Nothing Sacred (FBI Agent Dan Hammer Series Book 1) (10 page)

“Forgot.”

“Forgot?” Synapses exploded, a faint headache was beginning to rumble.

“Sorry.”

Dan shook his head. Sometimes he felt like he was in the middle of a Three Stooges episode, only there was just the two of them. Dan moved closer to the body. The nearer he got, the worse the smell. “Another girl? A “yes” or a “no” will be fine.”

“Yes.” Evans scoped out the area. “Gonna be kinda hard finding any evidence out here.”

“When I need your two cents, I’ll ask for it, okay?” Dan was hoping somebody had already taken charge, scouted out the surrounding area and began taking notes. It wouldn’t surprise him if nobody had. “Where’s the Coroner?”

“Around here somewhere. I just saw him.” Evans scratched his head. It was a wonder he could manage to do two things at the same time.

Dan began writing down his own notes. A patch of dirt, twelve feet by twelve feet made up the clearing. To the left of him was the body. Two triangles of three wooden stakes were burrowed deep into the ground. Three feet separated each triangle. One stake was at the top and two were at the bottom. He scanned for footprints, tire marks, anything. He drew a picture of the crime scene, checked out significant landmarks to triangulate. He wanted an exact location of the body. The victim, from what he could surmise in the darkness, was female. Even Evans had identified that. Her legs were spread-eagled, her ankles firmly attached by ligatures to each of the two wooden stakes. Her pelvic area was exposed. The only garment she wore was a robe, rolled up above, what was left of her waist. It was difficult making out the color, but Dan imagined that at one time it had been white. Tied together and secured at the top were the girl’s bony wrists. Through the tangle of matted hair, Dan could see blonde strands. A gruesome sight.

He walked up to the body, hands behind his back. Red-orange flares positioned around the scene created transient ghoulish light. Decomposition had made its ugly appearance. Not much luck in securing forensic samples, but enough, perhaps to get a positive identification. Fortunately, the wind was blowing. The rain helped. The smell of decaying flesh was one of the worst ever. Even after thirteen years on the force, Dan was still not used to it. He hoped to God he never would.

Flashbulbs popped as police photographers entered the secluded area. Dan finished his drawing and looked back in the direction of his car. The fine mist had turned to rain. His face was wet. “Anybody call the Medical Examiner?” Quiet, except for the shuffling of feet slogging through the thick mud. “Figures. After they’re done here, have somebody stay and secure the area overnight. Then get this body to the morgue. Radio the Medical Examiner on duty. I want an autopsy tonight. I’ll meet up with the body there.”

Dan walked around the corpse. Positioned beside it were an identical set of wooden stakes, driven deeply and securely into the ground. He bent down and took a closer look. Attached to the wooden stake were ropes. “Make sure you collect these too. You hear me, Evans. I want them sent to the lab.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Somehow, Angie had escaped.

Angie had to have known the killer.

June 15
, 2007

5:05 AM

Friday

Morgue

12

Dr. Marjorie Dunlap was the Medical Examiner on duty. Not only was she a well-respected physician, but also a board
-certified Pathologist, which made life a bit easier for Dan. She also had an excellent reputation for working well with police officers.

Dan’s presence at the Morgue and watching the autopsy was advantageous for several reasons. One, he didn’t have to wait several weeks for the autopsy report. Two, he was able to ask pertinent questions that might not ordinarily be found on the “formal” report, and three, he found Dr. Dunlap, or Marjorie, as Dan called her, incredibly attractive.

Marjorie greeted Dan at the side entrance of the Morgue. He got the frigid feeling she was “tickled pink” to see him. And, Dan wasn’t all that keen on seeing her either, hospitals and morgues being the last place he’d want to visit anybody at 5 AM in the morning. Nothing good ever happened in either location. You couldn’t pay Dan enough money to do what Dr. Marjorie Dunlap did for a profession.

“This better be good, Hammer,” she said, leaning up against the clam colored wall, her arms folded protectively above her waist. “I’m missing my beauty sleep.”

“What about me?” Dan asked, dripping with water from the rain. The smell of formaldehyde and disinfectant were overpowering.

“What about you?” Marjorie was prepared. His kind of girl. Already she was suited up. Pink scrubs, a plastic bib covering her torso, and a protective surgical mask dangling down across her under developed chest. Cat-shaped sunglasses outlined pale gray eyes. She noticed Dan’s interest and turned away, following the mortuary assistant as he rolled the gurney carrying the black body bag to the end of the hallway.

Marjorie and Dan were on a first name basis. At one time, while she was recovering from her divorce, and Dan was convalescing from his, they helped each other get back on their feet. In other words, they fooled around a couple of times. He watched Marjorie from behind. She had excellent legs. All that morning tennis. He tagged behind the deadly procession following a squeaky wheel. The other officers he sent home. Bad enough, he had to stay.

“Autopsy Suite,” Marjorie chuckled as she pushed open the double metal doors. “Put the body over there, Ben.”

Ben, her Assistant, reminded Dan of the giant from
Jack and the Beanstalk
. Dan had just finished reading the story to Alexandra on her last weekend visit. Big and clumsy, he maneuvered the gurney toward the examining table and heaved the body up and over.

Marjorie grabbed a package of sterile gloves from the shelf, peeled it open and slipped them on, popping each finger into place. Ben followed suit. In perfect sync. Ben then proceeded to unzip the body bag, remove the body and cover it with a white flimsy sheet. The overly ripe smell emanating from the opened container competed with the frigid air circulating throughout the room. Unfortunately, ripe won out. Marjorie picked up her portable tape recorder, attached it to the front of her pink scrub top pocket, and approached the body.

“I can tell you right now, there’s not much use in using the Lumalite.” Marjorie spoke bluntly. She rarely used adjectives and always kept focused on the work at hand. To be truthful, Dan loved watching her. She turned her attention to Ben. “You have the camera loaded, Benny?”

Ben nodded.

Dan guessed “Benny” was a term of endearment. Did Dan feel a tinge of jealousy? Ben didn’t seem to mind or notice as he fumbled around on the counter for his Minolta 35mm camera.

“This girl’s been dead for some time now.” Marjorie continued. “Lumalite’s worthless unless you’re interested in finding out what kind of critters used her carcass for a midnight snack.”

“That’s what I love about you, Doc.” Dan waited for her eyes to meet his. “Your incredible sensitivity. How long?” Dan stayed a fair distance away from the table, out of her way. He leaned up against a counter and crossed his legs Marlboro Man-style. Too close and he’d probably have to sit on the floor. His stomach was strong, but not
that
strong. He didn’t want to take any chances.

“Hard to tell…” Marjorie’s voice trailed off as she forged on, working over the body with large metal tweezers and forceps. Her hands prodded and fished, investigating each jagged curve while Ben took test shots of the floor. Flashbulbs ignited. He then proceeded to photograph the body from every possible angle. “My guess would be two weeks, maybe three, judging from the decomposition. She’s young. Thirteen, fourteen years old. Poor thing put up a struggle, though. Look here. She bit her tongue. Clear through.” Next, Marjorie worked her hands over the body, face, and neck. “No evidence of strangulation, no bruise marks around her neck, not that I can tell, but we’ll check that when we open her up…could be disguised…” Next the extremities. First the arms, then the legs. Marjorie talked calmly into her recorder. “Although it’s difficult to judge, there appears to be no puncture wounds on either of the arms, but severe ligatures are evident on both wrists and the ankles. Obviously, this girl was tied up. Her leg muscles are rigid. Look at this… Jesus Christ, Dan!”

“What?”

“What?” Marjorie faced Dan with terror in her eyes. “What in the hell happened to this girl?” She turned back to the body and investigated the girl’s pelvic area closer. She adjusted her glasses high up on her nose. “Dan, this girl’s been cut...” Dan walked closer to the table, the smell of rotting flesh disgusting. He watched as Marjorie took a scalpel from the steel pushcart and began cutting away at something. “Get a shot of this, Ben.” He crossed in front of Dan and positioned himself at the foot of the table. “Dan, her labia’s been sewn up with something. It looks like guitar string or something…maybe wire.”

Marjorie retracted something with her tweezers and placed it into a specimen container. Labels were already prepared, printed out earlier and on the stand ready to go. She slapped one on the sample and went back to the table. “The genitals are badly decomposed, no telling what animal’s been foraging around in there, but these fragments, it looks to me like they’re pieces of bone. Here look.” She lifted a shard of bone up to the spotlight with her tweezers. They both stared and squinted. “This is definitely bone, Dan. From a chicken or a turkey, some kind of fowl. It looks like these bone chips were used to penetrate the layers of her…” Marjorie dropped her tweezers on the metal tray and turned away from the table. She turned off her recorder. Everybody had a limit. Marjorie just found hers. “This is wretched, Dan. Really, really horrible.”

“Without sounding morbid, the other girl…”

“What other girl?” She cut Dan off before he could finish. “
Another
girl?”

“Earlier this evening…”

“What?”

“A girl was found stumbling around out on Old Towne Road. Some guy saw her weaving in the wooded area out there. He brought her over to MUSC. She’s alive.”

“What kind of world do we live in?” Marjorie threw her hands up into the air. In despair? Confusion? Dan couldn’t guess. He didn’t have all the answers.

“When human beings, people, can do this to one another…I just don’t know.” Exasperated, Marjorie clicked on her recorder, picked up the tweezers and once again turned her attention back to the body.

“This body was found at the same location.” Dan added. “Further back off the road, about a half mile into the woods. We may have a serial here.”

Marjorie continued to work, probing crevices, ignoring the last piece of information Dan gave her. People dealt with denial differently. Marjorie had a daughter, around the same age as this girl. Alice must be at least eleven or twelve by now.

“No forced entry, vaginally or rectally. Thank God for that.”

“Trajectory?”

“She was exposed when this occurred. Her clothes were off. I’d be hard-pressed to tell you what kind of instrument was used to cut her. The laceration edges aren’t clean, like from a razor or a knife, but they’re not jagged either. It would be difficult to calculate the path since she wasn’t wearing clothes, but I would guess the perpetrator was right-handed. That’s worth something, isn’t it? She was tied down. Restrained. Whoever did this was on their knees, bending down in front of her. Impossible to get height and weight…did you check the scene?”

“It was dark. I have to go back. I’ll check the area better when it’s light.”

“One thing I
will
say, whoever did this, did a good job. That’s for sure. Sick bastard.”

“Cause of death?”

“She sure as hell lost a lot of blood. That’s my first guess. Trauma, massive blood loss, shock.” Once again, Marjorie withdrew her tweezers. In their grasp was a small glass vial. “I’ll be God- damned.”

Dan moved in closer. “What now?” Dan could smell baby powder on Marjorie’s neck. Summer mornings perched up against overstuffed pillows, lying naked in Marjorie’s king sized bed watching her as she applied scented talcum to her back. Her chest. Her thighs. At the time, Dan thought it was for him. Now he understood why. It masked the acrid stench of death.

Marjorie had opened the vial and removed the bloodstained fabric. She held it up toward the spotlight. “
For his sins
…” she read aloud.

“Let me see.” Dan looked. “The other girl in the hospital… same thing. Hers read, ‘
For her sins…
’”

Marjorie deposited the piece of fabric into another empty sample container, closed the lid and slammed it onto the tray. “What a miserable fuck! Whoever did this to these poor girls should suffer. He should have his penis lopped off and be left to die. Bastard!” Ben pulled away from the examining table and took cover.

Dan held Marjorie in his arms for a brief second. It felt comfortable again. Safe. Like time had never passed. Ben was growing progressively nervous from their open display of intimacy.

Marjorie backed away. “Thanks, Dan, but, that’s not necessary.” She walked toward the sink, pulled her surgical gloves off and threw them into the sealed trashcan. Red signs with a large blaring triangle warned of biological hazards. “There’s really nothing more I can do here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Am I not speaking English?”

“I need some sort of identification. I want to find out who this girl is. Where she came from. Did you notice any tattoos, scars, recognizable body marks? What about serology? Fiber samples? I’ll send everything out today. To Washington, if I have to. At least give me a blood type.”

“I know my job, Dan, and I just don’t know what else to tell you.” She pushed short blond hair around her ear with an index finger. She did it a lot. It annoyed Dan now, and it annoyed Dan then, when it mattered. “I can take some tissue, some root hair samples, if you like, but that will take time at the Lab. You know as well as I do that all this is useless in the long run without positive identification from a family member. Other than that, there’s not much more I can do. What we’ve got here is simply a Jane Doe on our hands.” Marjorie glanced at the clock hanging on the wall. She was losing patience, back-peddling, treading water like an athlete. This had upset her more than she was letting on. Dan understood. It upset him, too. Or, maybe she enjoyed the tables being turned. Her power struggle with Dan continued, even now in this chilly, deadly environment.

“Dental records?” Dan was grasping at straws. “Anything?” He didn’t want this girl buried without somebody close to her being notified. Her mother, her father, somebody needed to know. “She deserves protocol, Marjorie. For the record.”

“I don’t have a problem with protocol. I just don’t want to do it now, at five thirty in the morning. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”