by Gary Starta
“Ah guess. So, y’all want me to go in there and ask only the occasional question.”
“That’s the gist of it. The less you say today, the more you’ll see and hear. This bunch is already going to have a chip on their shoulder when we walk in. Let’s give them the satisfaction of telling us, in their own words, just how badly they screwed up our crime scene. It’ll save us a lot of time today if you can act a little more like a kid just out of John Jay. That’s the college of criminal justice if you didn’t know.”
“Why the chip on their shoulder, sir?”
“Anytime the feds have to step in to assist local police with its superior lab service or anything else, their nose gets out of joint. They’re not equipped for something like this, and they know they compromised the scene already, but they’ll have to play it off to save face.”
“Oh yeah, the pissin’ contest. Ah forgot about that. That’s one thing about the service Ah don’t miss. Sir, this photo seems to imply spontaneous combustion. Why not just send lab personnel to the scene and send us out on another lead?”
“Honestly, Agent, I don’t know. Fischetti wants us here to assess all the possibilities, no matter how it looks or what we’re told today. If I’d worked with him for any length of time, I might understand why he wants us to be flies on the wall for now, but I don’t. We’re both rookie agents in this regard, so I think we’ll just go in, see what there is to see, and discover what there is to discover. Agreed?”
Deeprose perked back up. “Agreed. Ah’m goin’ to enjoy squeezin’ info outta those Jersey boys. They’ll never know what hit ‘em.”
Carter smiled knowingly. Investigators often made the worst interviewees, especially when north met south. “Agent Deeprose, I’m going to ask you to do something difficult for me, today. We’re stepping on enough toes as it is, and I don’t want to push any unnecessary buttons because of your, uh, your…” Carter flushed and coughed.
“My what, sir?”
“Your…oh, damn it, your accent. I want you to hang back a little. Don’t try to squeeze anything out of the boys. I want your eyes and ears on everything and everyone. There are preconceived notions at work here, and I want to know if I’m being intentionally pushed in a particular direction. If I am, I want to know why. While I’m interacting, I want you monitoring. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
Rain kept them company during the rest of the drive. It was a cold, clammy, miserable rain, the kind that always managed to drip down the back of your coat collar all the way down to your back. Deeprose shivered. She didn’t care for ugly, gray skies.
When they finally arrived, the commanding officer, Captain Morelli, looked irritated and uncomfortable. “And you are?”
Carter showed him his identification and introduced them. “We’re here to assist you in any way we can, Captain. Agent Seacrest will be here momentarily to conduct a forensic investigation. She’ll also be arriving with a crime scene crew.”
“Well, aren’t we the lucky ones to have the big boys from New York helping out the Jersey yokels. Hey, listen up you guys, the feds just arrived on a white horse to save the day. Let’s show them a little appreciation for helping us out, eh?”
Several men looked up, grumbled and went back to work.
“Agent Carter, my men have already been all over the crime scene. There’s nothing there. Zip. Nada. What happened in there is anyone’s guess. But if you think you can find something we haven’t, go ahead and knock yourselves out. If there’s anything we can do to help you, why, you just let us know.”
***
Morrelli walked away probably thinking that if word got out that they’d bungled the job, he might never recover the reputation it took him fifteen years to build. He might even be busted in rank. That would be even worse than being transferred to East Jesus, Idaho.
Morrelli decided it might go better for him if he cooperated a little now that he spoke his piece, so he turned back to Carter and Deeprose. “We need your forensics to confirm the victim’s identity. We also need to determine if it’s suspicious or accidental.”
***
Deeprose’s eyes grew to twice their normal size. Despite the gruesome photo depicting what looked like spontaneous combustion, it was obvious that she was surprised it hadn’t already been termed suspicious. Morrelli must have been told that the D.O.J. was was pushing to conclude this was another thrill kill. Carter was glad now that Agent Deeprose hadn’t been filled in. As a rookie, the last thing she needed was to get tangled up in department intrigue.
The thing was, the possibility of a thrill kill could be tossed out right now. Something else was going on.
Why is the D.O.J. goin’ out of its way to make this as difficult for me as possible? Why do I get the feelin’ we’re supposed to hand them the findin’ they seem to want so much? If these are thrill kills, I’ll eat my hat. They may be completely unrelated. They probably are! But neither murder was done for the thrill of it. Right now, our best chance of breakin’ these two cases depends on whether the killer or killers are amateurs, because amateurs make big, sloppy mistakes.
Carter pulled out a notepad. “Can you give us time of discovery? Who reported it?”
Morelli sighed. “A neighbor called the fire department when she heard the fire alarm go off and smelled smoke outside. Ms. Rivera said she smelled a strange, offensive odor more than she smelled regular wood smoke. We kept the details of the case from the neighbors and press. The victim had no family.” Morelli gazed intensely at Carter, who kept his eyes on his notepad.
“Did she know the occupant?”
Morelli looked at him like he was a moron. “You know neighbors; they never know anyone once the cops arrive! The name of the occupant is David Florio. No, we don’t know if the victim is also the occupant. We asked him, but in his current condition, he was unable to answer. He’s twenty-seven and single. You better write that down in your little notebook, Agent, or you might forget.”
“I know this is your baby, Captain. I’m here only to offer you our services and nose around a little to see if it ties in with any of my other cases. That’s all. I have the authority to take over the case right now, and you know that, but I won’t, Captain. I have bigger fish to fry, and I’m not interested in stealing your thunder.”
Morelli looked dubious but relented. “All right, all right. What else do you want?”
“In high-profile cases like these it’s better to give the media as much information as possible without blowing the details only the killer would know. More information tends to jog the memory of witnesses. The more information we can put out there, the less secure our killer will feel. He’ll make rash decisions that’ll lead to mistakes, or someone will turn him in.” Carter looked the captain in the eyes now that they’d come to an understanding.
Morelli blew his cork. “Wait just a damn minute there, buddy. Unless you pull rank on me, there’s no way I’m going on the six o’clock news to tell this town that what we have here may be an accident or a suicide or a spontaneous Goddamn combustion when I know damn well it’s a murder! And I am sure as shit not going to tell the world that two separate incidents in two separate states might be thrill kills and related to each other. That’s just what I need – a panic. Look, Agent, I have five more years to retirement, and that means I can’t afford to make a wrong call. If you want it on the news so much, one of your own people can make the statement.”
“You know that isn’t possible, Captain. Our cover can’t be blown. That’ll either force their hand, which we don’t want just yet, or scatter them to the four winds, in which case these cases will go cold before winter sets in.”
Agent Seacrest pulled up to the investigators with her window down. She had seen the local cops going in and out of the apartment and was already hopping mad. Oblivious to any authority that wasn’t her own, she flashed her badge at the captain as if he was a clumsy waiter and barked an order at him.
“No one is to enter that apartm
ent without my approval. Do you understand me, officer?”
Morelli turned purple. “Look lady, you can’t just fly down here on your broomstick, flash your badge and tell me what to do at my own crime scene! Who the hell do you think you are? These are my men, and I put them there! Per regulation! They’re wearing shoe covers for God’s sake; they know their jobs.”
“I don’t care if they’re wearing fairy boots!” Seacrest slammed the car door shut and marched herself into the home. She used her thumb hitch-hiker style to wave them out. “Everyone out! And I said NOW!”
***
Carter was highly amused but he kept his mouth shut and wore a straight face.
She certainly is something to see in action, unless you’re on the receiving end. Poor guy, he had no idea what his day was going to be like when he got up this morning.
Morelli ran after her. “Now listen here, you…”
Seacrest turned slowly, and spoke in her executive tone, which was dangerously low and level. “I am certain you want to cooperate with me, sir. I am equally certain you do not want to be responsible for having contaminated my crime scene. Furthermore, if your men have destroyed my chances for obtaining any useable evidence of which there should be a prodigious amount, I will make sure it is your ass that swings on national television. Are we clear now?”
She stood her ground and gave him a look that clearly dared him to challenge her. One thing she knew is that the only thing a bully understood was a bigger bully. So she stared him down and counted silently. One, two, three, four…
“O.K. O.K. Keep your skirt on.” Morelli spat on the ground and spoke into his shoulder mic. “Get everyone out of the apartment. Now.”
Deeprose whispered to Carter. “Wow, Ah like her! How’d the two of you ever get together? Ah mean…” She turned red with embarrassment.
“Relax, Agent. I know just what you mean. If you ever figure it out, let me know.”
Inside the garden apartment, Seacrest employed optical spectroscopy via camera to view the flooring area, particularly around the remains of the body. Carter stood in the doorway. He could hear Seacrest making exclamation points with her Ah-hah’s and Uh-oh’s. She was onto something.
Deeprose examined the outside windows as Carter observed Seacrest. She hummed as she investigated. Carter couldn’t help notice the difference in the way both women behaved while they were concentrating.
Interesting.
Deeprose interrupted his thoughts. “There’s no evidence that a door was kicked in and no marks or scrapes on the window sills. Ah think if there is a killer, he or she knew our victim. This would also support the accidental death and suicide argument, though. Y’all can’t really think this is anythin’ but a murder, can you? An’ it seems to me that neither one is in the slightest way related to the other. There is not one similarity in the style of the kills, the victims, or locations. Sir, what in the heck is going on here?”
Carter made a steeple with his index fingers. “Remember, Agent, no assumptions. What exactly makes you think this is a murder? There’s no forced entry, as you said, but that doesn’t mean much at this stage. Knowing the exact cause of death should help is determine the answer. We have to be able to definitively rule out accident and suicide, and we need to determine the identity of the victim.”
Seacrest appeared at the front door. “I think I found something.”
Luminol was a spray that revealed any sign of blood on a surface, even if it was washed. There was a lot of it on the chair where the body was found. “I’d love to tell you more, but in a nutshell, until I get back to the lab, all I can really tell you is that there is a good amount of blood on the chair. I’m hoping there are at least two different kinds. I’m going to look around some more.” She eyed the floor. “Give me a few hours to collect more samples, and then we’ll let the mass spectrometer tell us what might have happened to our victim.”
Seacrest raised a purple, gloved hand in Agent Deeprose’s direction. “I’m Agent Seacrest. Welcome to the team. I’d shake your hand, but…”
Deeprose was all smiles. Seacrest, it seemed, had an admirer. “No worries, Agent Seacrest. Ah’m Agent Shania Deeprose, and Ah want you to know it was a pleasure watchin’ y’all give it to that big bully in the parkin’ lot.
“So, can you rule out spontaneous combustion at this point, or what?”
“I can’t rule it out; it’s simply not that easy. There are many factors that will determine what goes into my report. I will say one thing, though; the place has been completely torched. In cases of spontaneous human combustion, or S.H.C., the surrounding area doesn’t burn easily, but the body can burn for several hours due to the way fire consumes fat. There is also something called a ‘wick effect’ which occurs when body fat burns as if it were a candle. In these respects, there does not seem to be much to support the spontaneous combustion theory. If the victim had died of S.H.C., most of the place would have been spared the fire. Most incidents termed spontaneous human combustion are ones where there is simply no other plausible explanation, anyway. According to the latest studies, there may be no such thing at all.
“Add to that the fact that there could be a host of external sources of ignition that could be responsible for an accidental suicide. For instance, did he fall asleep while smoking? Did he consume flammable drugs or dabble in anything that might explode? Did he drink alcohol excessively, perhaps inadvertently exposing it to leaking gas?”
Deeprose looked morose. “Ah guess Ah didn’t think of that,”
“Don’t look so down-in-the-mouth, everyone! The best way to determine cause of death is to let science tell us.”
Chapter Seven
Seven Years Earlier in Afghanistan…
Although his vocabulary was limited to speaking Dari, one of two languages spoken by Afghanis, the prisoner seemed to understand the American serviceman guarding him. He was telling him to run.
The guard had volunteered for the D.A.R.P.A. (Defense Research Projects Agency) experiment and was certain the prisoner understood him. The prisoner must have been imagining freedom, home, and family - all the things most men longed for.
The next stage of the experiment was for the guard to inject himself with a drug that changed him from an ordinary soldier into a killing machine. The prisoner was his prey and the chase began today.
The prisoner, sweating and stumbling, faced his guard with one question on his face. The guard nodded his answer and used a remote control to unlock the gate of the Parwan Detention Facility in Bagram. The Afghani wasted no more time. He ran hard and fast, plumes of dust rising in his wake.
The guard ran to the gatehouse first to report the escape and give the prisoner a sporting chance. He stuck a needle in his thigh. It hurt, but the pain became ecstasy almost immediately. On Hyzopran, he felt like God, and God was very, very angry today.
I am invincible. I will capture my prisoner, and he will die.
He heard the awe-inspiring voices of angels. They promised to guide him directly to the doomed man. In seconds he watched as a map unfolded inside his own head, complete with longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates. The guard was the blue dot and the Afghani was the red one.
The angels sang, “You are the executioner. No one may stop you!”
His strides grew more and more elongated until he thought he might bounce off the planet. His body was as weightless as his conscience. In less than half a minute, the escapee was in full view. He didn’t have to wonder what the prisoner was feeling; he knew, but he felt no concern or responsibility for what he would do to the enemy when he caught him. He would kill, and the prisoner would die. That was all.
A hunting knife tucked into a small leather case tethered to his waistline found its way into his hand. He grabbed the prisoner from behind and spun him around. The prisoner’s screams died with him as the guard stabbed him viciously and repeatedly. The prisoner crumpled to the ground holding up his hands as a last defense, but they both knew this was the end.
The guard lifted him half off the ground by his hair and sliced his neck in half like a ripe melon. Fountains of blood arched ten feet above them before falling back down on the soldier roaring and beating his chest. It was both sublime and monstrous.
A new, more expedient type of warfare for the U.S. military had just been born and would soon be used all over the world. Numbers of prisoners would plummet. Resources used to keep them alive would be used to feed our own people. Death rates would rise like the sun. The use of Hyzopran meant no one ever had to go home emotionally damaged for doing his or her duty ever again.
The guard looked up at a camera drone hovering in the sky, and roared his rage and triumph until he had no voice left.
McLean, Virginia
Clayton Artemus Montgomery stroked his beard while watching a video recorded by a camera drone in Afghanistan one month earlier. “This video brings your thesis to life, Dr. Blake. This is the argument that will convince the JASONS your project is critical to ongoing and future war efforts.”
“I still have reservations.” Dr. Katherine Blake, a promising, young biochemist, shook her head as she watched the guard butcher an escaped prisoner with nothing but a hunting knife and an enormous dose of Hyzopran.
“What kind of reservations?” Montgomery didn’t wait for Blake’s answer. “Remember, you can’t show any weakness in your presentation.” Scopolamine, a natural hallucinogenic compound discovered in the wood of the South American Borrachero Tree, had been blamed for causing victims to surrender their bank account numbers without hesitation. A chemically altered and refined version of the drug was said to be responsible for making its victims ‘zombies’. Montgomery was fully aware that Hyzopran was styled along those lines, but further refinement would allow humans to perform murderous yet necessary tasks without the crippling burden of guilt and shame which usually followed. It was a brutal solution, but not as brutal as the slow death of a prisoner of war or the lifetime of night terrors returning veterans dreaded.