Medium Dead

by Chris Dolley

  “Is Detective Sjoberg on duty?”

  The sergeant rang to find out and a minute later a harassed-looking Detective Sjoberg came hurrying downstairs.

  “Yes, what is it ... Oh.” His face brightened. “Good morning, Miss um....”

  “Marple,” said the desk sergeant.

  “No!” said Brenda. “Not Miss Marple. I’m um Mrs. Agent Marple.”

  The Inner Brenda cringed.

  Detective Sjoberg smiled. “Well, Mrs. Agent Marple, would you like to follow me?”

  Brenda trudged after him, her head metaphorically in her hands. How not to draw attention to yourself, lesson one – don’t speak and panic at the same time.

  Detective Sjoberg showed her to the same room as before, but this time he was in no hurry to leave.

  “What case are you working on?” he asked.

  “The Daddy investigation.”

  “Daddy?”

  Brenda showed him the picture. “We think he’s been abducting girls for at least thirteen years. He takes them, holds them in some underground dungeon, then kills them.”

  “You think he lives around here?”

  “We don’t know where he lives. It’s likely he’s been taking girls from all over the country to avoid detection. We’re only just beginning to tie the pieces together. Which is why I need to run these pictures.”

  “Right.”

  He leaned against the door, still showing no signs of leaving.

  Brenda considered asking him to help. He’d know his way around the system far better than she would. But...

  He was already curious and Brenda had a few extra searches in mind which would be difficult to explain.

  She grimaced, bending slightly and placing a hand on her abdomen.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “It’s just cramps. I started my period this morning. Is there somewhere nearby where I can buy tampons?”

  Detective Sjoberg suddenly found urgent business in another room. If he’d been a cartoon character, he’d have left behind an open mouth.

  Brenda used Brian’s ID and password to access the FBI database. No sirens sounded and no warning message flashed on the screen about unauthorized access. So that was a plus. The FBI database could have been a little more user friendly – a help screen for inexperienced hackers would have been good – but she tapped and clicked her way through a series of screens until she found a place where she could upload a picture. She placed Daddy’s photofit on the document feeder, waited an age for it to be digitized, then fired off the search.

  Hit after hit appeared on the screen – hundreds of near matches. She sifted through them one by one. They all exhibited some resemblance, but ... none of them was Daddy. Assuming Sacrifice’s picture had been accurate. And if she doubted that, then the whole exercise was doomed.

  She played with the search criteria, extending the search into victims and suspects and agents and police officers. More hits, more possibilities, but no one who cried out ‘Daddy.’

  She narrowed the search to violent crimes, deciding to print details of anyone who came close. After all, Daddy could have altered his appearance.

  And what about the name Daddy? What if it was a nickname?

  She searched on the name Daddy, found a few Big Daddies and one Puff Daddy, but no one who looked anything like the picture.

  Time to try something else. She noticed there was a search for matching similar crimes. You input some or all the details of your crime and the system looked for matches. Brenda filled in the victim type – female child, brunette. She added the abduction, the imprisonment in a windowless room. The names Daddy and Sacrifice. And murder by lethal injection.

  She found no close matches, but thousands of partials. Over two hundred children were abducted and murdered each year. Some had been imprisoned in basements. But no mention of death by injection, or the name Sacrifice.

  She kept skimming through the partial list, looking for similarities, looking for something close enough to at least print. But nothing came close.

  Then she tried searching just on the name Sacrifice. She found a few hits where children – usually recent immigrants from Africa – had been ritually murdered. And she found two cases where the word sacrifice had been scrawled on a bedroom wall at the murder scene. Both cases involved young girls. One was seven, the other nine. Neither resembled Sacrifice. They lived fifty miles apart, a couple of hundred miles from Mary Alice and Stamford. But the dates...

  Both murders were thirteen years ago, a few months apart. The second had occurred two months before Mary Alice Cassini was abducted. Was this Daddy in his early years, before he found it safer to abduct the girls and dispose of their bodies later?

  It could be. No one had been charged with either girl’s murder. She pulled up more details. None of the suspects looked anything like Daddy, and the girls were killed by having their necks broken. Did that rule Daddy out? Didn’t serial killers stick to the same MO?

  Or was Daddy just starting out thirteen years ago? Experimenting. He didn’t like the fact that the bodies were discovered so quickly, so he moved them to his basement. And he didn’t like the way they died so quickly. He liked having them around, so he built a special room where he could keep them. Then when Mary Alice died, he was so fixated on her, he had to replace her. Hence the need to find girls who looked the same. He was recreating her.

  Brenda printed off everything she could find on the two cases, then uploaded the picture of Sacrifice. She’d search for matches again, but this time she wouldn’t stop when she found Mary Alice.

  One by one, the lookalikes appeared on screen. She scrutinized them all. Again, none of them looked familiar, but then these were pictures provided by their families. The girls were clean, well-fed, and well-dressed. The Sacrifices were rail thin and had hair down to their waists. Plus some of the Sacrifices she’d seen could have been kept for several years. Children change.

  But not that much. She stared at the gallery of missing and murdered children. Could Daddy have altered their appearance to make them look like Mary Alice? Dyeing their hair wouldn’t be enough. But if Daddy was a plastic surgeon...

  Brenda considered that for a while, wondering if she’d just crossed the line into bad TV movie territory or made a real discovery. She was looking at the FBI database of all the missing or murdered children whose face resembled Mary Alice in any way. She should have found more than one positive match. She’d met three Sacrifices. There were probably more.

  So why weren’t they showing up here? Was he targeting girls who wouldn’t be reported? Were there girls who wouldn’t be reported? Surely even street kids had a missing person report somewhere in their past. Or was he going abroad for his victims? Into Canada or Mexico or further afield? But the girls all spoke English. They had no discernible accent. He couldn’t be going that far.

  Could he be a plastic surgeon?

  It might explain the hypodermic and the poison. As a doctor, he’d have ready access to lethal drugs.

  She typed in cosmetic surgery and murdered children and ran a search. Had any post mortems found the victim had had cosmetic surgery? No hits came back. She stood back and rubbed her chin. She was running out of ideas. Daddy was a doctor. He killed by lethal injection. Could he do that in such a way that the death wasn’t picked up as a murder? An air bubble into a vein? A heroin overdose that looked self-inflicted?

  She liked the latter. The Sacrifices could pass as street children. He could dump their bodies on waste ground or in abandoned buildings. Leave the syringe, create a series of track marks to make it look like they were long term addicts. They might not even get a post mortem. They might not be found for weeks.

  She typed in drug overdose and children – girls under twelve. There couldn’t be that many pre-teens overdosing on drugs, could there?

  There weren’t. Brenda did her best to scrutinize the pictures, but one was partly decomposed and another was bloated. They could be Sacrifices, they cou
ld be anyone. She cleared the screen. This was getting her nowhere. He might be burying the bodies, disposing of them at sea, or feeding them to pigs for all she knew. Was she going to search for cosmetic surgeons who kept pigs next?

  Well...

  The FBI database didn’t appear to have such a search facility. But it did have a person search. Should she enter Bruno Abbiati and list off his associates?

  Then she had a better idea. What if she typed in Brian Trafford?

  There was a box for nationality so it might link to databases in England, or even Interpol.

  She tried it. And back came a very different picture from the one she’d been expecting. It was a bruised and battered Brian Trafford from eleven years ago. He’d been attacked while on vacation in Florida. His wife and child had been killed. The attackers – one white, one Hispanic – had never been found.

  Brenda read open-mouthed. It was definitely the same Brian Trafford who later contracted neck cancer. Even with his face swollen and bruised she could still recognize him. And his address was given as Reading, England.

  So, Brian Trafford was a victim of crime. Was that why Brian had chosen his face? Or was this her Brian – Brian the Vigilante Demon on one of his takedowns that went horribly wrong?

  And was his dead wife one of Brenda’s predecessors?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Driving home, Brenda eyes kept straying towards the stack of papers on the passenger seat next to her. Angela Trafford’s picture lay at the top. She’d been shot five times in the head and chest. Her daughter’s body lay beside her, shot once in the face. Their bodies found in a Florida parking lot next to Brian, who’d been beaten, shot, and left for dead.

  According to Brian’s statement, they’d been returning to their car when two men came up to them and demanded money. Brian handed over what he had, but the men thought he was holding out on them and started beating him. His wife intervened, was knocked to the ground, then shot. Their daughter became hysterical and she got shot, too. In the mouth to shut her up. It was brutal and totally unnecessary. The Traffords weren’t a wealthy family. They’d handed over their money and their one credit card. The men just kept shooting. Not in panic or drug fuelled rage, but in cold blooded spite. Neither killer was ever apprehended.

  Brenda shivered. There were no other witness reports. Only the husband’s. It didn’t sound like one of Brian’s takedowns, but if he was the only witness, that meant nothing – he might have bent the truth to placate the police. Had he misread the robbers’ intentions – failed to stop the first bullet hitting his partner, then everything went to hell in a handbasket? And the men were never apprehended for the simple reason that Brian had shapeshifted their asses to bugs and stomped them flat.

  But...

  Where did the daughter fit into this crime-fighting scenario? Brian used a medium to find murder victims. He didn’t need anyone else. And it said in the report that Brian had been treated in hospital. Wouldn’t they have noticed he wasn’t human? He’d been unconscious when they’d found him. They’d operated on him to take two bullets out. They’d X-rayed his broken arm.

  So...

  What if Brian the Vigilante Demon and Brian Trafford the human were one and the same person? What if he’d been human eleven years ago? What if he’d been human five years ago when along came gene therapy and – zap – suddenly he wakes up with superpowers? What’s he going to do with them? Join the circus, save the world, or go after the murdering bastards who killed his wife and child? It fitted. His need to fight crime. His reckless behavior. His interest in gene therapy. He wasn’t a demon. All that bullshit about Heaven and Hell was exactly that – bullshit. He was a vigilante with superpowers – a grieving husband and father still lashing out at the men who’d murdered his family, seeking revenge by hunting down killers and switching roles – making them feel as impotent and frightened as he’d done that evening in Florida. And when he’d discovered that Abbiati could block his telepathic eavesdropping, his first thought hadn’t been ‘he must be a demon too.’ It had been ‘has he undergone gene therapy?’

  And how many people in the world had undergone gene therapy? Hundreds? Thousands? Had they all developed superpowers?

  When she got home she found Brian still slumped on the sofa.

  “Brian?” she called. “Brian! We need to talk.”

  He didn’t so much as open an eye. He looked like he was asleep. After his recent exertions fabricating pictures and FBI badges, he could very well be asleep. But ... it was all too convenient. Whenever she had something important to ask him, he passed out. Was that one of his superpowers? The ability to faint when confronted with a difficult question?

  The day dragged itself towards afternoon. Brian slept and Brenda stared at pictures of dead and missing girls, trying to see some resemblance to one of the Sacrifices. Imagining a nose job here, a cheek implant there. Then she decided the whole process was a waste of time, as any one of them could be fashioned into a Mary Alice clone by a skilled plastic surgeon.

  Should she summon another Sacrifice and ask? They’d know if they’d been operated on.

  She tried. Several times. But no one appeared. Maybe they really did have a lunch hour on the astral plane. Or Brenda was too tense. She was finding it difficult to concentrate on anything. She had to leave for her mother’s in two-and-a-half hours and Brian was still out cold. What was she going to do?

  The afternoon dragged even slower. She’d have to take Brian with her in the car. Put him in the trunk so he wasn’t seen. And if he hadn’t recovered by the time they reached her mother’s, she’d keep on driving and go into hiding until he had. Maybe she could persuade him to give her a few facial scars? Make it look like she’d been in an accident. Yes! She could see a viable Plan B. She’d turn up at her mother’s door the next day covered in cuts and bruises. I was tired and I had this splitting headache, but I couldn’t miss your party so I drove for hours to get here and then this car came out of nowhere and hit me. I’ve been in hospital ever since. She’d get sympathy, maybe even make her mother and Susan experience a pang of guilt or two. And her car would have to be totaled. She could keep the Jag!

  It was a win, win, win scenario.

  As long as she could fool her mother – the mother with a built-in lie detector.

  Four o’clock arrived with Brian still unconscious and no freak storm having washed away all the roads between Brenda’s house and her mother’s. She’d have to leave. Unless she took the Jag. It was bound to be faster. If she took the Jag she could wait another fifteen minutes at least. And the new car would completely throw her mother. Look, Mom, I told you my life was turning round. I’ve got a new job and a new car!

  The deprogrammers could be sent home.

  That is if her mother – the one with the built-in lie detector that never ran low on batteries – actually bought the story. Reality check time. Both her mother and Susan would want to know everything about the new job. The pair of them would cross-examine Brenda all through dinner. They’d want details. They’d want her work phone number.

  Could she use HELL 666?

  “Sanjay would charge.”

  “Brian! You’re awake. Can you change me back?”

  He sat up, not exactly moving spryly, but without grimacing or slumping backwards.

  “I’ll try myself first.”

  He changed in front of her, morphing slowly from naked charred corpse to ... well, he was clothed. And he looked like Brian, but ... his skin. It was flaky and blotchy. His face, his hands, and probably the rest of him too, looked dry and sunburned. Even his hair, which looked as dry as tinder and ready to fall out by the roots the moment a comb went anywhere near it.

  “Is that because of the fire?” she asked.

  He stared at his hands. “I don’t know. I’m not feeling one hundred percent yet. It might be an idea to wait a while before I change you.”

  Brenda didn’t need any convincing. Turning up at her mothers with giant hair and fake boo
bs would be bad enough, but looking like someone who’d then been locked inside a tanning bed for twelve hours would be far worse. Luckily, seven o’clock was still three hours away. And she had a lot of questions to ask Brian on the drive down.

  First she told him about her failure to find Daddy in the FBI database. Then she moved onto the two murdered girls with ‘sacrifice’ scrawled on their bedroom walls. That interested him. He studied the pictures and read the case details for ages.

  “If this is where he started, it might be close to where he’s based,” he said. “Somewhere in central New York State. It’s not that far from Stamford.”

  “What about him switching MO?” she asked. “Do you think that’s a problem?”

  “I’m not sure. Looking at these PMs, he broke both their necks, but not expertly. He’s not one of those trained killers who snap people’s necks with ease. He used brute force. Maybe in panic, maybe trying to keep them quiet. So, maybe later he found that by keeping the girls locked up, he could brainwash them, and no longer needed to get so physical. Who can tell with psychos?”

  He was less convinced about Brenda’s plastic surgeon theory.

  “Of course there’s one way to prove it,” he said.

  “How?”

  “We hack into some computer somewhere that has a list of all plastic surgeons and look for a picture of Daddy. If the surgeon files don’t come with pictures, we cross-reference their names against the DMV. I can’t imagine a plastic surgeon who doesn’t drive.”

  That’s when Brenda decided to raise the question. Brian was relaxed, open and, hopefully, not reading her mind.

  “How long were you and Angela married?”

  “What?” He didn’t exactly blanch, but he came close.

  “You were talking about her in your sleep–”

  “No, I wasn’t. I can read your thoughts, Brenda. You saw Brian Trafford’s case file and you’re curious. But you’re wrong. Angela Trafford came to one of my previous partners and ... it’s a case I never solved, okay? It niggled. It still does. So I adopted Brian’s face to remind me that I’m both fallible and have unfinished business. I will find Angela and Julie’s murderer.”