Breaking Creed

11

“The 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.