But Jessica was mentally adding an eighth item to her list of what she suspected was true about the Phantom, what she'd report to headquarters about the Hell-bound bastard:
8. He killed indiscriminate of sex.
Jessica felt a sudden need to sit down somewhere. Seeing her sudden loss of composure, J.T. whisked her outside and found a nearby room, where a Spanish maid was busily cleaning the bathroom. J.T. sat Jessica on the bed, slipped the maid a twenty, and flashed his credentials, telling the maid he was a doctor and that they would need the room for a half hour. “Come back then,” he instructed.
The maid gave him a wink and a cynical smile, said something in Spanish, and disappeared.
“How can he be a man?” Jessica asked.
“Maybe Mel in there had an unusually high voice, and besides, fear can constrict the vocal cords, Jess. Let me get you some water.”
“You don't have enough water, J.T.”
NINE
. . . as surely as a passion grows by indulgence and diminishes when restrained; as surely as a disregarded conscience becomes inert, and one that is obeyed active; as surely as there is any meaning on such terms as habit, custom, practice; so surely must the human faculties be moulded unto complete fitness for the social state; so surely must evil and immorality disappear, so surely must man become perfect.
—Herbert Spencer
When Jessica and J.T. returned to the odorous death room, they found a big-boned, stout, black-haired man in a flannel shirt and rubber gloves crawling about the floor, sniffing at things in bird-dog fashion. McEvetty shushed them on entering, saying, “Fire investigator. He was here earlier, but went out for a smoke.”
The chief fire investigator, from whom a series of hems, haws, and hums now steadily flowed as he crawled about the floor and examined all sides of the room and the bed, suddenly leaped elflike to his feet, coming face-to-face with Jessica.
“Just checking my earlier findings,” he told her.
McEvetty quickly introduced Jessica and J.T. as principal investigators on the case to Page's fire marshal. The fire investigator's name was Roy Brightpath, yet he looked like a man chiseled from the granite of this place, his skin the color of bronze. Jess realized immediately that he was part Native American.
“We at first thought it was just a guy fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand, but moment we come in, we could smell the accelerants. Dog couldn't place it anywhere but over the bed. Lennie, my lab guy, came over, took one whiff, and said it was a mix of gasoline and butane. Course, we'll verify that with analysis sometime late today, but Lennie's the best, and I'm pretty sure, pretty sure.” He extended a gloved hand, and they shook. She saw by his bars that he was a captain, which meant some years of experience.
“I wasn't expecting the victim to be... male, that the victim's a man. I mean, I spoke to him on the phone moments before he died, and he... he sounded like a woman,” replied Jessica, pirouetting about and staring, still shaken at this turn of events.
“Whoa up, there,” said Brightpath. “Whataya mean, you spoke to him?”
“Just before he was murdered,” she confessed. “J.T., will you explain?” she asked.
J.T. brought Brightpath and the others up to date on what had occurred between the killer and Jessica thus far. When he finished, Jessica asked, pointing to Martin's body, “Who was he? Does anyone know anything about the victim?”
“An older gentleman on vacation, late sixties, alone from what the detectives can gather,” replied Brightpath, whose skin, tinged with a red hue, made him a walking, talking ironic twist on the word “fireman.” Jessica guessed his roots must be somewhere in the vast family of the Navajo or Hopi. He was short and stout with a wide face that, under better circumstances, appeared to enjoy a white-toothed grin. She guessed as much from the smile lines and wrinkles.
“Smoked Camels without filters,” continued Bright- path, “carried a billfold full of pictures of his grandkids, beautiful children.”
Kam took up Brightpath's slack, adding, “Recently widowed, kids got together money to send him on this trip to see the West, the great natural resources of the national parks, or so his co-travelers have told us. So, he's on this trip, which is the dream of a lifetime, and whammo! This happens.” McEvetty quickly stepped in, saying, “We heard about your case in Las Vegas, but this time the victim's male, an over-the-hill guy by all appearances. Nothing like your victim in Vegas, so—”
“But you didn't know about the writing on the mirror in Vegas, did you?” she asked. “Thought you'd have a little fun since we flew all the way to Page anyway. Is that about it, McEvetty?”
The Arizona-Utah agent took in a deep breath, released it slowly, and said, “Sorry. We thought it was, you know, unrelated.”
“You thought?” she replied sarcastically.
Brightpath, ignoring them, said, “Dead guy's name was Melvin”—he checked his notes—”Melvin Bartlett Martin. That's according to both the seared wallet left on the table beside the bed and according to the agents here, who got their info from the night clerk.”
McEvetty added, “Martin had the room all to himself, but he dined with another man, according to the waitress who served him last night.”
“Left the lounge after purchasing that bottle of wine sitting over there unopened,” Kaminsky added, pointing at the 1989 Chardonnay label.
“It didn't pop from the temperatures in here?” asked J.T.
Brightpath shook his head. “Epicenter of the fire was over the bed. Never got that hot the other side of the room. Not even to bum the wallet on the nightstand.”
Jessica nodded, replying, “Just like our fire murder in
Vegas.”
McEvetty raised a meaty finger to his lip and said in such a tone that Jessica saw a lightbulb go on over his head, “Let's check the wine bottle for prints.”
“And dust the whole room, and scan it with an infrared laser, if you can get hold of one, for signs of any human secretions,” Jessica added, thinking it most likely a waste of time. Still, they must be thorough and hope that this madman would continue to make mistakes, as he had in leaving his prints in the messages and his voice on tape only a few hours earlier, and in leaving his shoeprint, laden with black soot, in the baby-blue-carpeted hallway here in Page, Arizona.
“I'm not so certain your theory about this monster's right, Jess,” J.T. muttered in her ear. “I mean about him getting off sexually on burning corpses. Wouldn't that mean he'd need a woman, a female victim? And what about the time element?”
“No, he doesn't need a female victim, not necessarily,” Jessica replied, “not if they're all so much kindling for his fantasy, no. As for time, he's spent quickly, perhaps even before he does them. He may get off on the anticipation alone.”
“So, in essence, it appears this guy doesn't care what sex his victims are.”
“You can't use your own sexual excitement barometer to gauge this guy against, John. He's obviously not interested in them in any sexual sense you and I can fathom,” she replied, searching cursorily over the body for any signs of blunt-force injury, but she was unable to see much in the smoke-laden light. “I give him this much,” she began. “He's intent on remaining a faceless bastard, careful and controlled, so...”
J.T. leaned in, for she was as much as talking to herself. “So?” he asked.
“So, I guess you're dead right, J.T.”
John Thorpe's big, round brown eyes grew larger. “How's that?”
“We've got to crack this code of his.” She now looked at and pointed to the message left by the killer. “It's got to make sense to someone somewhere. This guy has had to've talked to someone about himself, his fantasy, his sexual needs, his plans, his obsession-madness... and maybe his interest in numbers and words such as 'traitors' and 'violents.' “
“We could send it around to our university consultants, our arcane friends in academia. Who knows? Maybe one of them will recognize something. Maybe a mat
hematician...”
“I was thinking the same, but we also want to touch on medical people, mental facilities in particular. Maybe we should go public with what we know, spread it across the tube and the headlines. Somebody's got to know something about this nutcase, and we need information now, before he phones—kills—again.”
“Obviously our documents guys aren't having much luck with the first message,” he replied.
“But now this”—she again pointed at the new message—”may spur them on. Let's do both—send it to Quantico, as we did the other, and forward it on to our contacts at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, all the major universities in the network, and our medical lists.”
She turned now to McEvetty, a bearded, rugged-looking man who might well have been wearing buckskin and rawhide, he so looked the mountain man type, and she said to him, “Do you have a photographer on hand?”
“Jake's just waiting word. He's having a doughnut and coffee at the coffee and gift shop off the lobby. They opened early for us.”
“Send for him. Get photos of everything, starting with the mirror, and have them send up some coffee. I need something pleasant to smell in here. What about that secretion search, Captain Brightpath? Do you have the wherewithal, or do we call for help?”
“On it,” he responded, going for a phone.
“So, what're you waiting for, McEvetty?” she scolded.
“Yes, ma'am, ahhh... Doctor.” McEvetty's moist eyes, very like those of a doe or an ox, seemingly saying that he much admired her show of strength in the face of such horror.
She turned once more to J.T. and asked, “Can you take care of getting the information around? The photos of the handwriting, the shoeprint cast, what we've got here, and route it all to—”
“Sure. I'll get on it; that is, unless...”
She studied the hesitation in his features, glad to have her confidant and familiar friend alongside her. “Unless what?”
He whispered, so the others would not hear, “ 'Less you really want me to handle the body, Jess. Bum victims are tough, I know.”
Drowning victims in the water for long duration aside, bum victims in which the entire body, head to toe, was covered in the creosote of superheated human tissues and fat represented the most difficult cases for the forensic medical person, no matter how toughened or jaded. The corpse repulsed the physician. And this did not make for the best of working relationships or conditions. Usually Jessica felt a sense of bonding with the victim, a close- knit relationship in which she shared secrets with the deceased, down to the pallor of the skin, the size and shape of every organ, inside and out. But how was this possible here? Here such a bonding was virtually impossible when looking into so completely annihilated a face and human form, when having to look into the mask of a creature molded of fire. All this was true, despite a generalized and sometimes overwhelming sense of empathy with the victim's pain, felt even more strongly if you had prior knowledge that the victim was alive when put to the torch.
Jessica could not deny the powerful impact on both the doctor and the forensic process such a thoroughly repugnant, desecrated body meant. It was just shy of dealing with an exhumed body, a years' old cadaver from a grave, and in some regard worse, for the odor of burned flesh was worse than the odor of decay.
Jessica dropped her gaze from J.T., sheepishly whispering in reply, “I'm fine here. Go on with Brightpath. Be sure we get all the equipment we need here.”
Jessica relocated her black valise, and next she located a scalpel, the one given to her by her father. She'd pulled down her mask earlier, and she placed it back over her nose and mouth, her white lab coat now having a patina of soot. Jessica stepped closer to the mummy like corpse, inching closer until she stood abutting the blackened bed and the blackened east wall. She now meant to go to work gathering immediate samples for later lab work. She was all right, she told herself, but her thoughts over the ungainly thing at her fingertips continued.
The men in the room watched in a kind of rapt awe.
Most victims of complete burn such as this meant ample cause to rush through an autopsy. And in the rush, vital clues could be lost, and often were. Most certainly the coroner's usual care, precision, and thoroughness were impeded, if not breached completely. A good forensics man or woman knew this going in, so Jessica fought the overwhelming desire to be done with the body as quickly as possible, but Jessica also well understood the all-too- human response to the catastrophic annihilation of the body, its tissues and organs, to fire. She also understood J.T.'s chivalrous gesture was not without reservation, that he would prefer to make other vital arrangements and leave the autopsy to her. Despite his outward gallantry, she guessed that Thorpe was inwardly pleased that she hadn't jumped at the chance to trade places.
“Are you sure, Jess?” He was pushing his luck now.
“Damn it, J.T., I'm sure... I'm okay here. Now get going. You've got phone calls to make, people to wake up, and get that damned photographer out of the coffee shop and up here.”
“If you want me to take charge here, Jess .. .just say the word.”
She grit her teeth. “Now you're getting on my nerves.”
“What a ya mean, Jess? I'm just trying to show a little sensitivity. You women always want a show of concern, but you also want to be treated like equals. Suppose I asked McEvetty or Kaminsky here about how their morning's going.” He shrugged and frowned, a bit tired of her show of bravado in the face of a death so without integrity as this. And for a moment the others saw and heard what amounted to a married couple arguing about nothing. They had worked many cases together, elbow to elbow, but usually J.T.'s help came in the safe confines of a well-lit lab back in Virginia. “What?” he repeated, his voice giving way to anger.
“Go, get photos of this bastard's message. Get copies to Santiva and to the academics and the nuthouses, okay? I'll see to the body.”
J.T. nodded, folding her hands in his like they were an omelet. “Whatever you want, Jess.”
She bit her lip and held back a curse, finally bursting with, “What I want has very little to do with anything these days, John. This motherless... monster is using me, and I don't like it, not one fucking bit do I like it. Get that photographer in here and take care of that decoding angle for me, okay?”
“You didn't cause this, Jess,” he reassured her, studying her constricted features. “And nobody can believe you did.”
Ignoring this, she turned to the bed and the body, which in the fire had become an unrecognizable lump of extraneous waste dumped here like one might find back of a plastics factory: Body in repose, hands and arms, feet and legs arched inward in what firemen called the “fetal fire position,” the dead man frozen in a moment of excruciating pain, the gaping fissure of the mouth, the gaping holes where the eyes had been, all worked in tandem to create a mask of grimacing, tortured distress, the agony visible through the newly formed body armor of blackened tissue.
The mattress had created first a thick, black, choking smoke when the flame from the butane torch ignited it along with the body itself, the result discoloring the bed post, walls, and ceiling, and then the mattress had exploded into flame due to the gases released. Again this meant the killer must also be using a mask or filter of some sort, if not a small oxygen tank. She made a mental note to follow up with an exhaustive list of professions that employed such materials and instruments.
Other units on either side of the fire room, and even those overhead, were also scorched, but only slightly, due to the fast action of the FBI having contacted local authorities, and the fire department's subsequent action to contain the fire. Still, Melvin Martin—his unopened, label- scorched bottle of wine standing upright and mocking him—now melded with the charred furniture, a part of the soaked and sopping material left in the aftermath of the fire, followed by the fire hoses. He and his mattress one object now, and not just an object of pity.... He had literally been soldered to his mattr
ess and box spring. Martin's remains could not fully be separated from the chemicals and sodden materials adhering to him. This could only be done in the morgue with great care and handling and swathing and bathing, to make him as presentable as possible for burial, for his family's sake.
She left the side of the body, grabbing hold of her valise for something solid to hold on to, and she again stepped from the room to retrieve some air from the hallway. It was the worst condition she'd ever seen a human body in, and working over such a fire-desiccated body was no simple task. It would take several takes.
Everyone watched her. She even saw some pity in McEvetty's stony eyes. “Like a Pepsi, maybe?” he asked. “Or maybe a boilermaker?” he joked.
This only sent her back into the room sooner. She now placed her valise on the soupy mattress of the bed and snatched open a second pocket to pull forth a pair of fresh rubber gloves, indicating that if anyone needed a fresh pair, she had plenty to spare. She then located a notepad from deep within her valise, and on the ruled and printed pages of her autopsy report pad she began the tedious work of checking boxes for cause of death, condition of the body and premises.
It's going to be a long and difficult autopsy, she thought, and somehow she couldn't help but feel partially responsible for Melvin Martin's death, despite consoling words to the contrary from J.T. or anyone else. That in some sick, twisted gyration of logic Chris Lorentian and Melvin Martin had to die because of her, because of who she was, because of some morbid and as yet undetermined connection between the Phantom and the M.E., because this killer, in fixating on her, had somehow made her his accomplice, his confederate. The cruel, sadistic bastard.
She at once wondered how many other law enforcement agents and agencies across the country would soon be viewing it the same way. She wondered if perhaps she'd become a liability for the FBI since becoming the serial killer hunter celebrity that Dr. Coran had evolved into. Maybe J.T. was wrong; maybe she did cause this storm, due the publicity she'd been receiving on the sensational cases she had been involved in over the years. And if that held true...
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