Fear Nothing (6 page)

She was stalling. Her feet remaining in place versus taking that overdue step forward, up the stairs, into the master bedroom, arriving at the heart of the matter. Was she dreading the scene she would find in the bedroom so much? Or was it worse than that? Was she dreading the stairs?

Alex finally did the honors. He climbed the first few risers. D.D. had no choice but to follow.

With his high-intensity beam, Alex illuminated more blood evidence along the way. Paw prints, some full, some partial, as the small dog had gone up and down the stairs. Then, at the top of the stairs, a significantly larger streak, as if someone had found a large pool of blood and tried to mop it up.

“We’ll have to conduct some experiments to see if we can reproduce the pattern,” Alex was saying, “but I believe this smear pattern is from the dog as well. She was agitated, spending time next to the body, then running back and forth in the hallway. Here, at the top of the stairs, I think she lay down for a while. Maybe waiting for help to arrive.”

D.D. was having a hard time breathing again. The climb up the stairs, she told herself. But she had a death grip on the right handrail and her chest felt unnaturally tight. As if a giant had reached inside her body and was now squeezing her lungs with his meaty fist.

She bent over slightly. Found herself panting.

Then, as white dots began appearing in front of her eyes . . .

Rockabye, baby, on the treetop . . .

“Hold my hand. Steady. Now breathe. Inhale through your mouth, one, two, three, four, five. Exhale through your nose. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five.

“Easy, sweetheart. Easy.”

Another minute. Maybe two, three, ten. She was embarrassed to realize her whole body was shaking uncontrollably. And she was sweating. She could feel the beads of perspiration dotting her brow, rolling down her cheeks. For an instant, she was seized by the overwhelming compulsion to bolt back down the stairs and race out the door. She’d flee the scene. Run away and never look back.

Alex’s fingers, enmeshed in her own.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said quietly. “Anytime you want, D.D., we can walk away. I’ll drive you home.”

That did it. His voice was so patient, so understanding, she had no choice but to grit her teeth and steel her spine. She did not want to be this person. This weak, trembling woman who required her husband’s support just to climb the damn stairs.

She inhaled, counting to five. Then exhaled. Then got her head up.

“I’m sorry,” she said shortly, looking at anything but Alex’s face. “Clearly, time to boost the cardio.”

“D.D.”

“All this lying around. Doesn’t do a body good.”

“D.D.”

“Maybe instead of naming my pain, I should force it to run laps instead. That’d teach it.”

“Stop.”

“What?”

“Don’t lie to me. If you need to lie to yourself, fair enough. But don’t lie to me. This is the first time back at a crime scene since your accident. That you’re suffering some kind of panic attack—”

“I don’t panic!”

“Some kind of emotional response isn’t unwarranted. You’re not carved out of stone, sweetheart.” Alex’s voice grew gentle. “You’re a real person. And real people feel fear and pain and uncertainty. It doesn’t make you weak. It just means you’re human.”

“I don’t panic,” she muttered, still looking away. Then, because she simply had to know: “Is the dog okay?”

“Staying at the neighbor’s, which I gather was already like a second home to her.”

“She was covered in blood. The dog, right? Only way a smear this big . . . The dog’s legs, stomach, would have to be covered in blood. From the mattress. From lying down next to her owner and the mounds and mounds of flayed skin . . .”

“We can go home, D.D., anytime you’d like.”

“When the wind blows,” she murmured.

“What’s that?”

She merely smiled, then got her head up and her shoulders back. “And down will come baby, cradle and all.”

She continued down the hall.

 • • • 

T
HEY HAD LEFT THE SCENE
relatively intact. The body was gone, of course. But the blood-soaked mattress, bottle of champagne, fur-lined handcuffs, remained. And the bloody sheet, now tacked up on a bare wall. D.D. had witnessed the technique before, bedding, clothes, even entire sections of flooring, suspended at the original crime scene to enable better spatter analysis. Even then, she had to steel herself as Alex flipped on the overhead light, chasing away the thickening shadows and revealing the full bloody glory.

“I asked them to leave as much of the initial scene as possible,” Alex said quietly. “Allow me the opportunity to study it in situ.”

D.D. nodded. Her left shoulder had started a deep, throbbing ache.

“Same bottle of champagne,” she observed, looking at anything but the suspended sheet.

“Phil believes the killer brings everything with him—the champagne, handcuffs, rose.”

“Props for his play.”

“He wants it to be just so,” Alex said. “Not just any bottle of wine, or any kind of flower. But these specific items.”

“Ritualized.” She’d thought this before. They were looking at a killer’s highly developed fantasy. Now other thoughts returned to her, like shadows of a dream. “ViCAP?” she asked, referring to the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which included a searchable database filled with pertinent details from criminal cases all around the country. Investigators could use it to match a crime in their jurisdiction with similar deeds from other localities.

“I’m sure they’re checking it.”

“He makes it appear romantic,” she murmured. “Flowers, champagne, lovers’ toys. But it’s about control. Him, in control of everything.”

Alex didn’t say anything. He twisted behind them and pointed the tight beam of his high-intensity light back toward the hallway. The bright white beam immediately illuminated dozens of stains, mostly bloody paw prints from the dog pacing back and forth. Then he turned his beam onto the floor in the master bedroom and D.D. was immediately captivated by the contrast. A series of paw prints led from the queen-size bed to the door; then a thinner smear appeared on the floor near the right-side nightstand, where there had been blood, but the killer had made an attempt to wipe it up.

Otherwise . . . nothing.

Here, in the room that had served as center stage for one of the most gruesome homicides D.D. had ever seen, there was almost no blood evidence. Not on the floors. Not on the walls.

“But . . . but . . . ,” D.D. found herself sputtering. Then, more firmly: “Not possible. No way you can fillet a human being without being positively coated in blood yourself. And no way the killer could then move around this room, let alone exit the house, without leaving an obvious trail. Even if he cleaned up after himself with a bleach-soaked mop, you can’t get it all. It’s the whole magic of your job. Even when you can no longer see blood with the human eye, it lingers, just waiting for the right high-intensity beams or proper chemical solution to tell its tale. This”—she waved her hand toward the relatively blood-free expanse of hardwood floor—“I’m seeing it, but I’m not believing it.”

“As I mentioned, the Boston PD wouldn’t mind some help with this one.” Alex walked deeper into the room, his beam sweeping methodically right, left, right. “Shall we start with the bedsheet? I believe it serves as the beginning of the story.”

She nodded once. Responding to his hand signal, she obediently killed the overhead lights. In the near gloom, it was easier to focus on Alex’s high-intensity light and the way it cast a single fitted sheet into a terrible inkblot of dark, deadly stains.

Blood patterns, D.D. had learned by now, varied depending on the velocity of the blow and the porosity of the surface area. Bedding, such as blankets and mattresses, was obviously very soft and porous, meaning the blood spatter soaked straight in versus ricocheting or forming a starburst pattern on impact. In fact, the white sheet now bore a single, very long, almost cylinder-shaped bloody print, broken in two places by bars of white. She and Alex both stepped closer, inspecting the outer edges of the print.

“I don’t see any signs of fine mist,” D.D. murmured, “such as blowback from high-velocity gunfire.”

“Victim wasn’t shot. Blood patterns indicate a low-velocity impact.”

Which was consistent with most stabbings, D.D. knew. She still frowned. “But there’s no spatter at all, not even random drippings from the handle of the knife or edge of the blade. How do you explain that?”

“Killer’s not stabbing. Cause of death is unknown. But given the lack of defensive wounds, arterial spray and spatter, the victim was dead before the killer began removing her skin. I’m just a criminalist, not a behavioralist, but it would appear the crime is about control, not about pain and suffering. What we’re seeing here is purely the result of postmortem work.”

It should’ve been a reassuring thought. That the victim was already dead before the first slip of the cold blade beneath the surface of her skin . . . And yet, D.D. found herself almost slightly more horrified. A sexual-sadist predator with an overwhelming compulsion to inflict pain and suffering was something she could almost understand. But this . . . a killer who skinned his victims for sport?

“The voids?” she whispered now, pointing to twin patterns of clean white sheet amid the large cylinder of blood.

Alex got out a pencil. With his left hand, he started pointing and explaining. “Remember, the postmortem mutilation is mostly to the torso and the upper thighs. If you look at the bloodstain, you can see feathering at the top, and imprints here, which I believe are from the victim’s shoulder blades pressing into the sheet and limiting the absorption of blood. Orienting ourselves, then, here is the head, the shoulders, the torso, the legs. Given that . . .”

“The voids are on either side of the victim’s thighs.”

“From the lower part of the killer’s legs, I presume. Essentially, he was straddling her body, the front part of his shins pressing against the mattress on either side of her thighs, which shielded that part of the sheet from blood.”

“He incapacitates his victim,” D.D. murmured, trying to form a sequence of events in her mind. “Then, most likely, he sets the scene. The champagne, handcuffs, single rose. He’d want to get everything out before things get too . . . messy.”

Alex turned, sweeping his high-intensity beam across the nightstand where the champagne bottle and other props awaited. The light didn’t expose a single drop of blood.

“Fair assumption,” he said.

“Next . . . he would have to strip the victim. Expose her skin.”

Light beam to the left-hand side of the bed, where D.D. now saw a puddle of dark clothes.

“Black sweats, oversize Red Sox T-shirt, underwear,” Alex reported.

“Sounds like suitable PJs for a single woman. He cast them aside.”

Another nod.

“Then”—she turned toward the bed—“he climbs aboard, positions himself astride the victim’s naked body, and begins to . . . skin her. Why?”

Alex shrugged. “Part of the ritual? Maybe the killer is really some kind of necrophiliac, and it’s these moments with the body that are most fulfilling for him. The strips of skin are thin, and based on the ME’s study of the first victim, they’re precise, methodical. In his estimation, the killer spent at least an hour on the filleting process, if not two or three.”

“Semen?” D.D. asked. “Signs of sexual assault?”

“First victim, no. Second victim, results still pending.”

“I don’t get it. He gains access, incapacitates his victims. Drugs them?”

“Tox screen also pending.”

“Then . . . starts in with the knife. For at least an hour?”

“With some skill,” Alex provided. “ME suggests either a hunter or maybe even a butcher. But based on the smooth, even strokes, our killer has some experience.”

“Kind of blade?”

“Most likely something small and razor-sharp, perhaps even designed especially for the job. Here’s the other point of consideration. Often in these kinds of crimes, the killer will eventually set down his weapon. You know, resting for a moment, readjusting his grip, or even laying down the knife while getting on and off the bed. A reflexive movement, not even thought about, but an act that leaves a bloody imprint of the blade behind as further evidence. In a case where a killer spends this much time with a body at a scene this bloody, it’s the kind of evidence you’d almost expect. Except . . .”

“He didn’t do it.”

“Or he was aware enough, controlled enough, to rest it in the middle of another bloodstain, the kind of place where he thought it wouldn’t leave a pattern.”

D.D. glanced at her husband. “You just said he
thought
it wouldn’t leave a pattern . . . ?”

Alex smiled faintly. He had returned to the bloody sheet hanging on the wall and was hitting it up close and personal with the beam from his flashlight. “In this kind of attack, where the victim is bleeding out from multiple wounds over an extended period of time—”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“You get blood-on-blood patterns. Blood, as it starts to dry, thickens, the edges turning yellow from hemoglobin that’s separating from the platelets. The old blood starts to form a surface for the new blood to drip upon.”

She could almost picture this. “Meaning if the killer set down a knife covered in fresh blood upon an area of drying blood, it could leave an imprint on the surface of the old blood.”

“Precisely.”

“And in this case . . .”

Alex, his face a mere two inches from the stiff, red-encrusted surface: “I think . . . I can see an outline. Faint, but there. I would guess a filleting knife, but to be fair, it’s hard to know sometimes if you’re seeing what you
want
to see or what’s really there. We can fine-tune this, however, enhance the contrast using some chemicals back at the lab. Certainly it’s worth pursuing.”

“Certainly,” she agreed.

He frowned one more time, peering intently. For the sake of argument, D.D. did the same, but the nuance of a stain within a stain was lost on her. Mostly, she was aware of the overwhelming stench of blood. So much. This sheet. This mattress.