Breaking Creed (7 page)

Bodies tended to sink in water. It was one of those things movies and TV shows rarely got right. It wasn’t until days later, when gases started to form and collect, that the body began to float. From the apparent buoyance of this one, O’Dell suspected the gases were in full force.

“So what are
you
doing here?” she asked Stan, suspicious of why he had taken this assignment instead of sending one of his assistants. For as much as he hated law enforcement, Stan did enjoy the media. If there was even a whiff of a high-profile case, Stan tended to keep it for himself.

“What do you mean?” he asked halfheartedly.

Still, neither glanced at the other. The recovery team was making progress toward them.

“Why would you choose to be here in this heat? I’m guessing there must be something that piqued your interest.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Stan shrug and knew this was the most admission she’d get from the man. He surprised her when he said, “The call that came in said there was ‘a package in the Potomac.’”

“A package? That’s creative.”

“But that’s not even the interesting part,” Stan said, and finally he glanced over at her. “The caller promised that this was only the first.”

“Oh, wonderful.” O’Dell restrained a groan. Now she understood why she had been sent here. It was just another frickin’ serial killer case to add to her collection.

11

“T
HE
BODY
’
S
BEEN
IN
THE
WATER
at least a week.” Stan offered what O’Dell already knew.

The recovery team had splayed the floater on a tarp spread out on the muddy riverbank. They wouldn’t even attempt to fit the victim inside a body bag. Instead, they’d wrap the tarp as gently as possible around the bloated flesh, sealing up the ends for transport to the morgue. In the meantime, the team backed away and let Stan and O’Dell take a look before one of them started taking a series of photographs.

The body was male. That was about all that O’Dell could determine. But that alone was unusual. More than seventy percent of serial killers’ victims were female. Being in the water for a week would suggest the body would be washed clean, but debris dangled from the man’s hair, long and wet slimy weeds that made it look like
snakes were coiling around his head and into his face. Pieces of his flesh had already been compromised, scavengers in the water—fish or insects—teasing and tasting to see if this foreign object was something they could feed on.

O’Dell watched as Stan’s short, stubby fingers took temperature readings. Slow and methodical, he began his on-site checklist. She stood over the body, but kept out of the medical examiner’s way, even making sure that she didn’t cast a shadow over him. But while he worked, she continued her own visual examination.

She had chased her share of serial killers in the past decade. It wasn’t something that she chose to do. It wasn’t as if when she was a little girl, she’d said, “When I grow up I want to be an FBI profiler.” Just like her reputation for being an expert on dismembered bodies, hunting down killers had also developed into an accidental specialty.

O’Dell had an eye for details that others missed. She recognized patterns and suspected rituals while her colleagues thought she must be crazy. The strangest statistics and the most absurd facts stayed planted in her brain. She could easily become obsessed with a killer’s MO, learning and gleaning psychological tells that the killer never intended to share. And once in a while—to O’Dell’s detriment—a killer became obsessed with her, too.

Stan had said the caller who tipped off authorities about this victim had called it “a package.” It wouldn’t be the first time a serial killer had made up a clever reference for his victim. Nor would it be the first time that one called and alerted authorities, anxious to display his work. But so far, O’Dell couldn’t see anything that made this floater stand out as a homicide, let alone as the victim of a serial murderer.

She noticed marks around the man’s wrists and ankles, indents into the now bloated flesh that could have been made from ligatures. She wanted to take a closer look but stopped herself. She waited
until Stan noticed them, but the medical examiner seemed to be focused on something underneath the corpse.

“What is it?” O’Dell asked.

Stan waved her off while at the same time motioning for the forensic team, calling them over.

“Can we roll him over? At least onto his side?”

O’Dell squatted down beside Stan, not waiting for an invitation. She could see the tiny welts on the inside of the man’s legs that had gotten the medical examiner’s attention. They looked like insect bites. That didn’t seem unusual considering how long the body had been in the water.

They gently lifted and rolled the swollen corpse onto the left side and exposed the backside.

“Holy crap,” one of the CSU techs said. “What the hell is that?”

The entire back of the man’s body was covered in tiny welts, large patches of what looked like a rash on his calves, buttocks, and shoulders. What attracted O’Dell’s focus was the tattoo that spread over the entire left shoulder blade. It looked like the Grim Reaper, only there was something very different about it, despite being marred by the skin welts. It was distinctly female, clad in an elaborate robe and holding a scythe along with other items that were lost in the eruptions.

The others dismissed the tattoo. Stan poked and pressed the patches with a gloved index finger. One of the CSU techs began taking photos. O’Dell stood up and pulled out her cell phone. She zoomed her camera in on the tattoo and took several shots.

Taking a step back, she noticed that the worst areas—the most densely rashed—were those that would be in contact—unavoidable contact—with the ground or a surface, if the man had been restrained on his back. Maybe tied down. She pulled her eyes away to glance at the wrists and ankles. This close, she could see that ligatures—which were gone now—had cut deep into the skin.

“Was it something in the water?” another of the CSU techs asked.

But Stan was already shaking his head.

“I can’t say for sure until I take some samples, but I think this happened pre-mortem.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I have,” Stan said as he pressed his latex-covered index finger against a particularly nasty area on the victim’s shoulder. “One other time. Not this bad. Nothing like this.”

“They’re insect bites,” O’Dell guessed.

On closer inspection, the tiny welts looked like pus-filled blisters. And Stan was right—the skin wouldn’t continue to produce pus and blister like this after the heart had stopped.

“They’re not just any insect bite.” He looked over at O’Dell and waited for her eyes. “They’re fire ants. And nobody just falls onto a gigantic mound of fire ants and lies there.”

“Not unless they’re tied down.” She pointed to the wrists and ankles, which were bloated over the telltale markings.

“If I’m correct about these being fire ants, then this didn’t happen to him anywhere near this river,” Stan told her.

“How can you be certain about that?”

“Fire ants can’t survive in areas that freeze during the winter.” He said it without a doubt.

“So the killer tortured him somewhere else.”

“Not just somewhere else. It’d have to be at least five or six hundred miles south of here.”

“Oh great. So the original crime scene could be anywhere.” She pointed to the victim’s shoulder. “Any of you recognize the tattoo?” she asked.

The tech with the camera hunched over it and clicked off a couple of close-ups. Then he shrugged and said, “Not sure.”

O’Dell crossed her arms over her chest and stared out at the water of the Potomac. So delivering the “package” here must also serve some twisted purpose in the killer’s MO. You didn’t have to go far along this river to see monuments and historical landmarks from the water’s edge. And once again, she couldn’t help wondering if her boss had sent her out on yet another political goose chase.

12

F
ALCO
STARED
AT
HIS
BOOTS
. It was better than watching the spiders. He hated spiders. So he kept his eyes on his boots. Mud globbed into the seams where the leather met the sole. The toes were smeared, the heels caked, leaving no signs of the high-polished condition he obsessed over. He had other boots but these were his favorites. These made him walk like a cowboy, and he liked that. They had cost him more than his poor mother made in a month.

Falco had grown up watching American Westerns, old black-and-white movies that made the actors look tough, the landscape unforgiving, and the women more vulnerable. He liked to wear white button-down shirts with short sleeves and black jeans. Black and white had become his signature. Sometimes Falco even dreamed in black and white. It made the blood look like black motor oil. Cocaine was already white. Lately his dreams seemed to be covered in blood and cocaine . . . fire ants and spiders.

Falco’s obsession with black and white made it clear—perhaps it was a sign that even his Catholic mother couldn’t dismiss—that he was meant to be an apprentice under the Iceman. That code name brought with it a reputation, and at just its mention, Falco had seen the toughest men show fear, as though an injection of ice had been driven into their veins.

Few had ever seen the Iceman or met him. Those who bragged about getting a glimpse usually didn’t live long enough to verify their description. He knew that would be his destiny if he were ever to betray his new mentor. Now Falco realized that no one would believe him anyway, even if he gave an accurate description. The man’s features were bland, ordinary, and unremarkable. Easy to forget.

Choosing to be called “the Iceman,” although clever, wouldn’t give away the man’s real identity. After all, an assassin “iced” people for a living. Of course, Falco understood there were other reasons, deeper meanings for this nickname. It wasn’t much of a trick, but no one questioned it and neither would Falco dare to.

“They’re hungry today.” The Iceman’s voice brought Falco’s attention to the tabletop, where he had been trying to avoid looking.

He didn’t want to watch inside the Plexiglas box as the spiders fed on the carcasses he had helped collect for this very purpose. Their long spindly legs worked like tweezers, dissecting, pulling, yanking. The Iceman was teasing them with food, only to swipe it away. But these buggers were fast . . . and aggressive. Faster than Falco had ever seen.

The Iceman said they were “special ones . . . deadly ones,” and Falco found himself grateful. He wouldn’t be asked to handle them with bare skin like the others. These required gloves and a delicate touch, and thankfully, the Iceman didn’t believe Falco was ready or skilled enough, so Falco might luck out and not have to handle them at all.

“They’re Brazilian wandering spiders,” the Iceman continued,
and Falco knew there was a lesson coming. He didn’t mind. He actually liked that the assassin considered him worthy. “Their genus is
Phoneutria
. It’s Greek for ‘murderess,’ which is quite appropriate because they are the world’s most venomous. One sting is more powerful than a rattlesnake bite.”

He glanced back and Falco knew it was to check his reaction. Satisfied, the Iceman nodded. He poked a long stick through a carefully drilled hole in the side of the spider case. Falco watched as several of the spiders attacked the stick, rearing up on their hind legs. They were fast . . . so incredibly fast. Two raced up the stick until they ran into the Plexiglas wall.

“See how they defend themselves? Instead of running away, they attack. They’re very aggressive that way. They have to be because they don’t make or stay in webs. Their habit is to wander around in search of prey at night. Then they seek shelter in dark places during the day—log piles, boxes, shoes, and in bunches of bananas. That’s usually where they’ll leave their hatchlings, attached to the peel. It looks like nothing more than a puff of cotton.”

The Iceman pulled the stick out and the spiders continued advancing up it until the stick disappeared out the small hole and they were forced to drop down or cling to the inside wall of the box.

“Do you remember what I told you the last time?” he asked, but now he remained bent over his spiders, his eyes not leaving them, his back to Falco.

Thankfully, he couldn’t see Falco’s eyes dart from side to side, trying to think what it was the man wanted him to remember about the last time. Immediately his mind conjured up the image of how the ants had covered the man’s naked body so quickly, red-black streams of them racing and pouring over the skin like water. And just then a trickle of sweat broke free and slid down his back. It took effort to keep from shuddering at the thought of those ants crawling and biting.

“Find what matters to a man,” Falco said, as if, of course, that was the first thing that entered his head. It had to be what the Iceman wanted.

“What else?”

“Find out what matters most to him, then crush it. Discover his worst fears and make them come true.”

The Iceman nodded. “If you’re successful, he’ll beg you to kill him just to put him out of his misery.”

Falco knew that was the Iceman’s signature and why so many feared him. Other cartels sent hit men and death squads to cut the heads off their enemies and dismember their bodies, leaving them in the streets or hanging from bridges as a warning. The Iceman could find you no matter where you tried to hide, and he would destroy your life and your mind, as well as your body.

“Their venom includes a neurotoxin that acts on the nervous system and muscles. The initial bite causes intense pain that spreads through the body and shocks the muscles. It’s said that men who are bitten can experience painful, long-lasting erections. What an interesting fate for our Casanova, yes?”

Falco felt a shiver slide down his back. He knew the Iceman didn’t expect him to answer, and he remained quiet.

“Bring him in,” the Iceman told him, suddenly jerking his head in the direction of the doorway. He said it loud enough to be heard in the next room. “They’re ready for him.”