by Rick Murcer
The heavy hand on her shoulder caused her to jump high and turn with a perfect spin kick. But it landed in thin air. She squinted in the ever-growing dark and saw only a shadow. Then the shadow laughed.
“That’s your best shot, Agent? I can’t believe someone like you ever got into the Bureau, but I suppose they have female hiring quotas and all.”
Then another laugh.
The chill that ran down her spine as she recognized the voice paralyzed her. This encounter, this conversation, was impossible. Argyle was dead. Manny had blown his brains all over the deck of that boat.
Before she could get her mind around what was happening, strong arms grabbed her from behind, squeezing so hard that she dropped her weapons and lost her breath.
Her capturer whispered to her.
“Where are all those folks that are supposed to be helping you get through this, Agent? Are they as chicken shit as you? It seems to me they want you to die on the vine, so to speak. I can help with that, and I’m more than willing.”
Garity.
Her mind reeled and seemed ready to explode, simultaneously. Argyle alive? Garity holding her fast when he should have been running for his life? And where was Jen? Had he already taken her out? How could all this be happening?
Argyle stepped close, turning his head from side to side, taking in every line and curve of her face. Her fear turned to utter horror. The Good Doctor had been responsible for so much pain and for taking Manny away from her, but she knew he wanted more. Much more. He sought her soul. She could sense it.
She kicked at him, but he was just out of reach. More insane laughter.
“You’re dead. How can this be happening?” she managed.
“Really? Did you think that I could truly die, Agent Lee? Men like me are eternal. Your partner knew that. However, you aren’t him, are you?”
Argyle nodded to Garity. “Kill her . . . slowly.”
A second later, large fingers closed around her throat. She reached up with the hand he’d freed but couldn’t loosen his grip. Nothing worked. She kicked his legs, tried to reach his groin, but the pressure around her throat increased and her connection with consciousness began to disintegrate. She was headed for the edge of darkness; the gate wide open to that undiscovered realm. She would leave this world with questions and a mammoth chip on her shoulder, but maybe Manny had been right. Maybe this life was only a test and God had a special home for her too.
Wondering one last time where everyone else was—her help, her companions—she set her mind at embracing the future, whatever it held. As she was ready to slip away, she heard a voice calling her name, then the room burst into a dazzling light.
Her eyes flew open. Garity no longer had a death grip on her throat. As she dropped to the musty floor, her eyes darted to where Argyle should have been standing. He’d disappeared. The tears started to flow as her mind sought any kind of rational purchase. It failed.
This was crazy. Hell, maybe she was crazy. Her friend, her partner, her mentor, the lover of her soul, stood in the entrance draped in a grin that was supposed to live only in her memory.
“Hey Sophie. Good to see you, girl,” said Manny Williams, running his hand through his hair.
CHAPTER-6
New Hanover County Detective Ginny Krantz stood with her hands on her hips, staring at the ceiling of the Morgan mansion. What the hell was wrong with people? All she wanted was a nice, gentle, peaceful three weeks before she handed the Sheriff her badge and her gun, retrieved what was left of her sanity, then rode into the sunset as a retired cop after thirty-five years of service to the fine people of North Carolina.
Was that too much to ask? She’d had it up to her arthritic neck with perverts, liars, men haters, women haters, rich bitches, poor pricks, and especially other cops who did what they did because someone “pissed them off.” Or worse, because they felt like they were smarter than the law they’d sworn to uphold—and tried to prove it.
Rubbing her face with sixty-two-year-old hands, she winced when her knuckles cracked. She moved back to the foyer where Lance Morgan had met his gory demise. Her eyes hesitated at his chest then worked past his abdomen and then down to his left leg. This time, she couldn’t pull away. The combination of horror and fascination was compelling, in that morbid sort of way. She guessed that fascination was what separated detectives from blues who’d rather hand out speeding tickets and break up domestics than hang out with dead bodies. Today, she was all for being a blue . . . almost.
Murder wasn’t new to her but what lay spread-eagle on the floor was. When she and her partner, Ben Garcia, got the call, her thoughts ran every other place but to what she was now seeing, remarkably in this neighborhood of exactly four houses—the rich and famous kind.
Ginny felt her partner walk up beside her, followed by the head of their CSU, Dana Bostic.
“Are we good to go? I mean, you got what you need, Dana?” she asked without turning.
“Yes ma’am, I do. The team is done with this room and is working through the rest of the house. It may take all damn day but we’ll get it done, and done the right way.”
“That’s good to hear. Your folks always do a good job. Now, I need you to give me your first impression."
Dana let out a breath, her dark eyes almost hidden by the deep scowl running over her pretty face, then answered in her soft, southern drawl. “I hate that question, Ginny, because it’s early. But it looks like everything is here. I mean the silver’s in the drawer, the paintings—the expensive ones—are still on the wall. And I know for a dadgum fact that there are two Warhol’s in the hallway. His wallet still has two thousand in cash, so it didn’t appear to be a robbery. We didn’t find any drug paraphernalia in the house . . . yet, anyway. I swear I don’t know how people use this much house. I’d go nuts trying to keep it clean.”
Ginny twirled her finger, encouraging Dana to keep going.
“Oh yeah. Anyway, there wasn’t any graffiti on the walls or anything else destroyed. We did find an empty plate in the kitchen, and we processed that but it could have been Morgan’s breakfast dish.”
“So that all means we can rule out thieves, drug dealers, and jealous people and destructive gangs?” asked Ben in that deep radio voice that always made everyone in the room turn in his direction.
“I’d say so, but I’m putting a little disclaimer on that until we finish processing,” said Dana, nodding.
“Anything else?” asked Ginny.
Dana pulled a clear evidence bag out of her CSI kit and handed it to Ginny. In the bag was a small medallion with a six-point plant or flower encircled in a ring. It appeared to be solid gold.
“Yep. One more weird-butt thing that will get your gears moving,” she said as she bent toward the body, pointing.
“See where this side of his mouth is stitched shut? We found the gold looped through the thread. The killer must have placed it there because . . . well, who else would have? And, looking at the coloring around the entry points, it was probably put there postmortem . And yep, I think it’s gold. My sister is a jeweler and . . . well, did I ever show you this necklace that—”
Dana cut herself off and sighed. “Sorry. I do this when I’m nervous, and land sakes, I love jewelry.” She shifted her feet and looked at the ceiling, tears forming but staying home. “I guess the real reason I’m a little shaky is that I’ve never seen anything like this. I reviewed a few case studies in NIBRS, some like this, but like they say, pictures ain’t like being there. My Lord, this was a human being.”
Raising her eyebrows, Ginny took Dana’s last statement to heart. Sometimes working homicide, you blocked the fact that the victims were breathing not so long ago. Not only breathing, but laughing, entertaining hopes, and experiencing joys. She let the thought pass, for now. It wouldn’t help.
“So what the hell is that?” asked Ginny.
“I’m not sure, but we’ll see what we can do with it when I get back to the lab. Weird though. And that wasn’t the
only weird thing. When you get close to the body, like you do, you’ll see some tiny grains of clear crystal around some of the wounds.”
“Yeah? So?”
“It’s salt. Must have driven him crazy with the burning and pain. My guess is that it was antemortem; otherwise, what was the point?”
Ben swore.
Shaking her head, Ginny wondered again, who thought of this kind of shit. “Why?”
“Couldn’t say, other than the obvious. I’m just giving you the facts, ma’am,” said Dana. “Just the facts. The rest is all you.”
“Okay. So what do you think really happened here?”
“Don’t know that either. I do know, for another fact, he loved his women folk, so maybe that’s got something to do with it. I’ll have more science for you later. Let me go do that. I’ll get you reports ASAP. And, like I said, the why is all about you.”
Then Dana was hustling out the front door.
Ginny felt Ben looking down at her from his six-three vantage point with that familiar, and somewhat curious, way partners do when neither has a concrete clue where to go next.
“We’re checking everything else, per procedure, Boss. Cameras, whereabouts the last twenty-four hours, computer, cell phones, all of that. We’re still questioning the maid who came in and found him. She says it was her day off but she got a text from Lance that he needed her for a while. That was about an hour before she got here and found him,” said Ben.
“Good. Maybe we’ll get a print from the phone and a hit from IAFIS and that’ll make this a quick one.”
The doubt she tried to hide must have reflected in her voice because Ben gave her a double look. He thought it too. This just might get ugly and might be anything but easy. Hell, she knew better. Easy was for TV.
She bent closer; felt the catch in her back, ignored it, and kneeled to the victim’s left. Ben followed suit to her right.
The corkscrew was still buried in his chest, almost to the wooden hilt. Surprisingly, there wasn’t as much blood as she might have expected. Two thin spatter lines ran at a forty-five degree angle toward his chin and his semi-closed mouth, and a small puddle covered his chest, but that was it.
Underneath the corkscrew, a thin incision branched out in six directions, leading to every extremity of his arms, legs, neck, and groin, stopping short of his crotch. More salt dusted his groin and belly button.
Each one of the next incisions diverged outward in another six tracks making his skin look like some sick depiction of a spider web. If this carving job was done antemortem, then Dana was right: the man would’ve been in unimaginable pain. There were two more inch-long incisions—one above each eyebrow—and a two-inch cut on each side of his face below the ear. All four seemed to be deeper cuts than the others. He was a mess, no doubt, but the symmetry was hard to ignore, whatever it meant.
“This had to take some time, so I don’t think it was a crime of passion,” Ginny said softly.
“I think that’s right. But if it isn’t, then what? And how does the sewn mouth figure into that? There could be a dozen motivations for killing this guy like this,” said Ben, his handsome face wearing a serious frown.
“And we have to find the right one. I read an article once by a profiler from Michigan, a Detective Williams. He said killers will change MOs, but motivations are limited. Find the motivation, then you have a chance of finding the killer,” said Ginny.
“Sounds like a smart man.”
“How do you know it was a man?”
Ben grinned. “Intuition.”
“Smartass.”
“Had a good teacher.”
“And don’t forget it. You know, other than the corkscrew in the chest, these other wounds weren’t enough to kill him. Just not deep enough to draw that kind of blood. But throw in the salt exposure and serious torture comes to mind.”
Glancing at the victim's wrists, then his ankles and feet, she clucked her tongue.
“And how did the perp keep someone built like this controlled? No ligature marks that I can see.”
“Probably drugged then?” asked Ben.
“I guess the toxicology report will tell us. It smells real fishy, though.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, just a feeling. I guess I’ve never had one like this so I don’t know what to think.”
“Yeah, but like Dana said, the why is on us—” Ben’s sentence caught in his throat and he jumped back.
Lance Morgan’s head had moved to the right, then back to the left as each cheek popped out in turn.
They watched in horror as his mouth gaped open, showing a darkened tongue, then the movement stopped. A moment later, it began again. This time, his lips expanded, releasing most of the black threads. Then a small coral snake burst through the opening, heading directly toward Detective Ginny Krantz.
CHAPTER-7
Reaching for the glass of red cabernet, Lily inhaled its rich ambience and sipped it appropriately. She was beside herself with raw emotion. Not the typical kind she supposed normal people felt, but one of those first-time “feelings” that rocked every part of her depraved world. She understood from her myriad of doctors that babies are flooded with sensations at birth and that their management of those sensations determines their emotional temperature for life. No one was able to figure out why she had so few feelings, almost none, in fact. She didn’t know why, nor cared. No feelings of love, compassion, elation, even anger or hate. Up until a few hours ago, that is.
“Never again,” she whispered, and then laughed. A true this is mine laugh. She'd faked it for years. After all, she was far from the world of the intellectually challenged and had learned the ropes very quickly. She’d fooled them all, excluding two. But she chose not to dwell on them just now.
A sudden thought occurred to her. She struggled off the velour sofa and rushed to the bathroom. She stood in front of the silver-trimmed mirror and watched the smile spread across her pleasant face. Lily reveled in it. The smile was real. True. Genuine. All of her other smiles had been egregious facsimiles, except this one.
Imagine that. Killing a man just to elicit a response, any response from the part of her brain that was supposed to be automatic, had worked. She’d actually felt something. Not environmental, not learned, but from deep inside.
After a few more minutes, she watched her smile fade and felt her state of mind revert to her more normal degree of numbness.
Moving slowly back to the couch, she tapped the enter button on her computer and watched the video screen appear, asking her if she wanted to watch the previous play again.
Of course she did.
Immediately after hitting the button again, Lance Morgan’s face sprang into clear view, eyes wide open. Was there a glint of pleading reflected there? The camera panned his body and then pulled away to the perfect distance and angle. And it was perfect, wasn’t it? After all, she'd practiced for hours to get it right.
The unique, pristine feeling sparked anew from a place deep down in her gut. The more she watched, the more the video unfurled, the more her excitement built. Each turn of the corkscrew allowed small rushes of blood to escape his rippled chest. Each trail of the scalpel was like cutting a piece of exquisite dessert. Each time she saw herself dribble the sea salt from her tongue to his bleeding wounds, she came a step closer to the elusive euphoria she’d been trying to recapture since she'd left Lance's house. She eagerly watched, knowing what was to come. Could hardly wait for it. After her drilling and slicing and salting, she’d managed to stuff the adolescent coral snake into his mouth, closing it with a few stiches, then adding her own sense of mystery by hooking the symbol to the last stitch.
All of the serial killers she’d read about—her kind—had thrown something into the mix to mess with the investigators. For no other reason than to be known for their own exclusive mark on the world. It had to be something they could call their own. Some said it was about narcissism, ego, or about doing their moth
ers—or the all-time classic analysis that perhaps the signature was a challenge and clue to facilitate a desperate cry for help so they wouldn’t do what they did again.
“Idiots, none of them had gotten it right,” she said out loud.
She had to admit that she hadn’t truly understood it either, until now. It was about expressing something that she’d never been able to before. An exploit, a creative action that set her apart from the rest of the world. Creative expressions and her life had never kissed until she’d entered the door of a billionaire's home and did what no one ever expected she could do. She was starting to get it, and it was extraordinary.
Lily switched off the screen. Taking another sip of wine, she suddenly felt deflated, disappointed. Sending Lance Morgan to the world of the dead was already losing luster. She’d watched the video three times and, in each instance, she felt less and craved more.
But she knew the cure for the blues. Lying on the floor, she stretched out and began working her damaged hand and arm along with her weakened legs. Each painful repetition caused her to perspire just a little more. But, in the end, she knew her hard work would give her more strength. She’d need it for her next “date.” And the next.
One thing was certain: there were enough sick bastards in the Carolinas to service ten like her and her newfound appetite.
CHAPTER-8
“Sophie? Sophie? Hey, Princess, wake up. Come on, girl. Wake up.”
Sophie’s body jerked as her eyes flew open. She wrenched Dean’s hand from her shoulder and jumped from the hospital couch taking a Lotus stance, determined not to let Garity surprise her again.
“Whoa. Easy, girl. Don’t hit me. Were you dreaming?”
She turned toward the voice and recognition replaced her fears. Dean sat in the chair next to where she’d been lying, hands in the air, surprise on his face.