The Death Collectors

by J. A. Kerley

  “I don’t think Coyle met Jane Doe,” Harry said into the rear-view. “He was at Cozy Cabins twelve days before she appeared. Didn’t hide his presence. Probably had a woman in the car. Or a guy. Coyle’s not real wrapped up in Miz Barstow. She worships him, though. Naïve’s what some might infer, me included. Maybe lawyer boy’s having a mid-life meltdown. Take your pick of examples. How’s Dale Bryson sound?”

  Dale Bryson was a drably conservative 38-year-old civil engineer reported missing a few months back. When his credit-card path put him near a man killed in a liquor store, Harry and I got the case. Two days after putting Bryson in our sights, someone else confessed to the killing. Since we were already involved, Harry and I tracked Bryson to an upscale motel off I-10, a shiny new Beamer convertible parked outside the room. We found him naked in a bathtub filled with five cases of forty-buck-a-bottle champagne. The bed was covered with teddy bears. He was embarrassed to his marrow, offering no plausible explanation, save that, “It was something I needed to do.”

  Bryson’s case, though a bit extreme, wasn’t unusual: today’s white-collar, middle- and upper-middle-class males seem culturally programmed toward such events from mid thirties through mid forties. When they go missing, it’s generally for a week or so, the prime danger being emptying their bank accounts buying a speedboat or sports car. Odds were, wherever Rubin Coyle was, he was safe. And had nothing to do with our Jane Doe.

  “There’s just one more thing, Harry,” I said.

  I felt the car swerve, bang the curb, correct. “What thing, bro?”

  “I got a weird call this morning. Some old guy wanted to know if any art had been found with our Jane. Sounded like a crank. I blew him off.”

  “Nothing like that was found in the cabin, Cars.”

  “But a swatch of something artsy was delivered to Coyle.”

  Harry waved it away. “We don’t know it was art. Hell, my first wife had samples of decorator crap coming in the mail all the time: wallpaper samples, swatches of upholstery, curtain material…”

  “First wife? I thought you were married just the once.”

  Harry rarely mentioned his divorce and I’d never asked. He blew out a long breath, scowled at some distant memory. “Yeah. But sometimes it felt like a lot more.”

  Harry dropped me at the morgue. Jane Doe’s autopsy had been handled by a District Three detective two hours earlier, their last involvement. The case now shifted to Harry and me, and I wanted advance notice of what the preliminary might be, maybe influence it a little. Dr Clair Peltier was behind her desk in her spartan office, her furnishings scarcely nobler than those in the detectives’ room. She’d done the procedure on Jane Doe and would be working up the report.

  I stuck my head in her door. There was a vase of roses on Clair’s desk, the only bright color in the room.

  “Prelim in on Jane Doe, Clair?”

  Everyone else called Clair “Dr Peltier”. I’d used Clair from the moment of introduction and she let the faux pas stand, countering by using only my last name. Clair was director of the Mobile office of the Alabama Forensics Bureau, and my vote for Best Eyes in a Starring Role. In her mid forties, Clair had close-cropped anthracite hair and startling blue eyes that tended toward chill, but occasionally surprised with sudden warmth. I sat in the sole chair before her desk. Clair pulled her neck-strung reading glasses into place and scowled at the paper. The smell of the roses seemed dense enough to lean into, a red cushion of scent.

  “I found postmortem abrasions that appear to be shovel strikes. Plus livor mortis markings that wouldn’t be there if she’d stayed prone in a motel bed. Add the traces of clay on and in her body and we come to a pretty obvious conclusion…”

  I nodded. “Buried and disinterred, I know.”

  “I looked at the Forensics report, of course - flowers, candles. What’s your take, Ryder?”

  I shrugged. “Candles are symbolic in several ways, flowers too. But I’m not sure if it’s the work of a full-blown psychotic.”

  “Have you established that she was a hooker?”

  “She was naked in a motel that probably gets half its income from one-hour stints.”

  Clair snapped the paper with a fingernail. “She didn’t have prostitute’s plumbing, Ryder. No lesions, scarring, signs of STDs past or present. No bruising or abrasions. Given her age, her genitals look like they’re still under warranty. And no sign of sexual activity that night.”

  I tented my fingers, brought them to my lips. “Something else that’s odd, Clair - she doesn’t have prints in the system. New to the trade, maybe. Drugs make that sort of thing happen.”

  Clair shuffled through pages. “Let me read you the approximate timeline we’re getting. Death by asphyxiation between midnight Saturday and Sunday afternoon…”

  “I saw the ligature marks on her neck.”

  “What you didn’t see was the internal damage. The ligature was tightened and released several times.”

  “Torture.” I felt my stomach turn over. This was the kind of thing done by people enjoying themselves. Clair continued reading.

  “The victim was probably buried shortly after death. Monday or Tuesday, she’s unearthed. Washed.”

  I jumped in. “Tuesday night, she’s brought to a motel room rented hours before. Someone lights a lot of candles, throws some flowers on her.”

  Clair said, “You got nothing from the room?”

  “Bree’s running a trainload of prints. No latents on the candles, flowers. Nearby surfaces wiped. A careful perp. I doubt we’ll find anything. Forensics vacuumed the carpet for trace evidence. I’d hate to sort through the dirt.”

  Clair raised a dark crescent of eyebrow. “Sounds like a tough one, Ryder.”

  I thought about the chief’s concern, the media. He wanted us to look good, I wanted us to stay off the radar. But prelims were widely distributed internally and swiftly found back doors to the media.

  “What’ll you highlight in the report, Clair?”

  “Ligature strangulation. Plus standard clinical findings.”

  “How about the candles over her eyes, her burial and retrieval? The torture aspect?”

  She gave me a glance. “You don’t want that disseminated?”

  “Its absence now might help us later.”

  “It’s conjecture so far. I’ll leave out as much as possible.”

  “Thanks, Clair.”

  “I can hang a shroud over it only so long, Ryder. A week, maybe two. After that the public’s going to get the full report. It could set off a sideshow.”

  I pressed my hands to my knees, stood. I got to the door when Clair spoke.

  “Ryder? You hear anything from Ava?”

  Ava Davanelle was a former assistant pathologist at the morgue. She’d been fighting alcoholism when she’d become innocently involved in a case last year, almost dying in the process. We’d gone together for several months afterward, perhaps the happiest time of my life. Hers too, I’d hoped. A month ago - with no prior notice - she’d announced she was leaving Mobile, her job, her friends down here. Everything.

  I was suddenly a part of her past.

  Ava retreated to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where she’d grown up. She planned on acquiring additional schooling for hospital pathology instead of forensic pathology; to “work with the living and not the dead.”

  We’d spoken three times on the phone since she’d left. Our conversations had been stilted, falsely chatty, without any depth, like a conversation between Barbie and Ken dolls.

  They broke up too, didn’t they?

  “Ryder? You there?” Clair’s voice cut through my thoughts.

  “I haven’t heard from Ava in a week, Clair. Not a word. I hope she’s happy. She deserves happiness.”

  Clair’s eyes softened as she looked over her glasses. “And you, Carson? Are you getting…past it?”

  The room shimmered. My knees felt oddly loose. I turned, waved over my shoulder, and retreated from the room as fast as possible withi
n the bounds of civility. I stopped in the restroom on the way down the hall. Washed my face. Stared at my reflection until tired of it, two or three seconds. Took a deep breath and headed for the door. I was surprised to find Harry at the front desk. He turned from joking with receptionist Vera Braden and jammed his thumb toward the entrance.

  “Buzzards outside, bro; thought you needed warning.”

  We walked to the door. Several reporters clustered outside. It surprised me not to see the pair from Channel 14. Harry laid his big hand over my shoulder from behind. “Anything new in the post, bro?”

  “Bad things,” I said. “Torture.”

  I looked through the door, the faces of the media pressed against the glass, distorted, slavering for news, hoping it would be ugly enough to sell more papers, jack up the ratings to sell more commercials. I was suddenly sick of everything: the morgue, people who turned a woman’s death into a carnival, women who left without warning…

  And maybe sick of myself for being insufficient reason for Ava Davanelle to stay. I said, “Screw the bastards, Harry. Let’s get out of here.”

  We strode into a wall of wet heat. Voices bayed simultaneously, like on a master switch, the shouted questions blending into an aural non sequitur.

  How find is murder kind of weapon? do you think where circumstances? if you would there be a perpetrator? much the medical examiner can you determine the time of evidence any clues? be will you next notify of kin…

  After a couple dozen feet they fell away. Harry and I jogged a hundred feet to the car. A door opened beside us. Danbury and Funt jumped from a black SUV. She aimed a mic our way. The diminutive, denim-clad Funt flanked her, the glass eye of the camera shifting between Harry and me, as if making up its mind.

  “Well, looky here,” Danbury said. “It’s the pogobos.”

  “Pogobos?” I said.

  “Po-lice Go-lden Bo-ys. Pogobos. How about an exclusive from the elite squadron? What are the autopsy results? Is this a case for the PSIT?”

  “No comment,” I grunted, additionally sick of people jamming faces, microphones and cameras into my life. Danbury pushed closer, the mic inches from my nose. “This victim, Detective Ryder, was there anything about her that concerns the PSIT? Mutilation? Strange markings? A pattern of -”

  I slapped the mic away. It flew from her hand and smacked the sidewalk.

  Her eyes widened. I said, “Go to hell. And that goes for your camera monkey, too.”

  “Carson,” Harry cautioned.

  The camera guy grinned into his viewfinder. “Testy today, ain’t we?”

  I retreated to the far side of the car. Danbury said, “Can you tell me why you’re here and not someone from Third District?”

  I glared at her. “You couldn’t get a real job? How much you make as a grief pimp?”

  “You got an anger-control problem, Detective,” the cameraman said, the grin even wider. I wanted to jam the camera down his throat. Instead I got in and gave him the tight eye. He grinned back, winked. Harry fired up the engine. When he hit the accelerator, the car veered and fought and made the sound of a leather flag in a stiff wind.

  “Uh-oh,” Harry said. He braked and opened his door, looked at the tires. “Nothing here. Check your side, bro.”

  I jumped out. The front tire was a pool of flat rubber.

  Harry pulled his phone. “Get in, Carson. I’ll call the garage, get it fixed. Won’t take but a few.”

  We were fifty or sixty feet from Danbury and the chimp. The video monkey sprinted straight for me. “Hey, Detective,” he said, pushing the camera lens into my face. “A big smile for our viewers from the Cop of the Year. Be good publicity for the department.”

  “Move it,” I said. Something happening in my gut that was more sound than feeling.

  “Get in the car, Carson,” Harry said, louder.

  Danbury walked up. “Borg,” she called to the videographer. “Cut. Leave it.”

  “Come on, Mr Ryder,” the camera guy whispered, just me and him hearing it now. “Gimme that tough-guy face like in the paper. Your mama like the picture? How about your girlfriend? Oh, fuck me, baby, but first give me that hard look…”

  “Carson! Get the hell in the car,” Harry barked.

  But it was too late. I had the video guy by the front of his shirt and was lifting his face into mine, explaining uses I might find for his camera if we could grab a quiet moment alone somewhere.

  His pinched and simian face never stopped grinning.

  That night I came home to a blinking light on my message machine. I knew it was Jeremy, maybe because it had been that kind of day. I pressed Play, was rewarded only with the knowledge of being right.

  “Cah-son, Mommy’s waiting for her new recharger,” were the only words he needed. He sang them, like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Chapter 7

  I don’t know why, but Chief Plackett had one of those fancy floor-standing globes in his office, a world the size of a beach ball. I stared into the blue South Pacific, wishing I was there. Plackett studied me from behind his wide and gleaming desk. The morning fog hadn’t burned off, and the world outside his window was gray.

  He said, “You stand what, Detective Ryder, height-wise?”

  “Uh, six one.”

  “And you weigh what? One seventy, one eighty?”

  “Somewhere in there.”

  “And you got into an altercation with a man who is -” Chief Plackett picked up a letter from his desktop, scanned it - “five six and weighs a hundred twenty-five pounds?”

  The letter was from Channel 14 station management and had been delivered first thing this morning. I gathered the chief had spent an hour on the phone with various folks from the station.

  “Chief,” Harry said from beside me, “in my estimation Detective Ryder was provoked into -”

  Plackett cut Harry off with an upraised hand. “And not only did you threaten this man with bodily harm, you physically assaulted him.”

  “I gathered his shirtfront in my hand. Perhaps rather suddenly.”

  Plackett quoted from the letter: “…proceeded to lift him to his toes, holding him elevated until his face turned red.”

  “His face is naturally sort of red,” Harry said.

  “Not now, Nautilus.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you do this, Detective Ryder? Are these statements true?”

  “Sir, I think the camera tapes might reveal the man in question verbally goaded me into -”

  The chief threw the letter to his desk. “I don’t give two hoots what he said to you. You’re a cop. You’ve endured worse verbal abuse, right?”

  I jammed my hands into my pockets, looked down. “He caught me at a bad time.”

  Plackett walked to his window, looked out over the morning traffic. “Luckily, the station is willing to let it disappear. I had to talk to people, call in some markers, make some promises. You understand?”

  “Not really, sir.”

  “We owe them for not taking legal action. Or worse, airing a tape I understand is profane and embarrassing. This incident happens what - three days after you receive the Officer of the Year commendation? I don’t have to tell you about the black eye if the Mayor got wind of this.”

  “I’m sorry, Chief.” I’m not sure I was, but saying so was the protocol.

  “I hate owing the media anything, Ryder. I shudder to think what the payback’s going to be.” He frowned. “You getting any closer on that case with the woman in the motel? The case that seemed to spark this confrontation?”

  “It’s proving to be difficult, but I’m hopeful we’ll -”

  “No leads? No tips? Nothing? This is your field, Detective. You’re our specialist.”

  I paused, heard my mouth say, “We’re pursuing a small conjecture based on a phone tip. Something to do with art.”

  “Is this a solid lead?”

  “It’s all we have at the -”

  “Dismissed.”

  “
Art?” Harry said as we retreated from Plackett’s slammed door. “Are you talking about whatever-the-hell that dropped into the paralegal’s palm the other day?”

  “I was talking about the old guy that called, asking about art in the motel room.”

  “The lunatic?”

  “He wasn’t a lunatic. More like a codger. Did you want me to tell the chief what we really have, which is…” I zeroed together my thumb and forefinger.

  “You got a point there, hairy and scary. I’m going to go see what I can dig up from candle outlets. Maybe this freak bought himself fifty candles on a credit card, then used the same card at the florist. You think that happened?”

  I headed to the front desk, where the phone logs could be accessed. The address was across the mouth of the Bay, on Fort Morgan Highway. My caller’s name was unfamiliar, not surprising. I jammed the address in my pocket and hustled out the door.

  After an hour’s drive I turned onto a rutted drive cutting through vines and brush. Slash pines towered overhead. I drove two hundred feet to the rear of a cream-colored bungalow facing the Bay. I cut the engine and drifted up behind a dark-windowed Dodge Ram 2500 pickup, black, the diesel-engine job with twin chrome tailpipes like torpedo launchers. The truck had a rack above the bed, long tubes of PVC piping on the rack. Rod tubes, I surmised; a surf fisherman.

  Seeing nothing threatening in the surrounding brush, I tiptoed to the front of the house. A glider hung on the small porch, its slatted seat and back shiny with wear. I heard boats on the Bay. Gulls above. The low hum of the AC. Water lapped the pilings of a dock stretching fifty feet into the water, a small runabout at its terminus.

  A man’s voice from behind me. “Freeze.”

  I froze. “I’m with the Mobile Police. I’m looking for -”

  “Shush, sonny Jim. Move your hands away from your body, like you’re flying. I got a .45 here. Blow a hole in your gut big enough to toss a cat through.”

  The voice of my caller, Art Man. Where had he come from? The air? I lofted my arms outward.