The Blood Born Tales (Book 1): Blood Collector

by T. C. Elofson

  “You just assaulted a police officer. That’s a felony in this state, sir. Now calm down or I will take you into custody.”

  The man immediately backed up and put his head down. I think if he could have crawled into a hole he would have done so.

  “Sorry, man,” he said in a soft, non-threatening tone.

  “Now listen up. We are police officers investigating the multiple homicides that occurred near here last night. If any of you have any information regarding this, I would like you to come forward with it right now,” Kenny said in his commanding way.

  Looks of concern and nervousness washed over the faces of the people around us. They looked around at one another, each wondering if somebody knew or saw something, and I was more than a little sure one or two of them truly believed that somebody in that line was the killer. It always went that way.

  I walked forward and addressed the barista standing behind the counter, and by the look on her face, I think she must have wished she could have been anywhere else at that moment. She was no more than sixteen years old, her blond hair pulled back into a cap and a lip ring lodged in the right side of her mouth. She appeared as if she was still in high school and had a look of apprehension bordering on fear as I approached the counter.

  “I see that you have a security camera here. Does it record all night?”

  “I… I think so,” she stated reluctantly with a shrug of her shoulders.

  “You think? Is there someone here who knows for sure?” I asked. She gave me a hesitant nod and then turned to yell for her boss in the next room.

  “Mr. Cheever, can you come out here please?”

  There was an uncomfortable silence as we waited. It seemed like an eternity had passed before the man showed himself to us, and the girl looked like a deer caught in the bright headlights of a car, frozen with terror. I’m sure her mind was racing through all the charges we could arrest her on: underage drinking or pot perhaps—all the shenanigans that teenagers her age had been known to get caught up in.

  “Thank you,” I said to her, relieving her a bit. But the waiting people behind me were starting to get very upset. Agitated whispers and quiet conversations were getting louder and louder about how they didn’t “have time for this” and how they had to “get to work” and so forth.

  Then just go to work, I thought. And at that moment, as if a few could hear my thoughts, several of them slipped out the back door and a wisp of cold air assaulted the room.

  Why stand here so long? Is their morning cup of coffee that important?

  Of course I knew it was; half the city would shut down if the coffee dried up.

  Finally, a tall man about thirty-five years old came out. He was wearing a blue dress shirt and khaki pants. His name tag read Mr. Phil Cheever, Manager.

  “The police are here, Mr. Cheever,” she said to him. He stepped out of his doorway, looked us up and down, and then cleared his throat before addressing us. It was his form of respect and compliance, I suspected.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Sir, my name is Detective Tim Anderson and this is my partner, Detective Kenneth Johnson. I need to take a look at your surveillance cameras from last night, if indeed they do record all night.”

  “They do. This is about the murders?”

  “Yes, sir,” Kenny said over my shoulder in his low, authoritative voice.

  The manager turned around and instructed us to follow him. We walked behind the man, back into his office where he took a seat at a small wooden table covered with invoices and files showing delivery dates and holiday plan-a-grams for displays. A large dry erase board showed the weekly work schedule and what managers were on duty for which days of the week, as well as the weekly projected sales and then actual sales for the previous week. There was a small 13-inch television monitor in the upper right corner of the room. A scratchy split-screen image of the store and the street behind was presented in real time.

  Inside a half-open desk drawer were pencils, ballpoint pens, and a yellow Post-it note with a login password on it. Two of the pencils and one of the pens were chewed, and the manager looked at the indentations for a moment and immediately was embarrassed at the state of his office. He looked at me and then to Kenny out of the corner of his eyes. Shutting the drawer, he pulled his keyboard close to him and logged in with the password written on the yellow Post-it note. The computer came to life and I heard several clicks around the room as the machine woke up.

  “This is what your camera sees?” I asked, pointing to the monitor above us.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you play last night’s video for us?” Kenny asked. The man gave a nod before pulling open a drawer and displaying a tape.

  “I’m sorry, we still use VHS tapes. We haven’t switched to discs yet.”

  “It’s fine. Now I need you to leave us alone for a while.”

  He stared at us for a moment wondering if he should protest, then left, shutting the door behind him. I walked around his desk, put the night tape into the machine and pressed play on the remote sitting next to the VCR. With several loud clicks, the machine hesitated, then gave in to its duty and began to play. The tape was in horrible, scratchy condition and displayed everything in a strange greenish color. It showed an empty street and a shop in the distance.

  “Tim, play it on three times speed so we can make this go a little faster.” Kenny was getting impatient and I didn’t blame him at all.

  I pressed the fast-forward button and watched the video as several people came and went quickly on the screen. Their motion was just a momentary blur. We sat there for ten minutes, watching the blurry images until we found something interesting.

  “Wait, what was that?” Kenny asked. I hit reverse for a few frames then hit play again. At first it was only a shadow, and then one of the victims flew into the frame for a moment and was gone. The killer was just outside the camera angle.

  “Damn. So close. I can tell this is it.”

  “1:21 a.m. At least we have the time of the murder,” Kenny stated.

  “Come on, let’s get this tape to the guys at FTA. They might be able to pull something from it.” The FTA was the Forensic Tape Analysis team in Wisconsin, but we had a guy at the department that interned with us in Seattle.

  “Yeah, Devin might be able to help.”

  * * *

  The early afternoon sun had finally burned off the fog that had plagued downtown and the cold air was slowly warming up. The late morning traffic was still very heavy as Kenny and I inched our way down 4 Avenue. We were in the truck, driving back to the station, when my cell phone began to ring. I took a deep breath and wondered what had happened now, as I was not ready for some other crisis to befall me. I was a little relieved to see from the caller ID that it was only my ex-wife, Sara.

  “Anderson,” I answered.

  “Tim, it’s Sara. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  “Sara, I’m sorry but work is hell right now. Can I call you back?”

  “Your work is always hell, Tim. That’s why I left you. But you still have a child and she is really worried about that fucking dog.”

  “I’m sure Zakk is fine. When I have a moment I’ll come by, okay?”

  “Fine,” she said in the recognizably irritated tone that I had grown only too familiar with over the years. It was a tone that became a daily and nightly occurrence during our marriage and continued long after I took my leave of her. She was one of the hardest women to talk to that I had ever known and it bugged me how she could still affect my moods with the simplest of phone conversations. I really did hate her.

  I could feel Kenny’s eyes on me as I closed my phone and placed it on the dashboard.

  I knew that Kenny wanted to talk as he stared out the window and rundown, low-income housing flew by. He could tell something was up with Merric. Kenny had always felt close to her from the moment she was born. He felt a need to look after her. That was why Kenny was named godfather to her when she was onl
y three months old. I always knew Kenny loved me and my child, and when my marriage to Sara fell apart it was very hard for him. He felt my pain, of course, as my best friend and partner, but there was more to it than that. Kenny loved Merric as if she were his own child.

  You see, Kenny had a child before Merric came into our lives. He was married and his wife was pregnant but she got very sick and the baby died before it was born. As I recall, she had a long case of pneumonia which raised her blood pressure to high risks. Then she got pre-eclampsia—a medical condition in which the pregnant mother suffers from hypertension—and this caused her to miscarry.

  The marriage had no chance after that and Kenny began to drink a lot. He was in so much pain. He didn’t know how to handle anything, so she left him. Kenny hit rock bottom after that. His uncle and I were all he had left. We got him into rehab and soon after that Sara was pregnant with Merric. So when Merric was born, it was as if he could finally have a chance at what it would feel like to be a father.

  I looked over at him and decided I should tell him. I have always had the ability to read people and it’s the things that are not said that speak more to me than the things that are said. It had never been hard for me to read Kenny. We had never really been good at hiding our feelings from one another. Even when we served in the Army we told each other everything. We had always thought of one another as brothers—we were family, in every sense of the word. Kenny wanted to help but he wouldn’t push. He wanted me to talk to him, and I knew he would not pull it out of me, but he hoped I would just open up about whatever was bothering me.

  I had always loved that about him, his ability not to push, to give me space until I was ready to talk. He knew when I needed to be alone with my thoughts and work through a problem. That made him invaluable as both a friend and a colleague.

  “He got out last night. I’m sure he’s fine,” I offered.

  “Zakk?” he finally asked. “I’m sure he is. He used to do it when he was younger. Remember? When he gets the scent, he goes after it,” Kenny said, half smirking.

  “That’s not good—he’s a cadaver dog. That means he’s looking for dead bodies.”

  “It means he found a scent,” Kenny said. “But he always comes back. We can go look for him later if you want.”

  “Thanks, man. That would be great.”

  I was only off the phone for a few moments when it started to ring again and my heart dropped. I was not ready for another conversation with Sara right at that moment. I reached for my phone and slid it open. The ID read Dr. Marty Colleens, OCME.

  “It’s the chief medical examiner,” I told Kenny as I put the phone to my ear.

  “Hello, Doc. What’s up?”

  “I have to see you right away. Tim, we have to talk about the bodies from this morning.”

  “Sure. We’ll be right there.”

  “Thank you.”

  As I closed the phone, I already knew that this was not going to be a good development in the case. She usually didn’t call me this early on to talk about bodies. Either something had come up already or it was not going well. I had instructed Dr. Colleens years ago to not divulge any information over active cell lines. I’d learned that lesson several years back when the media had gotten a hold of the cause of death of a victim by hacking into our cell lines. The information had ended up on the evening news before I even had it in my file. The doc and I decided then that we would always have face-to-face communications regarding open cases. I would never make that mistake again.

  “What’s wrong, Tim?” Kenny asked.

  “I don’t know. She’s concerned about something. She wants to see us right away.”

  “Alright, man, hit it then.”

  At that, I flipped the switch on my dash and two custom police lights glowed red and blue, flickering flashing lights out the back and front windows of my truck. Cars pulled to the shoulder of 4 Avenue as we weaved through the late morning traffic congestion.

  The Seattle Medical Examiner’s Office was at 908 Jefferson Street. It was a two-story concrete building with nothing but two glass doors and a sign that read King County Medical Examiner and the name Dr. Marty Colleens on the front door. The parking lot was empty except for three cars, all belonging to the staff and Marty. I pulled the truck to a stop just in front of the front doors and got out, adjusting my Smith & Wesson 40-caliber handgun on my hip.

  Kenny and I dashed through the double glass doors, flashed our shields to Michelle, the secretary, and she waved us through. She was an older black woman who never really liked me very much, but with Kenny, I think it was different. He reminded her of her oldest son who never wrote or called her anymore.

  “She’s in the Autopsy Room,” she called out to us as we moved down the hall. We came to two large, steel doors. I walked through the doors and Kenny and I slipped into a dressing room where medical gowns and plastic shoe covers hung in a glass case. We suited up before continuing into the Autopsy Room. As I had done every time I had come into the Autopsy Room, I slipped the shoe covers over my Red Wing boots so I would not get blood on me. The doc hates having the contaminates of the Autopsy Room tracked throughout the rest of her offices so she insists on the shoe covers. Smart woman.

  Stainless steel sinks drummed away as x-ray light tables glowed white and the two of us silently made our way across the concrete floor of the long room. Giant steel fans on the ceiling fluttered as they worked to keep the stench of death at manageable levels. There was a row of shiny steel tables lining the middle of the room, each holding its own body. A door on the far side of the room read Decomposition Room—known affectionately in the industry as Decomp—and I noticed that Dr. Colleens stood at the table just in front of that door, working on one of the victims. She was hunched over the body and holding an ultraviolet light, slowly moving over the surface of the skin.

  “Dr. Colleens,” I said, letting her know gently that we had arrived. “Give me the poop on this guy.”

  She stood up and straightened her back as if she hadn’t moved from that position in hours, then gave us a grateful smile.

  “Detective Anderson, Detective Johnson, take a look at this. You can see when I move the light over the skin of this victim that slight bruising is now visible.”

  I stepped closer and I could see marks all over the body. A long bruise went from his left shoulder to his right side, where a visible hand print could be detected. And on the neck there was even more bruising. Another mark from the killer’s other hand.

  “She held him from behind.” Dr. Colleens began to deconstruct the event for us. “She must be very strong. You’re certain that the suspect’s a female?” she asked.

  “Yes. The depth of her shoe imprints leads us to believe the perp is female,” Kenny told her. “She’s already killed six people. I think ‘strong’ is pretty evident,” Kenny added.

  “You sounded a little frightened on the phone, Doc. What did you need to see me about?”

  “Alright. The victim was male, in his mid-twenties,” she began, refusing to give into my claim about her being scared. “Cause of death is inconclusive at this time, however there is trauma to the back of the skull.”

  She paused, as if to let that sink into our unscientific minds.

  “The hyoid was cracked at the tip, as if he was strangled. There is a split in the cartilage between the t3 and t4 vertebrae, leading me to conclude that he was stabbed or punctured with something. Already, I have found traces of oxidized iron and other rust imbedded in the bone. Something very sharp and old left trace evidence behind. I’m having it analyzed.” She then began to shake as if very stressed.

  “Anderson, I have never encountered anything like this before. There is no damage to the tissue other than minor bruising. This makes no sense.”

  “No damage at all?”

  “No, he was obviously stabbed but there’s no tissue damage, just like the other woman.”

  “But how can someone be killed this way without showing any signs of ti
ssue damage?”

  The look on her face was utter confusion. She had no answer to my question and that was certainly a first for her. She was always able to fire out quick, scientific responses to my medical queries, but not now, not this time. I looked at her, waiting for a response, but then let it go.

  “What can you tell me about the woman from Sand Point?” I asked instead.

  At that question, she turned and walked to a table on the other side of the room and grabbed up a file folder and opened it. She began to read the confusing facts to me.

  “Victim female, late teens. Cause of death—blood loss. The body shows wear to her upper right condyle and damage to her lower lumbar vertebra. Contusions around the ankles and hip displacement. Elongation of spine. She was hung upside down for a long period of time. Damage to the number 6 rib. Musket ball found lodged in the rib, and no flesh damage. The bone had begun to grow over the musket ball. It had been there some time. She also has damage to her ribcage. I haven’t seen damage like this since I was in med school. The last time I saw this was in a picture of a woman from 1872. The deformity in that case was from a corset being tightened a little each day to give the child an hourglass figure. This would have been done at a young age, before puberty.”

  “Did you say ‘musket ball’, Doc?” Kenny asked, trying to bring her back to that, and I’m glad he did.

  “Yes, a musket ball.”

  “Like from the Civil War? A musket ball?”