The Night Is Alive koh-10

by Heather Graham

  “Be right back.” She ran up the stairs, stopping to throw the file folder of notes David Caswell had given them into the bottom drawer of Gus’s desk. Something made her hide it beneath a stack of other papers.

  She paused, looking around the room. “Blue?” She waited. “Gus?” she said hopefully.

  But she spoke to the air.

  Leaving the office, she hurried to her own room to dress. She put on one of her white tailored blouses and lightweight blue pantsuits. She was going to the morgue. It felt important to dress properly.

  * * *

  Malachi found a perch on the bar stool next to Bootsie. Sullivan asked if he wanted anything; he decided that if he was going to sit there commiserating with the tavern’s intriguing trio of barflies, he should have a drink so he ordered a light beer.

  “Sad business,” he said. “But, Dirk, this might not be Helen. Abby doesn’t seem to think it is. Still, it’ll be best to know for sure.”

  Bootsie turned to him. “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, you can hope the girl just went off on a whirlwind romance, but...”

  “Helen was responsible,” Dirk said. He lifted his glass. “Ah, Helen.”

  Dirk might be a little too far gone to recognize anyone, Malachi thought.

  “Dirk, did Ms. Long have any tattoos or birthmarks? Anything that might help if her face is too...damaged?”

  “Damaged?” Aldous repeated with a shudder.

  “Um,” Dirk said thoughtfully. “She, uh, did say she had a tattoo. But she never said what it was—or where it was. She liked to tease her pirate cast mates aboard the Black Swan. Make them guess. They were a phenomenal group of young people to work with—Helen, Jack and Blake. They got along so well.” He shook his head. “Blake had a major crush on Helen. She liked him well enough, but said she wouldn’t date anyone she worked with. Would that she had!”

  “We don’t know that it’s Helen,” Malachi repeated.

  “And if it’s not—then where is Helen?” Aldous asked. He stared at Malachi and, in turn, Malachi stared at him. He was definitely unique and hard to miss, a big, powerful man with his shiny head and gold earring.

  “Hopefully, alive and well somewhere,” Malachi said. He gave Aldous a smile. “Sir, do you work on the pirate ship now and then? You’ve certainly got the look.”

  “Hereditary baldness,” Aldous told him. “Sometimes—say, around St. Patrick’s Day—the city gets crazy busy and then I work with my friend here.”

  “You’re a captain, as well, though? Different kind of ship, if I remember our conversation from before,” Malachi said.

  “My family’s been in the shipping trade for generations. We were bringing goods back and forth from the Old World before the colonies became a nation. I own Brentwood Shipping. We have ships all over the world. My dad was old school. I started work as a deckhand on a nine-hundred-and-six-foot container vessel. I’ve sailed on almost everything known to man, but these days, I mostly use my little fishing boat. She’s a thirty-three-foot Boston whaler with a fine cabin and a galley. I can take her out for a few days on my own when I feel I need the water beneath me. But, yeah, there’s fun in playing a pirate. I’m still on the company board, but I already put in my time. Now, I do the world a favor and give people jobs to keep the company afloat.”

  “That’s a good thing. We all need jobs,” Malachi said.

  “What about you? You spend a lot of time on the water?” Bootsie asked.

  “I spent some time with friends on shrimp boats down in Louisiana,” he answered. “And I’ve been on a cruise—does that count?”

  Dirk managed a smile. “Hardly! You’ve got to have the wheel in your hands, really feel the power of the water, even on a river. Feel the wind whip around when you aren’t sure you can fight your way back to the docks. Now that’s being on the water.”

  “Hear, hear!” Bootsie shouted as he thumped the bar with his fist.

  “Then you gentlemen have it all over me,” Malachi said, smiling. “What about you, Bootsie?”

  “Hey, I’m living on borrowed time here. I’m nearly as old as Gus! But, yeah, give me a chance and I’ll be a pirate!”

  Just then Abby came back down the steps, out of her pirate attire. She was now in a customary business suit, the kind worn by agents running all over Quantico and D.C. But there was no way to tone down her beauty or inner vitality. It might have been her coloring—or it might’ve been that she had a passion for life. She had dearly loved Gus; that was plain. But she loved her city, too. She’d made that clear when she’d told him so enthusiastically about the inn where he was staying.

  She looked at him, then looked at the beer in front of him. He’d barely touched it. He raised his glass and saluted her, showing her that only a few sips were gone.

  “Want me to drive?” she whispered, coming up beside him.

  “I think I’m fine.”

  “You shouldn’t think. You should know.”

  “I swear—two sips.”

  “I’ll drive,” she said. “Dirk, let’s do this, okay?”

  They walked outside and Malachi headed for his SUV. She was headed to the parking lot. She frowned at him, and he grinned and lifted his hands. “Okay.”

  Amused, he followed her and Dirk to the car, choosing to take the backseat.

  “Hey, big man, you can take the front,” Dirk said.

  “It’s all right. I fold well. And we’re not going that far.”

  When they reached the coroner’s office, Malachi found that David was there, waiting for them.

  “Dr. Tierney has the case,” he told them. “He wants someone to come in, rather than just viewing the remains on the screen. She’s really ripped up. An identification might take some time if we have to go through dental records or DNA.”

  “You okay, Dirk? You can do this?” he asked the man.

  “I can go in alone, Dirk,” Abby said.

  Dirk shook his head and squared his shoulders. They were led down a hallway and into a pristine autopsy room. The smell of chemicals was strong, but as they approached the gurney, so was the smell of death.

  Tierney was a man of about fifty, medium in height and weight, with brown eyes, huge spectacles that made them appear bigger and a mask over his mouth and nose.

  “We’re ready,” David said.

  Tierney lifted the sheet that covered the corpse.

  Malachi found himself thinking that the poor girl now resembled something that might have been created for the final scene of a horror movie—a mermaid beaten and destroyed or some other creature brought low. He shivered, remembering what he’d felt when he’d turned her over in the water and realized that hope had been gone for some time. She’d hit a propeller somewhere in the river, it seemed, since chunks of her flesh were gone. Her face had been attacked by fish and crabs. Very little remained of her nose or lips.

  He wondered if even the girl’s mother would recognize her.

  “Oh, God!” Dirk exclaimed, and turned away.

  David looked at Abby. Abby was white and pinched, but she didn’t turn away. “Can you tell?” David asked her.

  To Malachi’s surprise, Abby nodded. “It’s not Helen,” she said.

  “And you know that because...?”

  She pointed to the corpse’s left breast—in relatively good condition. “Helen had a tiny clover tattooed right there. She told a bunch of the girls about it one day, as long as we swore not to say anything to the guys she worked with. She liked to tease them, telling them she had one somewhere, but they’d have to guess where, and when she had all their guesses, maybe she’d tell them. And the hair...I don’t think that’s the shade of Helen’s hair. She was almost platinum. This girl had a manicure and Helen didn’t manicure her nails. She always said wenches didn’t use polish.”

  “Okay, then.” David let out a sigh. “We’re still looking for Helen. And we have to find out who this poor girl might be. I’ll get them started on missing-person reports back at the office. Thank you for coming
in.”

  Malachi didn’t want to leave yet. He walked closer to the table and stared at the dead woman. What he saw now might help him later when they were further along in the investigation. “Death was by drowning?” he asked.

  “Her lungs were filled with water from the river,” Dr. Tierney said. “They’ve scraped her nails, searched for trace evidence...but I don’t know. She was in the river about a day and a half to two days, until she washed up near the dock.”

  “So, she died around the time Helen Long disappeared,” Malachi said.

  Tierney glanced at David.

  David shrugged. “That timing sounds about right,” he said.

  Malachi didn’t want to act like a ghoul but he wanted to touch the body. He moved closer and leaned over her, trying to study the remains of her face. He touched her arm; she was cold and he felt no sense of her. But he noticed something he hadn’t seen before. Perhaps it was a detail the medical examiner’s office and the police had wanted to keep quiet.

  Her hands were darkened and curled at her side but there was something odd about her left hand. Malachi raised his brows at brow at Tierney and touched the icy hand. He looked at Tierney.

  Tierney returned his look with a fierce frown.

  Malachi straightened. “May I see the other corpses?” he asked.

  Tierney swung around to face David.

  “He’s one of my old partners, Doc. And now Mr. Gordon is a consultant with the FBI. I would appreciate it if you’d help us.”

  Tierney hesitated and pulled back his sleeve. “It’s late,” he muttered.

  “Please,” Malachi said.

  “Can I... May I get out of here?” Dirk pleaded.

  “Abby?” Malachi asked.

  She wanted to stay and help—that was clear in her eyes—but it was obvious that she was the one who needed to be with Dirk.

  “I’ll take you home, Dirk,” she said.

  “I’ll take Mr. Johansen for a coffee across the street. We’ll wait for you,” David offered. “Abby should be here since she just graduated from the academy. She’s an FBI agent now.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Tierney murmured. It didn’t sound as if he was impressed. Malachi made a point of grinning at her. Learn to live with it, he told her silently.

  Whether she understood his message or not, she handled it. “Thank you. I believe it’s important that we see all the victims.”

  David left with Dirk.

  When they were gone, Malachi spoke to Tierney. “She’s missing her ring finger. It wasn’t gnawed off, it was cut off,” he said.

  “We’re not letting that information out,” Tierney said curtly.

  “I understand.” Malachi nodded. “Is it the same with the other corpses?”

  “Yes.”

  Tierney walked over to a wall with numbered sliding doors and placards in little slots. He went straight to drawer nine. A handwritten name tag read Ruth Seymour.

  He pulled the drawer back and gently removed the sheet from her face.

  Ruth had fared better than the unknown girl they’d just seen. Most of her face was intact. Malachi saw the mark of some kind of bondage that had been described in the autopsy notes. He also saw that the ring finger on her left hand had been severed at the knuckle.

  “Head injury is here,” Tierney told him, pointing.

  She’d been struck on the back of the skull—one solid blow.

  “It would’ve knocked her out?” Malachi asked.

  “Probably came close to fracturing the skull, so, yes, likely she would’ve been knocked out. But if you look at the wound closely, you can see there’s healing. So she regained consciousness again—a day, a few days?—before she was killed,” Tierney explained.

  That made something cold curl up inside his gut. Dead was dead—but he wondered what torture she’d gone through before death.

  “What about Rupert Holloway?” he asked.

  “That was different. As far as I can tell, Holloway was knocked out and killed soon after. Maybe a few hours later, somewhere in that time frame, at any rate. Both young women were kept alive longer. I assume you’ve read the reports. Although I can’t state it definitively, I believe both were sexually molested, and killed later. I don’t think they were in any condition to fight off the rapist. They were probably knocked out and held until they annoyed their attacker—or he tired of them. Ms. Shepherd was the last victim found before today. She’s right here.”

  She could have been anyone. “How did you ID her?” Malachi asked.

  “Fingerprints. They were on file at her school. It’s a safety measure taken there.”

  “She’s missing the ring finger?”

  “Yes.”

  Malachi looked at Abby. She was stoic, watching, listening, betraying sorrow but allowing little else to show on her face.

  Tierney went over the young woman’s injuries.

  Malachi moved closer to inspect the corpse again, touching the body. And again, he had no sense of anyone remaining.

  “Mr. Rupert Holloway is the last of our recent victims. You don’t want to visit the entire morgue, do you?” Tierney obviously wanted to be on his way.

  “Just these victims,” Malachi said. “Mr. Holloway, please.”

  Rupert Holloway was in nearly the same shape as their Jane Doe, and his head wound was worse; the skull had been fractured. “He might still have been out cold when he was tossed in the river,” Tierney said.

  “But he’s missing his ring finger, as well.”

  Tierney looked uncomfortable. “Yes. Taken while he was still alive—as with the others.”

  “Any other marks on him?” Malachi asked.

  “Just one. On his back. Help me roll him and I’ll show you.”

  He obliged; Rupert Holloway had been a big man.

  Low on his back there was a wound, which was sharp and broad.

  “Not serrated,” Abby commented.

  “No, it was made by a smooth blade,” Tierney said. “Now, if that’s all...”

  “That’s all, Dr. Tierney. Thank you so much for your time.”

  He led Abby out. They removed the scrubs they’d donned and left them in the appropriate receptacles.

  “Definitely a serial killer,” Abby said. She shuddered and looked at him apologetically. She was ashen, although she’d held up well. “Why...why the fingers? Is there a significance to the ring finger? Are they trophies?”

  “Possibly. And I can’t begin to fathom if there’s a symbolic reason of some kind for the ring finger. Does it have anything to do with wedding or engagement rings? Holloway was married, but the others...” He shrugged. “I don’t know.” As he spoke, he watched something come alive in her eyes.

  “I’m an idiot,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She flushed. “I mean, there is a symbolic reason for the ring finger. Pirates used to cut off the ring fingers of their hostages specifically to steal their rings. Blackbeard supposedly cut off his own ring finger as a warning to others to leave him alone.”

  “Then it is symbolic,” Malachi said.

  “Yes, I believe that has to be it. But still, the killing of Rupert Holloway was different from the others. The injury on his back is completely unlike the injuries on the women. What do you think the blade was?” Abby asked. “And why that mark left there?”

  “At the small of his back?” Malachi mused thoughtfully. “A pirate sword, Agent Anderson. I’m willing to bet that wound was made by a sword.”

  5

  “It’s not Helen. It’s not Helen,” Dirk repeated. He’d said the words dozens of times during the drive back to the Dragonslayer.

  “No, Dirk, it’s not Helen,” Abby assured him.

  “Oh, my God! Did you see her face?”

  They reached the parking lot and Abby put the car in Park. Malachi was out of the backseat, opening the door for Dirk. When Dirk stood in front of him, he steadied the man with a hand at his elbow. “Not Helen, Dirk. So if you can think of anything
at all that might help us find her, it could save her life.”

  “What if he’s doing that to her—to Helen—right now?” Dirk asked.

  “Dirk, the poor girl looks so bad because of what the creatures in the river did to her. Helen could be alive. She’s a bright girl, and if anyone can manage to stay alive, she can. I’ll tell you what might help. You let the police do a thorough search of the Black Swan,” Malachi said.

  “A search?” Dirk asked blankly.

  By then, Abby had come around the car. “If they search the Black Swan, Dirk, they might find something Helen left on the ship. A note, a scrap of paper, a card—something.”

  She watched Dirk carefully—although she couldn’t believe anything evil of him, not in a thousand years.

  His expression didn’t change. “If it’ll help, hell, yeah, search the ship.”

  Malachi might have been surprised by Dirk’s easy agreement; if he was, he didn’t show it.

  “That’s fine, Dirk, thank you. I’m going to call my buddy David back and ask him to get a team in there, okay? You’ll have to give David official permission.”

  Dirk nodded. “Anything that’ll help,” he said. He looked back at Abby. “It will help, right?”

  “It will,” she said.

  “Call him. That detective. Tell him I’ll sign anything he needs.”

  “Thank you,” Abby said.

  Dirk left the two of them, striding for the bar. He stopped and turned back. “You two just saw all that and don’t need a drink?” he demanded.

  “We’re coming,” Abby said.

  She looked at Malachi. “Honestly, it can’t be Dirk. You figure someone’s kidnapping people, taking them on a pirate ship. With the women, he’s making them behave like captives—forcing them to have sex as if they’d been seized by pirates. And because he has a pirate ship, you’re thinking Dirk.”

  He shrugged. “Abby, yes, obviously, I’m thinking Dirk. Helen worked for him, Helen is gone. And he runs a pirate ship.”

  “If someone is going to search the Black Swan, shouldn’t it be us?” Abby asked him.

  “Get permission from your friend,” he told her.