The Harbinger Collection: Hard-boiled Mysteries Not for the Faint of Heart (A McCray Crime Collection)

by Carolyn McCray

  “Yes, but now that he has crossed the line into murder, he is devolving, his cooling off period shortening and shortening,” Kent replied.

  That was the problem. Each subsequent killing just didn’t satisfy as well as that first one. Therefore, they cooled off faster and faster, killing at a more rapid pace.

  “So he’s just getting started,” Ruben said, stating the obvious.

  To her surprise, Kent didn’t jump on Ruben. Instead, he took in a long breath. “I’m afraid so.”

  With his flippant attitude and penchant to criticize, it was easy sometimes to forget why Kent got into profiling in the first place. To save lives. Lots of them. It was a dagger to the heart each time a killer struck before he could catch them.

  The body at their feet mocked Kent and his ability.

  Before she could ask what happened next, Joshua, their odd morgue attendant, bounded into the crime scene.

  “Whoa, Detective Usher, to what do I owe this pleasure?” Joshua said, inclining his head. “I heard this was a mugging that went sideways.”

  “No such luck,” Kent said, causing Joshua to spin around.

  “Special Agent Harbinger! And Detective Torres? Wow, we’ve got the Holy Trinity of crime solvers.”

  * * *

  Joshua couldn’t believe his luck. He’d taken this call out of boredom. There hadn’t been a lot going on at the morgue. Just one heart attack victim from an old folks’ home. Like he said. Boring.

  But now? If Nicole, Kent and Ruben were here, then this was going to be a real humdinger. He looked down at the body. The woman was of average height and weight, a dirty blonde dressed in business casual.

  A handsome news reporter stepped up to the crime scene tape. “So is she a victim of the Wallflower killer?”

  The rest of the group turned to the Ken-doll reporter, Mitch Pederson. That jaw could not naturally be that square, and that cleft in his chin? Clearly, only surgery could produce one so deep and perfectly placed.

  “Wallflower?” Ruben asked.

  “Yeah, I came up with it,” Joshua said, happy to have contributed to the case.

  The young protégé of Kent’s frowned. “We don’t give nicknames to serialists. It only feeds into their delusions.”

  Joshua never had liked this guy with the weird name. He’d gotten all cozy with Joshua’s peeps. “But it describes the victims perfectly,” he said. “All of them are shy and retiring.”

  Kent stepped between them. “Wallflower it is, then.” He turned to the reporter. “But sorry, we can’t comment on an ongoing case.”

  Frowning, which only made Mitch’s cleft stand out more, the reporter moved on.

  A loud grunt behind them announced Dr. McGregor’s arrival. “If I’d known it was going to be a block party, I would have brought my wife’s famous coleslaw.”

  The group parted to allow the ME’s rather rotund midriff through.

  “You,” he said to Kent. “One hundred feet away.”

  “But this’s a crime scene,” the profiler objected.

  The old coroner shrugged. “The restraining order is for my person, not just the morgue. Now, scoot.”

  The profiler frowned, but Nicole urged him away from the crime scene. “Just give him some room.”

  “This isn’t fair,” Kent protested.

  “No, not fair is putting formaldehyde in my coffee. That wasn’t fair.”

  “Only because Joshua challenged me to,” Kent shot back.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Joshua said, putting his hands up. “Keep me out of this. I just said that Dr. McGregor’s sense of smell was so bad that I didn’t think he could detect formaldehyde in his coffee.”

  Kent smiled. “And we do know how I like to scientifically prove such statements.”

  “One hundred feet, Harbinger,” McGregor growled.

  “Come on,” Kent protested, and pointed to the morgue assistant. “Joshua stole body parts and you let him hang around.”

  “Only by court order,” McGregor stated. “And, so far, he hasn’t eaten anyone’s brain, so there’s that.”

  Yeah. Joshua thought, but would never voice to the profiler.

  * * *

  Nicole watched Kent’s back as he walked away from the crime scene. Actually, stormed off from the crime scene. A look of sheer satisfaction beamed from McGregor’s face. It was possibly the happiest she’d ever seen the older man.

  He was now able to lord over the crime scene as its master. Guess there wasn’t enough room within the yellow tape for both him and Kent.

  “Alright, let’s get her bagged and back to the morgue.”

  McGregor was known not for his skills as a forensic medical examiner, but for his hatred of being out in the field. Nicole wasn’t even sure if he’d looked at the body before he ordered it bagged.

  “But, Doc, I think there’s something wrong,” Joshua said, pointing to the woman’s belly. “There’s movement.”

  Again, McGregor didn’t even look down—he just bit harder into his unlit cigar butt. “Just gaseous movement from decomp.”

  “No,” Joshua said. “Dude, that is not gas.”

  Nicole leaned over Joshua’s shoulder, peering down at the body. Joshua might be odd, but he was right in his observation. The belly undulated up and down in progressive waves.

  Ruben tugged her arm. “Back up.”

  “Why?”

  Then the skin split open and maggots poured out of the belly. More like burst out of the woman’s stomach. Thousands of maggots tumbled from the body and spilled out onto the pavement. Some landed on Joshua’s shoe. The morgue assistant jumped up and down, shaking his foot violently.

  “That’s why,” Ruben said.

  There were so many maggots that collectively you could hear their mandibles gnashing, looking for new tissue to eat. There was a sickly sweet aroma. Nicole had to stifle a gag.

  “What the hell?” Joshua screamed. “That is wrong, just wrong!”

  Kent trotted up to the crime scene, but even under the bizarre circumstances, McGregor pointed. “One hundred feet, Harbinger.”

  Nicole waved the profiler off. She was grossed out, but fine.

  * * *

  Talk about unfair. The body just exploded with maggots, and the old coot wouldn’t let him inside the tape. He knew McGregor, though. He would have Kent arrested, so Kent backed far enough away that McGregor seemed content. It wasn’t nearly one hundred feet, though. At least he could eavesdrop on the crime scene conversation.

  “There’s no way those maggots were naturally there,” Yvent said.

  Nicole turned to Ruben. “How did you know?”

  “I spent some time on my grandparents’ ranch. Sometimes the livestock died out in the field, and you didn’t find them until they were bloated and the maggots would eat through the flesh.”

  Kent had never taken Ruben as a farmhand type. Although, in some ways, it did explain a few things. Like how he liked to ride in on his white horse to emotionally rescue Nicole.

  “But according to her liver temp, she’s only been dead for a few hours,” Joshua said, still shaking out his pant leg.

  Kent watched as people gave the body a width berth. That was a lot of maggots. The killer could have kept her warm, increasing the maggots’ life cycle and keeping the liver temp warm to throw them off time of death.

  “He injected fly eggs,” Kent said, coming to the only logical conclusion.

  “But maggots should only eat dead flesh,” Nicole said.

  “Harbinger,” McGregor grumbled.

  Kent was feeling lucky today. “Which, of course, begs the question of whether Wallflower did so to the other bodies.”

  Nicole frowned. “Something that you would have found on necropsy, right Doctor?”

  McGregor gnawed on his cigar. “When first laid, the eggs are nearly microscopic.”

  “So, depending on the species and ambient temperature, the other bodies might have had eggs injected in them, as well?”

  The burl
y man just shrugged. “Who would look for fly eggs in a closed abdomen?”

  “What are you thinking?” Nicole asked, although she must have had an idea of his answer. Not that she or anyone else was going to like it.

  “Harbinger,” McGregor barked. “What did I say?

  “I’m thinking we need to exhume a few bodies.” Kent backed up a few steps as he replied to Nicole.

  CHAPTER 4

  Ruben took in a deep breath, enjoying the smell of fresh cut grass. Many people found cemeteries creepy, but Ruben appreciated the fresh air and cloudless sky. Usually, cemeteries presented such peace and quiet—the present rumble of the backhoe notwithstanding.

  After showing the judge photos of the maggot eruption, getting a warrant to exhume the first victim had been pretty much a foregone conclusion. Even with McGregor arguing that he had completed a thorough and exhaustive autopsy. Again, the maggot explosion kind of undercut his argument.

  “I get that he could have injected fly eggs,” Yvent said. “But why?”

  “Why did serial killers do anything?” Ruben wanted to reply, but didn’t. It was a bit early in the day to get shot down, again, by Kent.

  “Remember, this guy was a good guy just a year ago. Sure, he sucked at getting women, which is why he turned to a prostitute. There was something wrong with him, but at his core he probably believed he was a ‘good guy.’”

  “I still don’t get it,” Yvent said.

  God, Ruben was glad that Yvent was here. Someone else to ask the stupid questions.

  Kent looked to Nicole. “Any idea?”

  Her jaw clenched as she shook her head, looking down. Ruben hated it when Kent cowed Nicole like that.

  “And you do?” Ruben challenged, even though he knew he probably shouldn’t.

  “How does a ‘good guy’ reconcile killing someone?” Kent asked.

  “A psychopath doesn’t have to reconcile,” Yvent said.

  “Ah, but our guy isn’t a psychopath. Our guy has guilt and shame. Look at the long interval between the prostitute’s death and his first real kill. Something stayed his hand for over a year.”

  Damn, Ruben wished he had the answer, just to wipe that smug look off of the profiler’s face. Yvent’s brow furrowed. You could almost see the wheels turning inside the young man’s head.

  Ruben didn’t even bother trying. He’d given up a long time ago attempting to think like a serial killer. He just couldn’t. And you know what? He thought he was a better person for it.

  Their captain might disagree, as he liked Kent’s closing rate.

  And once again, the profiler was light-years ahead of them all. Even his supposed prodigy, Yvent.

  Kent sighed as if he were in front of a class of kindergarteners. “He’s got to justify his kills. He has to not only justify them to himself, but to the forensic team that he knows will examine the body.”

  Yvent’s eyes scanned back and forth as he took in this new information. He so obviously, desperately wanted to reach the conclusion before Kent announced it. In the end, though, he sighed loudly. “I got nothing.”

  “He wants us to know that even though from the outside all of these women seem to be upstanding, they are all…”

  “Rotten on the inside,” Nicole finished for Kent.

  Kent nodded sagely, which appeared to be the only way the profiler nodded. “Exactly. He wants us to know that the women deserved it. He is trying to get out from under his cloud of guilt.”

  Damn it, but that did make sense out of a pretty senseless situation. Maybe, just maybe, Ruben could see why Nicole put up with all of Kent’s eccentricities. These flashes of pure genius were impressive. Again, damn it.

  As the backhoe rumbled to a stop, Ruben felt a knot form in his jaw muscle. There was a sound that had set up in the back of his brain and was burrowing in. It was jangly and set his teeth on edge. He’d assumed that it was the backhoe’s motor whining, but now that the thing was off, something else was making that noise.

  Kent indicated to Yvent. “Get down there.”

  “Why me?” the younger man whined.

  Kent just glared at his protégé, making it pretty clear that this was what protégés did.

  They all gathered around the edge of the dug-out grave as Yvent jumped in beside the coffin. It was a cream color. It took a moment for Ruben to realize that the coffin was one of those new eco-friendly ones, made out of recycled materials. Which meant that the body had not been embalmed.

  Ruben didn’t have time to explain or even shout a warning as Yvent went to open the coffin. Ruben only had time to grab Nicole and throw her back from the edge.

  * * *

  There was a pop as Yvent opened the coffin. From the corner of his eye, Kent saw Ruben take Nicole down. Then a buzzing filled the air. Actually, it seemed to replace the air, and a torrent of flies burst from the grave. Millions of them. A black swarm obscured Yvent. The swarm blocked the sky.

  Suddenly the entire world was consumed by large, black, ugly, angry flies.

  Kent tried to block his face with his arms, but the determined flies crawled between the cracks and onto his nose, and eyelids. They even tried to find a way into his ears.

  Yvent’s screams suddenly stopped. Kent was certain it was because a fly had gotten into the young man’s mouth.

  Reeling backwards, he tripped over Nicole and Ruben, landing on his ass. He put his arms into motion, flapping and flailing. Anything to keep the insects at bay. The flies, though, seemed to be really enjoying their freedom.

  Then a gust of wind carried the buzzing horde away. A huge black splotch on the sky moved as one downwind.

  Kent scrambled up, swiping flies off of his jacket and especially out of his hair.

  He cautiously made his way to the side of the hole in the ground to find Yvent puking in the corner of the grave. Kent did not blame the kid. There was a lifetime worth of nightmares in what the kid just experienced. Even Kent was slightly worried about what tonight’s sleep might bring, and he’d seen some stuff. Actually, a lot of stuff.

  There was just something inherently present in a human’s DNA to hate flies. This was like death was attacking them full on. That feeling wasn’t going to go away quickly.

  “Oh my God,” Nicole said next to him as she rose.

  Kent ducked. What was next? Killer butterflies? But she was looking down into the grave.

  Against the bright red muslin lay a perfectly cleaned skeleton. The woman had only been in the ground a few weeks, yet the maggots had picked her clean.

  “Oh no,” Nicole groaned. Yes, this was all gross, but usually she had a stronger constitution than that.

  Kent wasn’t the best at comforting behavior, but he gave it a try. “It’s going to be okay,” he said as he put an arm over her shoulder.

  “No,” Nicole said, shrugging off his arm. “Victim number three. Ashley Rohnart. Her funeral is today.”

  Ruben shook his head. “There’s no way—she was killed two weeks ago.”

  “But they were having trouble finding her family,” Nicole explained. “She was kept in the cooler at the morgue until Wednesday.”

  Yvent climbed out of the grave, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve, then spitting fly wings out of his mouth. “The lower temperature could have kept the larvae at bay.”

  * * *

  Nicole slalomed through traffic, racing to the funeral home. They had tried to call ahead, but the phone had rang and rang. Who didn’t have a freaking answering machine these days? And a funeral home? Why didn’t they have an answering service?

  Ruben had sent patrol cars ahead—however Nicole wasn’t sure what they were going to do about the situation.

  “What is the point of having a muscle car and not using the muscle?” Kent complained.

  Granted, they did have lights flashing, and the siren screamed in her ear. She stepped on the gas, speeding past a Ferrari. God, how she loved her Mustang. Good old-fashioned American craftsmanship.

  It
was only luck that Nicole had remembered about Ashley’s funeral. Sometimes if a case really got to her, she would attend the ceremony. The funeral homes were used to informing her of any upcoming funerals in case she wanted to attend.

  Nicole hadn’t planned to attend Ashley’s funeral. Did that make her uncaring? But at the time, she hadn’t even been aware that Ashley was the victim of a serial killer. At the time, they still thought she’d been the victim of a mugging gone wrong.

  But why did the manner of her death matter? Shouldn’t Nicole feel just as bad for the victim of a random violent crime as for a serial killer’s victim? Perhaps she should, but she just didn’t. They were pretty sure from the crime timeline that the killer held his victims for a few hours.

  They didn’t know why until now, of course. It was to inject the insect larvae. So, yeah, Nicole had way more sympathy for those type of victims. They had endured hours of torment, only to die.

  Nicole realized that her fingers were gripping the steering wheel as if her life depended on it. Relaxing her hands, Nicole took the last turn toward the funeral home.

  Yvent pushed his head forward from the back seat. “I am not going in first,” he announced.

  “Noted,” Kent said, surprisingly not giving Yvent any crap about being a chicken or having to toughen up for the job. That grave had been rough.

  The tires squealed and she turned into the funeral home parking lot. They all sprang from the car, but at this point there was no real hurry, as people ran out of the front door, crying, flailing their hands and many of them heaving.

  Yeah, Nicole knew what that felt like.

  “Silver lining,” Kent said. “Should be easy to get the exhumation order for the second victim.”

  As people fled, screaming from the funeral home, swatting at a swarm of black flies, that was an understatement.

  * * *

  Kent watched the pandemonium play out. He’d allowed Nicole and Ruben to take the front lines, explaining to the traumatized families why their precious Ashley had exploded into maggots and flies.

  There were grief counselors, PTSD counselors, and half a dozen exterminators on site by now.