Grave Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  Jessica extended her hand, reading his nameplate as they shook. Lorena had told her all about Stoffel's call to her office on the trip up to Georgia.

  “Unfortunately, Senior Deputy Stoffel,” Jessica replied to him, “you're only too right about meeting me. Most people would rather see Jack Kevorkian coming their way than to see me.”

  Stoffel laughed at this. “01' Dr. Death? Hell, you're a sight prettier.”

  “Most of the people I meet are engaged in their work when I meet them, and most I meet deal with death daily.”

  He nodded knowingly. “We know about the case in Jax-town, but we just never expected it to happen here. But we do have some good news for you, Dr. Coran, Lorena.”

  “Oh, and what's that?” asked Combs.

  “Killer left something of himself behind this time.”

  Jessica instantly wondered if the deputy had found the mark inside the victim's skull. She exchanged a look with Combs, and Lorena instantly asked, “What've you got, Milt?”

  He led them cautiously to the triangular center of the three patrol cars, and Jessica saw the marker where a tire print was clearly visible. “Could be the killer's,” commented Stoffel. “Didn't want to lose it before we got a cast made.”

  The two women stared at the tire treads in the soft red earth of a bare spot alongside the road, encircled by the patrol cars. Another state trooper came through the thicket and said, “I'm on it, boss. Just have to get the kit from my cruiser.”

  “Thanks, Wil,” replied Stoffel, “and don't forget the shoe prints.”

  “I'm on it! I'll do the shoe prints first.”

  “You've got shoe prints, too?” asked Jessica.

  “We do. It's why I have to lead you in and outta the crime scene. So far, they're intact and untouched.”

  Jessica clenched her medical bag to her chest. “I want to see the shoe prints.”

  He led Jessica and Combs to the shoe prints, again a sparse area giving way to soft red clay. “Photos've already been taken of the tire and shoe prints.”

  The shoe impressions were clear and easily read, like giant fingerprints against the earth, the wild swirls and eddies of the pattern indicating a unique design and wear. As a result of design and wear, no two shoe prints were the same. The prints isolated by Stoffel showed a man going into the field and coming out. “We'll need an impressions expert to be sure, but my guess,” said Jessica, “he weighs between one hundred and seventy and one hundred and ninety pounds. I'm going by the shoe prints pointing away from the body, not toward it.”

  “I calculated him somewhere in there, too, if not heavier,” said Stoffel. “Ground's soft here, so he made quite an impression, especially going in . . . carrying her weight, we speculate.”

  Jessica examined the prints with more care. “Given the size of the foot, we can calculate him at between five-eight and six feet tall.”

  “How do you figure that?” asked Stoffel.

  “There's a definite logic to assumptions about the size and weight. Body parts correspond and align with one another in surprising harmony. A foot this size indicates a tall man wearing casual shoes—sneakers.”

  “Now all we need is for the guy to come in with his shoes,” said Combs.

  Stoffel said, “Figure he couldn't get through the thicket in his vehicle, and maybe . . . just maybe he took the clearing under last night's moon to be a body of water, so he come through the trees, expecting to dump her in a pond or a lake that isn't here. Tells us he doesn't know the area so well.”

  “So we got lucky with the tire prints and the shoe impressions,” said Combs.

  “It's something, Lorena. This guy's left so little behind because he's always dumped them in water before now,” replied Jessica.

  “In Jax-Town, the St. John's runs north, so the body traveled upstream to Venetia Wharf. We couldn't locate the actual entry point, every possibility was littered with tire marks. During the day, those places are busy parks, but at night they're pretty well empty.”

  “Lotta these old dirt roads look alike,” Stoffel added, “but still. . . Savannah's not that for away. There's water everywhere going east. If he wanted to stow her body in water, he coulda just gone east of 1-95 for a ways. Hell, the tide comes in over there and you got instant lakes surrounding you.”

  “And if the tide's out at the time?”

  “Has been dry.”

  Jessica shook her head. “He must've simply run out of time. He's on the road again, likely 1-95 but who knows.”

  “Maybe he's going back to where he came from to begin with, north toward home, maybe?” suggested Combs. “New Jersey, maybe?”

  They carefully stepped around the shoe prints just as the officer named Wil showed up with the plaster of paris mixture that would make the impressions permanent and portable.

  As Jessica and Lorena were led through the final thicket, Stoffel said, “The crime against young Winona here ... Well, it's the worst ever thing I've seen on the job aside from a motorcyclist we once had to get a crane for.”

  “A crane?”

  “To get his headless torso from the top of a pine tree out on County 345A. Fool had to have been hitting 110 when he left the rise at Three Forks. Had sixty or seventy lacerations, his clothes and most all of his skin'd been peeled and was hanging like bloody garland. Some of the officers on scene tried shaking the tree, but that only dislodged the head, which hit one of the officers on the skull and sent him in with a concussion. It took a crane and a lot of effort to peel the rest of the motorcyclist down from that tree.”

  Deputy Stoffel spit out tobacco and pulled back the last of the branches and brush. They stepped into a farmer's open field where a tractor and discs sat idle some ten yards from the body of a young woman lying amid a field of decaying and turned under cornstalks. Neat rows of furrows led up to the body where the discs had turned under the dead stalks, weeds and earth, but the other side of the tractor looked like a burned out jungle. The heat and the rotting stalks, whipping now in the growing evening wind, sent up an odor of plant decay. When the killer had left the body, he would have been looking at a field of picked over, dead stalks, several miles of them. He likely did not expect the body to be discovered for some time.

  In the distance, Jessica saw a white farmhouse with a green roof, little specks of movement and activity telling her that children were at play there.

  “We've already been up to the house; everything's all right there. Nobody being held hostage. No one being harbored or taken in,” said Stoffel.

  “The girl. . . you know her name.”

  “Winona Miller, yes.”

  “Does she belong to the house up there?” Jessica pointed.

  “Oh, no . . . no, that's the Pratt place. What happened was old Lyle Pratt come up on the body in the dark of early this morning.”

  Jessica imagined the old man's fright and his proximity in time and space to the killer.

  Stoffel continued speaking. “Winona Miller, the dead girl, is—was—a native of Savannah, and I'm told a good kid, normal kid. . . . You know, typical fun-loving, free-spirited, happy kid. Lived in Savannah with her aunt and uncle, dealing with the usual teen angst and rebellion.”

  “And her parents?”

  “They live in the city, too, but they had all agreed on a trial period with the girl at her aunt's place. Parents filed a missing persons rep>ort with Savannah PD after being told that Winona had failed to come home from a date.”

  “A date?” asked Jessica. “What about the boyfriend?”

  “Boyfriend has been grilled, but he appears to be of little help. Last saw her out his rearview mirror getting into a dark van, possibly navy blue, possibly black.”

  “Wait... the boyfriend saw something?” asked Jessica.

  “We got very little from Nathan. He's shook up pretty bad. Blaming himself for her disappearance. Don't know what he's going to do with the truth.”

  “I'll want to talk to this Nathan, right away,” insisted Jessica.
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  Combs agreed. “He's the only eyewitness of any sort that we have except for the girl in Fayetteville who may or may not have come across the killer's path. She also said the van was dark blue.”

  “We already canvassed the club where her boyfriend left her in the parking lot. According to Nathan, they'd had a fight, an argument, he says, over her using too many drugs and mixing them with alcohol.”

  “Toxicology can verify or refute that,” said Jessica.

  “Like I said, she was a good kid at heart, but a mixed up kid, too. She might've been using pills or sniffing this or that,” Stoffel said, “but no tracks on her. Still, I know it'll take an autopsy to tell for certain.”

  “Even if she were using drugs, that's no reason to wind up dead and having your g'damn head cut open and your g'damn brains stolen,” shouted a younger deputy who'd stood watch over the body. The anger in his thick-throated attempt to keep from losing complete control was understandable. His nameplate read Hayes. “She was basically a good kid, and she didn't have any real enemies, not a one.”

  Beyond her addictions, Jessica guessed in silence.

  “You suppose she was without a care beyond school grades, makeup and make-out woes?” Combs cynically asked Jessica.

  Stoffel put a hand on the younger deputy 's shoulder and said, “Jeff here was the first trooper to arrive to secure the scene. It's been a shock. He knows the family and has volunteered to break it to them. Fact is, Jeff s married to the victim's cousin, so I've OK'd his talking to them. So far, all they know is their daughter's missing. There's been no press on it, yet. So, if you don't mind, I'll let Jeff go over to Savannah to break the news to the parents.”

  “No objections,” Jessica said.

  No one envied the young man his awful chore. Hayes disappeared into the brush, going back toward the squad cars. The thick brush and trees hid the road and the cars from view, even more so where Jessica squatted beside the body.

  It had grown dusky, the sky darkening with clouds. Jessica dug out a flashlight and filled the open brain cavity with light, looking for the sign left on the previous victim.

  “Is it there?” asked Combs, dropping to her knees alongside the body, opposite Jessica.

  “Is what there?” asked Stoffel, inching closer.

  At first Jessica had trouble finding it, but then it came into focus. The circle atop the horizontal and perpendicular lines forming a cross of sorts, roughly scratched into the bone at the back of the skull. As Jessica stared at it, a realization hit her, and Lorena saw it.

  “What is it, Jessica?”

  “I just remembered something that might be important. Several weeks ago at Quantico we were shown slides of the first two victims, and I noticed some imperfection on the screen in the grainy blowups. At least, I thought it was the screen. Santiva was impressing the hideous nature of the crimes on his agents. The photos of the violence done to each of the first two victims were external, but looking back now ...”“The marks were present?”

  “Perhaps when one or more of the shots was taken, maybe the flash revealed some indication of the mark. But I'll have to verify that.”

  “What is it?” asked Stoffel, staring over Jessica's shoulder. “Some cult ritual thing?”

  “It's a sign of some sort, a signature the killer leaves behind,” explained Combs. “The mark is absolute proof it's the same killer. Milt, this is strictly taboo. Nobody outside law enforcement can know. It could be the Holy Grail to solving the case.”

  “No one but the three of us knows at this point, Deputy Stoffel,” Jessica added, lying to him. “If it leaks out, it can't be used effectively when and if we ever get this monster into an interrogation room.”

  “Understood.”

  “I've got to call Quantico, have an associate take a closer look at the photos of the first victims. I may have been staring at this evidence and simply missed it kltogether in the photo array.”

  “You wouldn't have been looking for it at the time,” countered Combs. “No one who autopsied the bodies reported it; obviously, no one saw it.”

  “It must mean something to the killer, a kind of cryptic code of his intent or motive.” Jessica got on her cellular phone and contacted headquarters. Unable to get Eriq on the line, she opted for Jere Anderson, a young female assistant in the lab, who asked cheerily, “How're you, Dr. Coran? We miss you around here.”

  “Same here, Jere. Look, I need your help. I need you to review those slides Henrietta Wyans has of the two brain cases. The ones used at the briefing last month.”

  “Anything you need . . . anything I can do, sure,” Jere replied. “Shoot.” Jessica told Jere specifically what to look for in the slides and exactly where she must focus on the wounds to the victims.

  She told the young assistant about her suspicion that the mark might have been on the previous victims, but that it had been missed during the autopsies.

  “Are you going to order exhumations on—”

  “No, no! The families have been through enough.” In her mind's ear she heard J.T.'s voice repeating what he'd said earlier in the day: We're not going to get a court order to disinter two bodies on a hunch, Jessica.

  “No, no digging up anybody, Jere,” she repeated, “but I do want a fine-tooth exam of the photo evidence—the blowup slides.”

  “Right. . . right, for corroboration that the mark was left inside the skulls of the other two.”

  “If you can't establish both, then one. I'm eighty percent certain I saw something on at least one of the slides.”

  “OK, Dr. Coran. I'm on it.”

  “Jere, it may be nothing, a wild goose chase but we have to—”

  “Doctor, I'll chase this one for you. No problem. We all want to see this creep go away, and if there's any slight chance I can help from this end, of course, I will.”

  “Thanks, Jere, and in case I miss you, report your findings to Chief Santiva as soon as possible.”

  “Understood.” After goodbyes, they broke contact.

  Jessica then went to work gathering blood, tissue, fiber and hair samples.

  Combs, watching Jessica work, asked, “I doubt seriously if anyone in the Savannah area has a laser-guided scalpel, Jessica.”

  “No . . . not necessary since we have the one bone fragment. We'll just make sure this one photographs clearly.” Combs was kneeling beside Winona's body now. Insect activity—ants in particular—had already become a problem, especially around the large wound to the head—the single most obvious sign that this was the work of the same killer who had so recently struck in Jacksonville.

  “Let me have another look at this thing,” said Stoffel, placing on a pair of glasses and kneeling in toward the body. After a moment, he asked, “What do you think this mark means, Dr. Coran? Looks awfully strange indeed.”

  Jessica asked Stoffel for his pen and pad. The deputy obliged, and she quickly drew the sign of the etched cross.

  “Ain't that the Lutheran cross?” asked Stoffel.

  “Right now . . . we're unsure what it means, Deputy. It could be important to the killer or simply left behind to throw us off.”

  Combs, still on one knee across the body from Jessica, asked, “How? How did he lure her in? How did he find her, and how did he target her?”

  “You could ask that of all his victims,” replied Jessica. “At the moment, we don't know. Nothing specifically links the victims. Other than their ages and the horrible nature of their deaths, they have little in common.”

  “Yeah, they all got their brains sucked out, and they all got this mark put on them,” replied a solemn Stoffel, stabbing the crude drawing of the cross on the pad.

  SIX

  Evils draw men together.

  — ARISTOTLE, QUOTING A PROVERB

  Public library, Savannah, Georgia July 12, 2003

  NURSE Susan Thorn aspired to be a doctor. She had been taking classes part time, and to maximize her time, she had taken to the Internet for help. In her anatomy class, she had arri
ved at the frightfully difficult chapter on the human brain, and she had to know everything she could about it before the exam. Signing on to the computer as Twisted-Nurse, she had been cruising for information for sometime now.

  She'd seen some weird stuff on the Net, but there was one website in particular that spoke of the cosmic soul being housed in the brain. Some of the talk on the site had gotten into cannibalizing animal and human brains, which she chalked up to juveniles at play on the Web. While the site had at first promised to be useful, not long into it, she decided it must be for comic-book readers. She logged off and soon found something more professional, and from there Susan Thorn began taking notes from what she read: The medulla oblongata serves as the organ of communication between the spinal cord and the rest of the body. In the embryonic state, it is called the brain bag—the centers that govern such autonomic functions as breathing, heartbeat, regulation of blood vessels, body temperature and certain reflexes of swallowing.

  This is more like it, Susan told herself. Still, something about the other site nagged, like a little cyber voice, calling her back. She held firm to her initial conviction, however, stayed with her study, and read on:

  Projecting a little in front of the medulla is a wide band of nervous tissue forming a bridge over the two halves of the cerebellum called the pons Varolii. This along with the medulla forms the brain stem.

  In the brain stem lies a network of nerves known as the reticular formation—millions of neurons in a matrix of fibers, from which long branches are sent out to every part of the body. Thus, it participates in every neural function; so it coordinates and filters information in the brain.

  It is the center of arousal and wakefulness, regulating awareness. Anything that might put the reticular formation out of action would result in coma or death. Lying longitudinal along the brain stem is the raphe system, active during sleep. Anything destroying the raphe system results in chronic insomnia.