by Rick Murcer
“Maybe you're right. And I suppose your lackeys are tired of doing circles around the building. That’s at least eight times since we started this enlightening discussion, so maybe I should clue you in.”
Fogerty said nothing, but the shark was back.
“Your daughter and son-in-law are just two of seven people murdered in the rainforest in a twelve- to-sixteen-hour stretch. The attacks appear to be random, as in the wrong place at the wrong time kind of random.”
“I see. Do you have any leads?” The shark was swimming faster.
“We’re working on it, and of course, we’ll let you know when we have something more.”
“Pretty stand-pat answer, Agent. I don’t suppose you want to go deeper than that?”
The man was asking the right questions, but Manny knew what he was really thinking.
“No, I don’t. But let me explain something to you. This is an investigation of horrific murders involving a killer that I believe is not finished. The SJPD and the FBI are hard at work and won’t appreciate any interference.”
Fogerty pulled his chair up to the table and put his large hands on the surface. “Do tell, Agent Williams.”
“Furthermore, let me tell you what these crimes are not. They are not an attack on you and your way of life.”
“My way of life? What, pray tell, is that?”
Fogerty’s stare had immersed completely into the dark side, and he reveled in it.
Time to drop the hammer.
“That of a piece-of-shit, drug-lord gig that has ruined lives and killed countless all in the name of what you think you deserve.”
“Really?”
Manny leaned closer. “Maybe there is something to this karma thing. Maybe you get what you give. What do you think?”
The man’s hand left the table and shot towards Manny’s face, but he was ready. He grabbed it in midair and twisted and pulled at the same time. Fogerty yelped in pain as his face jarred the table.
“Assaulting an FBI agent, a Special Agent, could land your ass in a cell, but lucky thing for you, I’m in a good mood. So here’s the deal. You’re going to walk out of here, make arrangements to get your daughter’s body released, and head back to whatever deep, slimy hole scum like you crawl out of. This isn’t about you. If I see you where you don’t belong, I will throw your ass in jail, got me?”
There was a slight nod, and Manny let him up. Fogerty straightened his shirt and moved toward the door, wiping at the small trickle of blood oozing from his lower lip. Hatred danced in his eyes.
The shark is ready for a meal, an FBI meal.
As Fogerty brushed past Manny, he stopped, then leaned close and whispered. “Know that this isn’t over, Agent.”
Then he slipped through the door.
Taking a deep breath, Manny rested his backside against the table, knowing what Fogerty said was true: this was a long way from over, for all of them.
The intercom flared on. It was Sophie. “Shit. Why can’t they put the damn talk button on these things where you can find it? Hello? Manny? Manny you need to come quick. We’ve got bigger problems than Fogerty right now.”
Chapter-34
“Damn, this is a real piece of work,” said Dean. The trace of admiration in his voice was undeniable. Alex turned in his direction, and his first reaction was of disgust, but also . . . veneration . . . same as Dean, though admitting it would be like a married woman saying she was waiting for Mister Right.
“That’s kind of sick, you know,” Alex said.
“I get that and you got to be a bit touched to do what we do, si? But this guy, and I’m pretty sure our butcher is a guy, was as precise and intentional as any killer I’ve seen, in any class, anywhere, online or in living color. It’s like he played it out in his head, then executed with no concern for making mistakes. I also—”
“Go back a second,” said Alex, leaving the second stainless-steel table in the row of four. He walked to where Dean had just separated the last leg from the torso of the gruesome, eclectic body from the bathroom stall.
“What?”
“You said you were sure this killer is male. Make your case.”
Dean stripped off his blue latex gloves, pushing his glasses up on his nose.
“Ever notice how these new gloves come off so much easier?”
Alex grinned. “Hell yeah, they’re the best yet. Don’t chap my hands either.” He glanced at the floor and shook his head. “Oh shit. Sophie’s right: latex makes me tingle.”
“Hey, you’re not alone.”
“Somehow, that doesn’t comfort me much.”
He motioned to Dean to continue.
“Right. Well, first thing is that ninety-eight percent of all serial killers are male between twenty-two and forty-five.”
“Nothing new there. Keep going.”
“Another issue is the strength it would take to cut these folks the way he did. Cutting through bone, even with an edge as incredibly sharp as this one, is no easy game. The blade still needs to be brought down with true force. Unless the killer is some exotic female Ninja with years of training and wears boxers instead of lace.”
“You mean like the kind of woman you might see in the movies or read about in comic books?”
“That’s it, boss, like that.”
Alex watched Dean finger-rolling the edge of his unkempt beard, He’d receded into his own world. There was no other way to describe it; he’d checked out.
“You okay?”
Dean’s eyes snapped back to this dimension and he gave Alex a weak grin. “Yep. Just thinking this through.”
“Well, think out loud.”
“All right. Like I started to say before, it’s like he planned this piecing of the bodies together. The cut-angle on each body part was no accident. The bastard had to be planning this from the moment he felt the hilt of that weapon in his hands, otherwise the limbs wouldn’t have fit together so precisely.”
“I’m glad you’re sticking to the science. What else?”
“If what I’ve said about the strength that’s needed to take these people out didn’t convince you this perp is male, how about the width of his hand?”
Alex raised his eyebrows. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Raising the mangled head off the table by the hair, Dean spun the left side of the face to a forty-five-degree angle and pointed to two oval, intensely dark bruises.
“These are thumb and forefinger marks, I believe. You know how this works. Sometimes these kinds of marks don’t show up for a day or even a few days postmortem. The distance between the two fingers is almost eight inches, not a large male hand, but too wide for most women, since the average distance between those little piggies for women is somewhere around five-and-one-half . . . well, you do the math.”
Déjà vu was a sensation Alex hated, even worse, hated to acknowledge. There’d be no ignoring it this time, however. His mind immediately flashed back to the Ocean Duchess and the marks on the heads of the victims Eli Jenkins and Dr. Fredrick Argyle had butchered. He could see Liz Casnovsky’s face like the murders had been seconds ago, instead of going on three years. Manny had broken that case open by observing the bruises on the crime-scene photos, and they looked eerily similar to these. Argyle’s postmortem marauding had created deep purple blotches that sang and danced to music that had been written by Satan, if one believed in that sort of thing. Right now, Alex was real close to singing Amazing Grace.
It was Dean's turn.
“Are you okay, boss?”
Alex sighed. “Yeah. I think you’re right about having to be a little ‘off” to do this kind of work. Some days . . .” Walking back to the second table, Alex went back to work on Amanda Griggs’s body, hoping to find something, anything. He had taken the arm that was between the legs of Colita, and Dean had brought over a foot and hand that looked like they were Amanda’s as well. Alex pieced them together and felt like he was assembling the world’s most macabre puzzle.
She’s not here. It’s just flesh and bone.
Her flesh was a gray, hopeless color, and the thirty-nine wounds on her body were difficult to look at, even now—but they told a story, and he needed to read better. Josh’s words came back to him. He and Dean were the FBI file report. They had to get it right.
Damn. Nothing like a little more pressure.
He’d do what he knew best, that’s all he could do. But he was good at it, and Dean was every bit as good as his old CSI associate, and friend, Max Tucker, maybe better.
Taking a step back, Alex took several more pictures. As he got to her calves and then her Achilles heels, he noticed the deep, precise slits on the back of each heel.
“I think he sliced her Achilles tendons to incapacitate her,” he said, frowning.
“I noticed those cuts. She wouldn’t have had much of a chance,” answered Dean.
“Bastard,” breathed Alex.
He squinted, setting the camera down. He reached for his magnifying glass and zoomed in closer. The faint aroma of decaying flesh massaged his nose, but he was virtually oblivious. He bent over the left cut, located an inch above her ankle. Closer still, the lens almost touching her cold skin, he repeated the process on the other side.
Something was different.
“Dean, come look at this.”
Dean dropped the small, polyethylene evidence bag onto the metal table and moved to Alex’s side.
“What?”
“Take this and get real close to the wounds on the Achilles tendons. Tell me what you see.”
After following Alex’s actions to a tee, he glanced up quickly, then did it again. Thirty seconds later, he did it a third time.
“There’s something imbedded in the right cut. Is that what you mean?” asked Dean. “It could be just a piece of dirt, or even an insect egg.”
Alex didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled his smallest set of tweezers from his kit and took the magnifying glass from Dean’s hand.
Slowly, with the steady hand of a surgeon, he teased at the dark spot near the middle of the lower part of the wound. Eventually, he was able to get a firm grip on the sliver-like object immersed beneath the epidermis. By this time, Dean had retrieved a microscope slide. Alex placed the fractured material on the glass. Dean put the thin slip-cover atop the slide, one side first, then let it drop into place so not to jostle the sample. It fit like a glove.
“Nice work, for someone from California.”
“We don’t all do drugs and surf, you know. But there was this time—”
“Later. Is that microscope ready?”
Saluting like an awkward cub scout, Dean nodded. “Ready for action, Sir.”
“Well done, Private Smartass. Get out of the way.”
“What do you think it is?”
“We’re going to find out. You might be right on the dirt particle, but unless I miss my guess, we just got a break.”
Guiding the slide under the lens, Alex adjusted the light and magnification until he finally grew still. A small, triumphant whistle escaped his lips as he stood back and motioned for Dean to take a peek.
Moving with more enthusiasm than a thirteen-year-old finding his first real whisker, Dean almost pushed Alex out of the way.
A few moments later, Dean mimicked Alex’s whistle. He stood, frowning and smiling at the same time.
“Do we have a database for this?” asked Dean.
“Not too sure on that one.” Alex heard the excitement in his own voice. “But maybe we’ll start one. There are a dozen ways to analyze this. At any rate, that has to be metal from the murder weapon.”
Chapter-35
As Manny rushed through the dingy, white door, he wondered what could be worse than what they had. A deranged, motivated serial killer getting ready for stage two of his mission and a drug lord that wasn’t about to sit still and wait for the FBI to do its job. Throw in the fact that they had no freaking clues worth a tinker’s damn . . . it had been a wonderful night for the bad guys.
He turned the corner, and Chloe met him head on.
“What’s going on? Did Fogerty and his lackeys do something stupid?”
Chloe shook her head, her red hair framing her face. He had to remind himself to breathe. She saw his expression, maybe even felt the same. Chloe tilted her head to the left and gave him a quick grin, then reached up and kissed him full on the lips. That now-familiar electric shiver rattled up and down his spine, and for a moment, just a brief moment, he thought of nothing but making her his wife and what came next—a lot of what came next.
An instant later, she was all business, almost.
“No, not Fogerty,” said Chloe. “Sophie went ahead of us, so we have to hurry. Follow me.”
He watched her hurry away and couldn’t help gluing his eyes on her shapely backside. No doubt about it now, she wasn’t making this part of the trip any easier. And just maybe he didn’t want her to.
Chloe stopped on a dime, turned his way, and gave him that look women have that says I know what you’re thinking and it’s about damn time.
The accompanying grin was even worse. Or better. Yeah. Better.
Manny reached for her and pulled her close, then whispered in her ear. “Soon, very soon.”
“It better be, or I’m going to have to make a quick buck on one of those lovely side streets in Old San Juan.”
Exhaling, he did his best to arrest those images and remove them from his head—the ones with her dressed in nothing but a birthday suit and a smile.
“Okay. Where are we going?”
Pulling open the door to the next floor, she led Manny down the first flight.
“Remember the box that came for Ruiz? The one that was bleeding?”
“Of course I remember. They were going to have the bomb squad make sure there was no problem, then have the CSU take a look.”
“Well, Ruiz got impatient, then pissed that it was making a mess on his desk, so he started to open it.”
“Did it blow?”
“No, not that. Detective Crouse was with him, waiting for the two squads to show. By the way, I’ve been noticin’ how she looks at your arse. I don’t like it, and if she doesn’t stop, we’ll be talking. Anyway, Miss Roaming Eyes stopped him, but only temporarily, until about the time the CSU and bomb squad got there. He couldn’t take it anymore. It’s almost like he had a premonition.”
“What does that mean?” He thought he already knew.
They reached the door that led from the dilapidated stairwell to Detective Ruiz’s office and burst through it.
They made the next bend in the narrow, dimly lit hall. Sophie was standing outside a small row of cubicles that meandered left toward an enclosed glass office that belonged to Ruiz and Crouse’s boss. She was talking in a low tone with Josh and Crouse, who had, at least for the moment, forgotten her less-than-pleasant encounter with the FBI man.
As he and Chloe got closer, his heart-of-hearts told him he’d been right. Ruiz was sitting in a worn, brown, leather chair behind the glass in his boss’s office, face in his hands, shoulders heaving.
When Manny reached Sophie’s side, she looked up at him, a sheen of moisture in her beautiful, almond-shaped eyes. Somehow, they were larger than he’d thought possible.
“Chloe filled me in. What was in the box? What body part?”
Josh shook his head. “The box hit the floor when Crouse tried to stop him from opening it.”
Nodding, Crouse’s tears made small rivulets down her high cheek bones.
“It’s—it’s unbelievable.”
Josh took over. “The body part was a hand. The CSU guys said it was severed no less than three hours ago.”
“Let me guess. It belonged to someone he cares about.”
Sometimes you can see a heart break, other times you can hear it. Still other times, you can feel it. Manny thought Crouse was going through the full gamut as Josh spoke quietly.
“There’s a ring Ruiz gave her on the fourth finger. The hand
belongs to his daughter.”
Chapter-36
Climbing into the white limo, Randall Fogerty had already decided what agenda he would pursue. If fact, he’d even run most of the details through his mind, more than once as usual. The devil is in the details.
His grandmother, the only member of his miserable, nonfunctioning, pathetic excuse for a family he’d ever remotely cared about, had said that a thousand times if she’d recited it once.
Braxton handed him a pearly-white handkerchief. He blotted his mouth, the corner of it blotching into a crimson cloud. .
When his granny had died, he’d even cried real tears no less. She’d gotten sick from the damned cancer sticks that the tobacco industry still maintained weren’t as harmful as the research indicated. But life is full of choices, and one of hers was to rock in that aged, red wicker chair sitting at the corner of their small, sagging veranda. She’d roll her own and smoke unfiltered tobacco all day, every day. Even on most winter days, she’d venture out to smoke. She did it for some forty-five years and paid the price. After she was diagnosed, she even laughed a little, saying she was surprised she’d gotten away with it as long as she did.
Granny had been hard as nails, no mistaking that, but every once in a while, those old, dim, gray eyes would soften, and she would hand him a candy bar and tell him to do right.
Up until she passed, when he was twelve, he’d tried to do what she told him was the right thing. For her, just for her. But when she checked out, so did his reason to respect anyone else. He quickly discovered that the world was full of assholes, and all of them wanted what you had, no matter how little that was, so you had to guard it with whatever you could.
“Hotel, boss?” asked Braxton, from across the seat.
“Not just yet. Circle the building a couple more times.”
His voice did not reflect the pulsing volcano ready to erupt from the lack of respect he’d just endured at the hand of that son of a bitch Agent Williams and that little Asian bitch.