by Alex MacLean
The clock in the dash read 12:20. He picked up the search warrant from the passenger seat and made sure everything was right. Satisfied, he folded it in half and slipped it into a shirt pocket. Before coming here, he had checked the gun registry to see if Sodero owned any firearms; he didn’t.
There was still the question of whether or not he owned any illegal ones.
In the rear-view mirror Allan saw the Ident van pull into the driveway, blocking the Audi; Jim sat behind the wheel, Harvey beside him. Like Allan, they were still dressed in their coveralls.
His cell phone rang. It was Coulter.
“Go ahead, Doctor.”
“I went through my files and checked those names you showed me. I did perform autopsies on all of them.”
“The first name in the book was the earliest one?”
“Yes, it was,” Coulter said. “Do you remember Sonny Benson?”
Allan straightened.
Benson?
“Sounds familiar.”
“Accidental overdose. You handled the investigation, Lieutenant.”
Allan closed his eyes with a sigh.
That’s right, he realized. Sonny Benson from Chebucto Road. Smoked too much crystal meth one night and was found dead on his sofa by his girlfriend.
“Happened last fall, didn’t it?” he asked.
“October thirty-first,” Coulter told him.
Allan watched the ERT van pull to the curb in front of him. “Lawrence was at the autopsy. I remember now.”
“Yes, he was.”
Allan inhaled a deep breath. Suddenly, the enormity of this information weighed down on him. He foresaw each and every person in that notebook being exhumed.
He prayed Cathy hadn’t been touched, but at this point how could he be sure?
“Thank you, Doctor,” he said. “I apologize for my behavior earlier.”
“No worries, Lieutenant. You just get to the bottom of this.”
Allan hung up, watched as Sam Keating and four members of his team spilled out of the van. All of the men were dressed in SWAT uniforms with Heckler & Koch MP5s slung over their shoulders.
Allan gathered up his mask from the passenger seat and stepped outside.
“How do you want to handle this, Lieutenant?” asked Keating, walking over.
Allan looked over at the house again. “We’ll spare a breach,” he said. “I know the man inside. Let me talk to him.”
Keating put on his ballistics helmet and secured the chinstrap. “As you wish.”
He turned to his men, directing two of them to each side of the front door, the remainder to oversee the backyard.
Allan began walking toward the house, Keating a few feet behind. Jim and Harvey got out of the van and waited in the driveway.
As Allan reached the front door and rang the bell, he felt his pulse climbing. From inside the home came a faint Westminster chime. Moments later he heard a stirring, the rattle of a latch. Instinctively, he reached inside his coveralls to his armpit and put a hand on the butt of the pistol.
Sodero opened the door, wearing a striped polo, golf shorts, and sandals.
For an instant his eyes froze on Allan. He looked startled.
“Lieutenant Stanton.”
“Hello, Lawrence.” Allan gave him a mock once-over. “You don’t seem fluey at all.”
Sodero’s lips parted slightly. “Say what?”
Allan watched him for a moment. He found it hard to imagine this man as a murderer.
At last, he said, “I was wondering why you didn’t show up at Cecil Drake’s exhumation. Coulter told me you called in sick.”
“I’m feeling under the weather.” Sodero threw a nervous glance at Keating, then at the two other men on either side of the doorway. “Why are you all here?”
“To search your home,” Allan said.
Sodero gave him a guarded look. A flush stained his face a light shade of red.
“For what? Do you have a warrant?”
Allan noted the tremor in Sodero’s words. “I do.”
“Can I see it?”
Allan handed the paper to him. While waiting for Sodero to read it over, Allan’s gaze brushed past him, examining the inside of the home. It was modern and bright with an open concept. Leather furniture filled the living room; oil paintings decorated the walls.
He wondered how someone twenty-six years old had acquired so much.
Then his eyes caught sight of two pieces of luggage at the foot of a winding staircase.
Allan became very still.
He was going to make a run for it.
Sodero’s astonished tone cut into his thoughts “This says you’re looking for human body parts?”
Allan fixed him with a gelid stare. “That’s right. Where are they?”
Sodero blinked. “I don’t know.”
Allan drew him close. “Like fuck you don’t. Why not save us the work of tearing apart your nice home. If they’re here, we’re going to find them. What’s it going to be?”
Sodero’s expression became sheepish. He stepped back a little and raised his hands, as if in a silent appeal. “Please. It’s not what you think, Lieutenant.”
“You don’t want to know what I think.” Allan’s voice became low and caustic. “Are you a murderer? Or are you just some weirdo who goes around in the middle of the night digging up graves?”
“I’m neither.”
“Oh, I’m certain that you’re one. It’s the other I’m wondering about.”
Sodero opened his mouth and then closed it again, speechless.
“Where are they?” Allan prodded. “Do you have them pickled in a jar like little Freddy?”
“No.”
Fed up, Allan fought his own temper. He waved to Jim and Harvey to come over. Then he stepped inside the foyer.
“Why do you suspect me?” Sodero asked.
Allan turned to him. “Stephen Eagles.”
Sodero’s eyes widened. “What? Is he in custody?”
Allan ignored him. Jim and Harvey appeared in the doorway now. Allan lifted a hand, gesturing for them to stay there a moment.
“What’d he tell you?” Sodero asked.
“He didn’t tell me anything. But you just did.”
Sodero shook his head, confused. “I don’t understand. Where is he?”
“In Acresville,” Allan said simply. “At the morgue.”
“What?” The monosyllable came out tight and high-pitched.
Allan nodded. “That’s right. He was shot in Acresville yesterday.”
Sodero stared at the floor and adjusted his glasses with a shaky hand. He looked stunned.
“How does a man like you know a petty criminal like him?” Allan asked.
Sodero swallowed.
“Stephen…” He stopped and then continued, “Stephen was my dealer.”
Allan frowned, remembering the hash and crack he found at Eagles’ apartment the night before, the lengthy history the man had selling drugs.
“For how long?” he asked.
“Since last fall.”
“Do you know who shot him?”
Sodero lifted his head. “I think his friend did.”
Allan paused, reflecting.
Herb Matteau?
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know, Lieutenant. Stephen never called him by name. But he’s the one behind the murders.”
Allan reigned in his impatience. “You tell me what the hell is going on, Lawrence. Right now.”
Sodero looked him in the face and his words came out in a hurried undertone. “I hired Stephen to get some body parts for me. I told him where the people were going to be buried. I decided new graves would be the easiest to dig up because the soil wouldn’t have settled yet.
“Lay down a tarp on each side of the grave. Remove the sod before it had a chance to root. Pile it on one tarp, the soil from the grave on another.
“Stephen seemed like the perfect guy for it. And it wasn’t like he’d
run to you if he refused.
“When business picked up in April, he wanted to enlist the help of a friend of his from Acresville. I was skeptical at having someone else in the fold, but Stephen said he trusted this guy. He was to handle the work in the Acresville area, Stephen here in Halifax.
“When you called Doctor Coulter and told him that someone dug up Hector Walsh’s grave and that it was connected with the murders of that homeless man in Acresville and Trixy Ambré, I realized that Stephen’s friend was the one behind it all.
“I told Stephen everything and he said that he’d take care of him.”
Lost for words, Allan stared at Sodero with narrowed eyes. His thoughts were a chaotic jumble of anger, disbelief, and revulsion.
Keep calm. Keep it professional.
It took a moment before he was able to speak.
“Take care of him, how?” he asked. “Kill him?”
Sodero nodded. “I think so.”
Allan remembered the Glock by Eagles’ feet. He ran a hand over his face, through his hair.
“What was Hector Walsh targeted for?”
Sodero’s throat moved in one convulsive swallow. “His head.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you,” Allan barked. “Have you no morals at all?”
“Please, Lieutenant.” A plaintive note entered Sodero’s voice. “You must believe me, nobody was ever supposed to get hurt.”
It was all too much, Allan realized. The disrespect for the dead. Sodero’s complete lack of conscience.
“I can’t put into words how much you sicken me,” he said. “Did you ever consider the people you dug up? They were husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters to living, breathing people like you and me.”
Sodero flinched, but said nothing.
“Tell me Eagles never touched Cathy Ambré’s grave.”
“He didn’t.”
“You better not be lying to me.”
“I’m not.”
“But she was next on the list, wasn’t she?”
A barely audible, “Yes.”
“You son of a bitch,” Allan spat.
At the corner of his vision, he saw Jim, Harvey and Keating watching them intently.
Allan didn’t want to know the parts they had intended to take from Cathy. What he learned so far was more than enough to decipher.
“What the hell do you mean, business?” he asked. “Are you making money at this somehow?”
Sodero hesitated and then nodded.
In a grudging voice, he said, “Come. I’ll show you.”
He led them through the kitchen and down the basement stairs to a huge room with a bar, pool table, and various pieces of fitness equipment.
On the other side of the room, Sodero stopped at a closed door. With one hand on the knob, he turned to them.
“You might want to put on your masks, gentlemen.”
Then he swung open the door.
Even through the mask Allan detected a strong smell like nail polish remover. When Sodero flicked on the light inside the room, a collective gasp came from the four men.
“Jesus Christ,” Jim mumbled.
Allan stood in the doorway, frozen. His mind couldn’t fully grasp what he saw.
It resembled an autopsy room, but different somehow. Tile covered the floor and walls. A dissection table sat in the middle of the room with a tray beside it that held an assortment of surgical instruments. Along the back wall was a network of pipes leading into what looked to be pressurized tanks of various sizes.
To the right, there were several body parts on a long stainless steel table—heads, arms, legs, and torsos, enough to piece together two or three human figures. All of the parts had their skin removed so that only the muscle and sinew showed.
Allan stepped inside the room, a chill passing through his body. Slowly, he walked over to the table.
“The plastinates are safe to handle,” Sodero told him. “They’re completely sanitary.”
Allan looked at him as if he’d come from another world. “The what?”
“The plastinates. That’s what they’re called.”
Allan reached out and touched an arm on the table. It felt stiff, unreal.
“What’s it coated in?” he asked.
“A silicone polymer,” Sodero said. “First I skin the body part and then I remove all the fat that I possibly can. I then give it a series of acetone baths to dehydrate the tissue. When that’s done, I let it sit in a silicone bath under vacuum until the acetone is replaced by the silicone.”
A moment of silence passed as both men stared at each other.
Unbelievable, Allan thought. It’s like he’s actually proud of his work.
“Whatever lead you into something like this?”
“Have you ever heard of Body Worlds?”
“No. What’s that?”
“It’s a traveling exhibition of preserved human bodies and internal organs. Gunther von Hagens is the man behind it.
“Last summer while in Augsburg, Germany, I took in one of his exhibitions and immediately became fascinated with his work. I wanted to try this plastination for myself and shortly after I got on with Doctor Coulter, I started experimenting with human organs.”
Allan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He shook his head with a strange amazement.
“I know Coulter didn’t give you the organs.”
“I stole them,” Sodero said modestly. “Sometimes when he left me alone to sew up the torso, I’d put some organs in my insulated lunch bag. He never knew.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked again.
Sodero blushed and then shrugged.
Allan turned his attention back to the table and it was then his gaze settled on an object that made him gasp.
There, behind a plastinated human arm, two eyes in a jar of liquid stared at him.
Allan swallowed and moved closer. The irises were blue.
“Were these given to you by Eagles?” he asked Sodero.
“His friend got those.”
Allan’s own eyes shut as a terrible realization formed in his mind.
Trixy Ambré. Had to be.
DNA would prove it either way, but Allan’s instinct told him that they belonged to her.
“Who were they supposed to come from?” he asked.
Sodero paused. “I don’t remember the name now. But I was surprised at the shape they were in. I had Stephen try for a set before, but they were too shrunken to be of any use.”
Allan’s stomach tightened.
Of any use?
“So you think they came from someone freshly dead?”
“I think so.”
“Like Trixy Ambré?”
“Yes,” Sodero said weakly. “I suspected it after you called Coulter on Saturday.”
Inwardly, Allan winced and turned away. He felt a new swell of horror and sympathy.
His gaze swept the room and he saw piled in one corner, rolls of tape, corrugated boxes, bubble wrap, and bags of packing peanuts.
With great reluctance, he looked at Sodero again. “Who are you shipping them to?”
Sodero hesitated, as if deciding how much to say. At length, he said, “Everybody. But mostly medical students and anatomists.”
Are people that fascinated by the macabre?
Allan walked around the dissection table. He could feel himself sweating in the coveralls.
He noticed a stainless steel trough pushed against the wall and he went over to it, looking inside. It was half-filled with a liquid that Allan realized was the source of the strong smell.
Immersed in one end of the trough was a shaved human head; nearby, in a wastebasket, a thatch of gray hair.
Allan had seen enough.
He turned to Keating, who stood outside the doorway with a balled hand to his nose.
“Sam,” he said. “Take Lawrence downtown.” To Jim and Harvey, “Process everything.”
He walked out of the room, took off the mas
k, and unzipped the front of his coveralls.
Jim came over to him, “What are you going to do?”
Allan touched his eyes. “I have to go back to Acresville.”
For a moment, he watched as Keating slapped cuffs on Sodero’s wrists. Then he quietly left everyone and went outside to his car.
As he slouched in the driver’s seat, exhaustion overtook him. Through the windshield he gazed at a patch of blue sky, trying to pull his thoughts together.
“What do you know about Herb Matteau?”
“There’s nothing to know,” David said. “He’s squeaky clean. No priors of any kind. Not even a parking ticket.”
“What does he do for a living?”
“He’s a dairy farmer.”
Allan considered this. “An honorable profession.”
“Yes,” David agreed. “He made the news here last month. Had an environmental issue that ended up killing a bunch of fish in Elm River. Court came down quite hard on him.”
Allan shut his eyes.
Armstrong sat back, steepling his fingers in front of him. “Another important issue to consider is the recent stressor, the triggering event that brought about this murderous rage in this man. What was it that set him off?
“This could’ve been a job loss, a separation or divorce, the break-up of a girlfriend, the birth of a baby into an already unhealthy relationship, or the death of a loved one.”
Allan opened his eyes. He took out his cell phone and called David. When he answered, Allan told him all that Sodero had said.
David was quiet for a long moment. Allan imagined him trying to let it all sink in, as he had.
“You know it makes sense,” David remarked finally. “I have Stephen Eagles’ cell phone records.”
Allan heard the rustle of paper.
“There have been several calls placed to Herb Matteau,” David continued. “Beginning back in early May and leading right up to yesterday when Eagles was murdered. In fact, Eagles called Matteau yesterday and a few minutes later, Matteau called him back.
“The duration of each call during this three week span was never any longer than two minutes.”
Wouldn’t friends talk longer? Allan wondered.
“Sounds almost business-like,” he said, watching Keating and his team shepherd Sodero across the front lawn to their van.
“Yes, it does,” David said. “The only other call before that bunch was on Christmas Eve.”