Mercurial Dreams

by Hadena James

  However, I thought about her long after Gabriel left. I couldn’t imagine just going missing. I was convinced most missing persons were either runaways or dead. Of course, in my line of work, we also found missing persons that were being held by serial killers, but I considered that a special sort of hell. I knew firsthand what serial killer captives went through. If they were strong enough, they’d find a way to survive.

  When I did fall asleep, I dreamed of mad hatters and Egyptian Pharaohs. My mind made connections in the strangest ways, especially while sleeping. This case was taking a toll on me because we had nothing. Most cases had some evidence. This case just had mummified bodies and no forensics. It was the nemesis of every cop, federal or local, a serial killer who didn’t leave clues.

  Around four in the morning, I crawled from bed and tip-toed around the slumbering giant. Lucas had insisted on sleeping in a recliner in my room. I didn’t know why, I just knew that sometimes, he became overly protective. Tonight was one of those nights.

  I also knew the moment I began moving, Lucas woke up. He pretended to stay asleep, just to allow me the semblance of privacy, but we both knew otherwise. I booted my laptop and searched for mummification.

  After spending the day with an expert, most of the material was not new. I gave up and Googled mercury. Again, I found little information on mercury poisoning that I didn’t already know. I did find a bunch of thermometers on EBay for sale.

  “Lucas,” I said his name in my normal tone of voice.

  “Yes?” He didn’t open his eyes, but his voice didn’t sound like he had been asleep.

  “I had a thought on the mercury. How much is held in a thermometer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How do we find out?”

  “Mercury thermometers are obsolete.”

  “Except as antiques and of course, EBay.”

  “You think he got the mercury from thermometers?”

  “I don’t know, but it would explain why he hasn’t purchased large quantities of it. Maybe he is buying them on the internet and from antique stores.”

  “You want us to query online marketers for users that have purchased large quantities of thermometers?”

  “Nope, I want Michael to just hack into the system and find out for me,” I said.

  “I will tell Gabriel in the morning, go back to sleep, Ace.”

  “I can’t, I keep dreaming about serial killing hatters.”

  “Serial killing hatters? Like hat makers?”

  “Yes, like hat makers.”

  “Do you always internalize your work like this?”

  “Of course, then my mind relates it to something medieval, like hatters suffering from madness from methyl mercury poisoning. Oddly, I know this to be mostly untrue, but I still equate them.”

  “I think this is your form of a social conscious.”

  “Don’t analyze me,” I told him without malice.

  “Go back to sleep.”

  “What about the missing woman?”

  “There are dozens of missing women in Las Vegas and Henderson.”

  “Why is this one important?”

  “Her husband is a politician.”

  “Local, state or federal?”

  “State, he’s a district representative or something. Our killer is not killing women of status, only the homeless ones and they identified a missing person from Georgia. Came out here to get her start as a dancer, ended up a prostitute and stripper.”

  “Ironically, she became a dancer.”

  “There’s the silver lining,” Lucas finally opened his eyes. “You aren’t going back to bed, are you?”

  “Probably not,” I said.

  “Is your leg bothering you?”

  “Not nearly as much as Michael’s hands.”

  “Is there something you want to talk about?”

  “What the hell are we doing here? We have nothing except mummies with a few identities. We’ve caught a different serial killer. I feel like we should be doing something here or working on another case until this one warms up some.”

  “And if it never warms up?” Lucas looked at me.

  “Shit,” I hung my head. “I get your point. What do you think of our killer?”

  “Organized, affluent, not sure about his motivations yet, but that could be because we don’t have much on the victims. The removal of the blood says something about him, he’s very methodical, almost clinical.”

  “Think we have another doctor?”

  “No, I don’t think it’s a doctor. I think the bloodletting is important though.”

  “You think it’s about more than making mummies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe mummification is a side effect, not a direct goal. He figured out he could mummify them, so he does.”

  “That might fit,” Lucas sighed heavily. “If you go back to bed, I’ll get you some cookies and a fridge full of Mountain Dew.”

  “Caffeine would be good,” I got up and grabbed a soda out of the mini-fridge that had been stocked for me with Mountain Dew.

  “You’re not going back to sleep, are you?” Lucas got up and started making coffee.

  “Nope, so mummification is a side effect. Why do you drain the blood to begin with?”

  “Smell, it helps retard decomp,” Lucas answered from the coffeemaker.

  “Ok, then you bury them in the yard and discover you have a salt pit. The next time you go to bury a body, you find the first one, mummified or on the way. So you move the body and make room for the new one. You bury it in Death Valley, only they have more rain than usual and suddenly your body dump is exposed.”

  “Mummification is about preservation. You mummify to keep, not to discard,” Lucas said.

  “Yes, but if it was an accident,” I responded with a shrug.

  “But you can’t say for sure that it was an accident. Maybe there is a sexual component that we missed, maybe he’s a necrophile.”

  “Necrophilia would change the theory of mummification.”

  “Then when he tires of the one he has, he changes it for another.”

  “But does mummification fit with necrophilia? Isn’t it hard to have sex with a mummy?”

  “I don’t know, I haven’t personally tried it. I imagine it would be difficult, but to each their own. It wouldn’t be the first necrophile we’ve encountered.”

  “I’ll wake up Xavier, he should be able to tell us if the expert thought the mummies had been...” I searched for a word.

  “Molested?” Lucas offered.

  “Nope, doesn’t cut it,” I shook my head but left it at that. I left my room and beat on Xavier’s door.

  “What?” Xavier’s sleepy voice came from behind the door.

  “I need you!” I shouted back.

  “No you don’t,” Xavier answered. “You don’t have those types of urges.”

  “Not like that,” I shouted again. I heard the locks click. “Come to my room, we are talking about necrophilia.”

  “Such pleasant morning conversation,” Xavier quipped.

  I turned and entered my room. Xavier walked past me and began beating on the other door. Gabriel opened it after the second knock.

  “Ace and Lucas want to talk about necrophilia, I thought you and Michael should be privy,” Xavier said. He turned away from the sleepy, stunned Gabriel and entered my room. Soon, all four were in my room. I wasn’t sure why we always met in my room. The other rooms would have worked too.

  “Necrophilia at four in the morning?” Gabriel asked, tying a robe at the waist. Michael’s hands were swollen.

  “Why did you touch the cactus?” I asked him as he tried to find a place to put them. He finally sat his elbows on the table and held his hands straight up.

  “It looked fluffy,” Michael answered. “Turns out, it’s called a ‘teddy bear cactus’ for that reason. And the spines have barbs like fish hooks so that the plant can fall off in another spot and create more fluffy looking cactuses.”
/>   “It’s called propagation,” Xavier said.

  “It’s called painful,” Michael corrected. “The doctor said they see it all the time. The swelling should go down in a day or two.”

  “Back on topic, necrophilia?” Gabriel yawned.

  “Lucas thinks they are mummified for the purpose of necrophilia, I think it was an accident. I was hoping Xavier could weigh in,” I said.

  “I said it was a possibility,” Lucas corrected.

  “Ok, Lucas thinks it’s possible they were mummified for necrophilic purposes,” I changed the wording to reflect that it was a theory.

  “The expert found no evidence of necrophilia,” Xavier said. I smiled at Lucas. “However, that doesn’t mean the mummification didn’t happen after the bodies were starting to decompose. It could be a onetime sex act taking place immediately after the death.”

  “Which would fit with the theory of necrophilia,” I sighed.

  “Why?” Michael asked.

  “Because humans get very attached to their lovers,” I answered.

  “You don’t,” Michael said.

  “I don’t have lovers,” I answered. “Lovers require work and emotion and feelings, even one night stands. Since I get tired of faking all that, I don’t bother.”

  “And the biological need to breed is absent in Ace,” Lucas said.

  “As are the physiological responses to sexual stimuli,” Xavier added.

  “In English,” Michael said.

  “Ace is asexual,” Gabriel responded. “She has no sex drive. While most people require some kind of intimate, sexual relationship, Ace does not. Nor does she respond to sexually stimulating images or situations. When you see a pretty girl, you think about her as such. When Ace sees a pretty person, she just sees a pretty person and moves on.”

  “How boring,” Michael said.

  “Well, we can’t all be addicted to internet porn,” I grinned at him.

  “Deviant sexual behavior or alternative sexual behavior means that the subject is not turned on by normal situations,” Lucas said. “Such as necrophilia and a dozen other philias and sado-masochism.”

  “So, we think our killer is a necrophilic?” Gabriel asked.

  “I think it a possibility,” Lucas corrected. “I can’t say he is without evidence of such. He may have another philia that I just haven’t figured out yet. The fact that he takes male and female victims would mean he has strong bisexual tendencies if he is a necrophile or suffers from some other philia.”

  “A bisexual who likes dead people,” Michael raised an eyebrow. “Have we checked the vampire underground in Vegas?”

  “That would explain the draining of the blood,” I agreed.

  “Most vampires do not engage in necrophilia,” Lucas said.

  “You say that like vampires are real,” Gabriel said.

  “To some degree, they are, at least in their own minds. But they require blood or energy and it has to be living. Killing their victims and then draining the blood would not be part of their pattern,” Lucas answered.

  “What about a cannibal?” I asked.

  “They aren’t eating any parts that I can see,” Xavier said.

  “Ok, cannibal was the wrong word,” I thought for several minutes, holding up my hand for silence. The guys knew me well enough to not talk when I did this. “A few years ago, there were a couple of guys in Germany that were making blutwurst using human blood. They weren’t killing anyone, they were taking donations, but the same could happen here only ours is killing.”

  “I think living blood would be better than dead blood for that,” Xavier said. “Blood begins to clot and congeal quickly upon death. Hard to make sausage out of it.”

  “And we are sure the exsanguination is happening post mortem?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Xavier said.

  “Well hell,” I sighed heavily. “There goes that theory.”

  “It was a good one,” Xavier said. “But the evidence doesn’t support it. I’m not sure there is a theory the evidence would support at the moment though.”

  “And stop reading books on cannibalism, you have enough blood and gore in your life,” Gabriel made a half-hearted attempt to scold me. “Tomorrow, we are plastering the news with photos of the victims. Don’t expect much, they were homeless and there is a missing politician’s wife, but we can try.”

  “About that,” I said.

  “We don’t investigate missing persons,” Gabriel automatically said.

  “I know and I know that the missing woman doesn’t match our parameters, but has anyone thought to dig up the husband’s back yard or front yard?” I asked.

  “Henderson Police and the Nevada Highway Patrol are handling the case,” Gabriel said.

  “Why do you think it was the husband?” Lucas asked.

  “Aren’t they usually?” I returned with a question.

  Missing

  Someone was beating on Kyle’s front door. The digital clock read out said it was only a few minutes after seven in the morning. He’d gotten less than four hours of sleep and now someone was beating on his door. It was going to be one of those days.

  He had never been good at instantly waking up. His eyes were still mostly closed and sleep matted the corners. His mouth was dry. The skin on his face felt rough, stubble covering his chin and upper lip, the rest of it, as dry as his mouth.

  The incessant knocking began again. Kyle resigned himself to getting up and answering it. By the sound of their knocking, they weren’t going away.

  Kyle half walked, half shambled down the hallway. He opened the door, ready to tell off whoever dared to interrupt his sleep. Everyone knew he was a night owl.

  Two men, dressed in suits, holding badges in their hands greeted him before he let out the string of words that had formed in his head.

  “May I help you?” Kyle asked.

  “Are you Mr. Kyle Summers?” The older looking man asked.

  “Yes,” Kyle gave them a questioning look.

  “I’m Detective Terrance and this is Detective Hyde. We’d like to ask you a few questions about Mallory Riggings. Do mind if we come in?” The older one said.

  Kyle stepped away from the door, letting them in. He directed them into the sitting room and offered them coffee. They both declined but said he was free to make some himself. Kyle walked into the kitchen and started coffee. He had no idea who Mallory Riggings was or why the police were here to talk to him about her.

  While the coffee brewed, Kyle tried to remember a Mallory. None of the women he had encountered in his twenty years had been named Mallory Riggings. He kept a list of all of his models. For some reason, it struck him as odd at that moment that he had never met a Mallory. He poured coffee into his cup and joined the detectives in the sitting room.

  “Mr. Summers, Mallory Riggings had one of your cards in her possession when she went missing, do you know why?” Detective Terrance asked.

  “No, I don’t know a Mallory Riggings,” Kyle said. “Maybe if you could tell me what she looked like or give me some other information. I meet a lot of people at gallery exhibits and art auctions. I don’t remember all their names, but I’m good with faces. You say she is missing?”

  “Yes sir, she went missing two days ago,” Detective Hyde said. “Do you remember what you were doing two days ago?”

  “Of course, I went to the grocery store. While shopping, I saw a woman that was beautiful in an earthly way. I gave her my card, hoping she would call to set up an appointment to model for one of my sculptures. I offered her a painting as well as a modeling fee. She took the card, but declined the offer, saying something about her husband not liking it. Then I drove towards home, but I saw a young woman walking down the side of the road. She looked like she was having a very hard time. I offered her a lift, she declined. So I gave her some money. At that point, she agreed to go to lunch with me. I took her to a diner I frequent. She had country fried steak, her name was Adele. Pretty girl, nasty problems, then I gave her a r
ide to the bus station. She said she was going home, but I doubted that. I insisted she keep the money though. After that, I came home and worked until late,” Kyle recounted the day.

  “Do you make a habit of picking up strangers, giving them money and buying them meals and bus tickets?” Detective Hyde asked.

  “I do,” Kyle answered. “My wife died twenty years ago, I’ve been alone since. She had a big heart, always trying to help those less fortunate than herself. When I met her, she was using her trust fund money to help at a battered women’s shelter and working to build up a college fund. When I became a well-known artist and the money began to come in, I decided to remember my wife by continuing her practices. It was not uncommon for my wife to pick up hitchhikers, treat them to a meal, give them some money and buy them a bus ticket to wherever they were heading. As a result, now I do it. You can ask the diner employees, I’m always bringing in strangers for meals. I don’t have co-workers in my job and I get tired of rich, stuffy people who only talk about art. It’s nice to be able to share a meal with someone more down to earth.”

  “The woman at the grocery store, did you get her name or remember anything about her?” Detective Terrance asked.

  “I didn’t ask her name. I admit that I sometimes lack social niceties like asking for names. However, I do remember what she looked like. She was in her forties, probably early forties, with red hair starting to turn grey. Her nails were perfectly manicured and she wore her make-up too heavily. It appeared she was covering a black-eye, but it could have just been how the make-up was applied. She had blue eyes. I remember thinking she might have been a beauty queen before becoming a mom and having life experiences. She drove a Pink Prius.”

  “But you didn’t ask her name and you haven’t seen or heard from her?” Detective Terrance continued.

  “No, but I was hoping I would. She radiated something that I don’t find very often in women of that age. An inner strength and beauty that said life might be hard, but it could be well worth living. I liked her for that, I hoped to be able to capture it,” Kyle said.

  “Is this the woman?” Detective Terrance pulled out a photo. Kyle only glanced at it for a second, he’d know that face anywhere.