They’d come to a traffic light, so he looked over at her for the next part. “I see the dead. Those who choose to be seen. Some souls remain behind because—as lore states—their own lives were brutally ended. Some stay because they protect certain places or people who were special to them. I’ve seen some move on, too. When the time comes, when they’re satisfied something has been solved or fixed or rectified—when justice has been done, or someone else is saved.”
She was staring at him but he couldn’t read her expression. The light changed to green and he turned his eyes to the road.
“There is an incredibly small percentage of the population with gifts,” he continued. “Most keep quiet about it. Other people laugh at them or don’t believe them, and yes, that makes life uncomfortable. Anyway, I’m grateful you’re willing to work with me. I’ve personally felt protective about the Everglades most of my life. And I believe a heinous killer is using this land now as a dumping ground. I know this has been done far too often in the past. But I think this is a very particular killer. A calculating, organized killer—someone who is getting rid of people for a reason, and who believes the Everglades will hide the fact the murders are continuing.”
He glanced at her quickly. She was looking at him and nodding gravely.
“Thank you,” she said simply.
“You’re okay with all this?” he asked.
He liked the wry smile that touched her face.
“Hell, no!” she told him. “But it’s better to try to understand.” She hesitated. “I’ve just never...well, I’ve never been to the morgue. But I did touch my grandfather when he died. And all I felt then was that he was gone. His body was cold. The man I loved was gone.”
“I think it’s always best when they just move on,” he said. “And yet I’m grateful some remain behind.” He glanced carefully at her again. “Real people perpetrate real crimes and murders. Not the dead. They...they’re not to be feared. Not in my experience, and I work with that minuscule percentage of special people who see the dead or experience strange messages from them.”
“Messages from the dead.”
“Not like text messages,” he said dryly. “But the dress, for example. You were touched by the dead through the dress. We don’t know how this all works. But we don’t close our minds to anything.”
“Okay. But other people will be in the morgue, right? Or do you have the power to close the morgue?”
“The autopsy has been completed. Right before I called you.”
“Did the autopsy help identify her?”
Axel shook his head. “No. Another clerk at the dress shop remembered who’d tried on the dress last. She helped with a description for our sketch artist. It showed on the news last night at eleven. The woman’s name was Jennifer Lowry. She frequently worked up in Orlando and that’s why there weren’t any missing-persons reports that could help identify her.”
“Oh!”
She fell silent, staring out the front window.
“Are you all right?”
“How did you explain how you came to find the dress shop?”
“I report to Jackson Crow. I didn’t have to explain anything to anyone. Nigel Ferrer is the lead detective on the case locally. When someone questions me on that, I say I received an anonymous tip.”
“But the cops know I called in the body. They brought me in for questioning.”
“We’ll work through that when the time comes. Sometimes, when you get started in the right direction, events and evidence along the way provide what you need.”
She shook her head. “I still don’t see how you manage all this. When the police were questioning me, I was getting a little crazed, but I really couldn’t blame them.”
“We’ll just see how it all goes, hmm?”
Raina nodded.
“You can back out at any time.”
“I don’t back out when I’ve committed,” she said quietly.
“That’s admirable, but you can.”
They arrived at the morgue near Jackson Memorial Hospital, and he quickly found parking. He’d arranged to bring Raina before he’d picked her up. It wasn’t a place where visitors were expected or wanted. There were thirteen medical examiners and dozens of various forensic technicians and experts working at the morgue where nearly three thousand people a year were met with an autopsy to determine the causes of their deaths. Pictures were usually shown to loved ones.
There was an information desk complete with a panic button. A grieving family member had once leaped the desk and threatened a worker, so now they took precautions.
Grief could prompt all manner of unlikely behavior.
There were thirteen stations for the medical examiners and their crews. Room for the dead was finite. Miami-Dade was a big county.
Axel signed them in and, before he had completed his name, Dr. Warner arrived to greet them. He offered his hand and a warm smile as Axel introduced Raina; she seemed to feel better meeting him.
She glanced at Axel as if wondering if the medical examiner also saw the dead as they appeared in their spectral form.
He said simply, “Dr. Warner has sadly become accustomed to many a bizarre and sad circumstance. Shall we?”
They moved through the morgue. Raina looked straight ahead as they walked and focused on reaching the gurney where the body of Jennifer Lowry waited.
The autopsy had been completed just thirty minutes or so before they arrived. The Y incision had been sewn and a sheet had been drawn up respectfully to her shoulders.
She might have been asleep. Her body had been bathed at the morgue; all signs of her blood were gone. Most of the damage done to her remains on the embankment in the Everglades had been covered up.
Even along the line of her throat, the necklace of blood was down to just a line. Her lids now covered empty eye sockets.
All this, and yet Axel knew when she was touched her body would be cold. Ice cold. And even a brief touch would prove to the living she was gone. The body that remained had lost all essence and vitality—all that might be termed a soul.
Axel watched Raina as she gave her attention to the body on the gurney. Her eyes showed tremendous sadness, but not the fear or trepidation he had expected.
She glanced at him and he nodded slightly.
She set her hand lightly on the young woman’s shoulder. He watched her intently.
Dr. Warner did the same.
When she touched the cold body, she did not recoil. She stood there silent and still for a long moment.
Then at last, she let her fingers fall from the dead woman’s shoulders and she turned to him and Dr. Warner.
“Dr. Warner, thank you,” she said. “Axel, I think we can go.”
Warner nodded. “I believe she has friends making arrangements for her now,” he said. “Sadly, no family. But good friends. All we take with us, really, is the love of those we leave behind.”
Axel thanked him, as well, and quickly led Raina out. She didn’t speak as they headed to the parking lot surrounded by the courthouse, the hospital, jail and other municipal buildings.
Finally, they were on the road, shooting south on Twelfth Avenue and then west once they’d reached Northwest Seventh Street.
She didn’t speak until then, and when she did, she turned as best she could in her seat belt, looking at him with a mixture of awe and fear.
“She was there,” she told him. “Right there.”
He was silent a moment, but he knew she was reaching out to him—perhaps for help in accepting what couldn’t be believed.
“You’re truly gifted,” he told her. “Did you learn anything?”
Five
Raina still didn’t believe what she had seen and heard.
Had she really felt what she had experienced in reaching out to another person?
It w
as all far too strange.
He didn’t press her until they were back at her house. Inside, she hugged Titan—a living creature who was always warm and loving and happy to see her. Then she went into motion, offering Axel coffee, getting it ready and then sitting with him in the living room at last, knowing she had to talk while the sensations were all still fresh in her head.
“When I touched her, I could have sworn I could see her, that she was standing near me. She was sad,” Raina explained. “A presence in the air. And she was almost crying.”
“Begging for your help,” Axel said softly.
“Yes.”
She was silent again for a minute and then she told him, “I don’t really know how to describe this. It was as if she was next to me, as she had been in life, never really looking at herself on the gurney. She was distressed because she couldn’t just tell me what had happened. She could only tell me about her last few minutes...and the terror she had felt. And the denial.”
“What did she say?”
“First, she couldn’t believe it had come to this. She was referring to herself in the morgue. She didn’t know what she did. She said she had no enemies, no one who would do such a thing to her. She’d shared some beliefs on social media, but nothing like many of the hateful things that are said.”
“How was she taken, when was she taken, did she see anything at all?” Axel asked intently.
“No, that was part of her pain and confusion. She was home. She went outside to get her mail. Her box is down in the front yard by the street. She had one of those mailboxes set on a pole, designed to look like a smiling dolphin. She opened the box and that was it. Someone was behind her and then threw a bag over her head. She tried to scream but she couldn’t breathe. She was suffocating and it was fast—so fast. She was picked up and thrown into the back seat of a car. She remembers burlap or some kind of rough material. Her hands were quickly tied, and she was shoved downward. I guess so no one could see her. She believes the car was a sedan. She’d vaguely noted a dark car at the curb, but she hadn’t paid any attention to it. She was just getting her mail.”
Axel was thoughtful. “So that’s it. Whatever is going on, the victims are taken entirely unaware, driven out somewhere and then executed. But I don’t believe they’re chosen randomly.”
“She has no idea what she might have done to offend someone—much less to a point where someone would want to murder her.”
“There has to be something that links the victims. Did anyone speak to her?”
“Yes. She was told that she needed to just stay down and keep quiet. The voice was almost gentle, assuring her it would all be over soon. She wanted help. She was lost and confused. Even when the bag was over her head and she felt the car moving, she never thought it would ‘all be over soon’ because she would be dead.”
Titan had been sitting protectively at her feet. Axel leaned forward to answer her, and Titan moved over to him, certain the man had inched forward to pet him.
Axel responded, and despite the gravity of the situation and the strange cold shivers she was still feeling, she found herself liking him more.
Her father had always been convinced you could tell a lot about people by the way they treated animals. Some, of course, were allergic to dog and cat fur. But those who would boot a dog or cat out of the way might well treat people the same way.
Then again, she’d liked him when she’d first met him—that schoolgirl crush she’d felt for an older man. And when she’d seen him again, she’d felt an instant attraction. He’d simply matured into a wonderful man.
“We need to study the victims,” he said. “We now know who she is. Need to figure out what ties her to the other victims.”
“I remember growing up, we’d hear about bodies being found in the Everglades. It seems it’s always been a problem.”
“I’m afraid human beings have long committed murders, yes. But this, I believe, will be ongoing. I think it’s become a method of work for someone—someone who is just ridding the world of people causing trouble to someone.” He hesitated. He needed Raina to know the background of the ongoing cases.
“Years ago, in fact, the night that all of you were camping out there,” Axel continued, “a young woman went missing. Her car was found by the casino. She disappeared. She has never been found despite multiple searches. The hope had been she went partying in someone else’s car at first. But she never returned. And it’s unlikely she just abandoned her car and decided to change her name and make a new life. Remotely possible, yes. But highly unlikely. Whoever this is has not tortured his victims. There have been no indicators of sexual assault, no marks on the body other than at the throat. These murders are executions, carried out by an executioner who’s using the Everglades as a way to destroy evidence. Somewhere along the way, they will make a mistake. And evidence will win out, but that day could be a long time and many victims away.”
“How does what I saw help?”
“It helps. We know she wasn’t on a date and suddenly spirited away. We know our suspect attacks quickly. That means they watch their prey and strike when they know they have a clear field. Trust me, it will matter in the end.”
She nodded. “I just wish I could do more.”
“I’m sorry you’re going through this.”
“Trying on the dress and seeing the body in the mirror definitely freaked me out. Now, I feel a connection. I want to do more. If this is going to happen, I wish I could make better use of it.” She frowned. “You didn’t see anything...sense her...feel her?”
He was thoughtful before answering. “I had a sense of her, but not as you did. It’s strange. We gravitate toward certain people, or perhaps feel that certain people will hear us more clearly. I felt her...there.” He shrugged and offered Raina a slightly twisted smile. “It’s something we try. Ghosts, remnants, spirits—whatever you call them—don’t often hang out in the morgue. And only some hang out at a cemetery. They hover near those they mean to protect, or near places that mattered to them in life. But just as we never really understand one another in life, we never really understand or know what will happen with the dead. She could grow stronger. Eventually, several of us might see her. But for now, you became her link. And you’ve done beautifully.”
“Oh, if you call screaming like a terrified banshee handling things well, then...”
He laughed. “Everyone deserves their chance to freak out. Not many would have done as well as you’ve done since.” He stood. “I will see you tonight,” he told her.
“Yes. I’m so glad you’re coming.”
“It sounds like it’ll be a wonderful time. I’m grateful you’ve arranged for me to attend.”
She stood, as well. For a moment, she felt like an awkward girl again. If he were just a friend, she would give him a hug or a kiss on the cheek and say, “Yes, see you later.”
But she waited for him to start for the door and then followed.
Carefully.
At a distance.
Titan, however, barked and stayed with him. Axel paused to pet the dog while opening the door before leaving. “I suggest you lock this. Even with Titan, it can be a cold, cruel world.”
She came to the door. But doing so, coming close to him, brought a flush to her cheeks and, she was sure, to the length of her. His magnetism now seemed to leap through the air. She stayed where she was, imagining a scene in which she just stepped forward, threw her arms around him and used her best husky voice to beg him to stay—she had a little time.
But he didn’t. She knew that. And she had no idea if he felt any of that electric heat she was feeling.
“Tonight,” she said, forcing a cheerful smile.
Titan barked and wagged his tail.
Axel waved, and he was gone.
* * *
Nigel Ferrer arrived at Andrew’s house just minutes after Axel.
They’d agreed to meet there. Though they were grateful for all the help they had from every quarter, it was good to meet and talk about what each had learned themselves.
Axel was first up, telling the other two about his experience at the morgue with Raina.
“Jennifer Lowry. We’re finding out more about her,” Nigel told them. “She was a dental assistant for Dr. Herbert Wong. He has his office in the Kendall area. Jennifer has worked for him for three years. She was certified to do cleanings and, according to Dr. Wong, his patients all loved her.”
“Can’t see it being a patient,” Andrew said. “I’ve had a dentist or two I’d have loved to sock in the jaw, but not many people want to kill the assistant.”
Axel looked over at him, arching a brow. Nigel continued. “Hey, I’m just saying. I can’t see this as something being done as a statement against dental assistants.” He grew serious. “We just had an ID confirmed on the last victim before her through dental charts—finally finding their way to the right place.” He pulled out his phone to read notes he’d taken on it and continued. “Alina Fairchild. It took a long time for her to reach the ranks of ‘missing person’ because she traveled the state. She worked for what had been a boutique clothing firm now extending its reach not just through Florida but upward into Georgia and the Carolinas. Sounds like a good deal. She traveled all over, seeing what people were wearing, and what would be comfortable first for year-round heat, and then for changing temperatures. She was a designer, but also, so personable that she met with people to talk about clothing. Attractive clothing that wasn’t torturous to wear. The company is called Sea Green Clothing. If you haven’t heard of it, they started with women’s clothing. Now, they’re stretching out.
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