by M. Z. Kelly
They were less than four feet from her patient when Dr. Marlow introduced her. “Mr. Macy, this is Dr. Moore. She’s going to accompany you on the next round of clinical trials.”
Macy finally broke eye contact with her. Moore released a breath as her patient said to Dr. Marlow. “Dr. Javier?”
Marlow glanced at Moore then back at their patient. “He’s no longer with the hospital.”
The patient’s lips thinned, exposing small white teeth. As Macy looked back at her, Moore thought it might be an attempt at a smile, but quickly dismissed that thought, the word predator coming to mind. She knew that Dr. Javier had accompanied Macy a couple of days earlier on his initial visit to Halgen for some preliminary medical tests.
“Do you think I can be cured, doctor?”
The question startled her. “I’m sorry?”
“A simple question. Can I be cured?”
His yellow eyes fixed on her as she fumbled for an answer. “I’m not…” Moore looked at her boss, then back at him. “I think time will tell. We’ll have to see how things go.”
“Time,” Macy said. “What is that?”
Moore looked over at Dr. Marlow again, but saw that he had lowered his eyes. She found her subject’s ochre eyes again. “I don’t know…”
“Of course you do,” Macy insisted. “What is time?”
She tried to collect her thoughts. “Why it’s…I guess you could refer to time as a point when an event takes place that we measure other events by.”
The same peculiar expression she’d seen before played on Macy’s face again. “You mean, like death?”
Moore swallowed. She looked back at Marlow, but saw the psychiatrist was now checking his watch. She met Macy’s strange eyes again. “Yes, I suppose that’s one way of looking at things.”
“Then I presume you could say that death is our constant companion, Dr. Moore. Its dark visage haunts even the halcyon days of our youth, reminding us of that which brings us closer to oblivion. We blindly stumble through a world in pursuit of immortality, despite inhabiting a universe that is governed by impermanence.” His dark eyes fixed on her. “In my estimation, that would mean that we’re all waiting.”
“I’m not sure…”
“…for a moment in time called ‘death’.”
Moore started to answer when she realized that Dr. Marlow had taken her by the arm. The elder psychiatrist said, “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Macy. As soon as transportation and other arrangements are made for your return trip to Halgen.”
They were headed for the door when her new patient’s words stopped them. “Aren’t you going to shake my hand, Doctor?”
Moore took a breath and turned back to her patient. She walked over and took his hand. It was warm and felt wet.
The strange half-smile played on Macy’s lips again. “Nice to meet you, Doctor.”
“Same here.” She pulled her hand away, brushing it against her coat as she and Marlow left the room.
Moore wiped the sheen of perspiration off her forehead when the door to the security room closed behind them, telling her boss, “That was…odd, to say the least.”
Marlow folded his arms and leaned against the table. “As I said before, your new patient doesn’t fit any of the diagnostic criteria. He’s not only deranged, he’s brilliant. My suggestion is that you keep your distance from him, both physically and intellectually.”
Marlow started to leave, but Moore called after him. “Can I ask you something?”
The administrator turned back to her. “Of course.”
“His reference to Dr. Javier. I know that he was previously assigned to Macy. What happened to him?”
Dr. Marlow’s gray eyes held on her for a long moment. “He committed suicide.”
NINE
“Gooseberry might be a thoroughly despicable character,” I said to Leo as we drove to the coroner’s office in Los Angeles, “but I tend to believe his story about how things went down at the cemetery.”
We stopped at a light and Leo glanced at me. “That means there are two options. Somebody was lying in wait for Jerry Duncan and Marvin Hanks and took them out. Or, whoever murdered the girl also killed the rappers.”
I thought about the possibilities, then said, “I think we need some follow-up on Duncan and Hanks. Maybe they had other issues, besides the one with Gooseberry. It could be somebody else was burned in a drug deal and knew they were going to be at the cemetery.”
The light changed, and Leo accelerated. “Maybe.”
I glanced at him. “It sounds like you have your doubts.”
“Not sure. What happened to the girl and the two drug dealers, it seems like they were two completely different events. And the girl…” Leo looked at me. “Even if he’d finished up and was leaving the scene and then saw what was happening between Gooseberry and the others, why get involved? The murdered girl was concealed, away from that action.”
I felt Bernie’s hot breath on my neck and cracked a window. “As always, there’s a lot more questions than answers.”
Darby and Buck met up with us at the coroner’s office as Brie was preparing for the autopsy. I made arrangements for Bernie to wait in a technician’s office while we all gathered in the autopsy suite. While Brie laid out scalpels, saws, swabs, bags, and toxicology supplies, she told us about the autopsies of the two shooting victims.
“One of my colleagues, Dr. Mumford, completed the autopsies of Mr. Duncan and Mr. Hanks about an hour ago. Both victims died of multiple gunshot wounds. It’s noteworthy that the entry wounds were posterior, all 9mm rounds. It would appear they were shot from behind, with the shots having been fired from the approximate direction of where our female victim was located.”
“You mean, somebody shot them from a hundred yards away?” Darby asked.
“No, as I said, the direction was approximate, but the range would likely have been much closer.”
“Meaning that when somebody was finished with the girl, they unloaded on our rappers,” Darby concluded.
Brie leveled her eyes on him, glanced at me, and then looked back at him. “That’s one of the possibilities.”
“Maybe it was just a matter of someone being in the wrong place, at the wrong time,” Buck suggested to his partner. “Our suspect was leaving the girl and came across the others.”
“If that was the case, why not just disappear into the fog and let them shoot it out? He had no skin in the game.”
“Could be Duncan or Hanks saw him and he didn’t want to leave any witnesses.”
Darby was mumbling something about idle speculation as Brie went about her business. Seeing our victim in the bright lights of the autopsy suite only served to make her injuries all the more horrific. Brie took photographs and recorded her observations during the initial examination of the body, noting that the skin had been denuded in all areas, except the victim’s head, arms, and chest. She also made note of the fact that victim’s head, arms, and armpits appeared to have been shaved, prior to death.
Brie then took several photographs of the victim’s face and the associated artwork. I was struck by the precise nature of the painted image: a skull on a skull. I realized whoever had painted the victim must have had some formal art training. Contacting the local art schools and colleges would be more of the legwork required to work the case.
“The victim has a ragged incision in her upper chest,” Brie said into the microphone as she turned her attention to the victim’s injuries. “Preliminary examination in situ revealed that the heart has been removed. I’m now going to make a y-incision and examine the thoracic area.”
We all watched as the victim’s chest was further opened, her ribs were cut using a Stryker saw, and the chest cavity was entirely exposed.
“The interior chest cavity is…” Brie paused and turned away from the microphone. She looked over at me, the pitch in her voice rising. “The killer left us a message.”
TEN
Brie reached inside our victim’s c
hest and removed a small, square piece of paper. It was brown and almost translucent, like a piece of parchment paper.
“What the hell does it say?” Darby asked.
Brie shook her head. “I’m not sure. It’s some kind of strange writing. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
I looked over her shoulder as she placed the paper on a tray. I’d never seen anything like the writing either, and had a thought that it might be Latin or something similar.
“We’ll have to dust it for prints and then find a language expert to take a look,” Brie said, placing the paper into an evidence envelope.
After using the overhead camera to take some close-up photographs of the paper, Brie continued with her examination. She finished up about three hours later and met with us in a small conference room, where she went over her findings.
“Let’s begin with the approximate age. Providing the photograph found at the scene is our victim, based on the general dentition and bone structure, it looks like she was in her early twenties.
“Rigor was present when the body was initially found. Based on that, the liver temp, and stomach contents, I would estimate our victim had been dead for only four to six hours before she was found.”
“That means right after he took her, our boy got his paintbrush out and worked fast,” Darby said, stating the obvious.
Brie ignored him and continued. “There were no signs of sexual assault. Chemical analysis of the tissues and underlying muscular structures indicates sodium hydroxide was used to denude the flesh. That act was done in a precise manner, to remove the skin from her body in specific areas, while preserving others.”
“Is that chemical easy to obtain?” Leo asked.
Brie nodded. “It’s commonly used in commercial and industrial oven cleaners and drain openers. It’s also used to digest tissues of animal carcasses, roadkill, and, in some cases, deceased humans. Due to its low cost and availability, it’s even been used to dispose of corpses by criminals. I remember reading somewhere that one of the Mexican drug cartels used it to dispose of several hundred bodies.”
I thought about our Day of the Dead display being a holiday celebrated in Mexico and Latin American countries and wondered if there was any connection.
“How would our suspect apply the lye, but leave the skin intact in some areas?” Leo asked.
“It would have to be a very methodical process, probably involving washing the body and making sure that the sodium hydroxide was applied sparingly.”
“Seems like a lot of work to go through to skin someone,” Darby said.
Brie raised her brows but didn’t respond.
The room was quiet before I asked Brie to summarize her thoughts about what happened to the girl. She took a moment before answering. It was obvious that she was exhausted.
“I think everything that happened, probably including the way she was taken, was done in a controlled and precise manner. Her body was washed and shaved prior to the application of the sodium hydroxide. The drawing on her face must have taken a couple of hours of methodical work to complete. When that was done…” Brie’s chocolate eyes found each of us. “…her heart was removed and the paper was inserted.”
“I get everything you just said,” Darby told her, “except the cause of death. What was the specific cause of death?”
Brie’s beautiful face seemed to take on the pain of the world as she answered. “Everything I’ve described happened pre-mortem. The cause of death was the final act. Our perpetrator cut open his victim’s chest and ripped out her beating heart.”
ELEVEN
It was late in the day by the time we wrapped up at the coroner’s office. Brie’s finding that our victim’s heart had been torn from her chest by her assailant while she was still alive, only added to the brutality of the horrible crime. Despite her findings, we were still drawing blanks regarding a motive or suspect. All I did know was that, with the images of our victim all over the Internet, the pressure to break something loose was only going to grow.
Brie invited Bernie and me to her house for dinner, telling me that she would take me home later. I was exhausted, but agreed to the proposal when she said it would give me a chance to bond with her daughter. Lily and I played dolls in her room while Brie and her boyfriend, Phyl, prepared dinner.
I found the little girl had an active imagination, as she told me about Princess Anna from the movie Frozen.
“Anna goes on a journey to find her sister, Elsa, who has magical powers to turn things into snow and ice.”
“She sounds like a pretty amazing princess,” I said. “Would you like to be Elsa?”
She smiled. “Yes. I would use my powers to freeze everything.”
“Why would you do that, sweetheart?”
“Because then my mommy would live forever. The cancer couldn’t get her.”
I took a breath, feeling the heaviness in my eyes. I brushed the little girl’s hair off her forehead, saying, “I think your mommy is very lucky to have a daughter like you.”
I had a lovely evening with Brie and her larger-than-life boyfriend, Phyl—mamma wanted a girl and named him Phyllis, a name that Brie had shortened. As Brie drove me home later that evening, we did our best to put work issues out of our minds and I mentioned what Lily had said to me.
My friend glanced at me and exhaled. “I’m afraid Lily is at that age where she believes in the power of magic to cure all the evils in the world.” A half-smile found her lips. “I’ve tried to gently explain to her there’s no magic that will cure me.”
My gaze drifted to the blur of traffic lights in the stop-and-go traffic. While I had my share of problems, I couldn’t imagine being in Brie’s shoes, facing a fight for her life and raising a little girl. I made a vow to appreciate what I had and try not to get wrapped up in my day-to-day problems.
“Have you had a chance to talk to the lieutenant about the photograph you found?” Brie asked, changing the subject as my thoughts surfaced.
While my friend knew all about my family situation, as the saying goes, it’s complicated, so I’d better take a moment and give you some additional background.
Most of my life had been lived as a lie, the truth about my biological parents having been kept from me by my adoptive mother. Over the past couple of years, I’d finally pieced my personal history together. My birth mother was a one-time actress named Judie Crawford. She and John Sexton—the man who raised me, who I now refer to as my love-dad—had been involved at one time. After they’d broken up, Judie got pregnant by another man and gave birth to me, but his identity was still unknown to me.
During this time, Judie’s mentally unstable former boyfriend and future husband, Ryan Cooper, had come back into her life. She was so concerned that Cooper might harm both her and me if he ever learned that she’d given birth while they were estranged that she’d made the life-altering decision to give me to my love-dad to raise. I was subsequently adopted by him and the woman I’d thought was my bio-mom after they married.
Four years after I was born, my love-dad was gunned down in a local park right in front of me. I’d recently learned that Ryan Cooper was responsible for that act. Cooper had eventually married my birth mother, who he also eventually murdered after battering her. After learning of my existence and stalking me, Cooper was eventually shot and killed by my half-sister, Lindsay.
I’d originally believed that Cooper’s killing spree had been motivated out of jealousy because my love-dad had been involved with Judie at one time. But I’d recently learned that Cooper might have also been involved in a larger conspiracy to murder one of the most famous stars in Hollywood, an actress named Jean Winslow.
While Winslow’s death had officially been ruled a suicide, a few weeks back I’d learned that Donald Regis, the former head of the studios where she’d been under contract, and a man named Kellen Malone, might have been involved in her death. Malone was involved in a secret organization called The Revelation, and had been linked to Wins
low before her death.
I’d recently met with Winslow’s niece, Laura Trenton, who had shown me some old photographs belonging to her aunt. I’d found my love-dad in one of those photos, along with Ryan Cooper and Kellen Malone. I was still in a state of shock over also finding my lieutenant, Ozzie Powell, in that same photograph. As you know, both Oz and my partner Leo knew my father back when they were all rookie cops. I hadn’t talked to Oz about what I’d learned because I was still trying to process everything.
After explaining things to Brie, I said, “To tell you the truth, I’m now wondering if Oz wasn’t somehow involved in what happened to my love-dad.”
“I think you’re eventually going to have to confront him. Since he was with your dad and Jean Winslow shortly before they died, he must know something that he’s not telling you.”
I sighed. “You’re right. I just want to be mentally prepared before I talk to him.”
Brie did her best to offer me some emotional support before turning off the freeway in Hollywood. She then asked, “How are things with you and Noah?”
“They’re good. We’re doing a fundraiser for rescue dogs at his house this weekend. He’s hoping to find homes for a couple of puppies if you’re interested.”
Brie glanced at me. “Let me think about it. Lily needs a companion, but I’ll have to see if I can talk Phyl into it.”
Maybe it was the mention of her boyfriend that caused my thoughts to drift to Buck. I told Brie about him transferring to the sheriff’s department, adding, “It’s a little strange working with someone you’ve been involved with at one time.”
“Do you still have feelings for him?”
I took a breath. “You know, I’m not really sure. While I’m in love with Noah, I have to admit there’s still some sparks there.” I looked at her. “He invited me to come by his place for a drink tomorrow night.”