Playing With Death

by Simon Scarrow

  ‘Samer Aldeera, aka “DarkChild”, your pending charges are as follows. Four counts in total across three different states: Conspiracy to Engage in Computer Hacking; Conspiracy to Commit Access Device Fraud; Conspiracy to Commit Corporate Infiltration; Aggravated Identity Theft. You have the right to retain counsel. You are also denied bail, for the moment, as you present a significant flight risk.’

  ‘Thank you, your honour,’ Owen says. Denying Samer bail is a smart move. He’d been a slippery fish to catch and the Bureau couldn’t risk letting him out in the open.

  Samer has gone pale. ‘What does all that mean? How many years do you get on those charges?’

  Marc does a quick mental calculation.

  ‘Unless there’s a plea bargain, I’d say . . . one hundred and sixteen years in federal prison.’

  18.

  Owen limps up the stairs with his grocery shopping and unlocks the door to his Bay Area apartment.

  ‘I’m home,’ he says, picking up the shopping bag and entering his studio apartment. It is simply furnished with a fish aquarium, intelligent chess set and self-assembly furniture from IKEA. He crashes onto the nearest soft cream sofa. On the coffee table there are framed photos of him racing cars and motorbikes in his younger years. It’s been a long day.

  ‘Hello, Owen.’ A soothing female voice comes from the ceiling speaker. ‘How was your day?’

  ‘Honestly, MIA, I’m pooped.’ Owen is in no mood to indulge his digital personal assistant. Even though he’s had the device for nearly two years it still feels weird to make conversation with the matt black cone on the shelf above his desk.

  ‘OK, Owen. How about some music?’

  ‘Sure. Something . . . relaxing.’

  The sound of chamber music fades in.

  ‘Would you like me to put the oven on?’ the voice asks.

  Owen has a freezer filled with ready meals. He is no gourmet.

  ‘Good idea. Thanks.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  After the arraignment, he’d led Samer to his holding cell. Small, scuffed white with a thin blue mat for a bed, a wash basin and a bathroom. He’d managed to find Samer a blanket. He’d also made it clear to the sheriff that Samer was to be kept away from the rest of the prisoners and out of the public eye. He didn’t want other hackers to discover his arrest and sever their links to their former comrade. Samer’s court-appointed attorney, Philip De Russet, is beginning to build the defence case.

  Owen can see that Samer is socially awkward, but online, in his virtual community, he is a hero. He’s exposed shocking security flaws in massive corporations and government departments. As DarkChild he has shown how vulnerable data really is. He has also exposed registered users of extreme pornography sites, some of which contained several senior government officials’ emails. And for that, perhaps he and his friends deserve some credit. After all, the rich and powerful have been getting away with concealing their sins, often aided by their rich media proprietor friends. In the digital age there are fewer places for such people to hide. And that’s one reason why hackers are so assiduously targeted by those in power.

  And now Samer’s facing serious jail time, potentially spending the rest of his life behind bars. Owen knows Samer has broken the law. The digital world is a Mecca for disaffected youths like Samer who want to vent their anger and frustration. It’s easy for such people to wander down the wrong paths. And what harm has really come of it? Sure, it has pissed off some influential people and embarrassed some corporations, but Samer has not used any of the financial details he’s accessed. But it isn’t down to Owen to pass judgment on the justice of the situation. His job is to uphold the law, warts and all.

  Owen tells MIA to turn on the small wall-mounted TV and tunes in to a news channel.

  A well-groomed news anchor with a flawless wavy haircut intones, ‘In breaking news, Braxton Grindall accuses his rival, Senator Keller, of endangering the safety of Californians by refusing to endorse the president’s new anti-terrorist initiative.’

  There’s a cut to a corpulent man in a suit standing outside the state capital, backed up by a coterie of earnest supporters holding placards. Grindall narrows his eyes and raises a finger as he declares, ‘It’s the senator’s solemn duty to safeguard the people who were misguided enough to put their trust in him. When Braxton Grindall takes his place in Washington, you can be sure he’ll be doing what Senator Keller is too damned scared to do for himself.’

  Owen looks up briefly and shakes his head. ‘Blowhard asshole . . .’

  Now on screen there’s Senator Keller and his entourage at the San Francisco State Campus. The camera operator is struggling to keep up with Keller as the female reporter thrusts her microphone towards the senator. It’s the kind of interview approach that is designed to make the interviewee look evasive. But then Keller stops dead and rounds on the camera.

  ‘Whatever my rival may say, I take my duty to protect the people of this great state very seriously indeed. Always have done, while my good friend Braxton Grindall was busy driving honest people out of poor neighbourhoods to clear the way for all those smart expensive houses that the people of Silicon Valley are so keen on. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got better things to do than waste time responding to his bull.’

  As he strides off Owen catches a glimpse of Jeff Blake just behind the senator, looking handsome in suit pants and an open-necked shirt, his jacket hanging over his forearm.

  Then the screen cuts back to the studio. It’s a pity about Keller, Owen thinks. The senator’s a good man, but his views on digital technology are alarmist. But then maybe he has reason to feel that way. After all, he lost a son thanks to cyber bullying. That kind of shit changes a person. And now Keller is on a crusade to clean up the internet.

  ‘Good luck with that, buddy,’ Owen mutters. With kids like Samer on the loose, Keller has less than the ghost of a chance.

  19.

  At the San Francisco Medical Examiner Office, Rose descends in the elevator to the facilities beneath Bryant Street. It has been a few days since Coulter’s body was discovered. Rose needs to know more about the suit, or Skin, the victim was wearing. She has left a message at WadeSoft but has had no reply. The battered elevator door slides open and she walks down the pale-green corridor towards the heavy doors marked ‘Morgue’. Her echoing heels clatter and she quickly feels the temperature drop to a refrigerator chill. The choral crescendo of Mozart’s Requiem floats like a shimmering ghost, or a joke in poor taste, getting louder as she pushes the swing doors open. She sees the ME, Arthur Benfield, sitting hunched over a stainless-steel autopsy table. He looks up from the blackened mass of Gary Coulter. Beside him is a tall, gangly autopsy technician who looks nearly as pale as the corpses nearby.

  Benfield is a small, mole-like man, wearing a long white coat, paper boots over his shoes and big glasses which he permanently seems to be squinting through. Rose has worked with him many times and is bemused that, in this grim setting, he is always cheery, working along to classical music playing from a smartphone synced to a Bose sound system perched high on a shelf.

  ‘Special Agent Blake. Always a pleasure. Just one moment, please.’

  Rose nods and feels a chill as she passes the recently departed laid out on slabs. Some of their mouths are gaping wide, their skin a dull grey-lavender, some with eyes staring upwards as if in silent accusation. Tags are tied on their big toes.

  Banks of cabinets containing jars of chemicals line the tiled walls above the polished steel sinks. Sharp metallic tools including scalpels, saws and face shields are neatly arranged on steel trolleys. Bright striplights softly hum and bathe the room in a faint blue hue. Pungent odours of dead flesh rush to greet her nostrils. Despite the morbidity, Rose finds morgues to be strangely intimate places, where dignity and courtesy always seem a prerequisite, even though most of the occupan
ts are dead.

  The sound of a drill whirring, and bone fragments cracking, pierces the air.

  Rose turns to see the technician and Benfield hunched over Coulter’s head. The technician grabs a steel hammer and chisel, firmly tapping the top of the skull three times. As they remove the top of Coulter’s skull she hears what sounds like two halves of a melon being pulled apart.

  ‘Seriously, guys, unless you wanna see me blow my breakfast can you do that when I’m gone?’

  Benfield smiles apologetically as he tugs off a rubber glove to shake her hand.

  ‘You know, Art, I’ve said this before, but working in a place like this . . . I don’t see how you avoid going a little crazy.’

  ‘It’s not so bad. I’m surrounded by the kind of people who are well past stabbing you in the back. At least with the dead you know where you stand. And you get used to the random flatulence.’

  ‘What have you got for me?’ says Rose.

  ‘Certainly one of the strangest vics I’ve ever looked at. Before I make my final report, I still need to test the body’s organs, and toxicology can take a while for the various cultures to grow, but I thought you’d appreciate the heads up.’ He looks at Rose over the top of his glasses. ‘Suspicious is the word I’d use.’

  Benfield rolls on his stool across the granite floor to pick up his clipboard from the sideboard. With all the advances in digital technology, he still prefers to work the old-fashioned way.

  ‘Dental records confirm this is indeed Gary Coulter. This whole thing came in here a total mess. We had to cut the remains of the chair off him before we could even get to what was left of his body. Quite a job in itself.’

  Rose edges closer, the smell of burnt flesh and formaldehyde stinging her nostrils.

  Benfield has tried to peel back some of the black rubber suit from the body, but it has fused with the flesh in many places. Where he has been at work he has exposed a mash of interior organs, bones, lumps of burnt hair, dried blood and scorched flesh. Coulter’s blackened hands are balled together tightly, evidence of the blazing torment he had endured. The remains of his lower jaw hangs open and twisted to one side, forever screaming.

  ‘After the body had cooled, I managed to scrape most of the black plastic and leather from the chair away. But there’s another textile involved. It’s definitely some sort of rubber suit. I found a chunk of it left on his calves.’ Benfield hands Rose a jagged strip of plastic in a clear bag.

  Rose takes out her smartphone and does a quick online search before she holds it up. There’s a publicity image of the new Skin on the screen. ‘Look anything like this, do you think?’

  ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘You don’t watch much TV, then?’

  ‘Can’t stand it. Better off reading, every time. Why? What did I miss?’

  Rose taps the side of the phone. ‘This is going to be the next must-have computer toy. A suit that covers the body, and the head. Just like our victim, I’m thinking. See the visor? From what the maker says, it’s going to be the virtual reality technology of choice.’

  ‘I have enough trouble keeping a handle on the literal reality,’ Benfield says.

  He gestures at the corpse. ‘So this suit, it’s a weird one. Not a wetsuit, then, like one of your Bureau buddies suggested. That rules out some kind of fetish thing. There’s what looks like the remains of a computer port round the back of the neck. There’s something else.’ He indicates a tray on the gleaming steel work surface beside him. Rose sees a twisted bit of black plastic, shiny but distorted.

  ‘I found that on his skull. Looks to me like some part of a helmet perhaps. Or that visor in the picture you just showed me. There’s wiring fused into his scalp and what looks like the remains of earphones. You can take the plastic and the rubber with you back to the Bureau, I have no further need for them.’

  Rose nods her thanks and slips the pieces into a clear evidence bag.

  ‘Anything else?’

  Arthur looks at his notes. ‘You’ll like this. His genitals have been crushed.’

  Rose forces a look at the gap between Coulter’s open legs, down at his burst scrotum, not so badly burned as the rest of the body. His epidermis is charred and destroyed, a misshapen testicle hangs loose. She shuts her eyes for a moment. That’s another sight she’ll never forget for the rest of her life. A thought flashes into her mind: some of Koenig’s male victims had suffered genital mutilations. It could be just a coincidence.

  ‘He also arrived with what was left of an erection, not uncommon for the deceased. We call it the last sausage at the barbecue,’ Benfield says with a laugh.

  ‘Charming. What’s your opinion?’

  ‘Honestly, I’m not sure. The strangest is yet to come.’ He leans closer, and Rose can see her face reflected in his lenses.

  ‘Once I peeled off the rubber and removed the burnt tissue, I found something very unusual.’

  Benfield reaches for a slender polished scalpel. He lifts Coulter’s charred wrist. Rose glimpses bits of black rubber dug deep under his fingernails. With the blade, Benfield pushes back some of the suit to expose a patch of dry skin. It’s deep yellow and purple.

  ‘To the casual observer, this could be mistaken for lividity. It begins immediately after the heart stops functioning. The cessation of the heart allows gravity to pull the blood to the lowest points of the body, so the tissue takes on a purplish tint, typically in the hands and feet. Most of the time it’s a mistake to think the victim has been badly beaten, but in this case, he has.’

  ‘He’s been beaten?’

  Benfield points at a red-raw, grid-like pattern imprinted from the suit onto the flesh.

  ‘See how regular that is? It’s as if he was crushed by a machine.’

  ‘Is it possible the perp would have done this post mortem?’

  ‘No. It happened while he was alive. With the crushed genitals and bruising, there’s no way this can be classed as an accident. Certainly the fire is what killed him, but the circumstances leading up to the fire suggest extreme torture.’

  Rose thinks this over for a moment. ‘He was found sitting, with no signs of struggle – apart from the bits of rubber dug underneath his nails. Were there any drugs in his system? A sedative of some kind?’

  ‘I’m still waiting for the rest of the tests to be done, but from what I’ve seen, there’s been no sign of anything. It’s possible we might find a short-acting but powerful sedative, such as propofol, in his system.’

  ‘The anaesthetic?’

  Benfield nods. ‘The effects last thirty to sixty minutes before it wears off. Only a liver examination can confirm its presence. I’ve also checked the vitreous humour – the fluid in the eyes. He was certainly diabetic, but that had no bearing on his death.’

  He rubs his jaw and thinks for a moment: ‘That’s all the news for now. I’ll let you know if I find anything else.’

  ‘Thank you, Arthur.’

  ‘Until next time,’ he says, flashing a smile. ‘And since we’re looking at foul play, I guess the funeral will be delayed. Who is the next of kin?’

  ‘His mother. Lives in a retirement home in Fort Lauderdale.’

  ‘She been told yet?’

  Rose shakes her head. ‘I’ll pass the word to the local field office soon as I get back to my desk. Guess they’ll send some uniforms round to break the news, before someone there gets it off the Stream and tells her first.’

  ‘The worst news a parent can get. It isn’t normal to bury your child.’

  ‘Look around, Arthur. You tell me what’s normal these days.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘But we’ll let Mrs Coulter make arrangements for the funeral as soon as we can. Meanwhile thanks for these.’

  She holds up the evidence bag, reflecting that killers often at
tend the funerals of their victims. It’s a useful occasion to gather intelligence, even if the timing sucks. Rose decides that she will be there when the time comes. She paces out of the main autopsy theatre, presses the elevator call button. It seems Gary Coulter’s death was anything but an accident. And now comes the hard part for the Bureau. Picking the crime apart minutely. They must search for an explanation, a motive and a killer. And find out why Coulter seems to have had what looks like a Skin before it was even released.

  20.

  Back at the field office, Rose sits at the desk in the silent and empty interrogation room. Often when she is trying to get her head into a case she comes here to fully absorb all the details. She flicks again through the crime scene photos taken by the forensics. They are still taken on 35mm film to avoid tampering. In the digital age, any photographic evidence can be removed or fabricated using even the most basic software packages. Rose uses an inner dialogue, constantly questioning herself to check her assumptions, step by step.

  To understand the artist, you have to look at the painting.

  She tries to think herself into the mind of the killer. First there is the entry . . .

  Perhaps he buzzed the apartment. Coulter, wearing the suit, let him in. The killer entered wearing gloves, and savagely beat Coulter in the Skin. As part of the struggle he crushed Coulter’s testicles . . .

  That’s a stretch, Rose concedes. It’s not the kind of damage you do to a victim incidentally.

  No, Coulter was beaten and tortured and then set on fire. There is no evidence of an accelerant yet, which implies that the killer tampered with the wiring so that it set the suit on fire, to make it look like an accident. Before the killer leaves, he injects Coulter with an anaesthetic strong enough to prevent his victim from attempting to put out the flames until it is too late. The killer leaves, closing and locking the door behind him. Then fire spreads through the suit, burning Coulter. The pain overcomes the anaesthetic and he starts to scream and is overheard by the neighbour . . .