by P. D. Martin
“Woman.” Harris moves to the front of the room to start the debrief and the three of us make a quick exit.
I give Darren a look and bite my lip. God, I hope it’s not the brunette.
We drive over to Himmel Park in Darren’s car and move quickly toward the crime scene, but I’m more eager than the others. I need to see her face.
I flash my ID at the uniform who’s standing guard over her body until all the players arrive. She’s been dumped underneath a bush, face down with her arms raised above her head—different from the others. She’s also lying on clear plastic but it’s not the ME’s plastic; this is how the body’s been dumped. I pull a small flashlight out of my back pocket and shine it over her body for a closer look. Her hair looks like that of the girl from my dream, but until I see her face I can’t be sure. I want to lean in and roll her over now, but until the ME and forensics arrive and set up their night equipment to do a first pass of the scene, the body can’t be moved. My skin crawls, literally feeling like thousands of bugs are piercing my flesh. I need to see her face. Darren stares at me with soft blue eyes, but his sympathy makes it worse, not better, and I look away, focusing only on her.
It takes another five minutes or so before the ME, Ray George, arrives. He must have been close to get here this soon. The call would have gone out immediately, but even so, he managed to get here in about fifteen minutes. The lab guys arrive hot on his heels, and within five minutes the crime scene is floodlit, but also crowded. Darren and I direct the cops and forensics assigned to the case, getting them moving with their tasks as quickly as possible. I look back at the body, which we can see much better now. George is preparing to turn the girl over. I hover close to him, waiting.
After many photos have been taken and everything’s ready, they gently roll her onto her back. Darren moves in, too, and I know it’s to support me as much as anything else. Her body weight eventually drags her over, but her brown hair is draped across her face. I lean in and carefully part the rich locks…to reveal her face. I ride the nausea, fighting the need to puke. “Shit!” I say. It’s her. I back away from the body. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to save her and now…she’s dead. I was too late. I know this feeling all too well.
The nausea threatens to beat me so I focus on distancing myself and regaining my investigative objectivity. In my vision the woman was stabbed, yet to be one of the killers’ victims, she should have been strangled. I bend down and run the flashlight over her body, even though the main lights are already illuminating her. The love heart’s there, of course, but there are no stab wounds. She looks just like the others, except for the different posing of the body. Why did I dream about her being stabbed so violently?
“It’s the woman from your sketch,” Stone says.
“Yes,” I manage.
I move into the background, torn between wanting to see her and not being able to bear it. Every time I look at her, or think about her, I can see her being dragged through the house by her hair, fighting her attacker every step of the way. And I saw it before it happened. Before she was dead. Why couldn’t I stop the killer in time?
Eventually the body is ready for transportation. Darren and I ride in the back with the vic, leaving Stone in charge of the scene. I stare at the body bag and Darren looks at me.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Not really.”
He doesn’t respond at first. Then: “We can’t always make it in time. No one can.”
I nod, although without any enthusiasm or sense of absolution.
“It’s not our job,” he continues.
I look at him. “Of course it is!”
“We find the killer. As soon as we can. That’s the best we can do.”
I keep my eyes firmly planted on the body bag, not on Darren. I’m in no mood for logic. I can see her face, just as if the black plastic wasn’t between her and us. Flashes of the dream ride me. I try to fight it again, but it’s futile. I’m no longer looking at a body bag, or even her body lying on the stretcher in front of us. Now all I can see is her past, or more specifically, how she died.
She’s being dragged by her hair across a hallway. She’s screaming, kicking, fighting for her life every step of the way. But he’s bigger, stronger than she is and he takes physical control of her easily. He drags her into a bedroom, flings her onto the bed and cuffs her hands to the headboard. She screams and screams until her voice is hoarse and she’s got nothing left.
I close my eyes trying desperately to repress it, but the onslaught continues.
Her screams start again. He’s running the thick blade of a knife across her tanned skin. He runs it from her bare breast, down her abdomen and down onto her inner thigh. Then he traces the mirror line up the other side of her body, until the knife’s resting on her face.
“What’s happening?” Darren puts his hand on mine. I jump at the contact and open my eyes again, hoping it will stop, but it doesn’t.
He raises the knife above her and brings it down in a forceful arc, penetrating her skin. Blood sprays everywhere, across his face, down his naked chest, onto the bed…everywhere.
I put my hands up in front of my face, trying to stop it, trying to deflect the attack.
Darren squeezes my hands tightly, covering both of them with his. “Sophie. Sophie!”
The psychic episode releases its viselike grip on me and I’m staring at Darren’s face. He’s crouched down in front of me. My hands shake uncontrollably within Darren’s firm grip and I realize I’m breathless, like I’ve run ten miles.
Darren gives my hands a squeeze. “What did you see?”
At first I can’t answer him. I’m still shell-shocked, frightened the images and fear will come again. Eventually I manage to speak. “Her death.” My breath evens out and I no longer feel like cowering in the corner. “But it was the knife again.” I shake my head, confused.
Darren looks down, then back up at me. “There are no knife wounds, Sophie.” He pauses. “Maybe the vision is wrong.”
“No.” I shake my head again. “It was so strong. Besides, you’re the one who told me to trust them.”
He doesn’t have a response and so we ride in silence.
Ray George decides to process the brunette straightaway, and lets her jump the line. Not surprising given it’s a serial killer—who’s working on an incredibly accelerated time frame. Weekly killings—even Rivers can’t deny the pattern now. And it’s a far cry from the female killer’s average of roughly one a year.
In the autopsy room I stare at her, but I just feel numb.
“Any tattoo?” I ask. If our killing couple was taking turns, a male victim would be lying on the slab and I’d expect a rose to be tattooed on him somewhere. But it’s a female victim.
The ME turns her wrist over and brushes off some dirt, being careful to preserve it for analysis. It’ll probably turn out to be earth from Himmel Park. But there’s nothing underneath the dirt, no tattoo. He does a sweep of the rest of the body and comes up emptyhanded—no tattoo.
“Time of death?” Darren asks.
“Based on rigor and body temp, I’d say twelve to twenty-four hours.” He removes the plastic bags from her hands and feet and continues the visual examination. He draws our attention to small bruises on her legs, about eight all in all.
Darren looks at me. “Maybe from kicking, trying to escape.”
I nod. I try to stop it, but I can’t help but visualize the woman being dragged down the hall by her hair, thrashing. She probably knocked her legs against furniture and the walls as she went.
“The bruising was just coming up before she died, so the trauma would have happened only a few hours before death,” the ME says. He turns her hands over and examines the fingernails.
“Anything?” I ask.
“They’ve been scrubbed clean. She may have got a sample of her attacker but he removed all traces of himself. I’ll take some swabs anyhow. See what comes back.”
He continues up her b
ody, spending more time at the neck.
“Strangulation?” I ask.
“Looks that way.” The ME fingers the woman’s bruised neck. “Internal will verify that.” He moves to her head, which hasn’t been shaved yet. “The scalp shows some distress.” He runs his gloved hand through her hair, and a handful of broken strands come out. “Looks like hair pulling was used to restrain her.”
Again I can’t escape the image of her kicking and screaming with the killer dragging her down the corridor.
Next the ME checks for rape. “She was raped,” he confirms. He points to bruising on her inner thighs. “This is quite severe—” he examines her pelvic region “—and we’ve got vaginal and rectal tearing. Looks like he raped her several times.”
Darren winces. “Fluids?”
“I’ll do a rape kit. See what we find.” He starts the swabbing procedure.
“The rape’s very different from Cindy,” I say.
Darren nods. “Guess he lost control.”
I have an instant to feel disturbed by the different rape styles, before I’m taken over by dizziness. I try to resist what I sense is about to happen, but it’s no use.
A woman’s body is wrapped in mud-streaked but clear plastic, and dumped in long grass. She’s lying on her stomach, but her legs are splayed apart slightly and her arms are over her head. On her back are several gashes, deep knife wounds.
I come to and Darren’s staring at me, but thankfully the ME’s still absorbed in his work. Darren gives me a look but I just shake my head at him, confused by the vision—it wasn’t even the brunette. I focus on the body on the slab in front of me and take in every detail. But the rest of the autopsy is uneventful besides a small amount of dirt that the ME finds in her inner-ear canal.
“No doubt soil composition will show it’s from the Mojave,” Darren says.
“No doubt.”
We leave the pathologist to finalize the body. Outside, Darren calls Stone and they swap information.
“Well?” I say.
“They’ve found a footprint near the dump site, but nothing else. It could be our perp’s or it could be the gardener’s.”
The next afternoon we sit in the project room, going over the autopsy report and the crime-scene photos.
“Anything on the rape kit?” Stone asks.
Darren looks up from the photos. “No DNA. He used a condom.”
Stone continues to read the autopsy report. “Scalp trauma?” She looks up.
“No surprise there,” I say.
Stone waits for me to expand.
“She was pulled by her hair.” As soon as I say it, I regret the certainty in my voice.
“Doh. Sorry.” Stone rolls her eyes. “Even rapists use the hair-pulling technique.”
I nod, relieved Stone assumes my confidence is based on stats not the fact that I saw the girl’s murder. “It’s a quick and easy way to subdue a victim with long hair,” I add. “And very effective.”
Darren continues. “All her organs looked fine, but obviously we’re waiting on the tox screen.” He flicks to the next page. “The X-rays showed an old injury, a broken arm. She’s never given birth.”
Probably not a very useful detail for us, but for female victims the ME’s report usually includes comments on any obvious gynecological issues such as childbirth.
“Any word on the fingerprints?” Hopefully they’ve rushed the ID through the system.
“They’ve run the prints, but no matches from the database,” Stone says.
“So unlike Malcolm and Cindy, no criminal record.” It’s a point of difference, but probably not significant.
Stone sighs. “A woman who’s broken her arm and never given birth…not exactly narrowing down our options here.”
“No.”
We’re silent for a few minutes.
“The footprint?” I ask hopefully.
“Matched to one of the contractors employed by Himmel Park,” Stone says. “And nothing back on the plastic yet.”
“Is the Bureau going to give us some more resources now?” Darren asks.
“No.” I sigh. “I called Rivers, but he just doesn’t have anyone to spare.”
Darren doesn’t say anything, but I can tell he’s annoyed.
We go back to the hard facts and I try to absorb the case details. But no matter how much I try to ignore it, I’m drawn to two things—the plastic at the crime scene and the new vision I had yesterday. That victim, whoever she was, was posed just like our brunette, face down and covered in plastic. I think about what Darren said in Vegas, about this being a calling. I can’t ignore the vision—it’s like ignoring a piece of evidence.
“Mind if I use your computer for a bit, Carter?”
Darren looks at me a little quizzically, but says, “Sure.”
Until I can piece this together, or at least make some sense of it, it’s too early to share the vision.
At Darren’s desk I open up the VICAP software and run a search on stabbings where the victims have been found wrapped in clear plastic. To narrow the search I also add in the body positioning from the crime scene: the girl lying on her stomach with her arms posed above her head. Within a few minutes the online database returns seven hits that all have the exact crime-scene elements as my scenario.
I click on each result and find one file that’s got scanned photos attached. I open that one up and print out the full file, including the crime-scene report, the autopsy report and the photos. I also print out the files on the other six murders, even though they don’t include photos. Photos and other scanned images can be attached when the initial VICAP questionnaire is logged, but scanning can take time—time most cops don’t have.
After I’ve spent an hour going through them, I’m convinced that somehow the brunette is related to these seven cases. The body positioning, the plastic—they’re clues to this killer. And the fact that I saw her stabbed in my vision certainly supports that. But it’s also so different than Cindy.
I take the files into the project room, to Darren and Stone. “I think I’ve got something here.”
They both look up.
I spread the color printouts of the photos across the table, on top of the current crime-scene photos.
“A stabbing?” Stone is confused.
“I know, I know.” I hold my hand up. “It sounds off base. But I was thinking about Malcolm. He had the rose tattoo and the rose is a signature of our killer. Someone’s leaving us clues. So, what if the body positioning and the plastic are clues?” I don’t mention my vivid premonition. I can’t in front of Stone. “Anyway, I did a VICAP search on women who’ve been wrapped in clear plastic like that found at the latest crime scene. And this is what came up.” I motion to the photos. “There are seven murders that match in total, but this is the only one with photos on the VICAP database.”
Stone and Darren pick up the printouts and review them. The first picture is of the crime scene as it was when the police first arrived. The body is about thirty feet off the path, and barely discernible through several layers of clear but mud-streaked plastic. Just like my vision. Nothing lies near or around the body. No murder weapon, none of her personal effects, nothing. The photos of this stage cover all angles, and some are taken from a distance while others are close-ups. Next in the sequence are a few photos as the examiners removed the upper layers of plastic. The killer created a sandwich effect by placing her on one doubled-over sheet of plastic, before draping a larger one that’d been folded in three over her body and tucking it in at the sides. It’s almost as if he wanted to preserve her. Next are some shots of the victim’s back, exposed and showing five knife wounds in total on her back. The final series shows what the investigators found when they turned her over. Her front had been stabbed multiple times in a frenzied-style kill. They are deep stab wounds, where the knife has been plunged into her flesh and then extracted. There are also some smaller cuts on her stomach and breasts. These cuts remind me of a suicide’s hesitation c
uts, the trial cuts they do while they’re gathering enough determination to make the lethal wounds. But our killer isn’t indecisive or tentative. He was probably playing with her, all part of his power trip.
“So you’re thinking…?” Darren says.
“These are related.” I point at the nearest printout. “The pose and plastic are classic signature stuff.”
“Agreed,” Darren says. “But why would our couple leave clues to lead us to past crimes? The tattoo of the rose, the plastic?”
He’s got a damn good point. Why would they?
Stone pipes up. “They could be taunting us. Think they’re so much smarter than us.”
Darren stands up. “Unless…”
We look at him expectantly.
After a couple of seconds he says, “Have you seen a movie called Copycat?”
“Sure. Harry Connick Junior, Sigourney Weaver,” I say.
“Well what if this isn’t our female killer and it isn’t this guy?” Darren points to the new files I’ve placed on the table. “What if it’s someone else trying to set them up?”
“Do you think it’s possible?” Stone asks.
“Anything’s possible,” I say. “But if we do have a copycat killer, how would he know about the rose, the plastic? Those details weren’t released.”
We’re stumped again.
“And what about the second victim, Cindy?” Darren rubs his chin. “There was no special clue on her.”
“Not that we found,” I say.
Stone breathes in, about to say something, but then abandons it. Darren and I both look at her.
“Go on.” I’m assuming Stone has an idea but isn’t confident enough to voice it.
“Well, it’s just…what if we’ve got three killers? The woman—” she points to the whiteboard still covered in scrawl about Malcolm “—a second killer for Cindy, and then this third one.”
Darren and I are both silent.
“Sorry, dumb idea,” Stone says.
“No, not at all. In fact, it would also explain something else that’s been bothering me. The rapes. Cindy was raped, but there was no bruising in her thighs, or around her groin. But this latest victim’s rapist was much, much rougher. It looked like a different perp, because it is a different perp.” I say. I twist the ring on my finger, piecing it all together. “But why would three killers team up? The couple I get, but three?”