by Steven James
Now, as I looked around at the variety of agencies already onsite, I could feel it happening again: The spaghetti was beginning to spill off the plate.
It struck me that Congressman Fischer might be right about wanting to cut down on bureaucratic redundancy.
A Metro police officer was approaching my car.
I picked up a pair of latex gloves from the crime scene kit I keep in the glove compartment, made sure I had my lock-pick set, my Mini MagLite, my 3-D hologram projection phone, then grabbed my FBI windbreaker and stepped into the storm.
The officer held up his hand. “Excuse me, sir, but-”
I already had my creds out. “Patrick Bowers. I’m with the FBI.” I slipped the windbreaker on.
Rain boiled across the pavement, black grease frying in a dark, concrete pan.
He shifted his gaze from me to the facility. “The others are already inside.” The wind tried to swallow his words, and he raised his voice. “Did you hear? The perp, he set the chimpanzees on her-they chewed off her face.”
The news sickened me.
I pocketed my wallet.
Approached the building.
Stepped inside.
An expansive viewing area wound between eighteen enormous glass-enclosed areas, nine on each side. All of them were at least six meters high.
I shook off the rain, brushing my hand for a moment against the holster of my. 357 SIG P229. Most of the Bureau has switched to Glock 23s to make it easier for the gunsmiths and for interchangeability of ammunition in the field, but some of the senior agents had been allowed to keep their SIGs. I loved that gun, so I was thankful I was one of them.
Most of the law enforcement officers were clustered at the far end of the cavernous room, and I began walking toward them, taking in as much as I could along the way.
Three exit doors, including a stairwell that presumably led to the parking garage.
An elevator just to the left of the stairs.
Six video cameras, all non-panning, tucked into the shadowy nooks and crannies of the ceiling high above me. A few moments ago as I’d entered the building, I’d noticed two additional cameras covering the entrance to the parking garage, and I expected that there would be coverage above the emergency exits as well.
And of course, on both sides of me, behind the glass, the primates.
It didn’t seem like “cages” was the right word to describe the structures holding them. Habitats, maybe. Glass-enclosed habitats.
Each was nearly as wide and long as it was tall, and could be accessed through a door at the back of the ape-sized steel sliding doors that connected the habitats.
The constant chatter and shrieks of the primates filled the air.
Each habitat had a unique combination of rope swings and large canvas hammocks for the animals to lounge in. Some had tire swings or bars to hang from, others had blankets to hide beneath. All were lined with straw.
Agents Ralph Hawkins and Lien-hua Jiang stood conferring near a hallway that led to another wing of the center. Ralph’s densely muscled bulk stood in stark contrast to Lien-hua’s slim, willowy figure.
So.
The last I’d heard, she was working a case in Miami, and I hadn’t expected to see her here tonight.
Ralph saw me. “Pat.” His voice was low and gravelly, more of a growl than anything else. “Over here.”
Lien-hua and I hadn’t run into each other since our breakup. We gave each other a somewhat strained nod of greeting, then she averted her eyes to a nearby habitat. It appeared to be the one that contained Mollie’s body, but my view was obstructed by the Crime Scene Investigative Unit officers inside.
Even though Lien-hua wore jeans and had on a T-shirt and windbreaker, she looked as orientally elegant as ever. Thoughtful. Beautiful. Intelligent. Two strands of sable hair framed her face.
It wasn’t easy, but I shifted my gaze to Ralph. “Talk to me.” I slipped on the latex gloves. “What do we know?”
“One victim: Mollie Fischer, Caucasian, twenty-two. Attacked by two chimps. The keeper who found her put ’em both down.” His voice was steeped with thick anger. “The killer strapped the girl’s wrists to the tree limb. She didn’t have a chance. Still unclear why the crime occurred here. Mollie doesn’t have any ties to this place. That we know of.”
Lien-hua said, “The animals were injected with 1-phenyl-2-aminopropane.” There was anger in her voice too, but tempered with deep sympathy. “Basically, they were drugged to make them as aggressive as possible.”
“All right,” I said, bracing myself. “Let’s have a look.”
10
We entered the maze of hallways that meandered behind the habitats and past a series of glass-walled research rooms equipped with wire mesh partitions to keep the researchers safely separated from the primates. The back door in each habitat opened to one of the rooms.
Lien-hua walked beside me. Graceful. A gazelle.
I could feel the weight of the unsaid stretching between us, and I tried to think of a way to clear the air, but before I could land on the right words, she broke the silence. “Pat, our past needs to stay in the past.” She spoke softly, her voice rich with her Asian heritage, and though she tried to sound objective and detached, I could tell the topic was difficult for her to bring up. “This case, this is where we are. This is where we need to be.”
She was right, of course, but that wasn’t going to make things any easier.
“We can’t pretend that nothing happened between us,” I said, more for my sake than for hers. “That we weren’t…”
In love, I thought.
“Close,” I said.
A small pause. “I’m not suggesting we pretend, just saying we need to move on.” A thin thread of pain ran through every word, but I couldn’t help recall that she was the one who’d ended things, not me. “People do that, you know,” she said. “People see each other, they break up, they find a way to work together again.”
Yes. You’re right. People do that.
She looked my way. “We need to do that too.”
“I know,” I replied.
“Okay.” She took a breath, then added, “I’m glad you’re back in town, though.”
“It’s good to see you too.”
Lien-hua.
Cheyenne.
This was going to be a hard summer.
As we passed through the hallway, I noticed computerized testing stations, fMRI and CAT scan machines in the adjoining rooms. From a case I’d worked in San Diego last winter, I even recognized two MEG, or magnetoencephalography, machines used to study the magnetic fields that are caused by neurological activity.
There was definitely some big money behind this facility.
Lien-hua noticed me surveying the rooms. “We had a briefing before you got here.” Her tone was professional, that of a co-worker, and it hurt to hear her use it on me. “Mostly the research here focuses on primate cognition, but in this wing, they’re also studying primate aggression. The keeper arrived at 7:00 to check on the animals, found the security guard drugged, Mollie dead, and the chimps mutilating her body. She called it in. That’s about all we know. Metro police are interviewing her now.”
“Any indication she might be involved?” I guessed that Lien-hua would want me to mirror her cool, detached tone, and I tried to but failed pitifully.
“Not so far.”
“How was the drug identified so quickly?”
“They use it in their research.”
After a few more steps she said, “A personal question. Is that all right?”
“Sure.”
“How are you and Tessa doing?”
Although I hadn’t told Lien-hua about Paul Lansing, she was aware of my struggles connecting with my stepdaughter. At the moment I avoided the whole topic of Tessa’s father. “She’s good. Thanks for asking. Actually, she mentioned she was looking forward to seeing you this summer. Wants to talk to you about something called .”
A small moment.
“Yes. That would be nice.”
I kept my curiosity to myself.
We arrived at the doorway to the ape habitat where Mollie had been killed. The door was wide, but low, and at six-foot-three I had to crouch to get through.
As I entered, I was struck by the stark smell of straw and feces and the rusty scent of blood.
Death in the air.
To get to Mollie, I had to walk past the two dead chimpanzees.
Both had blood-stained teeth and streaks of blood smeared across their faces and hands. The larger of the two had a single gunshot wound to the chest. The other had been shot two or three times, it was hard to tell, and lay closer to the door. An officer was interviewing a distraught-looking female civilian, possibly the keeper, but I tried to avoid making assumptions.
Ralph was having a word with the three CSIU officers beside Mollie’s body. By the time Lien-hua and I arrived, they had stepped aside.
And so, Mollie.
Lying at my feet.
I knew that chimpanzees are many times stronger than humans and can turn violent, but I had no idea they could be this vicious. Most of Mollie’s face was missing, the deep, bloody bite marks trailing down what was left of her cheeks and gouging deeply into her neck.
With so much skin and meat missing from her face, her jaw jutted out grotesquely toward me. One of her eyes was pulverized, the other missing.
I felt myself grow both sickened and enraged.
She had a single piercing and earring in what was left of each ear and wore a silver chain necklace that was tucked beneath her Georgetown sweatshirt. Once light gray, the sweatshirt was now darkened with splattered blood. Using a gloved hand, I eased out the necklace and found a locket with two engraved initials: R.M.
Mollie had a small build, weighed perhaps 110 pounds, wore blue jeans and black pumps and had blonde hair, now matted with blood and several thin, grisly strips of flesh that had been torn from her face. Her right leg was obviously broken, the foot turned sideways, perpendicular to the rest of the leg.
A savage and brutal and terrible death.
The contents of her purse lay scattered around me in the straw.
Apart from the blood on her sweatshirt, her clothes were dry.
The leather straps the killer had used were still snugged tightly around each wrist, and the skin surrounding the straps was red and raw from what must have been her desperate attempts to get free. I noticed that two of her fingernails were chipped, and caught on the corner of one of them were several threads of blue cloth.
From the killer’s clothing?
Carpeting?
Bedsheets? A blanket?
The guys at the lab would find out.
I mentioned the fibers to the CSIU, and they told me they’d already taken note of them. I glanced up and saw two strips of leather hanging from the branch of the tree she’d been secured to. I assumed the responding officers had needed to slit the straps to lower her to the ground. “When was she last seen alive?”
“We’re not sure,” Ralph answered. “Someone saw her at the Clarendon Metro stop at about 4:00 this afternoon. That’s the last we know of.”
I considered that.
4:00 p.m.
It was now 8:31.
I looked at the black soles of her shoes. Scuffed.
Felt the cuff of her jeans.
Dry.
I ran through the seven steps law enforcement officers take: secure the scene, secure the subject, assist the injured, call for responders, detain witnesses, identify the body, pursue all leads.
“Who made the ID?”
Ralph indicated toward Mollie’s purse. “The keeper found her driver’s license, called it in. They got the congressman over here right away. He IDed her. Yeah, I know it’s unusual to do it on-site,” he went on, “but there was concern this might be a politically motivated crime, that his life might be in danger, so the Capitol police brought him in. Took him to a secure location when he was done.”
With the extent of her disfiguring injuries, I wondered how he’d identified her. A birthmark maybe. A tattoo.
He’s her father, Pat. A dad knows his daughter. Even in death.
I scrutinized the blood-spattered straw surrounding Mollie’s body. A frenzy of violence. “Other family members?”
“She’s an only child. Her mom is in Australia for a relative’s wedding.” The CSIU officers eyed me quietly. I had the sense they were not happy I was on their turf.
I stood up, appraised the area, taking it in. “Anything else like this? Any similar crimes that we know of? Links to other homicides?”
“We checked ViCAP,” Ralph said. “People have been fed to Dobermans, pigs, gators-but never primates. At least not that we know of.”
I could look into that more in-depth later.
The crime scene technicians would be scouring the room for physical evidence. I wasn’t here for that. My job was to notice the pieces of the puzzle other people miss.
I mentally ran down what I knew.
The Metro stop.
The rain.
The congressman’s high profile position as house minority leader.
Timing. Location. Patterns. Routes.
Lien-hua was studying the position of the chimps’ bodies. Ralph knelt beside Mollie, inspecting her injuries. The three CSIU officers were still watching me.
“Time of death?” I asked them.
“Not long ago,” one of them replied. He was slim with blue eyes, blond hair, and had a nervous habit of rubbing his left thumb and forefinger together. The cloth name tag sewn onto his uniform read Officer Roger Tielman. “Body temp and lividity suggest one to three hours ago. Probably sometime around 6:00. Maybe closer to 7:00.”
Not specific enough to help me narrow things down.
“Last call on her cell phone?” I asked. “Any texts?”
“We already followed up on the last ten calls-all from preprogrammed numbers. Eight female, two male.”
“Any from an R.M.?”
A quizzical look.
“Were any of the calls from someone with the initials R.M.?”
He sent one of the officers beside him to find out.
“She’s got hundreds of text messages from the last month,” Ralph added. “The ERT guys are tackling that.” The Evidence Response Team, or ERT, is the FBI’s forensics unit.
I pulled out my cell. Tapped in a few numbers on the flat screen’s touchpad.
“What about the facility’s security cameras?” I asked Tielman. “Anything?”
“Yeah. We checked.” He sounded almost insulted by the question. “The footage from 5:00 to 7:00 was deleted.”
On my phone I surfed to the Federal Digital Database and logged into the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s site. They might not record detailed data from every city in the US, but I was counting on the fact that they would track meteorological changes here in our country’s capital. I punched in my federal ID number then looked through the glass to one of the cameras above the central walkway. “Were the cameras on when you arrived?”
“Yeah.”
“And are they directed in the same position now as they were before the footage was lost?”
He looked a little confused. “The same position?”
I was getting frustrated by Tielman’s repeated need for clarification. “The cameras are all stationary; non-panning. I want to know if someone has reviewed the footage prior to 5:00 and confirmed that the angles at which the cameras are currently positioned are the same as they were before the footage was deleted.”
He let his eyes wander from me to his partner, a slim Hispanic woman, then back to me. “I would imagine they are.”
“Don’t imagine,” I said. “Find out.”
“Why would that matter?”
“Everything matters.”
“Go,” Ralph said, ending the discussion.
Tielman spoke to his partner, sent her to find out about the camera angles. He stayed behind as
she passed out the door.
The NOAA precipitation data appeared on my screen in a series of condensed scrolling columns of numbers, organized by longitude and latitude coordinates.
A few more taps at my screen and I’d pulled up the defense satellite’s imagery of the city.
I went to a corner of the habitat, pushed a little straw aside to make room for my phone, laid it on the concrete, and opened the hologram program.
A moment later, the phone was projecting a 3-D hologram of downtown DC. It hovered a meter off the ground, half a meter in width and length.
Glimmering buildings, shimmering roads.
With this phone I had the capability to rotate the hologram, zoom in and out, and overlay data to highlight specific locations and travel routes. Although I wasn’t sure my idea would work, I transferred the precipitation stats and coordinates onto the city, overlaying them against the hologram’s 3-D imagery, just as I do with the travel routes of victims when I’m doing a geoprofile.
The precip levels were marked in layered, darkening shades of blue corresponding to the precipitation level recorded by NOAA’s satellites. Although it was difficult to discern the subtle changes in color, when I studied it closely I could just barely make out the differences. I began reviewing the levels at fifteen minute intervals starting at 4:00, when Mollie was last seen.
“It’s not a spectator sport,” Ralph growled. His words caught my attention, and when I glanced up, I saw that everyone in the habitat, except for Ralph and Lien-hua, was staring at the hologram.
“Get back to work.” When Ralph speaks, people obey. Within moments they’d all turned away from me.
Lien-hua leaned down, brushed at a small pile of blood-spattered straw.
I continued to scroll through the time markers until I came to 7:00 and saw what I was looking for.
“I need to see the parking garage,” I said.
“What is it?” Ralph asked.
I closed the program, the hologram disappeared. I pocketed the phone. “Shift change and the Metro station. It fits.” I started for the exit, but before I could leave, I met two members of the Bureau’s ERT crawling through the door.