by Hadena James
Kimberly stuck her head in the door. A smile on her face.
“What?” I asked her.
“You both read very quickly. I knew you did, but I didn’t realize you had found a partner in speed reading. Do you two need anything?”
“I’m good,” Fiona told her.
“You were very quiet this morning at the crime scene,” I answered.
“It spoke for itself,” she answered.
“That it did.” I agreed, motioning her into the room.
“I have seen five of those now, they aren’t getting any easier and I think the level of violence is getting worse.”
“How so?” Fiona asked her.
“The first couple weren’t nearly as dissolved as this one.” She looked down at the pizza boxes. “With each case he’s using more acid, and hanging around longer as a result. He isn’t afraid of getting caught. Considering the public nature of the temple, I’m just surprised.”
“And horrified,” I added.
“A little bit.” Kimberly nodded. “I have seen some dreadful things on this job, but this is in the top ten.”
“Do you have a problem with acid attacks in this town?” Fiona asked after another moment.
“No. I know there have been some in other places around the country, but we have not had a single one.” Kimberly said. “I don’t know how to put it into words.”
“The large pagan community means that really dedicated religious persons fail to feel welcome and so they don’t stick around long enough to start spouting scripture on corners or throwing acid on young women they find immodest.”
“Basically,” Kimberly nodded. “Our mayor is a Druid. This is a community that accepts all religions and religious diversity better than most and the overzealous don’t stick around for very long as a result. We don’t get a lot of religion-based crimes.”
“Considering pagans are discriminated against fairly regularly, I’m surprised by that.” Fiona said.
“It’s part of the reason my husband and I moved here.” Kimberly said. “My husband’s family is from here and most are practicing pagans. So, when we met and started talking about getting married, he asked if I would have a problem moving here so he could work for his father.”
“That was elusive and cagey,” I pointed out.
“My father-in-law is an occultist, for lack of a better word. He sells spells and charms and amulets from a variety of pagan religions.” Kimberly shrugged. “My husband is a doctor, so they also sell folk medicine.”
“Don’t introduce him to Xavier.” I smiled.
“Actually, they might still get along. My husband believes most people are over medicated. He doesn’t solely rely on folk medicine, but if someone is insistent they need a medication to treat whatever they have that he isn’t as convinced they need, he will often give them something like valerian root, because he says belief is half the battle with treating any illness.”
“You may be right then,” Fiona agreed. “They might get along fine.”
“Exactly. He doesn’t recommend spells or holistic medications that have a spotty track record, it’s more about getting people off the medications than putting them on it, like he wouldn’t tell you to stop treating your migraines with modern medication, but he would want to do lab work and make sure you weren’t missing any key vitamins or minerals in your diet and he’d put you on supplements of those to see if they helped.”
“Our definition of folk medicine might be different,” I suggested.
“Maybe,” she agreed. “However, most medications have horrible side effects and people want a pill to help with everything, so doctors prescribe them pills to help with everything. My husband doesn’t agree with that approach. He prefers a more natural approach then using medications when nothing else is available. He isn’t going to risk the life of a patient with high blood pressure by prescribing them all-natural relaxant substances, but he will try to get them off all medications not essential to controlling their high blood pressure. For example, I grind my teeth bad, acupuncture in my jaws and valerian root are what my husband recommended. I stopped taking the muscle relaxers and I rarely use a night guard anymore. Putting one in only when I’m really stressed at work, like lately.”
“I understand,” I assured her. I looked around the room. Fiona was munching the second slice of pizza that had been on her plate. I offered a piece to Kimberly who declined.
“Is your husband an occultist, too?” Fiona asked.
“My husband is a scientist,” Kimberly chuckled. “The occult doesn’t interest him. However, he comes from a long line of Haitian witch doctors, making it impossible for him to be a total disbeliever.” Kimberly looked at Fiona. “You commented earlier you weren’t a Satanist, but you aren’t exactly a Wiccan, either, judging by the medallion you are wearing.”
“I practice a form of goddess worship and naturalism. Wicca is as close as most people get to understanding it, so I just claim to be a Wiccan witch.” Fiona touched the amulet that usually hung on a chain long enough to keep it hidden in her shirt. However, Badger had broken the chain a week ago and a new suitably long replacement hadn’t been found yet. Fiona was technically a Neo-Druid, but there was more to her religion than Druidism ever thought of being. From what I could tell it was mesh of Druidism, Revivalist religion, and naturalism. She mostly worshipped forgotten goddesses like Gaia, Hathor, and Maat, making her religion mostly revivalist ancient Egyptian, except the Gaia part. We didn’t really discuss it because the incense burning and sage cleansings annoyed me.
“I’m going to be a bitch and ask what your parents thought of you marrying a Haitian witch doctor’s son.”
“We don’t speak. They have never seen their grandchildren, and until they accept it, they won’t.” Kimberly’s parents were Jewish and not particularly tolerant of things not Jewish. They had expected her to settle down with a nice Jewish boy and raise nice Jewish children. Kimberly had about as much interest in practicing Judaism as I did in practicing self-mutilation. In college, they had been horrified to learn that not only was I not Jewish, I was not religious anything. I remember them yelling at the resident advisor in our building about them setting up their daughter with a gentile, especially one like me.
“Maybe one day,” I shrugged at her without much conviction in my voice that her parents might one day come to their senses and learn there were things worse in life than Haitian witch doctors.
“We aren’t holding our breath,” she replied absently.
“Do you have many hate crimes in general in Tallahassee?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Not really,” Kimberly answered. “You think it’s a hate crime?”
“The method of killing implies it probably is.” Fiona answered. “The method supports the idea of it. Killing is usually about hate, even in shootings, but the idea of injecting acid into another person, is a specialized kind of hate. I don’t think the killer could do this if they considered them people.”
“I agree,” I told her and Kimberly. “Hate crime fits. We’ve kind of been looking for hate crimes, but we haven’t found many.”
“The majority of our hate crimes are based on race more than religion. We have our loons no different than anywhere else. A few years ago, a Neo-Nazi group tried to set up a headquarters here. There was an organized demonstration against it, organized by the leaders of several of our non-mainstream religious groups that ended when the group made it known that they were just as comfortable with their right to bear arms as the Neo-Nazi group. No one died, but they were using a vacant store as their headquarters, and it was the target of lots of vandalism, including someone continuously cutting their electric at the box. One night someone wrote a note and told them they would be in for their own Kristallnacht if they didn’t leave. Listed the names and addresses of all the members of the group, a few days later we got a slew of reports of slashed tires and gas tank tampering from the hate group members. Shortly after that, they closed down shop an
d the majority of them moved out of town. They now have a cult-like compound on the outskirts of town. That’s why the FBI is here. My boss was worried these killings were retaliation for running the skinheads out of town.”
“Is that possible?” Fiona asked.
“It isn’t impossible,” Kimberly answered. “Although very unlikely, because no one could figure out who was behind the vandalism. It isn’t like The Temple of the Rising Sun was the only one claiming they organized it. Even my father-in-law claimed that he got some of his Voodoo buddies together to cast spells on the skinheads and that the demons they summoned must have caused the damage. Almost every organized group in town claimed responsibility. Even the peace-loving hippie yoga group claimed responsibility saying they did it because the skinheads were disrupting the calm the town had.”
“How odd,” I frowned.
“Hey, since the pagans came to town in droves, our crime rates have really dropped. We went from averaging three thousand murders a year to just under a thousand.”
Why would pagans drop crime rates?” Fiona asked.
“They are very organized and community involved. It’s hard to believe but the nine Satanist groups have a youth outreach group and run several community centers as well as pour money into public education and policing. We even have a community policing group that has to train for three months with the police force and every dime they need to operate from uniforms to training is paid for by the Satanic Coalition that exists in this town.”
“Satanic Coalition just sounds weird. They aren’t two words you put together and think it helps the community,” Fiona smiled.
“I know, but in Tallahassee, the Satanic Coalition is one of the largest fund-raising groups around and they are generous donors.”
“I get it.” I told them. “They’re accepted here, but they still feel the need to prove that they are contributing society members.”
“You do the same thing,” Fiona looked at me.
“To some degree,” I answered.
“I had never thought about it until now, but that’s why you buy the crap the kids in the neighborhood sell, whether it’s cookies, candy bars, or magazine subscriptions, you tend to buy it and you tend to foist it onto us once you have bought it.”
“Except the candy bars and magazines,” I reminded her, although sometimes, I gave members of the SCTU the magazines too. I had even gifted a few subscriptions. I only read a handful of magazines and they usually weren’t on the forms the kids in the neighborhood were selling as a fund raiser.
“I don’t foist, I gift, there is a difference,” I informed her.
“The difference must be very subtle,” Fiona remarked.
“Sometimes the difference is practically invisible,” I shrugged.
Six
Autopsies are not quick processes, especially when it’s a murder victim. Fiona and I had looked at over three hundred murder cases. We’d finished the previous year and decided we’d check the previous five years. That had boosted our stacks of files and we’d found a handful of cases that had landed firmly in the definitely maybe bins.
The problem with them was that three of them were technically solved and the murderer was in prison. They were the only ones we had found that even remotely caught our attention. While Tallahassee had murders, the majority were run of the mill shootings. There weren’t even a lot of stabbings. Weird murders were even rarer. One of the cases was a poisoning. I liked this case more than Fiona, but it just seemed to fit so many parameters. The victims were a prominent couple, wealthy and active in the community as well as one of the Satanic temples in the area. There hadn’t been anything written on the walls like the current cases, but the couple had been forced to drink lemonade laced with liquid ant poison.
It had been a messy crime scene. To me, it was messier than the acid injections. Poison victims tend to vomit a lot and this one had been no different, bloody vomit had covered the floors and walls. As a fledgling serial killer, dealing with pervasive amounts of vomiting, especially if unexpected, would make one change their method of killing. Acid was every bit as painful as poison with less mess.
It was also as slow. Poisoning didn’t happen in real life like it did in the movies. It could take hours upon hours for a poisoning victim to die. That was a long time for a killer to hang around and watch and wait for their victim to die. Injecting acid was probably faster to be honest. Aside from the massive hemorrhaging from the acid dissolving blood vessels leading to organs, the body would have gone into shock and shut down long before the acid dissolved something important like the liver or stomach.
The problem for us was that there wasn’t a lot of research conducted that involved injecting creatures with acid to see how long it took them to die. We could generalize and make assumptions, but our killer knew more about the process than we did. When we caught him, we’d have to ask him about it. If we were really lucky, he’d keep a diary of it and we could just read that, because psychopaths were prolific liars and not the most scientifically oriented observers.
However, reading about it in a journal was better than having to listen to a serial killer tell us about it. They tended to be animated about the parts that no one else wanted them to be animated about. I actually didn’t want to sit through a serial killer’s memory of it, especially if we were wrong and he was sexually aroused by it. Listening to that would be brutal on the mind and soul of SCTU members like Fiona, Gabriel, and probably even Lucas. I didn’t include Xavier because he seemed to be less sympathetic than the others. He and I could probably handle it, even though neither of us would like it.
Gabriel and Lucas were done with interviews and were back in the conference room with us. As was the FBI agent who was either ignoring what we were telling her or had decided that regardless of what we said she was going to disagree with us.
Right now she was engaged in an argument with Fiona and Lucas that our current serial killer’s method of murder would not have required a trial and error period. I was fairly sure that no one woke up one morning and thought, “I’ll start injecting people with acid for fun.” Personally, I felt acid and poison weren’t that much different as murder weapons. The only difference I could really find was that acid might be a quicker death regardless of how it was introduced to the victim.
The FBI agent only wanted to connect murders where the killer had laced something like cookies with acid. That didn’t sound like an effective or productive way to commit murder to me. It certainly wouldn’t fill the killer’s need to watch their victim’s suffering. Unfortunately, we hadn’t found a single case of someone lacing a food or drink item with acid, and for good reason. You couldn’t mix acid into something like cookie batter and then cook it, it would eat the batter and you’d just have dried clumps of acid and acid byproduct. Also, acids tended to be liquids and they didn’t mix well into, say, lemonade. They had distinct smells that made me sure they were mostly bitter and they surely had an after taste beyond just “blood in the throat”.
“Drinking acid would be worse than eating glass,” I heard Lucas practically yell. “It burns skin, but skin is a rather tough tissue compared to organ tissue like the esophagus. Even stomach tissue is a tougher material than most of the tissues in our body. If a victim ate or drank a product laced with acid, they would immediately know it. They aren’t going back for a second drink or second bite.”
“We eat acids all the time,” she disagreed.
“We eat mild acids. Acids that aren’t going to kill us.” Lucas commented. “Strong acids create symptoms when ingested.”
“So do mild acids. Look what soda does to teeth.”
“It’s not the acid or even the sugar in soda that ruins teeth, not really,” Lucas sighed. “It’s the carbonation. That’s why in places like England where sparkling water is more popular than water or even soda they still have bad teeth. The carbonation in sparkling water does as much damage as carbonation in soda. The carbonation is also why even though most jui
ces have just as much sugar and acid as soda, juice doesn’t damage teeth like carbonation does.”
“I didn’t realize you were a doctor,” she said turning on her heels and walking away from him. She plopped down into a chair across the table from me. I didn’t glare at her but it took effort.
“I’m not entirely sure what you want from this relationship,” Gabriel said. “I talked to a friend at the Bureau and this is your first serial killer case, but you don’t want opinions from us, everyone in this room has caught at least thirty serial killers, but you won’t listen to us. So, tell me, what exactly do you hope to gain from having us help you on the case?”
“I didn’t call you in,” she snapped at him. “But now that you’re here, I don’t have the authority to send you back home it seems, because I did try, long before you started this insane search for other cases that might be this killer’s first kill.” She pulled a file from her bag and slid it across the table to me. “Because these poor people here are his first kill.”
I opened the file and read it quickly. The file read nothing like these killings, except that acid was involved. The killer had etched a swastika on the foreheads of the victims using hydrochloric acid according to the lab report. The victims were a child of about 9 and her mother. Neither had been raped. I didn’t even consider hydrochloric acid to be in the same league as sulfuric acid. It was much harder to get hold of and it was more damaging. Cause of death was ingestion of poison distilled from rodent bait.
“You are sure that this is a man and he’s raping his victims, I have doubts about both.” I picked up the poisoning case and opened it to a picture. There were ladies’ tennis shoes by the door covered in bloody vomit. “The file says no one recognized the shoes. If we are right and this is among the first kills, then our killer is most likely not a male and this might be the reason they moved to using acid instead of poison.” I shoved the pictures under her fingers. “You seem to only be looking at evidence that suits your theory. The reality is, women who become serial killers are not known for being gentle. Very few of them use poison and they like to be just as up close and personal with their victims as male serial killers.”