THE DEAD SOUL: A Thriller

by M. William Phelps

  The tips of her fingers stuck to something cold, the texture of Styrofoam.

  Dry ice?

  She put the phone down on the table in front of her. Turned on the speaker function. “Todd,” Anastasia yelled louder than she needed to, “did you send me one of those LobsterGrams?”

  She felt bubble wrap. The size of a fist. Soft. Semi-flat.

  She slipped it out of the envelope.

  “Todd, what did you send me …?”

  Anastasia unhinged the tape. Unfolded the plastic wrap. The gel-like package popped open as if it had been rigged to spring apart. The contents oozed all over Anastasia legs, and then onto the floor.

  Gasping for air, Anastasia got up. Walked slowly backward. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” It was as if the wind had been kicked out of her.

  Both her hands covered her mouth.

  She stood with her back flush to the wall. Tears rolling off her cheeks. She had a hard time catching her breath.

  Todd yelled, “Ana? Ana? What is it? What’s going on?”

  Her back to the wall, Anastasia slid down slowly and landed on her butt, sobbing uncontrollably.

  47

  Friday, September 12 - 7:00 A.M.

  Jake had found a few hours of sleep. After dozing off on the tacky chair, about halfway through the night he grabbed a blanket from the trunk of his car, hit the bathtub.

  When he walked out of the bathroom, rubbing sleep from his eyes, Jake saw that Mo was gone. At the window, he pushed the drapes aside. Sure enough, Mo’s car was nowhere to be found.

  “Coward.” Jake said, shaking his head.

  Standing there, staring at the empty parking space, Jake went into a drowsy daydream centered around Martin Cooper. How the man had run from situations that involved any sort of emotional responsibility. Jake’s dad drank himself silly right through mourning Casey’s death. Numb as a cavity. This, of course, while Jake and his mother withstood the brunt of it all—calls from family and friends, packing up Casey’s clothes, dealing with the military. Now, with Alzheimer’s stealing Martin’s memory, the old man managed to escape guilt, too. Bastard. How the universe sometimes got it wrong.

  Why would you ever want to be a cop?

  It was too early for this. Jake wanted a cigarette. Instead, he popped a piece of nicotine gum.

  Then another.

  He could call and scream at Mo for taking off. Ask why he didn’t face up to being a loser. Yet Jake had other things on his mind this morning. Anyway, he could take a drive over Mo’s when he got back in town and demand answers.

  Then again, maybe the best response was to catch this sicko and quit.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, Jake wondered why a burglar needed to tell him to check that visitors log. Why hadn’t he done it himself yesterday while he was at the prison? This was probably a good indication as to why he’d been passed over before now on these big cases.

  You’re probably not Army material, anyway.

  There was Martin again.

  8:05 A.M.

  Jake rolled up on downtown Dunstable and found a Starbucks. A tall Pike’s Peak all the way out here in the sticks. Go figure.

  As he walked out, he heard his cell phone chime.

  He looked at the home screen. A profile, although incomplete, was finally waiting for him.

  Jake pushed the “load” key. Sat down inside his Crown Vic.

  It took a moment. He sipped his coffee, waiting.

  Then, with the magic those techies had promised, there it was.

  ----- Profile Incomplete/Need More Data -----

  Developed: Friday, Sept. 13, 6:58 AM

  Subject: RE: Public Garden Murder Suspect

  FAMILY / HOME

  Mother: Drug addict, abandoned child at young age, likely blonde, average looking, loner, prostitution possible, welfare case

  Father: Not a daily presence in home, unavailable emotionally to mother and children, unfulfilled promises, may have abused children sexually, did not hold down steady job, likely discharged dishonorably from military

  No siblings.

  Urban dwellers, low income housing, lived alone at a young age, likely lives no fewer than 50 to 100 miles outside of crime scene zone

  CHILDHOOD

  Seemed in total control of life, look for “good will” offerings to make up for loss of love at home, probably scorned by one or two adults early, felt let down, a driving force behind the anger he now feels, dismembered and/or mutilated animals

  MOTIVATING FACTORS

  Self-importance, easily feels upstaged, greedy, collects objects (beyond relics from murders) of fascination, hate for mother is projected toward victims, childhood sexual abuse initiated feelings of loss of control, will try to improve and increase “cat-and-mouse” with LE with each crime, will not stop until fully satisfied, may begin to take long breaks in-between murders

  PROFESSIONAL LIFE

  Involved with the public, prefers to wear uniform to hide behind mask of sanity, works second or third shift, excellent attendance record and work performance evaluation, will be described by coworkers as “quiet,” “keeps to himself,” “excellent worker.” No friends

  DIAGNOSIS

  Antisocial Personality Disorder, Anger-Retaliation Signature, likely 32 to 41 years old. Will have no trouble gaining the trust of his victims, who view him as nonthreatening

  A college kid whizzed by Jake’s car on a mountain bike. Jake watched. Thought about the greed factor the program mentioned. He knew that as it manifested inside his killer, the more he killed and got away with it, the larger the thirst for blood was going to be.

  And that's when he’ll get sloppy.

  Jake found Dickie and Anastasia’s email addresses. Tapped out a brief message—“Work this into whatever you have … I’ll be in touch soon”—and forwarded the profile.

  Jake drove back to Souza-Baranowski. Parked next to a 1999 black Z-28 with tinted windows. He crouched down in the passenger’s side of his vehicle, looked at his watch. It was ten minutes past eight.

  Five minutes went by. He heard footsteps. Then the Z-28 door open.

  Jake popped up and startled the guy. “Whoa, there, hold up.”

  It was that British security guard, Derek Minster. The tall, bald one.

  “You scared me, Detective.” Derek had his trench coat folded over his arm.“Got a minute?”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “Work a double last night?” Jake took out his iPhone, ran the green light scanning option over the driver’s-side door handle of Derek’s hotrod. Waited for the image to load. Then hit the compare App.

  “Yeah. I’m beat. Looking forward to going home and sleeping it off. You going in to speak with Micah this morning? Good luck with that, Detective. What’s that thing you have there in your hand?”

  “I thought I saw you last night in the parking lot of Larry’s. That you, Derek?” Jake kept looking down at the iPhone screen to see if it had finished the comparison task.

  “Me? What. No. Must have been someone who looked like me.”

  “Derek. Come on. You’re a bald, giant man. Very British-looking. I’ve been a cop a lot of years.”

  “I was here all night working. Couldn’t have been me.”

  “Didn’t really realize it was you until I saw the car here this morning—and then it fell together.” Jake walked around the front-end of the vehicle, ran his index finger—the white glove touch—along the pin stripe. Derek stood still, following Jake with his sad eyes. “Why tail me? How’d you know where I was heading?”

  The chime sound rattled Jake’s attention. He looked down—confirmed match was all it said atop a split-screen of the two fingerprint images: one from Derek’s hotrod and the other from the door knob back at the hotel Jake had scanned before he left.

  “You must have me mistaken with someone else, Detective. Not sure what you’re bloody insinuating.”

  Jake tilted his head. “Please, Derek. Don’t insult me.” He held up the pho
ne, raised his eyebrows. “Let’s stop dicking around here.”

  Derek Minster hesitated. Then opened his door. Tossed his coat onto the front seat. Straightening, he put his hands up a like a suspect. “Okay. You caught me.”

  “What’s happening here, guy? Why the interest in Micah? How in the hell did you know I was at Larry’s?”

  “I got people.”

  “You got people?” Jake laughed. “How long you been in America?”

  “Can we sit over there?” Derek pointed to a bench behind his car under an elm tree.

  “Sure. I have all morning.”

  Derek took a deep breath. Together they watched a bird peck at the grass. “I have cousins. Lots of cousins. Too many bloody cousins, actually. We were poor. A few of them went to Bainbridge when my mum, well, when she couldn’t provide anymore. It was kinda like, okay, pick of the litter. She had six of her own. Her sisters’ kids were derelicts. One of them, a mate I actually liked, became one of Micah’s students.”

  “’Nuff said.” Jake held up his hands. “But why the interest in this ‘visitor’ you mentioned in that note you left me? If anything, I could see you allowing your cousins into the prison some night when”—Jake looked around at Orwell 1984 security—“all this technology mysteriously loses power.”

  Derek considered this. “I figured you were looking to maybe get Micah charged with more crimes. My cousin’s case was tossed out of court. That’s why you’re up here, right? You have more witnesses? There’s no statute on what that bloody sonofagun did. Plus, if my cousin’s case goes to criminal court, it will look better for his civil suit. They’re still poor. They’re suing St. Paul’s Church for recommending Bainbridge.”

  “Gotcha,” Jake said. “You would make a great cop, Derek. You’ve got me all figured out. And breaking into my hotel room. Great touch.”

  “I know the proprietor.”

  “Well, okay, anyway. We’re hoping to maybe take a few more cases to the DA soon. You’re absolutely right.” Jake reached into his pocket. Took out a business card. Crossed off his name, numbers, and email. “You tell your cousin, if he’s now willing to talk, to call this guy.” He showed Derek Minster what he wrote: Detective Lieutenant Matikas, “Call this number.” Jake wrote Matikas’s home phone, underlined it. “You tell him to start at the beginning with the lieutenant. This is Matikas’s case. I’m just up here doing him a favor. He would love nothing more than to hear about this.”

  “Hey, thanks for that. You really think I could be a bloody cop?”

  “ ‘Course. Ask Matikas about that, too. You got what it takes, kiddo. He’ll help you out.” Jake tapped him on the side of the arm.

  “One thing, though, Detective. Micah, he won’t talk. I sent a couple of my boys in last night.” Derek looked around as though someone was listening. Then brought his voice down to a whisper, and winked. “Made sure the cameras were off. He wouldn’t budge.”

  Jake looked toward the prison. “Yeah, I guess I should head back to Boston. Forget Micah for now.”

  “You might want to talk to that mailman who was up here to visit him, though. Come on, I’ll take you in and get that log. He signed in. Checked his ID myself. Seemed to be a strange mate.”

  Jake flashed on that red, white and blue paint chip Anastasia found on the Tea Party ship.

  “Did you say, ‘mailman,’ Derek?”

  A line from that computer profile he’d just read came back.

  Involved with the public, prefers to wear uniform to hide behind mask of sanity.

  48

  Friday, September 12 - 8:42 A.M.

  With a quick test, Forensics determined that the bag of blood sent to Anastasia Rossi’s apartment was a mixture of Lisa Marie Taylor, Alyssa Bettencourt and an unknown donor. The plastic package, similar to an IV bag, was engineered to pop open when CSI Rossi pulled it out of the envelope. The lab had also found traces of cornstarch inside the package and on the bag—which meant their serial had worn latex gloves.

  Anastasia had been up all night. She was shaken. She had washed her hands obsessively. Getting the smell of death off her body and out of the apartment was going to be tough. Blood can really start to have an odor when not chilled to the proper temperature. Anastasia was a trained crime-scene technician. She’d scraped the remains of teenagers off the highway with a shovel—literally. She’d picked the charred remains of fire victims and found organs to identify them. Yet having the blood of two dismembered vics in a case she was actively involved in spread all over your hands, thighs and carpet, the man she still loved on the telephone, had proven to be too much.

  “At a crime scene you’re, um, detached,” she told Dickie. “You’re working.”

  Dickie had rushed over. His wife Caroline with him. He took Anastasia in his arms. Consoled her. From this point on, all mail, delivered to the squad room or to any of the detectives’ homes, Dickie ordered in Jake’s absence, was to be put through X-ray.

  Anastasia sat at her desk the morning after the incident, but she was not there. Todd called to make sure everything was okay. He said he was heading out the door on a three-day tour, and wanted to “check in.”

  “I’ll be fine, Todd,” Anastasia said, trying to sound strong. “Don’t worry.”

  “You call if you need me. I’ll try to phone you tonight.” She knew he meant it, even if he was just trying to be nice.

  “Screw him,” Dickie said after she hung up. “He had his chance.”

  The package had been dropped off. There was no way to trace its origin, logistically. No postmark. No fingerprints. Nothing.

  Dickie called Jake to fill him in. “This is his game now,” Jake said. He sounded sure of himself. “It’s going to get worse. Expect additional morbidity. He’s showing us what he’s capable of doing. You read that profile I emailed you, right?”

  Dickie had no use for computers telling him how to do his job. “Yeah, ‘course, boss.”

  “Well, we got a serial who is in the business of upstaging himself with each crime. Egomaniac. I’ll be back in the city by noon. I think I made a discovery up here that can help.”

  “You want to share?”

  Jake was taking charge. “Nothing you need to know right now.”

  Dial tone.

  9:05 A.M.

  Matikas sat behind his desk, the phone in his ear. Someone from HQ had called to run up and down each side of the man because of Jake Cooper and his inability to catch a killer. As he listened, Matikas noticed that one of his file cabinets had been jimmied open.

  He stood, cradled the phone between his shoulder and ear. Opened the drawer. Dug through several files, searching for what he knew the intruder was after.

  Indeed, it was gone.

  Sonofabitch.

  “Gotta go, Henry. Let’s meet this afternoon and discuss. I’m all over Cooper’s shit.”

  Matikas stood in his office alone. Wiped his mouth in dread.

  What the hell am I supposed to do now?

  9:15 A.M.

  “You up for a brainstorming session, Rossi?” Dickie leaned on her desk. “Scratch that. Why don’t you just go home? Get some sleep. You’re tired. Emotionally drained. Jesus, a bag of blood in your lap.”

  “How is your son, Dickie?”

  Dickie was surprised by the question. He righted himself. Looked at Anastasia with a twisted face.

  “Yeah,” Anastasia stood. Kicked out her chair. “Your boy in Iraq. How is he?”

  “He’s okay, Rossi. Getting by. Tough kid. Knows his limits.” Dickie thought about it. Then segued into, “Okay, Rossi, I get the picture here. I’m just saying, if you need some time off, it’s understandable. You’re human. Lot on your plate these past few months.”

  She held out a hand. Closed her eyes. “Nope. I’m good, Detective. Let’s get to work and catch this psycho.”

  Inside the large conference room on the same floor, tablet armchairs were set up facing one direction, as if it were a classroom. Dickie picked up a cylinder of w
hite chalk. Spent a minute laying the case out on an old-school blackboard. Cases were mapped out and analyzed here. Important meetings with the entire squad.

  “Sit there, Rossi, in front of me.” Dickie pulled up his pants. Drew a bull’s-eye diagram on the board. “In the middle, the bull’s-eye,” he pointed to it, tapped on the board with the chalk, dust blooming, bits of chalk falling on the metal eraser holder below, “those are our victims. These rings around the victims are all of our leads and suspects—for which we have very few. We have options, Rossi, of where we can take this case. The question is, where does that bag of blood fit into this matrix?”

  Anastasia was numb. She’d just wiped the blood from two of those victims off her hands. Here was a guy who had trouble keeping his pants up all day sounding as though he was a professor, teaching a master’s course in Law Enforcement Investigation.

  “Lisa’s friend.” Anastasia stopped, snapped her fingers with her eyes closed. “That girl … um, Martina Clarkson. Yes. She led us to the Internet source who sold Lisa the first batch of flowers on eBay. Turned out to be nothing. The guy was clueless.”

  “Right!” Dickie pointed at Anastasia with the chalk. Then turned and used his forefinger to smudge out that ring of the bull’s-eye. “Keep going, Rossi.” He made a circle motion with his free hand.

  “What about Jake’s profile—the one he texted us?”

  “Screw that computer nonsense. We solve cases by gumshoe police work. Forget about that and focus, Rossi.”

  “We know that the paint chip—which may or may not be part of our Tea Party crime scene—is from a government vehicle, possibly a mail truck. But we’re still waiting on additional tests to confirm the paint type.”

  “You’re on a hot streak here, Rossi. Keep it up.”

  They stared at the board as though it was a calculator. If they could just put in the right combination of thoughts and theories. Screw Jake and his iPhone. This was how you caught a killer. Mind against mind. Good verses evil.