Vanished - A Mystery (Dixon & Baudin Book 1)

by Victor Methos

  Their Jane Doe looked different from when Dixon had seen her last. She was much whiter. The genitals were where his eyes went first, to the gaping, open wounds that revealed the dried, crimson interior. He had to look away, down to her feet and the mangled toes with the skin falling off the bone. He’d once watched something on the Discovery Channel about a caveman who had been found frozen into the ice. They thawed him out and determined that he’d been murdered. Jane Doe looked like that caveman, with ancient, crusted flesh.

  Dixon closed his eyes and said a quick prayer for her.

  “She suffocated,” Gil said, staring down at her face. “Suffocation’s what kills someone when they’re crucified. Their lungs can’t get enough air, but it’s too painful to put pressure on your feet to stand and give your lungs space. So they slowly suffocate. It takes days.”

  “About three days, wouldn’t you say, Doc?” Baudin said.

  “Guess so. Though I’d guesstimate she’d been out there at least twenty days. She’s got maggots inside her. We can get an ento person out here from UW to take a look and give you a date certain.”

  Baudin walked around the table to the head and looked at her eyes. “Was there anything in her throat?”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything that shouldn’t be there?”

  “I didn’t see nothin’.”

  Baudin leaned over her. “What was she cut with?”

  “Something sharp, a knife or razor. Some organs missing.”

  “Which ones?”

  “The pancreas and thymus. Odd ones to take. That heart, though, that ain’t hers. That’s a deer’s heart, best I can figure.”

  “Deer heart?” Baudin said, looking up at him.

  “Yessir, her heart was still in her chest. Couldn’t get through the breastplate, though it looks like he tried. See right there? She’s got scrape marks on it. He tried to lift it like a lid on Tupperware. But you gotta cut the ribs first to release the breastplate. Don’t reckon this fella had any medical knowledge. Shoved the deer heart right where her stomach goes.”

  Dixon said, “What about the breasts?”

  “Those were torn away. Nothing sharp there. Just cut a little bit and then torn right off. Damn brutal.”

  “Can you tell if she was raped or sodomized?”

  “Nothin’ there for a SANE kit to analyze. The rectum’s so deteriorated I can’t tell. Any semen or hair from this fella’s long gone. Sorry, boys, but there just ain’t enough here for me to tell you anything.”

  Baudin said, “How long were the nails?”

  “Fingernails?”

  “No, the nails she was hammered in with.”

  “Oh, four inches, about. Why?”

  “Christ’s nails were supposedly between seven and nine inches long. If this was symbolic, he should’ve used the same-sized nails. Anything else you can tell us?”

  “She bled out, so I can’t get enough to test for drugs in the system… There just ain’t much there.”

  Baudin nodded. “I appreciate the rush, Doc. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Baudin stepped away, but Dixon remained, staring at the girl’s eyes. “How old you think she was, Gil?”

  “Maybe seventeen, eighteen. Probably no older than twenty-one or so.”

  “You take the dental impressions?”

  “Yeah, we had Marvin come out, and we did ’em. And again, not enough.”

  “What do you mean?” Baudin said, staring at an anatomy poster on the wall.

  “Some of her teeth are missing.”

  “How many?”

  “’Bout fifteen.”

  Baudin stepped closer to the body. “Can you open her mouth?”

  Gil grabbed her chin and upper lip without gloves and forced them open, a slight crack escaping from the desiccated flesh. Baudin and Dixon both peered inside. Every other tooth was gone. Dixon saw ragged flesh in some of the holes.

  “They were pulled,” Dixon said. “And not softly.”

  Baudin shook his head. “They pulled enough so we can’t identify her.”

  Damn, Dixon thought. He didn’t have medical knowledge, but he knew that ninety percent of the time bodies were identified through dental records.

  “Anything else you can tell us, Gil?”

  “Well, fingertips was cut off, too. No prints. And some birds got a hold of her—crows, probably. So not all the wounds you see are from him. I’m sorry. I’ll keep lookin’, but don’t expect much.”

  Dixon nodded. “I appreciate it just the same. Have yourself a good day.”

  As the men walked out, they glanced into the room where the young assistant had been. He was gone.

  “Fucker pulled the teeth,” Baudin said as their footsteps echoed in the corridor.

  “Why the organs?” Dixon said. “What the hell does he want with the pancreas and thymus?”

  Baudin was quiet a moment. “They’re called the sweetbreads in cooking. I think he took them to eat.”

  13

  Dixon wanted to come up with a picture of what Jane Doe had looked like, based on the photos the forensic techs had taken. Then he could get the photo out to the media and hope a parent with a missing child or a roommate would call in.

  The computer artist the department had on contract was located in a graphic design studio. The place was the opposite of the coroner’s office: full of light and color, walls painted yellow and red. The tables and desks were all glass, and the artist hummed to himself as he worked, Dixon sitting across from him in his office.

  Dixon glanced out the office door and saw Baudin at the conference room table, working on his iPad.

  “How’s this looking for the nose?” the designer said.

  Dixon looked at the photo of Jane Doe’s body that they’d printed up and then at the computer model. “Close. A little narrower up top, I think.”

  The artist, whose name Dixon couldn’t remember because he’d never used him before, hummed again as he narrowed the nose.

  “Now?”

  “Better.” He leaned to the side. “You wanna take a look?” he yelled.

  Baudin set the iPad down and hurried over. He hovered over the artist’s shoulder, glaring at the image on the screen. “That’s her.”

  Dixon nodded, and the designer touched up a few things and printed the photo.

  “Gimme about twenty copies and email me a digital, would you?” Dixon asked.

  “No worries.”

  When he had the printouts, Dixon couldn’t help staring at them. The girl was beautiful, someone who would stand out in any crowd. Baudin wouldn’t look at the photo again. Instead, he paced near the entrance to the studio until Dixon was done.

  “You got contacts in the news?” Baudin asked.

  “Yeah. I’m gonna head over there now.”

  Baudin’s phone rang. He answered it. “Hello?… Yes. Yes, I’m her father… Today? What happened?… I’ll be right down.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “My daughter got into some trouble at school. I’m gonna head down there for a minute. Can you give me a lift back to the precinct?”

  On the drive over, Dixon glanced at Baudin, who was busy again on his iPad. The man had an intense look of concentration that never broke. Even when he appeared to be relaxing, his face and body posture betrayed the fact that he was thinking furiously about something.

  “So that 9-11 bullshit,” Dixon said. “You really believe that?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, what else you believe?”

  “Whatd’ya mean?”

  “I don’t think conspiracy theorists are ever happy with one conspiracy. I’m sure you got more.”

  He grinned and lowered his iPad. “You trying to get to know me, Kyle?”

  “I’ve always been interested in what crazy people believe.”

  He went back to the iPad. “You ever heard of the Tuskegee experiments?”

  “No.”

  He looked out the window at a
woman on the corner. “Government researchers wanted to study the progression of syphilis but didn’t want to use whites. So they studied it in the black population in Alabama. They never told the participants they had syphilis. In Guatemala, these same government doctors purposely infected people with syphilis, too. They knew penicillin could cure it, but they never gave it to them or to the blacks in Alabama. They let them die, so they could study them.”

  “Bullshit,” Dixon said.

  “Look it up, man. Don’t take my word for it. But a government willing to kill its own people just to study syphilis… Imagine what that government would do to its own people if it wanted to go to war and needed an excuse. We been at war for a hundred years with almost no periods of peace, man. Somewhere in the world, American soldiers are fighting, all the time. We’re a nation built on war. Our government doesn’t know how to function any other way.”

  Dixon shook his head. “You believe in UFOs, too?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t—what? That’s just stupid.”

  “How the hell do I know what’s up there? Could be giant spacewomen for all I know.”

  “Giant spacewomen infecting people with syphilis?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe they get around?”

  Dixon chuckled as he merged onto the interstate.

  Once he’d dropped Baudin off at his car, Dixon headed to KBS 5 News. The studio was in what appeared to be an office building with a private two-year college on the first floor. Dixon parked at a meter and put coins in before heading inside and up to the main floor.

  The station had no security, which always surprised him, considering that these people were on television every night and the offices had nameplates on all the doors. Everyone seemed to be preparing for the mid-morning broadcast, and he stood by for a second and watched them on the monitors, practicing and warming up their voices.

  He continued to the last office, which had a nameplate on the door: “Carol Billings.”

  She was typing away on her computer so quickly that it sounded like pounding rain rather than typing. When she didn’t notice his presence after he’d stood there for a few seconds, he cleared his throat. She jumped as though he’d just grabbed her purse.

  “Oh my gosh,” she said.

  “Sorry,” he said, sitting down across from her. “Didn’t think you were so jumpy.”

  She exhaled as though forcing herself to calm down. “You always sneak up on women?”

  “Just the ones I’m gonna rape.”

  She threw a pencil at him. “Asshole.”

  “How you been?”

  Carol took a sip from a bottle of water and then leaned back in her chair. “Good. Did you see my piece on the water dispute between the mayor and Frank Herbert?”

  “I didn’t. I don’t watch TV, Carol.”

  “Like, at all?”

  “Like, at all. Just takes away my time or upsets me.”

  “What about the news? You’re a detective, you gotta know what’s going on in your city.”

  “I figure it’s none of my business. World’s always been a mess, I ain’t gonna fix it.”

  “That’s one way to look at it, I guess.”

  Dixon brushed a piece of lint off his pants. “Listen, I don’t wanna take up too much of your time, but I got a photo that needs to go out on the five o’clock and the ten o’clock.”

  “Both? Mm, this must be juicy.”

  “On the record, it’s a body that was found on Brett McCabe’s property that needs to be identified. We’re still determining cause of death and need help with identification.”

  “And off the record?” she said, leaning forward like a child listening to a bedtime story.

  “You sure love this gory shit, don’t you?”

  “I live for it. Now, what’s really going on?”

  “Murder vic. She was crucified, and her breasts and genitals were cut off. The guy pulled half her teeth out and cut off her fingertips, so we couldn’t identify her.”

  “Whoa.”

  “No shit. So can you run it?”

  “Of course. Gimme what you got.”

  “I’ll email you the photo. She was probably eighteen to twenty-one years old, found about two miles in on McCabe’s property, on the county border.”

  “You got anybody you’re lookin’ at?”

  He shook his head. “Not a one, except for McCabe himself. He looked old and feeble to me, though. It’s a completely cold case. We’ll probably just file it in the open-unsolved, but I wanna run with it a little first.”

  She nodded, staring at him a moment. “I’ll get it on air. In exchange for something, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “I want first release of anything you guys make public. If you catch the prick, I want twenty minutes with him in the holding cell.”

  “No way.”

  “You just said you’re not gonna catch him, so what does it matter?”

  He grinned. “You shoulda been a lawyer. Always an angle, huh? All right, he’s yours if we get him.”

  She smiled and leaned back, taking her water and holding it up as if she were delivering a toast. “Well, here’s to catching him, then.”

  14

  Baudin raced down to the middle school, parked out front, and rushed inside. Anger billowed out of him like clouds of frosty mist from dry ice. He didn’t know how he would react when he actually saw his daughter, but anger wasn’t the emotion he wanted to show.

  He stopped halfway down the hall and leaned back against the lockers, staring into a classroom down the hall. Some of the children were paying attention, but most were doodling, daydreaming, or—an option he hadn’t had in middle school—playing on their cell phones.

  Fury was like a drug and, like a drug, it dissipated over time. The body expelled it forcefully from the systems that saw it as poison. Within a minute, he was calm, and he continued down the hall to the principal’s office.

  Inside the school’s office, past the reception desk, he saw Heather sitting on a bench. He walked over to her and knelt down.

  “What happened?” he said.

  “It wasn’t my fault, Daddy.”

  “Heather, what happened?”

  The principal, a heavyset black man with a sweater vest, rose from the desk and came over. He held out his hand, and Baudin shook it.

  “You must be Detective Baudin. I’m Martin. I’m the principal here at Moss.”

  “I appreciate the call. I just asked Heather what happened.”

  “Why don’t you two step into my office?”

  The principal’s own office was covered in photos of him with people Baudin didn’t recognize, except for one with George W. Bush at some black-tie function. The chairs were uncomfortable, and Baudin was taken back to the hours he’d spent in principals’ offices, probably for offenses no different from Heather’s.

  “Detective, we take drug use very seriously. Normally, we would call the police and deal with it that way. But I knew who you were and thought I would do you the courtesy of giving you a call.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “She was caught behind the school with a few other students, two boys and another girl, sharing a joint. I’ve spoken with all four, and Heather doesn’t seem to be the one who supplied the marijuana.”

  Baudin looked at her. He remembered her as the little girl who would throw her arms around his neck and kiss his cheeks, who would hug him every morning and say, “I love you, Daddy.” The one he would watch while she slept and hope he could spare her all the pain that life was waiting to thrust upon her. It was difficult for him to see she was turning into her own person, with her own value system that was different from his.

  “Is that true?” he said.

  “It wasn’t… Yes,” she said quietly.

  Baudin looked back at the principal. “I appreciate you contacting me, Martin. I also appreciate your discretion. I promise you that this will be dealt with.”

 
He nodded. “I understand. And I hope you understand that some punishment must be imposed. I’m going to suspend her for two days. Monday and Tuesday. She can come back on Wednesday, and she’ll be spending her lunch hour eating in detention for a month.”

  Heather was about to object before the principal cut her off.

  “That,” he said, looking directly at her, “is the price instead of calling the police.”

  “It’s fair,” Baudin said. “And it won’t happen again.”

  Baudin shook his hand, thanked him again, and left with Heather in tow. They didn’t speak until they were outside and heading for his car.

  “How could you do that?” he said. “I’m a cop, Heather.”

  She was quiet until they were in the car and the doors were shut. “I just wanted to try it.”

  “How many times have you done it?”

  “Never.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  She shook her head vigorously—the actions of someone desperate to be believed, Baudin thought.

  “I promise. I’ve never done it. Becky just had some, and we went out to try it. I just wanted to see what it was like.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged.

  He exhaled and looked forward, debating what to do. “In addition to what the principal’s doing, I’m taking away your cell phone for a month.”

  “Daddy! You can’t do that. I have assignments due, and I need to talk to my partners. We work in groups. And I have to look stuff up, my notes are on my phone, there’s no way I can do my assignments without it.”

  “Well… a week, then.”

  “I have a history paper due, and my partner’s totally slacking, and we need to—”

  “Okay, the weekend. You can survive the weekend without it.” He reached into her breast pocket and pulled out her phone. “One weekend.”

  She folded her arms. “Fine.”

  Baudin started the car and pulled away, wishing her mother was here. She had always been the one who punished and disciplined. He had no tolerance for it, no knowledge about what was too much and what was too little. When he looked at her, she was just his little girl.