder was being analyzed by psychiatrists across the city as a throwing down of the gauntlet, as a slap to the collective face of law enforcement and Police Commissioner Orlando Everette. Jessica and others working the case were hounded and harassed and bombarded with microphones, cameras and inane questions at every turn and down every corridor. “What’re the police doing?”
“ How’re you FBI people helping?”
“ Why isn’t anything being done?”
“ Who’s responsible for this?”
“ Will he strike again, soon?”
“ Where will he strike again?”
“ Is it true that one of the bodies was a copycat killing, maybe two of them?”
“ Is it true that one of the bodies hadn’t been in the water as long as the other two?”
Jessica and Santiva plowed through with “no comments,” geysering forth until they came to a door which was off limits to press, closing it behind them, knowing how foolish they would look on the six and eleven o’clock broadcasts.
They were led through another door and down a passageway to Dr. Coudriet’s Crime Lab Unit, with its adjacent morgue. Jessica still had to log in the evidence she was carrying from her seawater crime scene. Here it would be logged by date, tag number and item description and then she would have to sign off on it. This done, she could begin her lab work and analysis of the evidence-such as it was.
They soon located the evidence lockup and Jessica filled in forms which indicated every piece of evidence she had collected, each item now logged in on a manifest. This took some time, so Eriq located a nearby coffee machine and brought back a Styrofoam cup filled with the black liquid for Jessica. She hadn’t had any breakfast, so the coffee was welcomed.
“ What kind of monster is behind this?” she asked Santiva as she finished up the necessary paperwork, not expecting an answer. “The damned reporters want to know if and when and where it will continue-stupid questions.”
“ Well, it’s not like we can read minds or look into the future,” he replied, “but on the other hand, we are the experts. Who else’re they going to come to for answers?”
“ Then maybe we’d best work with the press, the Herald at least, as we promised?” She gulped down the remainder of her coffee, which had gone lukewarm.
“ Leave that to me. You concentrate on the lab evidence.”
The uniformed officer at the “cage,” where the evidence was finally and completely logged, now thanked Jessica and told her everything appeared in order. She returned the thanks, tossed away her empty coffee cup and indicated to Santiva to follow her and they’d locate the morgue from here.
Eriq’s request that she focus on the lab work and leave the press to him sounded like an order, so she said no more on the subject, but it seemed that Santiva felt a need to explain himself further. He looked over at her as they continued down the institutional-gray corridor and said, “People are rightfully upset, and I’d be more worried if they weren’t. Hell, it’s a goddamn mystery, and they want some goddamn answers, and we’d better begin to provide some or we’ll be crucified along with Commissioner Everette and his guys.”
She nodded in agreement, still in jeans and shirt stained with saltwater, her hair pulled back and in a ponytail. “People need to know why this is happening, why here, why now… to them. Only problem is, so far, God alone knows the answer to that one. But you know, Eriq, I’m wondering if anything like this has happened before, if this case can be linked to any earlier bizarre outbreaks elsewhere.”
“ Where multiple victims have been dumped at once?”
She brightened a bit, hopeful. “Has the computer told you anything along those lines?”
“ Nothing quite like this, no. Like I said, London thinks there could be a connection, but I don’t see it.”
“ What do you think he’s trying to tell us, Eriq, sending us three bodies at once?”
Eriq shrugged and pushed a door open for her. “Your guess is as good as mine. But I would hazard a guess that he’s not quite as in control of himself as he was earlier.”
“ He’s getting careless; that’s for sure.”
“ Not so much careless as uncaring, perhaps.”
“ Which could be made to work in our favor, if we work swiftly.” She stopped him in his tracks and looked deeply into his eyes, asking, “He’s become bored with the game that he’s played thus far, hasn’t he? That’s what you’re driving at, isn’t it?”
“ Let’s say he’s altering the routine of his fantasy. If it holds true that all three of this morning’s victims were his to give up to us whenever he chose, its clear that he’s become more interested in… well, in us…”
“ Good Christ, you don’t suppose he’s stepped up his killing spree as a direct result of reading about our coming in on the case, giving the case a high profile, do you? So he plays to the press even more than ever, which means he steps up his killing agenda?”
“ It is a distinct possibility, Jess.” She dropped her gaze. “God… so, he jazzes it up a bit. To what end?” To make it that much more challenging, exciting, dangerous maybe.”
She nodded, relenting. “Yeah, J can see that.”
They continued along the corridor, coming to the Miami- Dade Crime Lab, one of the finest in the nation, where Coudriet had already made arrangements for Jessica to view the additional two bodies that’d washed ashore that morning.
She had instantly wanted to know more about the freshest of the three kills as soon as she’d learned of the three- in-one deal allotted them by the murdering Night Crawler. That body had turned out to be the one Coudriet had attended to. The most recent kill could quite possibly tell them far more than any other body turned up thus far.
“ I’ve had an opportunity to reexamine my corpse from the Flamingo Hilton Beach Resort,” Dr. Coudriet told them. “She hasn’t been in the water for longer than a week and a half, maybe ten, twelve days at the outside, but she had a condition as a child which medication has over the years stabilized-Addison’s, which bloats the skin. Without her medication, bloating set in, along with the natural expansion of the tissues by the water. It’s how and why I was able to get fingerprints from her.” He held up a single vial with a tiny lump of flesh in a preservative gel. “It’s one of Tammy Sheppard’s fingertips. It was enough to ID her with a missing persons report. You want a witness list?”
Thorn hung back, but Powers rushed them with a long- bone X ray, the left femur and knee. “It’s from our victim. She once had a compound fracture. You can see it here, just below the knee; and just above, here, you also see a simple spiral fracture,” he said, pointing with a ballpoint pen. “It has gone a long way in IDing Jane Doe number three.
” Thorn momentarily joined them, piping in with, “As for your victim, Dr. Coran, we found absolutely nothing to distinguish her. Her insides are as clean a slate as her out- sides.”
“ And all three were strangled, repeatedly?” she asked. “The water in the lungs-”
“ Lungs full to bursting, but yes, signs of multiple lacerations and strangling,” added Thorn.
“- about the throat and wrists, just like the others, and that information was not released to the press,” added Powers.
“ So, there’s little chance any one of these was a copycat killing,” surmised Santiva.
“ Virtually none…” Coudriet put aside the little vial he’d been tightly holding, a dark shadow coloring his features.
“ Parents of the IDed Jane are on their way.” Jessica only half heard Powers’s last remark as she stepped into the autopsy rooms, where all three victims lay beneath sheets, well within view of one another, separated only by glass partitions. The three bodies looked like an endless trail of reflected images here, as if a mirror were being held up at each end.
Three in one, one after the other; the bastard had cut them loose close enough to shore to insure that they would float straight into the hands of authorities. Had the SOB learned via TV or newsprint of her and Santiva’s arrival and the organization of a task force? Was that the cause of his sudden rage? Either way, all three victims had been long dead before their arrival. It was like stepping into a dark theater in the midst of a play about insanely vented evil. She stood silent vigil over the bodies for a moment, looking into each room from where she stood, realizing anew the enormity of the moment. In each death room lay a separate victim of the Night Crawler, three young women who had most likely not one thing in common before now, and who now had everything in common.
“ If they could only talk,” whispered Coudriet in her ear.
Peeling back the sheet in the first room, Jessica recognized the remains of the young woman she had earlier examined in the field. She went next to the second room and looked into the bloated face of another victim, this one with features still adhering. This one was Coudriet’s subject, the young woman he was calling Tammy Sue Sheppard. Jessica lingered, looking over the remains and instantly agreeing that this woman’s body was in far better shape than the one she had examined. Thorn and Powers, like children anxious to show off a favorite pet or toy, led her to the third body, the one they had taken charge of in the field. “Want to show you this,” announced Powers, his glasses bobbing as he tore away the sheet covering the swollen, draining body. There was a terrible gash in this one’s left side, just below the rib cage.
“ Looks like another shark bite,” said Thorn.
“ Measures up rather shallow for a large shark, but a small one might’ve done the damage,” Powers instantly added.
Jessica’s mind worked over the possibilities: auto crash wounds sometimes looked bad, but seldom was so large a section of flesh missing from the torso; she’d seen hatchet- type weapons such as meat cleavers do as much, but the cut would be clean-cleaved in two. “It’s more than a simple fall or collision,” she agreed. “And the edges of the wound are really quite jagged.”
“ In keeping with a shark bite, I’d say,” Thorn quickly defended, as if his reputation were on the line.
“ Try an outboard motor,” said Dr. Coudriet. “I’ve seen outboard motor cuts a lot down here; somebody, or something like a manatee, gets tangled in one of those things, it can take out a hell of a chunk of flesh.”
“ Along with the sailor’s rope and knot, it all points back to a boat being the killing ground,” suggested Santiva.
“ The bodies may’ve traveled a good distance across the channel, too, in which case a speeding boat may’ve hit her,” cautioned Coudriet.
Jessica agreed but did not say so. “We have lots of work to do here, Eriq. I’ll see what I can learn from the Sheppard body in particular.”
Eriq nodded as he said, “Word’s come down that her parents are on their way to ID the body, so I wouldn’t do any carving until-”
“ A little late for that,” said Coudriet, recalling his bag of fingertips, “but not to worry. We’ll have her presentable at the window.”
“ I’ll go talk to the parents,” Eriq said, “and I understand there were a couple of young ladies with her the night of her disappearance. I’m seeing them today; see what they can give us. Touch base with you later.”
“ Right, and good luck.” Eriq nodded and disappeared through a corridor, led by Powers to where civilians, and parents in particular, awaited officialdom. “No doubt having the FBI on the case will do wonders putting the concerns of the victims’s relatives on hold,” Coudriet mocked.
“ We have released enough information that we can hope for some help in learning the identities of the other two girls,” Jessica told Coudriet. “It may take some time, but we have television and the news media on our side for the time being-”
“ Don’t count on that lasting very long.”
“ All three of them died in the exact same manner as Allison Norris, and I suspect there will be more.”
“ Shall we go to work, Doctor?”
She nodded, then went for a surgical gown and gloves. She superstitiously located her own scalpel from her bag as well, the scalpel her father had given her so many years before, the scalpel she’d used to foil Matthew Matisak’s ugly plans in Chicago. She knew she’d need all the luck and skill she could muster to end the career of the heartless Night Crawler.
The autopsies on the two as-yet-unidentified young women only corroborated what they already knew, that each had died in the same manner, at the hands of the same killer. Tammy Sue Sheppard died in identical fashion, the fantasy-murder ritual precisely the same.
But it took seven hours of intensive lab work to prove it beyond any doubt, so Jessica was seven hours on her feet as they performed three autopsies simultaneously, each M.E. in communication with the other. By the time it was over, all the doctors were exhausted.
It was after six p.m. when suddenly Santiva showed up and said, “I’ve got something for you to see, and there’s someone I want you to meet right away.”
“ Eriq, I’m beat. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?” Jessica pleaded.
“ There’s been another letter from the killer.”
She was tearing away the rubber gloves she’d used during the autopsy, tossing them into a trash bin, thinking how stupid it was to expect anyone to replace rubber gloves at every single step of an autopsy or evidence-gathering. “As we expected there would be,” she said far more calmly than her heart was beating.
“ Here’s a copy. Read it, then meet me in the corridor. The eyewitness hasn’t been exactly forthcoming with us. I thought perhaps if she talked to you, another woman, it might be productive of something.”
She waved her hands in the air. “Jesus, Eriq, at least let me change and scrub and throw some water in my face, and while I’m doing that, do you think you could find me a nice garden salad?”
“ Jess, this is important.”
She took in a deep breath as she tore away her surgical garb and deposited it in a gurney. She then took the copy of the killer’s note in hand and walked into a nearby locker room where female internists and lab technicians changed. Coudriet and the other doctors had disappeared after the triple-autopsy like scattering rats, leaving the technicians to find freezer space for the bodies.
Santiva stormed into the women’s locker room behind her, saying, “I know you’ve been on your feet and you’re stretched to the max, Jess, but I think you’ll want to talk to Tammy Sue Sheppard’s girlfriend. The girl remembers something of the man Tammy Sue disappeared with the night she didn’t come home.”
A female lab assistant stepped in from the shower, placing a towel about herself as she did so. Seeing Santiva, she gasped and shouted for him to get out. Jessica joined in the chorus of expletives, driving Eriq from the room.
“ Pervert! Get outta here!” Jessica ordered, feeling good about doing so. She then sat down and stared at the strange note from the killer. Just as Eddings had predicted, the sequel verse in the e. j. hellering poem was continued. It read: