by KJ Kalis
Dr. Murphy handed her a paper towel and a bottle of water. “I’m so sorry,” she said, wiping her mouth and taking a sip of water. By the time she looked up, Chelsea’s body had been returned to cold storage, the door closed firmly. At least she wouldn’t have to face the reality of what had happened to her, or at least the image of it.
“Well, at least I know I’m not the only one that is completely horrified,” Stephanie quipped.
Leave it to Stephanie, even in her pain, to say the one thing that made Kat feel better.
As they left the examination room, Dr. Murphy ushering them out the door, Kat glanced behind her. The image of Chelsea’s body burned in her mind. Who would do such a thing and why?
6
Ben Boyd hummed to himself as he mopped the hallways of the Statler building. He was thinking about his two little girls at home, Melinda and Sadie. He’d had a chance to spend a little time with them before he went to work. They had just gotten home from school, in fourth grade, and second, bringing home artwork they had made during their day. He thought about those two pieces of artwork as he swirled the cleaning solution on the floor.
Ben had been a janitor at Grand Ridge College for over ten years. He’d gone there as a student but dropped out after his freshman year. College just wasn’t his thing. Luckily, a professor had taken a liking to him and helped him to get a job in the facilities department. He was happy there. Ben would never be a millionaire nor would he ever make an impact on society in the way that scientists or musicians or artists did, but he knew what he was doing helped the community. The buildings were safe and clean for the students and professors. Whether they realized it or not, he counted it as an important mission.
One of the best parts of his job was that he was home in the morning to see the girls off to school and got to spend a little time with them before he had to go to work in the evening. He worked from late afternoon until just after midnight five days a week. It was good, steady work with a nice paycheck and good benefits that helped his family. There wasn’t much stress and he got to work at his own pace. He’d been there long enough that his boss rarely bothered him and even when he did, it was only to ask him to take on another project or get something fixed. Ben was always happy to do that.
One of Ben’s main jobs was to keep the Statler building up and running. It housed much of the humanities — History, Art, and English. The building was old, having been built in the late 1800s, right after the gold rush in California. Grand Ridge College started as nothing more than a single building where people could gather to learn about a wide variety of subjects, everything from farming to business. Over the years, it had evolved into a larger campus that even included a noteworthy music and theater department.
Ben dunked the mop into the bucket, pumping it up and down a couple of times to get the dirt off of it. He lifted it into the drainage section and used the metal handle to press the water out. His mind drifted home and he smiled. There was nothing he wanted more in his life. He had his beautiful wife and his two girls. His life was full.
As Ben turned the corner, making his way to the lobby, he heard some rustling behind him. He had been humming “Cecelia” under his breath. He hadn’t thought of that song in a long time. The noise he heard went away as quickly as it came. He kept humming. Just beyond the next doorway, there was a light on in an office. Ben took a couple of steps forward, knocked on the door, and didn’t hear anyone answer. He shook his head. Professors were always leaving the lights on in the building. That wasn’t good for the college’s electric bill. He pulled the master keys out of his pocket, stuck the key in the lock, and opened the door. “Hello?” he said, peering around the corner. There was no one inside. He flipped off the light switch and closed the door, locking it. As he shoved the ring of keys back in his pocket and picked up the mop stick, he heard something behind him again, this time a figure cloaked in a shadow, “What the…?”
The clatter of the wooden handle of the mop echoed against the floor. Joseph stood over Ben’s unconscious body. He stared down at him. “Ben, I know that you have a lowly position here at the college. I am about to elevate you to historic levels,” Joseph said.
One of the most difficult problems Joseph had to overcome was how to move unconscious bodies. They were dead weight even before they were dead, he thought. He had spent several months researching the best way to move people without injury. Although the injuries weren’t an issue in itself, he didn’t want anything to compromise his experiments.
After weeks of research, Joseph determined he could craft a sling to lift his subjects. It was a simple hoist that allowed him to put bodies safely into a container so he could transport them. From the janitorial closet just down the hall, Joseph retrieved a laundry cart, the kind used in hotels. Ben had given him the idea himself, one day when Joseph was leaving the building later than usual. The closet door had been open, a single bulb shining down. In front of the shelves of cleaners and stacks of paper towels and toilet paper was the cart parked off to the side. Joseph wasn’t sure why the college had a laundry cart given that the Statler building didn’t house anything that would require a large amount of laundry or towels, but it didn’t matter. Earlier that day, before Ben came on duty, Joseph had gone into the closet and stashed his hoist.
It took only seconds for Joseph to set it up, strapping it underneath Ben’s body and then using a lever to winch him off of the ground. Joseph felt impatient, knowing the success of his next experiment depended on getting Ben back to his shop. He needed to do so without incident. Ben was the perfect candidate.
A trickle of sweat ran down the back of Joseph’s neck. Even with the hoist, moving an unconscious body was challenging. Joseph had estimated Ben’s body weight at about one hundred eighty pounds. Based on the tension on the hoist, he knew he was right when he swung Ben’s body over the top of the laundry cart and gently dropped him down, pulling a syringe out of his pocket. The stun gun he’d shoved into Ben’s side would only keep him quiet for so long. The sedative he had loaded into the syringe, Versed, on the other hand, would keep him asleep for at least four hours. That was enough time to get him back to the shop and situated.
As soon as Joseph injected the sedative into the muscle of his arm, he put a couple of towels over the top of Ben’s body, quickly deconstructed the hoist and set it on top of him, rolling it down the hallway. He only stopped to turn off the light in the janitorial closet and close the door, pushing the mop and bucket equipment back in the corner. The security officers of the college would just assume that Ben had finished his work instead of wondering why he had left a mop and a dirty bucket of water in the middle of the floor of the Statler building.
Joseph rolled the laundry cart, the wheels clattering on the tile floor, down the hallway and out the back entrance. He eased the cart down the ramp and to his van, which he’d pulled up in the back. Figuring out how to get the bodies back to his shop had been another issue he had spent months researching. Initially, he thought of using a moving van, figuring the hydraulic lift would be helpful in terms of getting people home. The problem was not only the expense, but they were obtrusive and bulky and difficult to weave through traffic, not to mention all the nosy neighbors that could attract the wrong kind of attention. The idea of driving an enormous box truck through the city didn’t appeal to him.
He settled on a used handicap van, the kind that was designed for people who were in wheelchairs. They were equipped with ramps and lifts that made it easy for him to move unconscious bodies.
Joseph slid open the side door, pressing a button on the door frame to start the ramp. It whirred as the platform began to descend. Joseph smiled. He was excited to start his next experiment, every nerve in his body on alert. Everything had been planned so carefully. He pushed the laundry cart up into the van securing it with bungee straps so it wouldn’t roll while he was driving. He pressed the button to get the ramp back into the van, slamming the side door closed.
As Joseph pulled
away in the darkness, he smiled again, “Mr. Boyd, I’m delighted to meet you in person. I know that we’ve seen each other on campus several times, but I have an incredibly special job for you. Now, you may not enjoy all of it, but rest assured that you will be making a great contribution to society and to history.” Joseph hummed the rest of the way home.
When he returned to what Joseph termed his shop, he pulled the van up in front of the garage doors. The old garage, on the same property where his parent’s house was, hadn’t been used in decades before Joseph decided to reclaim it as his workshop. It had taken him nearly a year to clean it out, refurbish it and fill it with the equipment he needed. There were times that he wished the process would go faster, but he was happy with the result and with the meticulous nature of the design.
Joseph dragged the laundry cart out of the van and pushed it inside of the garage, closing the doors. There was no reason to hurry. Ben wasn’t going to wake up anytime soon, and the garage was so far back on the edge of the property that no one knew it was there. Out of curiosity, one day, Joseph had traveled to the city planner’s office and asked to see the official records of his parent’s property. The building didn’t even show up on any information the city had. It was invisible.
Once inside the garage, Joseph started to settle down. The nervous excitement he felt when recruiting a new medical specimen had been replaced by the focused action of a researcher. He reassembled the hoist and lifted Ben’s body out of the laundry cart, swinging it over the top of one of two identical hospital beds he had purchased from a used medical equipment sale a few years before.
Joseph adjusted Ben’s body on the bed, face-up, making sure that his body was in line from head to toe. He wanted Ben to be as comfortable as possible while they got started. Attaching restraints to each wrist and onto each ankle, he fastened them to the frame of the bed. For an extra precaution, he attached straps across Ben’s chest, pelvis, and legs. Ben groaned a little in his unconsciousness. “Yes, yes, it’ll be okay,” Joseph whispered to him. “Remember, this is for science.”
While Ben was still unconscious, Joseph started an IV in his arm. Normal saline. “No reason for you to get dehydrated,” he said as he taped the IV line into place.
Joseph checked his watch. He wanted to make sure that Ben woke up before he had to leave again so he had a chance to explain. He would be afraid if he woke up and found himself shackled to a bed all alone in a dark building. Joseph pulled up a chair near the foot of Ben’s bed, watching him sleep. He pulled out his notebook and started taking notes, writing down his heart rate and blood pressure after taking it and noting the time and the amount of the IV that he had started.
It didn’t take much more than an hour after Joseph had gotten situated in his shop for the anesthesia to start to wear off. Ben rolled his head from side to side, his eyes closed. A few minutes later, his eyes opened and he stared around the room. Within a few seconds, his eyes widened, his arms struggling against the restraints. Joseph stood up, “Now, now, no need to get excited. You are safe and fine.”
Joseph could tell by the look on Ben’s face that he wasn’t convinced. “Who are you?” Ben said, his eyes wide. “Let me go!”
“I’m so sorry, but I do need you to stay here. I wanted to be here when you woke up to let you know that I will be back. It could be a few hours. Now, you have a choice. Would you like me to put you back to sleep again or would you like to stay awake while I am gone?”
Ben struggled against the restraints, his face turning red. “I don’t know who you are but let me go!”
Joseph stood back. Daniel Arthur had behaved the same way. For some reason, male subjects thought they could fight their way out of the situation. Unfortunately for them, Joseph had devised a restraint system that was nearly impossible to get out of. Certainly, there was a small statistical chance that someone would figure out a way to get loose, but the odds were so infinitesimal that Joseph didn’t have a problem leaving people alone while he was gone.
“Again, I would recommend that you calm down. Would you like the sedative so you go back to sleep?”
Ben didn’t answer. He just struggled against the restraints. Joseph could see the skin chafing at his wrists and ankles already. Ben might be the type that would have to learn on his own. “All right, then. I’ll leave you here on your own. As I said, I will be back in a few hours.”
Joseph checked the IV one more time, making sure that it was still in place, securing it with another piece of tape when Ben stopped thrashing in his bed. He walked to the door and shut off the lights, leaving him alone in the darkness.
7
Detective Wesley Dawson had barely taken one sip of his morning coffee when his phone rang. “Boss, we have a report of another missing person.”
The voice on the other end of the line was one of the dispatchers, Nancy. She’d been with the department nearly as long as he had and was one of the few people that didn’t irritate him with her mere presence. “What’s the story?”
“The wife just called. The guy is a janitor up at Grand Ridge College. Was due home about four hours ago. He works the overnight shift at the college cleaning one of the buildings.”
“Did you tell her we don’t take adult missing person cases until they’ve been gone for at least twenty-four hours?”
“I did. She’s insisting that she needs to speak to a detective.”
Wesley groaned. Hysterical families were not his specialty. “And why is it she feels the need to disturb my first coffee?”
“Well, I sent a car over there to look and they met up with campus security. They walked through the building and didn’t find much, except for Ben’s cell phone on the floor of one of the hallways. His car is still in the parking lot, too. Campus security tracked it through his parking badge.”
“All right, send me her address. I’ll head over there as soon as I finish my coffee. Tell her thirty minutes.”
“Will do.”
“Thanks, Nancy.” As Wesley ended the call, he shook his head. He was still trying to piece together the case he had stumbled upon two days before, the two bodies with interchanged arms. The missing janitor sounded like nothing. He’d probably met a cute professor at the college and decided to run off with her, leaving his wife. That’s how most of these things went. The family became hysterical for no reason when it was more of a domestic issue. The wives never saw it that way, though.
His own wife had been the same way. It was one of the reasons they had gotten divorced. He’d be busy at work and forget to call and she was sure he was dead or had a heart attack. The hounding became too much. He looked at her one day and said, “I’m done. Call a lawyer. I don’t want to be married to you anymore.” He guessed that happened in this case, too.
He stood up with a grunt. Being with the Sauk Valley Police Department for thirty-five years had left him with an aching back and bad knees. The other guys on the job told him he should retire, but to do what? His mind drifted back to the young kids they had found. A strange case, that was for sure. He had more questions than answers. Having to deal with this hysterical wife was interrupting the work he needed to do.
Wesley walked back to the coffee maker and filled the travel mug, snapping the lid down. It was going to be a long day. He could feel it. He hadn’t slept well, not that he ever did anymore, the images of the two bodies they had found circling overhead like a flock of cackling crows. Whoever had severed the arms of those two kids and reattached them to each other’s bodies was cruel. There is no doubt about that. He was glad not to be the medical examiner on this case.
Dawson walked out to his car, slamming the door and catching his sport coat in it. He cracked it open, pulled up the coat and slammed it again, nearly spilling coffee on his pants. As he drove, he thought about the case, the miles ahead of him to get to the hysterical wife’s house giving him a little time to think. Who were those two journalists that showed up at the scene two days ago? He knew they were friends of the family, but
he didn’t trust them. Journalists. They were always out for their own good, he thought.
As he passed the coffee shop where he usually stopped to get breakfast, he didn’t pull in. The case was eating at him, acid getting caught in the back of his throat. I should switch to water, he thought, remembering what his doctor had said on his last visit.
The fact that another person had gone missing so quickly after the other two had been found was troubling. Dawson checked the address on his cell phone as he pulled into the driveway of Ben Boyd’s house. He didn’t want to knock on the wrong door this early in the morning. He took a deep breath, steeling himself. This wasn’t how he wanted to start his day, but duty called. As he got out of the car, he started to wonder if there was more to Ben’s disappearance than just an unhappy marriage. What if it was connected to the other two cases he was working on? If it was, then he needed to act, and act quickly. Ben’s life depended on it.
8
Joseph had a hard time paying attention as he taught his classes knowing Ben was already in the garage. Normally full of energy and focus, he could barely get the words out to give his two lectures. His mind kept drifting to the project in his workshop. He was excited to get moving on it but didn’t have everything in place yet. He still needed another subject.
“Dr. Schreiber?” A dark haired girl stopped at his podium on the way out of class, batting her eyes at him.
“I was just wondering if I could get an extension on the paper that’s due tomorrow? I have a little more research to do. I want to do a really good job, but I need a tiny bit more time.”
Joseph pushed his lecture notes into his briefcase and snapped it closed. “I’m sorry. You know I don’t give extensions unless you have a note from the doctor. You look perfectly well to me, so I will look forward to seeing your paper tomorrow.” He walked away without saying another word or waiting for the student’s reaction.