The Shadowed Mind

by Julie Cave

  "I've been seconded here," explained Zach. "It had become a bit of a basket case and they needed some serious help. Who else would they call?"

  Once in the lab, the mood shifted and Zach became very professional.

  "We literally combed the crime scene," he began. The items found at the crime scene were secured in plastic evidence bags and laid out on the bench. "And I really don't have much that will help you. The attack was fast and meticulous. There was little opportunity for the victim to retaliate in any way which might have led to some DNA being left at the scene. Also, the alleyway itself contained lots of DNA fragments from many different individuals, none of which are useful. It's what happens when people shoot up there or get involved in a fight. I examined the needle and cord that were found on the body and there is nothing I can tell you. The perp likely wore gloves. The needle is a cheap one that can be found at any needle exchange in the city, and the cord was of the garden-variety hardware store type. That pretty much only leaves the card presumably left by the killer on the body as a clue of any value."

  "I'm almost positive he didn't leave fingerprints on it," said Dinah.

  "You're right. The only thing we can do is find out the particulars of the photo — who is in it, where it was taken, how old it is and so forth," Zach said.

  "Have you had any luck?" Cage asked.

  "Not yet," Zach said. "There are no identifying markers, but I'll keep trying."

  "I've had a look at the photo myself," said Dinah. "At first I thought it was a military school or boot camp from a few decades ago. What do you think?"

  Zach picked up the photo and studied it. "You could be right," he said. "But how do we know its whereabouts, let alone when it was taken?"

  "I don't know," admitted Dinah. "I hate to say it, but we need another message from the killer to help us with that."

  "You mean, we need another body," said Cage flatly.

  "Probably." Dinah sighed. "Can you involve the media somehow; try to get the killer to communicate with us?"

  Cage mused. "It could work," he said, at length. "I'll have to talk to my boss."

  They stood in silence for a few moments, each lost in thought. Finally, Cage said, "You got anything else to share with us, Zach?"

  Zach shook his head. "Sorry, guys. I told you there wasn't much I could help you with."

  Cage and Dinah turned to leave, and then Zach said, "Oh, there is one thing. I know that the victim was killed by breaking the neck."

  The two investigators nodded.

  Zach made a twisting motion with his hands. "I asked my karate instructor about that move. Apparently, it's taught in the higher levels of some of those more extreme martial arts groups. You know, the ones who train cage fighters and such. Anyway, the more reputable martial arts teachers won't even go near that move, so it might help to look at some of the lesser-known martial arts."

  "Thanks, that's helpful," said Cage, writing this down in his little notebook.

  Dinah just stood and stared at Zach.

  "What?" the lab technician said, defensively.

  "I guess I just didn't pick you as a karate enthusiast," Dinah said eventually.

  He shrugged. "It impresses the ladies."

  Dinah grinned at him. "You need all the help you can get. I don't know if karate is enough."

  "You're just jealous because I'm so much younger than you," retorted Zach smugly.

  Dinah laughed, and she suddenly realized how good it felt.

  ****

  Ben Steffan brightened when the killer arrived at the depressing halfway house for what Steffan thought would be his final interview. The killer found it amusing that Ben actually looked forward to tonight, considering what was going to happen.

  "What are we going to talk about tonight?" Steffan asked. "I can't wait to read your article. I can't believe I'm in it! It's so exciting. It's the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me."

  "I thought we might go out," suggested the killer. In his head he screamed, Shut up, shut up, just shut up! "I've seen just about enough of this place, and I was wondering if you could show me places where you might end up if you weren't able to obtain treatment here."

  "That's a great idea!" bubbled Ben. "What a great idea. Okay. Let's go."

  It was almost too easy, thought the killer. It was so easy because his preparation had been so thorough. The killer was meticulous in every detail, and that was why everything was progressing smoothly.

  Along the way, Ben Steffan chattered away incessantly, which irritated his companion immensely. The killer ground his teeth together and bit his tongue in an effort to stop himself from strangling Steffan on the spot in full public view.

  Slowly they drifted east toward the Anacostia River, then south toward Capitol Hill. The homeless seemed to gather in small groups around naked fires burning in 55-gallon drums. The majority of them were men, but the killer noticed a few women in their midst. The average age seemed to be between 35 and 60, but life on the streets could often age a person prematurely. They eyed the two men suspiciously, instantly wary of any stranger.

  "I would bet that close to one-third of the guys you see here would suffer from schizophrenia or some other mental illness," Steffan said. "Without medication or therapy, they can't hold down a job. If they don't have good family support, there is nowhere else for them to go." He paused. "Actually, even if they do have good family support, they could end up here anyway. It's easy to assume your family is trying to drug you or imprison you when you're in the depths of the disease."

  The killer didn't particularly care, mostly because this was information he already knew. Still he continued to ask questions, pretending to be a harmless reporter, hoping to distract Steffan as they wandered away from the people.

  They kept walking into the black night. Steffan didn't seem to notice that most of the homeless had been left behind. He was too busy complaining about the lack of care received by the mentally ill. Finally, when even the intermittent street lights no longer brightened their way, either through design or destruction, Steffan seemed to realize where he was. He stopped short. "Where are we?" he asked, glancing around.

  "I thought you knew where you were going," the killer said glibly. "Aren't you leading this tour?"

  Steffan laughed. "Sorry, I must have got preoccupied. We have to go back."

  The killer looked around quickly. They were on a nice dark street, in a section of the city where the buildings were abandoned for the night. The fires of the homeless were well behind them and even if Steffan managed to yell for help, the killer would have finished his task and be gone by the time any of them arrived.

  "This is actually the end of the road for you," he said.

  "No, we need to go back," said Steffan, oblivious to the threat. "We'll just get lost if we keep going."

  In a flash, the killer had Steffan pinned close to his own body, one arm around his neck. Steffan seemed frozen in shock for several seconds, and then started to struggle.

  "What are you doing?" he asked, with effort. His hands scrambled uselessly at the strong arm pressuring his throat.

  "I'm actually very sorry," said the killer. "But someone has to stop the cycle, you see."

  It seemed that Ben put up less of a fight than Lakeisha. He was a slight man, but more potently, his senses and reason were dulled by the heavy medications he currently took.

  Therefore it took the killer no time at all to complete his work and let the body lie on the crumbling sidewalk. He made it mercifully quick. This time he didn't take as much care to stage the body; it wouldn't be found for some hours yet. He withdrew a card with a simple message on it from his back jeans pocket and read it with a smile on his face.

  He stuffed the card into the inside pocket of the jacket Steffan had been wearing and melted into the night, like a ghost in a nightmare that can't quite ever be forgotten.

  Chapter 5

  Dinah jolted awake from a heavy, dreamless sleep to the sound of her cell phone vi
brating on the night table. It took her several seconds to adjust, blinking sleepily in the dark room while the last tentacles of sleep slithered away.

  "Hello?"

  "Harris, this is Detective Cage," boomed a deep voice. "We've found another body that looks like it's related to the murder of Lakeisha Tennant."

  "I'll meet you there," said Dinah. "Where?"

  Once she'd obtained the address, Dinah quickly showered, made coffee and poured it into a thermos, and briefly thought about food. She decided to eat something later. Every nerve was buzzing with the anticipation of a crime scene and what they might find there.

  Dinah did not observe the speed limit and made it to the crumbling neighborhood in record time. Detective Samson Cage was already there, along with a slew of uniforms. Red and blue police lights cut through the gray, early morning light.

  Dinah approached Detective Cage, who nodded at her. As usual, he looked like he'd just had a restful eight hours of sleep, a long shower, and probably even a decent breakfast. In fact, it was entirely possible he'd given himself a manicure before heading out his front door.

  "What do we have?" asked Dinah.

  Surrounded by crime scene tape, a male who appeared to be in his late thirties or early forties lay supine on the sidewalk. There were no evident signs of violence, and he could quite easily have been overlooked as sleeping or unconscious were it not for the unnatural angle of his neck.

  "His name is Benjamin Steffan," began Cage. "His current address is a halfway house for the mentally ill."

  The two of them ducked under the tape and squatted down over the body. Steffan's eyes were wide open, as if in shock that he would not meet death gently. Dinah wanted to close them, to give him some rest.

  "I'm willing to bet that his neck was broken by torsion," said Cage. He spoke in the quiet, hushed tone that people used around dead bodies. "And that's what makes it interesting to us."

  Dinah carefully looked over the body, careful to touch him only where necessary. There were no other marks on him that would indicate a struggle.

  "If these murders are related," she said, thinking aloud, "it appears that the killer strikes up some sort of friendship. In Tennant's case, the killer pretended to be a friendly do-gooder or social worker with no expectations. He met up with her several times before he killed her. Perhaps the same is true for Steffan."

  "Why do you think that?" Cage asked.

  "There seems to be no struggle. Most victims will fight tooth and nail when they realize that death is imminent. It seems to be a natural instinct of self-preservation. The fact that there is no evidence of this leads me to believe that the victims knew and trusted the killer, and that his attack was a complete surprise. It helps that the method he chooses is quick and clean, but it also means that he has to be in the perfect position to execute the move."

  Cage nodded as they both stood. "I would have to stand behind you, pretty close," he said. He demonstrated on Dinah. In fact, their bodies would have to touch for the killer to get the leverage he needed.

  "There is no way I'd let someone I didn't know or trust get that close to me," said Dinah. She turned to face Cage. "So back off, man."

  Cage laughed, a rich, full sound that caused his entire body to resonate like a plucked violin string. They stood in silence for a few moments, lost in thought.

  Cage pursed his lips, thinking. "What if you are a vulnerable street kid, though? Wouldn't you be used to letting others invade your personal space?"

  "No," said Dinah immediately. "Not from behind like that. That's a position of trust, and any street kid quickly learns they must never let their guard down on the street."

  "I guess the question now is whether the killer left behind a card like last time," said Cage, after several more moments of silence.

  They squatted beside the body again and carefully looked through the victim's clothing. Dinah patted the body's legs with her gloved hands, feeling for a crinkle of paper or the stiffness of a card.

  "Got something," said Cage. He'd been searching the victim's coat and had found something in the pocket.

  Together they studied it intently. It was a blank generic sympathy card, with a picture of an angelic little girl on the front. There were no other distinguishing marks. Cage opened the card. Inside was a typed message, stuck to the inside of the card with a piece of tape.

  It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.

  Cage and Dinah looked at each other with horror. This put an entirely new spin on the case and, in fact, rocketed it into the stratosphere of the kind of weird crime that the media loved.

  "What is this? Racism?" whispered Cage. "Or something else entirely?"

  "I think it's something else entirely," said Dinah. A feeling of dread rose in her stomach.

  They were headed down a path of no return, with personal ramifications that would rock both of them to the core of their very souls.

  ****

  The medical examiner's office took over custody of the body, preparing to take it with them to the morgue. There was little evidence to follow up, and Cage suggested a trip to the halfway house where Benjamin Steffan had lived. On the way, Dinah phoned ahead to ask the director to meet them. She didn't give any details, other than to impress upon Reverend Notting the urgency of the situation.

  It was located in a neighborhood that seemed to straddle the lower and middle classes. To the north lay the gang-riddled, poverty-stricken suburbs where hope for the future was in very short supply. The house itself was situated in Edgewood, with the wealthier suburbs to the west — Columbia Heights, Mount Pleasant, and Adams Morgan. It was a neat, well-kept house with a wholesome, well-scrubbed look.

  Reverend Stephen Notting was waiting for them. He wore the worried, harried expression that in-demand caregivers often sport. Still, he graciously offered Dinah and Cage coffee and donuts and invited them into his office, which wasn't much bigger than a broom closet.

  "How can I help you?" he asked. He had a nervous habit of picking and pulling at the cuticles on his nails. Dinah was distracted, then irritated, by the man's tendency.

  "I understand that a resident currently lives here by the name of Benjamin Steffan," began Samson Cage. "Can you confirm that?"

  "Yes, he does. He's lived here for about seven months now."

  "And for what reason did Steffan come to live here?"

  "He suffers from paranoid schizophrenia," replied Reverend Notting. "That is a mental illness characterized by hallucinations and the subsequent inability to determine reality. The hallucinations are often paranoid in nature, so that the sufferer might believe any number of wild theories."

  "Like what?" asked Dinah.

  "Well, that the government has implanted microchips in his head, or that the CIA has recruited him for a dangerous mission, or that the Mafia is hunting him down." Notting paused for a moment. "The possibilities are endless, limited only by the victim's imagination. Each sufferer has their own unique hallucinations."

  "So what do you offer here?" Cage asked.

  "A place to live, primarily," said Notting, "in addition to medication and therapy that would otherwise be too expensive. We try to establish a drug and therapy regime that will stabilize the patient, and then help them to get jobs or go to school. Our main objective is to get them to a point where their disease is controlled and they can be part of society."

  "What happens to patients who don't get access to treatment like that?"

  Notting made a face. "Unfortunately, the worst cases end up homeless, in jail, or dead, either by their own hand or through violence of some description. Milder cases might drift from job to job, or end up living with their parents."

  Cage and Dinah were silent as they digested this information. Ben Steffan had been as vulnerable as Lakeisha Tennant, thought Dinah.

  "Is Ben okay?
" Notting asked, his voice calm but his fingers picking at his nails at a frantic pace.

  "No, I'm afraid he was murdered last night," replied Cage. "We found his body this morning over by Anacostia River."

  Notting paled. "Oh, how awful! Do you know what happened?"

  "At this point, we are still piecing together the details," said Cage. "Did you know that he'd left the premises last night?"

  "Our residents are free to come and go as they please, up to a point," said Notting. "So although I didn't specifically know that he'd gone out last night, I would also say that I'm not surprised."

  "He went out often?"

  "No, but the journalist had come to see him."

  Cage and Dinah glanced at each other. "What journalist?"

  "A freelance journalist came to see us. He wanted to write a series of articles on Good Samaritan organizations, as he called them. He wanted to speak to one of the residents, and Ben volunteered." Notting looked from Cage to Dinah, confused. "Why?"

  "So he didn't represent a newspaper or television station?"

  "No."

  Dinah frowned, thinking. It was the perfect ploy to gain someone's trust. Steffan would have opened up about his illness and past, thinking that he would appear in the media.

  "What did this journalist look like?" asked Cage, his tone more urgent.

  "He was white, about six foot, dark hair …uh, very average looking," said Notting, pursing his lips as he thought.

  Of course he would be. The killer would not go out of his way to make himself memorable.

  "Are there any distinguishing features you can think of?" Cage questioned. "An accent, a tattoo, a scar?"

  Reverend Notting was silent for so long that Dinah began to wonder if he'd even heard the question. Finally he said, "I don't know how to describe it. He had funny eyes."

  "Funny eyes?" Dinah leaned forward, watching the reverend intently.

  "Yes. It was like …there was no life in them, almost nothing human." Notting chewed on his lip. "There was no expression. They were the eyes of a snake."