Cajun Fire

by Rick Murcer

  “Stay in contact with me,” said Josh. “I’m waiting to hear from Barb’s team on the interrogation progress, and Manny and Sophie will be landing near the ADX facility soon.”

  He put his hand on Alex’s shoulder and smiled at Chloe. “I’m good with this change in direction. Manny had basically quoted that old saying: there’s nothing like good police work. He was right. We were distracted and running in circles, it seemed with no traction, even though the database searches will help in the long run, I hope. At any rate, I feel at least like we’ve shifted gears. Good luck.”

  “Thanks, you too. We’re going to need it,” said Alex.

  Alex watched him walk away, grabbed his case, and then turned toward the body, Chloe in tow. They stood over the end of the table where the remainder of the woman’s head lay. He glanced at Chloe, expecting at minimum a hint of repulsion, but saw none. He’d almost forgotten how tough she’d had to be throughout her career.

  After she pulled out her phone, she slid her finger and then showed him the screen.

  “This composite profile picture that Brooks helped with is close. The hair is different, but the curve of what’s left of her face and that chin line looks like a match, to the naked eye.”

  “It does,” said Alex, squinting at the photo, which he already had memorized. “That’s where proving it comes in. I’m going to leave the whys and what-fors to you, for now. If this is the same women, the science might help determine some of those questions.”

  “Agreed.” Chloe bent closer to the body. “Where do we start?”

  Reaching into his case, he took out his Nikon DSLR camera and began taking pictures, steadying it with his newly constructed left hand, pushing the button with the index finger on his right.

  Stepping back, he then bent close, changed angles, all the while circling the body, careful to allow as much sunlight as necessary. He supposed if he hadn’t fallen in love with forensic science, he might have tried his hand at photography. Taking pictures felt natural to him.

  Changing directions, he took a step, then bumped into Chloe, not realizing she’d been following his path closely.

  “Oops, sorry. Just trying to see what you see,” she said.

  He put the camera down on the faded wooden table. “Okay, Mrs. Williams, what do you see?”

  Chloe raised her eyebrows, then smiled. “Okay. I’ll try, don’t you know.”

  Her Irish intonation always made him grin.

  “I see too many teeth marks left by the gator in a couple of places to distinguish any trauma there. So let’s look at the other places where she was covered and relatively clean.”

  “Great start, Agent.”

  Scanning the remains with an expert eye, Alex watched while she stopped at the woman’s side, near her right breast, just above where a huge part of the victim’s flesh and internal organs were missing.

  Putting on her synthetic gloves, Chloe reached down and lightly touched a symmetrical hole that didn’t appear gator related.

  Good eye. It wasn’t.

  “Gunshot?” she asked.

  “Yep. That’d be my guess. Let’s find out for sure.”

  Reaching into the black leather kit, he removed a long, narrow, tweezer-like instrument, winked at Chloe, and then slowly, his hand as steady as a surgeon’s, he lowered the tool into the hole.

  There was a quiet sucking sound as water and tissue oozed from the wound. The accompanying aroma was far less than savory, but Alex ignored it, intent on his mission. After a few more seconds, he felt metal hit metal. Maneuvering the piece until he was satisfied he had it in the proper position, he withdrew it, the crinkled slug dangling from the tip of the tweezers as it left the woman’s torso.

  “Get me an evidence bag, please.”

  A breath later, the spent slug was sealed in polyurethane.

  “Can you tell what caliber it is?” asked Chloe.

  “It’s not in bad shape, and we’ll have to run it through ballistics, but I know Detective Brooks’s service weapon is a Glock 22, forty caliber. This looks like it could be a match for that caliber.”

  “But we can’t jump to conclusions, right?”

  “Right. Follow the science, and it takes the guesswork out of it.”

  Leaning back, Chloe put her hand on her chin, Basil Rathbone-like. “Was that what killed her?”

  Alex shrugged. Another good question.

  “Again, we’ll verify that in the coroner’s lab, but no, I don’t think so. Looking at the entry of the bullet and where it ended up, and I’m not a doctor, but I believe it must have hit a rib. That’s why there’s damage to the slug. I think she would have bled significantly, but it wouldn’t have killed her right away.”

  “So we keep looking for something exterior?”

  “Right again. If we don’t find anything, we have two conclusions to sift through.”

  “Those are?” asked Chloe.

  “She was either killed by something internal, like poison, or something else not so obvious. Or the gator snacked on the part of the body that would give us a clue as to what really happened.”

  He reached up and pulled open the victim’s one remaining eye, then examined her neck and throat area.

  “Okay, there are no ligature marks around her throat, and her eye doesn’t show any petechial hemorrhaging, so I think we can rule out strangulation.”

  “Got it.”

  “Let’s check the next possibility on the forensic list. She could have drowned.”

  “Water in the lungs?”

  “You’re a natural at this, Chloe. But that’s not the only thing that determines death by drowning. She doesn’t appear to have any wounds on her hands and arms from struggling against an attack. Particularly, injuries that might have led to being forcibly thrown or held in the water. The bruising around the gator bites looks postmortem to me, so I think we’ll not assume she drowned.”

  He ran his hand along a small section of plastic still attached to part of the leather belt near her waist.

  “Throw in the fact that she was probably completely wrapped in plastic like this, I’d say she was most certainly dead before she became a meal.”

  “Makes sense,” said Chloe softly.

  Glancing at her, he noticed she was looking at the left side of what remained of the woman’s neck.

  She pointed a finger at a small hole, purple and blue in color, below the woman’s ear. It appeared to be too clean to be a bite or random injury caused by rocks on the lake bottom.

  “What’s that, Alex? It looks different.”

  “You’re right. It could be a stab wound. Let’s see.”

  Stepping back to his kit, he pulled a narrow flashlight from a bottom shelf, then grabbed a smaller pair of tweezers.

  “Here,” he said, handing Chloe the light. “Shine this right into the wound. Sometimes, every once in a while, depending on the angle of the thrust . . .”

  His voice trailed off as he became lost in the idea that this could be something special. Manny would have been proud of the fact that he was riding high on a mere feeling, and not science.

  At first, he saw nothing. He moved a small section of pale, shredded flesh, and there it was, reflecting against the steady rays of the light.

  Gently, carefully, he latched on to the barely visible piece of metal. He then held it close to his eyes. He felt Chloe standing over his shoulder, her warm breath reminding him he wasn’t alone.

  “What is it?”

  “That, Agent, is the miniscule tip of the knife that helped sever this woman’s carotid artery.”

  CHAPTER-28

  “How do you want to do this?” asked Belle.

  Barb pointed at the two-way mirror leading to the holding room of the safe house. The two attackers sat across the room from each other. Both showed pointed physical effects of losing their encounter with Sophie and Manny—bruises, a black eyepatch on the right eye of the man, and a bandage across the woman’s arm where a hot bullet had left its mark.
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  “We do what we always do, Belle. First, we asked nicely. If that doesn’t work, well, then . . .”

  “Dat’s right. It probably won’t do any good, but we will try,” said Braxton, his mammoth arms crossed against his thick chest.

  “Okay, I understand that, and I know we don’t have much time,” said Belle, frustration seeping into her voice. “But we usually separate suspects into different rooms. It makes them uneasy, and they don’t gather any strength or resolve from their cohorts.”

  “Ahh, dat’s what ever’body does, but not dis time, not in dis circumstance.”

  Barb coughed lightly into her fist to clear her throat, then explained. “Sometimes in these high-pressure situations, the perps will show us something with their body language because of the increased tension of being together. You’d think they’d take a little comfort from each other. I haven’t seen it work that way very often. No one wants to be the first to crack. Hell, sometimes they argue with each other. Either way, when the heat is turned up, you can almost see them get ready to turn on each other. They want to be the first one to make a deal, especially when you ask the right questions. You can profile. Tell me what you see.”

  Belle stepped toward the glass, her eyes riveted on the perps sitting a few feet from each other. She flinched slightly when the man raised his head, glanced at the woman, and shared a toothy, exaggerated grin.

  Barb touched her arm. “And?”

  “Okay, it’s subtle, granted, but they are on the same page. I don’t see any real fear in them. Anxiousness maybe, but no fear.”

  “I agree. But why aren’t they afraid?” asked Barb.

  “I don’t know. Arrogance?” said Belle.

  “Maybe, but that’s why we need to get in there and get this thing rolling. We’ve let them stew long enough. We’re under the gun here.”

  It was Belle’s turn to cross her arms. The look on her face was becoming more troubled. Barb knew what was coming next. And it did.

  “What about their rights? Their legal rights?” Belle asked.

  Braxton’s loud laugh almost made them both jump, then Barb smiled. His laugh was very infectious, even at inopportune times.

  “Do ya tink dese people have rights? Or dat we give a shit about dem if dey did? Dey tried to kill two agents of the ACTU. Dey got nothing.”

  When Belle frowned, Barb waved her hand. “We can discuss this trip down morality lane another time. We’ve a terrorist problem, and these two are going to help us solve it.”

  The steel security door opened behind them, and another agent walked in holding two sheets of paper, which he gave to Barb. “We’ve identified these two, for what it’s worth. It’s a little bizarre.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “See for yourself. I’ve got to go. We have another issue to deal with in Metairie.” He then spun and abruptly left the room.

  Glancing down at the first page, featuring details of the tall woman, Barb read quickly. She then shuffled to the second page and read the man’s information. It was almost identical, except for the name and gender.

  The “oh shit” feeling inside her stomach swelled to storm proportions, chasing her as she ran to the door.

  “We have to get in there now,” she yelled, reaching for the ashtray on the solitary metal table.

  “Why? What’s wrong?” asked Belle.

  “These two are members of God’s Hand.”

  “Shit,” said Braxton, falling in right behind Barb.

  “Who the hell is that?” asked Belle.

  “Dey are a crazy cult of radicals dat tink suicide at the right time gets dem into heaven.”

  Reaching the door to the containment room, her heart beating twice its normal speed, Barb swung it open and then lunged for the woman in one desperate attempt to knock her over, chair and all.

  The woman laughed, even as her body, shoulder first, struck the tiled floor with a resounding thud. Barb landed on top of her.

  “You can’t come where I’m going, Agent. None of you can. No one like you will enter the Gates of the Golden City. There’s . . .”

  Barb shoved the plastic ashtray into the woman’s open lips, forcing it into her mouth, extracting a gasping reflex that wiped the smile from the woman’s face.

  Behind her, she heard Braxton swear, Belle joining him, a little shock in her voice as she yelled.

  Barb knew without looking that Buford had exercised his brainwashed prerogative and would be dead in a few seconds. She couldn’t let that happen to the Grimes woman.

  Leaning close, she whispered in her very best I’m-your-friend persuasion. “Please, Rachel, don’t try to bite down on that tooth. We can help you. We can get you out of this group and protect you from the people who hired you.”

  Grimes’s cold eyes focused on her face. Barb had to control the chill brought on by the pure, unadulterated hatred coming from the woman.

  Instead, there was a sudden pressure against the ashtray and then an almost inaudible sound of breaking glass.

  The woman smiled, then suddenly thrashed to the left, as much as her bindings would allow. Her eyes rolled up deep into the recesses of her head, white foam and spittle forming on her thin lips. Then the woman died.

  CHAPTER-29

  The small, well-designed interview room in the west wing of the ADX prison was secure and impregnable, like the rest of the prison.

  As it should be for a facility referred to as the Alcatraz of the Rockies.

  The clean, stainless steel décor was completely void of anything that might be molded into some sort of weapon in the hopes of escaping the inescapable.

  Ironically, the guards didn’t carry weapons of any kind, not even nightsticks or riot-control clubs. They were, however, the most thoroughly trained federal prison guards in the world. Most were experts in more than one martial art; and they all were in exceptional physical condition. He supposed he would go that route as well.

  A well-built guard opened the door to his right, and Sophie entered, smiling. She plopped down in the chair next to Manny.

  “Damn, Williams, this place is absolutely full of eye candy.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Some observant King of the Profilers you are. Hell yes, man. I mean, I’m in mourning, but I sure ain’t dead. I think that last mass of muscle stared at my rack, more than once too.”

  Classic Sophie Lee. For once, her sexual innuendo was a welcome addition to their conversation. Yet another indication she was making the adjustment to her heart-breaking loss.

  “Well, they are restricted to looking at mostly men all day, so who can blame them for an extra look?”

  “Yeah, good point, especially hot Asians. Hey, speaking of that whole men and women thing, how did Anna end up here? I thought this was reserved for the male scums of the earth.”

  “It is, mostly. It used to include women, then was changed to an all-male prison. Since they’re truly able to keep the population isolated from each other, there have been some special circumstances that allow for woman inmates to be admitted.”

  Folding his hands and placing them on the table, he continued. “Anna fits that special description, particularly after her behavior shift and given the nature of her situation, and her IQ . . . it was thought best to bring her into this one.

  “It helps that Florence is forty miles south of anything remotely close to a city. If she did figure out how to escape, which would be like trying to fry an egg without heat, she wouldn’t get far.”

  “So in short, the Feds, and you, think she’s smarter than the rest of the pieces of shit in this place?”

  “That’s true as well. But that was all secondary to having secure access to interview her. That’s been successful as far as the program designed for her is concerned. She has allowed over seventy-five interviews from almost every renowned psychologist, psychiatrist, doctor of human behavior, and law enforcement profiler in the world.”

  “She must feel like some reject from Pinky and the
Brain with all of that research and questioning. I suppose she had to endure a few physicals along the way as well,” said Sophie, disgust tinging her words.

  “That goes without saying, but she can―”

  The double doors leading from the holding cell into the interview room opened, and Anna Ruiz entered with a strapping gray-clad guard on each side of her. They were accompanied by the clanging of metal against metal as the chains on her wrists, leading to her ankles, spoke while she shuffled forward.

  Her green eyes met his, lighting up like the proverbial Christmas tree. He returned her grin with an affectionate one of his own. All things considered, she looked like she was doing well. Certainly better than the last visit almost six months prior.

  “Knights in shining armor don’t take this long to rescue the fair maiden, do they?” she asked as she tumbled into the steel chair across from Sophie.

  The guard on her left told her to mind her manners, then shoved at the back of her head, hard enough that her forehead almost hit the table.

  Five seconds later, Manny held the guard’s chin in his hand, bringing the big man’s face close to his. “If you ever do that again, son, you’ll be walking a beat in Ithaca, Michigan. Do you feel me?”

  The guard nodded, his eyes as wide as hubcaps. “Yes sir. Just keeping order, that’s all.”

  Releasing the guard, Manny stepped back. “You let us worry about that. Now take off the bracelets.”

  “No can do, against policy,” said the other guard.

  “I wouldn’t piss him off anymore,” said Sophie. “He ain’t as badass as me, but he’ll pull your tongue out your dick if you keep this up.”

  Manny flashed his ID. “This says we don’t have a policy.”

  The guard looked at the clearance level of his ID, shrugged, and removed the shackles. “Your ass, Agent. We’ll be outside when you need us.”

  The two men left the room.

  “Dang, Sophie, that’s a bit much, don’t you think?’ said Anna, the bounce in her voice undeniable.

  “Hell no. These people need to know what’s what.” Sophie glanced at Manny, then back to Anna. “So how are you doing, girlfriend?”