Killer Instinct

THREE

Jessica had given up on getting the sophisticated fingerprint equipment promised them by the Milwaukee field office. She might have had results with an ultraviolet imaging system that intensified light 700,000 times at a crime scene. But she must make do with what she had, a field generator and headlights flooding through the windows and doors. She tried to take it in stride; besides, the chances of actually capturing a print from the killer in the terribly disturbed crime scene was scarce at best. She had noticed that someone had actually picked up one of the dead girl's parts and returned it to her, laying it below the body like an offering, and it wasn't very likely that it had been the killer's doing, but someone who had been moved by the awful scene.

Still, she had gone through the motions, using the best technology available to her, the MAGNA brush. It was an ingenious device, small enough to carry in her breast pocket. The MAGNA made it possible to develop fingerprints on all kinds of materials, even those that once resisted processing. The locals were making their own prints with conventional tools and seemed to her in the stone age.

Everything would have to await her return to Quantico, where fluids and stains found at the scene, along with fibers, could be identified, and where DNA results might show them something. But such tests took time.

The local law guys were getting antsy now, wanting very much to cut the corpse down, close down the death house. She couldn't blame them. It was one of those universal instincts, an urge to tidy up the helpless victim, to right the wrong so far as it could be righted, to at least put the helpless form of the victim in a more natural pose; they wanted someone to clean her wounds, not to measure and poke and take slivers of tissue from her. They wanted to put the ugliness from view.

Along with the urge to clean and tidy up came the accompanying illusion that doing so was not only helpful but the morally right thing to do.

Her father had told her about such things as this; he had been witness to it countless times, and so had she now. But he also taught her that such urges were both natural and good, despite the harm they often did in destroying evidence and the desired sanctity of a crime scene. Such human urges certainly served the living; they certainly served to “soften” the scene, but thankfully, and somehow, Otto's long-distance proviso that the corpse not be touched by anyone had prevailed, amazing as it seemed. Once again, she guessed it was the sheriffs doing, a man named Stowell. She knew that to these men she appeared hard, perhaps even perverted, to have kept them so long from releasing the body from its silent torment, its bonds and its unholy position. The kind of well-intentioned mentality that caused no end of problems at crash sites where victims of burning Boeing 707s were too soon lifted off and placed all in neat little rows, creating a nightmare of identification problems for the medical examiner.

She had been called in on such a case with the terrible fate of Pan Am flight 929. It had been her first mass-death site and it would prove a massive undertaking in more ways than one. Identifying mangled and charred bodies, fitting limbs torn and hurtled about a debris field of some hundred and fifty yards, was enough of a challenge for any forensics specialist. She had been an assistant M.E. on call at Washington Memorial when the news of the crash came over. Such an announcement is like an invitation to a frat party, and so within the hour all roads leading to the crash site were congested with off-duty cops, reporters, camera crews, voyeurs of every stripe. Anyone with the remotest excuse to be on hand converged on the site, including politicians prepared to be interviewed.

Fire engines lined the way along with ambulances, along with more cops than necessary. The terrible secret amid the mayhem and confusion was the looting which was typically blamed on the local population. At a busy airport like Dulles International the first on scene were those whose job it was to rescue the living and protect the bodies of those who'd died. At the Pan Am crash the first to arrive were the Port Authority police, followed by the WPD, the firemen and the emergency medical supply teams, nurses, doctors, morticians and then nearby residents. The amount of looting was unforgivable.

The relatives of the dead were in an impossible situation, Kafkaesque in its nightmarish proportions. They saw evidence of the police, the firemen and the medical teams rushing in to save or identify their loved ones. How then might they question a missing broach, a lost diamond, a wallet? Without recourse, there was no way to accuse anyone or even prove that something had been stolen.

Pan Am 929 had been a “rich” flight, coming in from Buenos Aires, the passenger list reading like the social register of Washington, D.C. But by the time Jessica had arrived on scene, it looked like a planeload of paupers. Another reason to put the bodies all in a row, she guessed, in order to frisk them for rings and things-things that might quickly identify the charred and mutilated remains.

She overheard one policeman say to a distraught young woman, “You say your mother always wore this ring? But can you say you actually saw it on her hand when she boarded the plane in Buenos Aires?''

An archbishop on his way back to Rome via D.C. was located, his body intact, but his gold and amethyst ring and cross, along with a Rolex, had vanished without a trace. Outraged, one police lieutenant ordered all wallets and jewelry removed from the bodies under the watchful eyes of his men, and these items were tagged with a number corresponding to a number given each body, and placed in plastic bags sent to the police property room so that no further thievery would occur. It was at this point that Jessica and other M.E. s had come on the scene, having battled rush-hour traffic to get there. By then there was not much personal property left, and the bodies, all neatly numbered and assembled in a row, and covered over by a green tent, had been stripped of whatever personal effects might identify them.

As a medical examiner, Jessica's main concern was to identify unrecognizable bodies. The easiest, quickest and least painful method of doing so was through the use of personal effects and the passenger list, with its seat number for every passenger. At the untouched “pristine” scene, the M.E. could see patterns of injury, relationships of body parts, enabling her to work out the exact details of what happened, and why one passenger's head was severed and another's left intact.

While she was working over the bodies at the crash site, Jessica had been painfully aware that influential people at the FBI had their eyes on her, as she was awaiting an appointment to the academy. The tragedy of Flight 929 became a litmus test for her. Two of the passengers aboard had been with the Bureau. She got the appointment, but she reserved the right to maintain a little contempt for all those who had profited in one form or another from the tragedy, including herself, all those superlatives about ambition notwithstanding.

Now in Wekosha, Wisconsin, with a single body to work with, she was expected to have all the answers, but without the necessary lab time, all she could manage was the same as Stowell or Lumley: guesswork. However, one clear fact in all of this stood out. Without a doubt the killer had literally “milked” the dead girl of her blood. She pictured an enormous vampire bat at the girl's throat, huddled there, lapping up her life with a vile tongue and incisors.

Otto returned from outdoors, looking controlled and tightly wired once again. He extended a hand to help her to her feet from her kneeling position there at the throat.

“ I've got all I need,” she told Otto, “and I'm ready to leave.”

Lumley lost some saliva and tobacco when he blurted out, “You mean we can cut her down now?” His tone was sarcastic and brittle.

Sheriff Stowell fixed him with a stare.

Jessica said simply, “Yes, but do so very carefully and gently. We don't want any mortician wounds confusing anyone later.

“ We'll be careful,” said one of the Wekosha cops.

Jessica left quickly, now anxious to breathe the crisp, cold air of the Wisconsin countryside, filling her lungs with it while the car was loaded with her equipment and findings.

The night here had a silence that seemed impenetrable, the stillness like cold lead leeching into her bones. The darkness of the deep woods was complete and mysterious. It was such an isolated place, both peaceful and dangerous at once. It reminded her of a hundred hunting camps she had visited with her father on excursions for deer. The end result of their hunt was a gutted carcass, and when she heard the grunting and noise of the men inside as they released the dead girl from her bonds, she thought of the horror that she had somehow put on hold for these many hours. She could hardly blame men like Lumley who looked at her as if she were a ghoul.

“ We're ready to roll, Jess,” said Otto, who'd come from the cdr with her overcoat, placing it over her shoulders. “You're shivering,” he said.

“ Thank you. Didn't realize just how cold it was.”

In a moment she was leaning into the soft, clean upholstery in the back of Stowell's squad car. Stowell reached into his glove compartment and offered her a pull on a Jack Daniel's bottle, which she hesitantly took only after Otto gave her a nod.

Sheriff Stowell turned the car around, nearly throwing them into a ditch, before righting the car onto the overgrown dirt road which would take them to the highway. Otto took the whiskey from her, pulling on it twice before returning it to Stowell with a “thanks.”

“ Sheriff Stowell has agreed to keep a lid on the more gruesome aspects of the crime, Jess,” Otto was saying, while all she wanted to do was drift off with the soft slumber reaching out for her, the car gently rocking now over the dirt road.

“ Good,” she managed.

“ But I promised something in return.”

She blinked, her expression turning to curiosity, before she said, “He'll get a full report, soon as we have-”

“ He wants to know if she was or was not sexually molested before the mutilation.”

Stowell spoke for himself. “Candy wasn't a bad person. She didn't deserve dying like this.”

“ You knew her?”

“ She had an arrest record.”

“ Prostitution?”

“ Yes.”

“ Is that how you knew her?”

“ I spent some off-duty time with her; got her a job; got her to clean up her life. Now this…”

Stowell filled her in on the details concerning Annie “Candy” Copeland's life. At the age of eighteen and three-quarters, she'd been a waitress for all of two months at a diner in Wekosha. Before that she had been working the streets and living with her pimp. Before this, as an idealist still in high school, she had been a volunteer at the local hospital, a candy striper, from which she had derived the nickname, Candy.

“ What about her family life?” asked Jessica.

Stowell's voice had the grit of a man who had seen a great deal of sorrow in his professional life. “She was what you'd call a throwaway kid. Stepfather abused her, mother looked the other way, and when she tried to fight back… came to me… they booted her onto the streets. System didn't begin to work for this kid, so I did what 1 could, which wasn't much.”

“ Stowell and I'll be talking with the pimp soon,” Boutine said.

“ And the stepfather.”

“ Co-workers at the diner, all that,” Otto added.

She knew the routine. First check with those who knew her, those who came into routine contact with her; who had last seen her alive, when and where, and with whom? Suspect the relatives, the friends, the co-workers, and work from there. Question each and from each gain a new insight and a possible new lead or clue to her demise.

“ So, tonight, you want me to tell you if she was sexually molested?”

“ Best guesstimate, Dr. Coran,” said Otto.

“ My best estimate should await lab analysis, Otto, and you of all people should know that.”

“ Best guess, Jessica,” Otto said in his most commanding voice, squeezing her hand as if to impress her as to the importance of his deal with Stowell.

She breathed deeply, allowed a sigh to escape and said, “My guess is-and it is only a guess-that this guy didn't have any interest in her sexually, that is in a normal sexual sense.”

“ Normal sexual sense?” asked Stowell, whose knuckles had turned white on the wheel. She could tell that he had more than just a fatherly interest in Annie Copeland. Had he been carrying on an affair with her?

“ Intercourse.”

“ But I saw you taking a semen sample.”

She knew what he was fishing for. “Yes, I found semen, but-”

“ Semen's evidence of-”

“- but it hadn't penetrated beyond the cervical-”

“ You can tell that from just looking?”

“ It was cold in there, and the semen I found was jellied, almost as if…” She trailed off.

Otto squeezed her hand again and urged her on. “As if?”

“ Like the blood on the wounds, smeared on, after the girl was dead, as if intended for us to find.”

“ Sonofabitch,” muttered Otto.

Stowell sat in abject silence for a moment before saying, “So whoever did this wanted only one thing from her?”

“ That's right, Mr. Stowell,” she said. “He just wanted her blood.”

“ Thank you, Dr. Coran,” he said before falling into a well of silence again, the green dash lights alone illuminating the wounds on his face.

Jessica looked across at Boutine where they sat in the rear. Boutine bit his upper lip before speaking. “Stowell's going to do what he can to keep the vampire aspect frozen. At least no leaks for twenty-four hours.”

She realized that Boutine had bought a little time, and they both knew that the sensationalism of the case would soon overpower the small-town police force, the troopers and Stowell's county office within that time frame.

“ You look like hell, Otto,” she said in a whisper, not believing that the thought escaped her lips. “I'm sorry; I didn't mean to be so blunt. Guess I must look wrecked, too.”

He had continued to hold onto her hand and now took both of them in his own, massaging them. “Fact is, you look fine, just fine.”

“ Perjury before a witness, Otto?” She pulled her hands away, glancing at Stowell's eyes in the rearview mirror.

They both needed sleep. Neither of them had had any rest for well over twenty-four hours. She leaned back into the cushioned seat again, closed her eyes and recalled the telephone call at her home that placed her on standby status. God, had that been just yesterday? At the time Otto hadn't a clue as to where they would be flying, except to say that it was likely to be a Midwest destination. He had given her a pep talk about how the Bureau wanted her to get experience in the field and that he wanted her on his team. He spoke of consolidating his team with a clinician, someone who could put the pathology back into a psychological-pathological report on a serial killer.

So he had put her into the rotation, and after hours of standing by and standing down, she was told to stand to when Boutine had called back and cryptically said, “You ever been to Wisconsin in springtime?”

“ No, never,” she'd replied.

“ Lots of mud, what with the winter thaw.”

“ Is that right?”

“ Got any boots?”

“ Sure, I got boots.”

“ High-tops?”

“ High-tops, low, anything that's required. Is it a go?”

“ Be at the academy gates in half an hour.”

An army jeep was waiting for her at the gate, and when she got in, it swung out to the airfield, where she was given help with her gear to board a sleek Leaijet with engines piercing the stormy black sky, and her eardrums. In a matter of two hours they'd touched down at a remote airstrip facing a farmer's bean field. She was told they were on the outskirts of Wekosha, Wisconsin.

The entire way. Otto spent time filling her in on the case as he understood it. As it happened, however, he didn't fully understand it, primarily because it had not been reported in its entirety to him. He'd gotten it secondhand, off a fax. Anxious to prove to superiors that it would make sound sense to combine his psychological profiling team with a solid forensics team under Jessica's leadership. Otto had recklessly-for him-whisked her off to oversee the ' 'trouble” in Wekosha.

On the plane with Otto, she was given the impression the case involved murder, but she wasn't told that it involved the ninth level of torture, blood-taking. She wondered how much Otto had known, and how much he had kept from her when a sudden, jarring pothole in the city's pavement brought her back to the present.

They had to first go by the city police department, where all the evidence was placed under lock and key, Otto and Stowell witnessing, as a matter of protocol. From there Stowell had a deputy drive them to the Wekosha Inn, where they had rooms awaiting them. As soon as the deputy was away, Jessica hurried inside, anxious for a shower and some well-deserved sleep, but Otto stopped her at the desk the moment she had her key in her hand, taking her aside.

“ There's something you're not telling me, isn't there?” he said.

She stared into his eyes, wondering how he had ever gotten so smart at reading people. “Nothing I can prove, yet.”

“ What is it?”

“ Aside from the bastard's having carted off most of her blood?” she asked.

“ Carted off?”

“ Stowell said she had been missing for two days. From the stage of rigor that I saw, I'd say she died the first night of her disappearance. Now, the guy could have hung around all night, but I don't think so. And no one can consume that much blood at one sitting. I don't care if he thinks he's a vampire or not.”

“ So he took the blood with him?”

“ Most of it, yes.”

“ Some of the local idiots are trying to make a case for the Copeland girl's getting into a little B amp;D, or maybe auto-erotica getting out of hand.”

“ That's bullshit, and you know it. She was tied by her heels to the rafters and her blood syphoned off. If it had started out as some torture turn-on, there'd be whip marks, bite marks, small wounds and bruises, and like I said the sperm was smeared inside her along with the blood. She was not a party to her own death.”

“ Only insomuch as the way she lived her life,” he replied sadly.

She understood his meaning. Many a victim “invited” attack; many people were perfect victims.

“ Stowell says they got a tire print. Not a great one, but-”

“ You made sure that guy Stadtler's not to embalm her before I get a closer look at the lab?”

“ Taken care of, I assure you. Meanwhile, 1 want you to get some solid rest. God knows, you've earned it.”

She started away with a “good night” trailing after, but stopped at the elevator and said, “One thing, Otto.”

“ Yes?”

“ Whoever this fiend is, he showed amazing control.”

“ Amazing control?”

“ Of the blood flow. Given the body's position, there would have been tremendous pressure against the arteries leading to the cranium, the jugular in particular.”

“ The kind of pressure that should have sprayed the place with her blood.”

“ He knew that himself… has thought this thing out… thought about it a lot.”

“ Fantasized about it, or has actually done it before, maybe,” he suggested.

“ And the bastard's come up with a way to staunch the flow, control it and contain the blood.”

“ Suggest a medical background, possibly.”

“ Also suggests an organized mind at work.”

They both knew the literature-if it could be called that-on the organized versus the disorganized murderer. A disorganized killer left a disorganized crime scene behind: weapons, footprints, fingerprints, personal articles and other giveaways to the police, usually in haste to run from what he had done. An organized killer only left carefully chosen clues, evidence that he wanted police to find, often in an attempt to send them down a blind alley; other reasons ranged from fetishes and fantasy rituals concocted in a fevered brain to a sick desire to taunt those who came in to clean up his filthy work.

If Jessica was right, they'd turn up no murder weapon, and all the suspects hauled in by the locals would likely be poor substitutes for the real thing. The local response in such killings was to chalk it up to the work of lunatic impulse. In fact, they counted on it and on moving quickly to incarcerate someone for the crime.

But they both knew that while all this would happen for the community's sake and for the newshounds, the real killer would be all but invisible. An organized killer would have returned home, gone to bed, slept the peace of the innocent, having relaxed his biting urge to take blood, and wake refreshed. He was not about to show up at Stowell's office dazed, disoriented, blood dripping from his mouth, to give himself up in order to quell a brain in turmoil over having fed on the life of another human being. Whoever this man was, he felt no remorse, pain or empathy with his victim. Instead, he likely had a place in his garage for the cutting tools he'd used on Candy Copeland, and he most likely had placed each on its respective nail or shelf before turning in for the night.

“ Our guy's a tidy man,” said Otto there in the dimly lit hallway, as if reading her thoughts.

“ Fastidious about himself and his things,” she agreed, “and I don't think he wanted to get any blood on his clothes. If he tried catching her blood in a bucket, it would still be all over that cabin, and all over him. He'd gag and wretch if he tried taking it all in at once through a hose of some sort. No, he'd have to do it in a very clean, neat way.”

She was busy in her head with the image of the monster, silhouetted in the dark against his victim, working meticulously over her before tearing into her dead body with the mutilating tools in an attempt to hide his finer work.

This time neither of them said good night. Both of them knew that sleep, if it did come, would not be without disturbing images.?