“At last, we agree on something.” He smiled for the first time, her charm apparently winning him over.
“Dr. James, I assure you my presence here, my goal, is the same as yours— to catch the killer that is out there. Neither I, nor the FBI, have any desire to make you or your esteemed office appear inept. The FBI offers its full assistance, all its resources.”
“Thank you, but I just don’t understand why Richmond believes we can’t handle this on our own.”
“The FBI has resources which your office doesn’t. We have access to the world’s foremost behavioral specialist and forensic pathologist who perform tests with the utmost accuracy—”
“I know all that, but it all comes down to scientific deduction, a guessing game, doesn’t it, doctor?”
“Yes, and no one is better than the FBI at playing games,” Cat responded quickly.
James’s outrage had completely dissipated.
Over the body now, which remained just as it looked when Consuelo Vargas flatlined, Cat asked when they would move her.
“A van is on the way. They’ll be here any minute. In the meantime, what can you tell us?” Sharpness and sarcasm returned to his tone. Cat knew he was testing his younger colleague, twenty years his junior. She was up for the challenge.
She turned her attention to Consuelo Vargas; the victim’s wounds shouted the killer’s razor-sharp aggression.
“The injuries tell me this man’s one complex sonofabitch. From the look of the incisions, he uses an instrument with a small, very sharp blade.” She stopped for moment, thinking. “Uses it with surgical precision, a scalpel, perhaps. The wounds correlate with the other victim’s, one half to one and one half inches deep each from the look of it. Probably dealing with above average intelligence, perhaps genius IQ. The killer is most likely male, mid-twenties to late fifties.” Searching Conrad James’s eyes, Cat asked, “Did she know the other victims?” She knew the answer.
“No connection to each other as far as we can tell.”
“The randomness of the kill, then, suggests a smooth, easygoing type. Nonthreatening at first. Probably uses his charms to disarm their defenses, get them where he wants them. He is calculated in his choice of victim; each abduction is carefully orchestrated, probably even practiced beforehand. This woman had no idea she was in a madman’s presence until it was too late.”
James’s thick eagle-eye brows loomed low.
“Incisions here and here”—Cat was careful not to touch the corpse as she pointed to the chest and abdomen—“are precise. He knows exactly how deep to cut, without piercing any vital organs. My guess, he wants to keep the victims alive, he enjoys watching them as he tortures them. That’s why none have been disfigured in the face; that way he can see their pain, experience it with them.”
“Interesting,” James responded, his forefinger and thumb pinching his chin. A moment of silence. “Continue.”
“The manner in which he kills these women is much more than his MO. It is his signature—a way for him to shout for attention to the authorities. He wants us to find him, wants us to know he did this. He is proud of it. To him, it is art. As surely as if he had left us a signed confession, each of these wounds, the use of acid, is his calling card. Through it, he validates himself, his life’s work. These women can tell us as much or as little as we want.” She glanced at James. “All we need to do is observe objectively.”
“Very perceptive,” Richmond mumbled from behind her.
“Whoa, you’re losing me,” Dr. James complained.
“At Quantico, I’ve been trained not only in forensic medicine but in the behavioral sciences. The art of profiling, understanding the nature of the beast, can help predict his behavior and bring him to justice.”
As Cat spoke, her voice sounded more detached. He recognized the drone. He too had used mechanical, monotone diatribes when a body was especially gruesome. It was a defense mechanism. He knew it well.
Just then, the van arrived to pick up Consuelo Vargas. Dr. James quickly oversaw the removal, placing bags over the deceased’s hands and feet to preserve any hair, skin, or blood evidence that might be present. Within two minutes, Consuelo Vargas was on the move.
“Would you like a lift to my office?” Dr. James asked. “My car’s just outside. I presume you gentlemen won’t be joining us for the autopsy?”
Stone Kilroy turned white, looked like he would pass out. Richmond feigned an important meeting. Walker flat out declined.
As Cat left the ER with Dr. James, a wave of nostalgia overcame her when she saw what must be Consuelo Vargas’s children grieving in the hallway. A small-boned, dark-complexioned boy, not much bigger than her own, was holding to his father’s thigh tight, crying. Cat picked up a few Spanish words. “Morte, mama, aqui.” Her thoughts drifted back to her Joey—she would phone him tonight to be sure he was all right. Cat longed to hold this woman’s child, to comfort him, but it was not her place. She and the woman’s husband exchanged knowing glances, his dark eyes stained with tears.
She knew this family would have no solace, even after her work was done.
Quickly, Dr. James and Cat left UCLA. At least Cat believed she had won him over.
The autopsy room gleamed—ten stainless-steel tables. The air was cold. Like death. Icy air forced through a huge vent overhead. Despite Dr. James’s concerns, Orange County’s autopsy facilities were better than most.
“I presume the appropriate photographs, clothed and nude, have been taken?”
Dr. Conrad James nodded through his surgical mask.
“And X-rays taken?”
He nodded once more.
Cat Powers adjusted the microphone attached to her surgical garb’s front, with a latex-gloved hand, and began to dictate. She looked briefly at the camera lens as she continued, having turned the unit on with a handheld remote.
Moving to the bottom of the body, she checked the toe tag, confirming the identity. After rote dictation of the case number, condition of the body, age, sex, race, length, weight, and general condition of the dental work, Cat began sizing up the wounds, her expert eyes roaming.
“Rigor mortis is present in the extremities,” she said. As she spoke, it was hard for her not to concentrate on the wounds, the rage that the victims of this burning killer had faced in their last minutes. Whether old or young, the killer displayed an inordinate amount of medical skill, trained no doubt. His savagery was extreme, given the multiple stab wounds and his use of acid to further disfigure. It took no great imagination to understand that this man was deliberate with each cut, enjoying his work. From what she knew of the semen found at the scene, she surmised that throughout the cutting ritual he became sexually excited and that excitement culminated in ejaculation over his prey, either immediately before or after her death. At this point, Cat couldn’t tell.
She forced herself to focus on the victim.
What could she tell?
“There is a single scar in the lower right quadrant, well healed, from a previous appendectomy. No moles, tattoos, or other scars are present.”
She continued. “The skin texture is abnormal. White ubcutaneous veins are visible over the ventral sternum and abdomen. The third-degree burns appear more pronounced on the ventral buttocks. Third-degree burns cover 70 percent BSA, including all extremities. There is deep tissue damage and extensive necrosis. The face is untouched. There are multiple lacerations to the skin.”
Cat picked up a plastic ruler and held it against the largest wound. “There is a one-centimeter incision…”
She reached up and turned off the camera.
“Her throat, did anyone catch this?”
Despite the intubation, Cat noted that tissue near the trachea had bruised so severely that there were discoloration scars on the back and side of the neck. The trachea is a nearly cylindrical tube of cartilage and membranes that extends from the larynx to the fifth thoracic vertebrae. Injury to the eleven-centimeter-long tube could cause difficulty breathing
and speaking. It was clear to Cat that the only reason Consuelo Vargas had not said more to her rescuers was because she simply couldn’t.
She desperately wished the woman had lived.
“Was this exhibited in any of the other victims?” she asked Dr. James, anger running just below the surface.
He remained silent, then responded, “Not that I recall.”
Silently, Cat made a note of the killer’s apparently escalating violence. Or perhaps Consuelo Vargas simply refused to go quietly, and he had sickened of her shrieks—his remedy the destruction of her means of communication.
Cat turned the camera back on and described the injury with great care and precision, removing a tissue sample to a sterile surgical tray for further analysis. Proceeding down the length of the body, she continued to document the incisions as best she could, counting the number and the portion of the body where each appeared, estimating the size and depth, using a plastic ruler.
The most pronounced cut warranted special attention. “There is a three-centimeter-long incision to the left anterior abdomen, just deep enough to reach the subcutaneous fatty tissue. Blood vessels below have not been affected. The incision is a straight clean cut; edges of the incision are not serrated in any manner.”
Dr. James liked what he heard. “Continue,” he said.
“Like the others, this looks like the work of a small, very sharp blade. This wound doesn’t penetrate the abdomen’s vital organs.”
“Semen was collected from her skin?”
“Yes. Already at the lab.”
Cat carefully looked under the victim’s fingernails. There was no blood, but she managed to scrape what appeared to be skin onto a glass slide.
Satisfied she had covered all the cuts, she briefly examined the chest for rib fractures and moved on. Cat made a Y-incision, midline running down to the pubis. Dr. James fidgeted as if getting bored. If this one was anything like the others, there would be no internal injury other than expected lung damage from the sulfuric acid’s vapors being breathed in. Consuelo Vargas was true to form.
Like her predecessors, there was no sign of sexual intercourse or penetration. The head and brain were unremarkable, no evidence of petechia of the conjunctiva, indicating strangulation or hanging.
After dictating the remainder of the findings and sectioning tissue samples of the major organs, Cat felt exhausted.
Snapping off her surgical gloves, she asked if Dr. James would mind taking her back to the hotel.
“Yes, of course,” he responded in a casual manner.
Did he think she was coming on to him? She found herself noticing for the first time that he wore no wedding ring. Within minutes, they were in his midnight blue Lincoln Continental, the car accelerating smooth as silk through Santa Ana’s streets. After dark, downtown parts of Santa Ana took on a seediness, a callousness for anything and everyone decent. Visited by drug dealers, prostitutes, and lowlifes, what was a major hub of Orange County during the day descended into filth at night. Cat was pleased she was being spirited through the streets with a man at her side. Dr. James seemed impervious to yellow stoplights, as if he felt the same sense of urgency.
“You seem very at home in my autopsy room.”
“Guess I’ll take that as a compliment. It’s better equipped than most.”
“Thanks. Our lab’s one of the best on the West Coast.” He sounded like a proud captain of a ship, boasting the merits of each of his seaworthy mates.
“Yes, from what I hear your turnaround time is about half of downtown Los Angeles’s lab.”
“And a bit more precise too. You heard about that DNA screw-up they had?”
“Yes. It made every national paper including the Post.”
Dr. James rolled his eyes skyward.
Enough of the small talk. Cat asked, “What do you make of the damage to the trachea today?”
“Perhaps he wanted nothing more than for her to be quiet.”
“I don’t believe so.” Her pale blue eyes glistened, boring into him. “On the surface, that may be what occurred. But at a deeper level, it indicates accelerating aggression. The other bodies, from the photos I have seen, don’t have any outward signs of aggression.” Cat had to work from photos because Nancy Marsh and the other girl had been buried, their families given some small semblance of dignity and closure. Exhumations were out of the question and not necessary. The photos and autopsy reports said enough, speaking volumes about the predator.
She continued. “This third corpse, the injury to the neck, shows his hostility is escalating. The earlier cases indicate a meticulous attention to detail, cool, cunning. Deliberate. Nothing was left to chance, from the random choice of unrelated victims to the method of the blood sport.”
“A lot to assume from one look at the throat?”
She ignored the question. “With two killings behind him, he feels more confident, sure of himself. Enjoying the police fumbling. Initially, the act of killing appeared to have a ceremonial aspect. But this third one—she’s different. This one was not the perfect murder. It did not go as he planned. Perhaps he was startled midway through the ritual, and he injured her to keep her screams at bay.”
“What are you saying, doctor?”
“I’m saying this predator was disturbed unexpectedly. Something spooked him. We got too close.”
“What do you make of the acid?”
“Less than 9 percent of female deaths in the United States fall into the ‘other’ category, the majority being gunshot, poisons, hanging. Our madman is definitely imaginative in his method. Sulfuric acids are used in industry and, in more diluted forms, in medicine. I’ll do some research on who could get their hands on the stuff easily.”
“In your opinion, were they killed before or after the burns?”
“After, I believe. With the Vargas woman, he may have incapacitated her with the injury to the neck, then allowed her to revive, to listen to her pathetic animal cries for help. No doubt he chooses his cuts very carefully. My guess is the smallest ones come first. He allows these to gape open, then pours in the acid, enjoying the sounds of sheer terror. He waits between each infliction, cutting as he goes.”
“With what reason? It would seem he would want it over quickly.”
“Far from it. His control of the death process is very much a catharsis. By gaining control of her life, he gains control of his own. Perhaps he needs to gain control of this more animal part of himself, and this is the only way he knows how.”
“Then he seeks to control death itself?”
“Maybe. I think, more so, he intends to control himself, the cruel inhuman part of himself. Maybe because it is so at odds with the rest of what he projects to society.”
“Interesting.”
They rode in silence for the remainder of the trip, each replaying the conversation, the autopsy, the possible reasons in their minds.
When she got out and removed her bags, Cat said to him, “Get a good night’s sleep, doctor. Tomorrow will be no more pleasant than today.” They both understood what she meant as she watched him drive away.
FOUR
Hell is oneself.
—T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party
Breakwater beckoned him, the open sea beyond. Just out of Huntington Harbor, now under Pacific Coast Highway’s overpass, the waves lapped at his fifty-four-foot yacht’s stern. To his left, the jetty painted a lovely picture against a mid-afternoon sun’s sky. He maneuvered the sailboat past what used to be the navy’s Long Beach shipyard. A great loss to the sea, he believed. A mistake.
Mistake.
The word haunted him.
His last one had been a mistake. Consuelo Vargas had been pretty enough, but her social rank was below him. Somehow that night it didn’t matter; he had wanted her and he’d taken her. But he was a man of taste, culture. He would have no more migrant farm workers, at least not tonight.
He’d lost his cool; that was a mistake too. Letting himself stroke her the way he did,
sliding his fingers slowly along the soft skin of her thighs, under her cotton panties. He blinked and breathed hard, allowing himself to relive it. He stroked her through the cotton at first, till she moaned, her breathing faster. Then, slowly, he moved below, his finger making small slow circles on her. She squirmed to get closer to him, but he would not allow it, would not let any other part of her touch him.
He was careful not to penetrate her, as he touched himself.
She screamed out in delight, breaking the spell. Instantly, he removed his hand, recoiled from her.
“Te quero, Papi.” she had told him.
“Nada.”
From then on, she had been almost like the others. He had held her round the throat till she lapsed into unconsciousness. That’s when the cutting began. The blessed cutting. His release.
Blinking, he regained command of the present. Some distance out over the water now, he intended to head out a mile more, then due south toward Newport. Passing an oil rig, seals barked a warning to him to stay away. Winds were favorable. He made quick work of sailing by the Huntington Beach Pier. It seemed to him a sad testament to today’s youth—garish neon-signed multistory complexes replacing the quiet mom-and-pop surf shops and burger stands. Some managed to stay on, but they were fighting the ebb tide of dreaded modernization. Kids didn’t realize that it was those small establishments that had seen the great days of surfing, the giant wooden boards, the old school surfers who had made Huntington Beach the home to the Surfer’s Hall of Fame. Now the pier was nothing more than a tenuous monstrosity.
An hour and a half later, he neared the mouth of Newport Harbor. A far bigger harbor than its neighbor to the north, Newport was where he felt most at home. Multimillion-dollar homes lined both sides of the breakwater. This was the playground for Southern California’s elite. Forty-thousand-dollar vehicles were as passé as mom’s station wagon. Even Ferraris barely turned heads. This was his town. He smiled, thinking of his plans. Squinting into the setting sun, he pulled his corduroy baseball cap squarely down over his eyes.
The Burning Man Page 3