The Last Witness

[TWO]

Kensington, Philadelphia

Monday, November 17, 9:08 P.M.

“And I thought that room full of pot plants was surreal,” Matt Payne said, shaking his head. “This is beyond surreal. It’s. .”

“Evil,” Jim Byrth said, finishing the thought.

After searching the upper floors and finding no one in the house, they now stood in the basement.

The largest object in the room was the most disturbing one-an orange 110-gallon drum near the back wall. It had a natural gas line fueling the fire box beneath it and a tin vent tube leading from its metal lid up to the ceiling. And metal ductwork ran to a hole in what was the main room of the first floor.

Coming from the drum was the same stench, though somewhat fainter, that had burned their nostrils and throats as they had approached the back door.

Byrth gestured at the long wall where “El Pozolero” had been spray-painted in highly stylized graffiti-like four-feet-high lettering.

“The sick bastard takes a perverse pride in being called the Stew Maker,” he said. “Like it’s something to boast about. Incredible.”

In the middle of the room was a heavy cast-iron incinerator the size of an office desk. It also had a natural gas line feeding it, a vent tube, and metal ductwork that ran to the first floor. A digital gauge on its ductwork read CAUTION! CO₂.

Beside the incinerator, on the raw concrete floor, were two cardboard boxes, each labeled “Technical Grade Sodium Hydroxide Lye Beads.” One was empty.

“This is getting worse by the second,” Matt Payne said ten minutes later, kneeling by the cardboard box. It was half full of women’s clothing, and he was using the tip of his pen to carefully look through it.

He had just put back a leather string necklace with an Elegua medallion threaded on it-the clay disc of a child’s face that was the Santeria god of destiny-and uncovered an unusual purse.

Some damn destiny, he thought.

He looked at the purse for a long time, dug some more, then looked back at the purse. He pulled out his cell phone and went to the folder he had made with the files Kerry Rapier had sent him in the Keys. He opened one and clicked through the images.

“How can it get worse?” Byrth said.

“Here. Look at this photograph of the Spencer girl.”

Byrth saw that it showed the tall twenty-seven-year-old in jeans and a Temple University sweatshirt and carrying a gold sequined purse that was glinting in the sunlight.

“Okay, the same photo from her file,” he said. Then he turned to look in the box. “Jesus Christ. .”

Payne met his eyes. “I didn’t find a Temple sweatshirt in any box, and I’m sure there’s more than one purse like this in Philly, but. .”

Byrth nodded. “There will be plenty of DNA in that purse to see if it’s a match,” he said.

Payne pulled out his phone and hit a speed-dial number. “Mickey, drop whatever you’re doing. I’m about to call in this scene. You’re not going to believe this. . ”

After he gave O’Hara the address and broke off the call, he saw Byrth watching him.

“What’s the worst that would happen, Jim? They’d fire me, thus denying me sublime moments such as this?” he said, gesturing around the basement. Then he looked back at Byrth. “Remember what Eisenhower said at that Nazi death camp at the end of World War Two, when he was supreme commander of Allied forces?”

Byrth nodded. “Indeed I do. ‘Get it all on record now-get the films, the witnesses-because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.’ To this day those images are hard to look at.”

“And,” Payne said, “no one would believe that this is happening now. That, however, is about to change.”

Payne hit another speed-dial key and after a moment said, “Kerry, are you picking up my location from this phone?” He paused to listen, then said, “Right. That’s it. We were at the Hazzard address. I need you to send a Crime Scene unit here. I’ll call you back.” He broke off the call and speed-dialed another. “Dr. Mitchell, Matt Payne. You too busy to break away. .?”

“We’re talking with Philadelphia’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Howard Mitchell,” Mickey O’Hara said, panning the broadcast-quality high-definition digital video camera around the basement of the row house, the lens tracking across the wall with the elaborate four-foot-tall “El Pozolero” graffiti.

He stopped when he had in view the balding, rumpled doctor in the well-worn two-piece suit. The medical examiner stood to the right of the giant orange drum, which towered over him.

“Dr. Mitchell,” O’Hara said, holding a microphone in front of him, “you were calling this process alkaline hydrolysis?”

“That’s correct,” Mitchell began, then stopped as he furrowed his brow. “This is not for public broadcast or any other publication, correct?”

“Not for broadcast, Dr. Mitchell,” Matt Payne confirmed. He was standing behind O’Hara. “Just for documentation purposes.”

Mitchell, looking beyond the camera, nodded and said, “Okay, Matt, I take you at your word. I damn sure don’t want to see myself in those fifteen-minute TV news loops, over and over discussing such an indelicate topic. And that’s what would happen, because I’m too old to try to be politically correct.”

He then looked back into the lens and went on: “The university’s medical school has what is called the Tomb-a large stainless steel cylinder that is about the size, not surprisingly when you consider it, of a human coffin. When bodies are signed over by the families of the deceased and these bodies meet the needs of the medical school, they’re used for teaching gross anatomy, et cetera. Afterward the carved-up cadavers are taken to the Tomb.”

“And how does the Tomb work?” O’Hara said.

“The cadaver is placed in a lye solution in the cylinder, which then is sealed and heated to three hundred degrees Fahrenheit under a pressure of sixty pounds per square inch. In about three hours the alkaline hydrolysis turns the cadaver into a liquid that’s about the color and thickness of motor engine oil. It is an inexpensive and efficient process.”

“But is it safe?”

“Of course. Completely. Safer, in fact, than the embalming fluids that get washed down drains. There is only a bit of bone shadow left over.”

“Bone shadow is what?”

“Calcium phosphate. It’s what makes up most of our bone and teeth mass. This can then simply be ground to a harmless fine powder and disposed of.”

Dr. Mitchell motioned with his hand at the enormous drum.

“And this is essentially the same process-the use of lye and heat. Clearly, the drum here is much more crude than the pressurized Tomb. And considerably less efficient. But lye is cheap and readily available for soap making, biodiesel manufacture, and many other general uses. Any farm supply house in Amish country will sell it to you, or you can order it on the Internet. I would estimate that two hundred dollars’ worth could easily cook four or five bodies. Just add water. And boil.”

After O’Hara recorded Dr. Mitchell releasing the row house to the Crime Scene Unit-video that the medical examiner said O’Hara did have permission to use on Philly News Now-he followed Mitchell out the door.

Jim Byrth now watched the Crime Scene blue shirts photographing the large room with its clear plastic tent and small forest of ready-to-harvest marijuana plants. He had his handcuffs in his right hand, having gone back and retrieved them from the Jamaican after confiscating his knife and throwing it in the nearby dumpster. Byrth and Payne had agreed they had more pressing problems and that the stoner had had enough justice served for one day.

“That Rastafarian would’ve pissed his pants over this hydro,” Byrth now said. “It’s maybe four, five times as potent as average Mexican pot. Which is why it goes for a premium. A pound of average weed runs around four hundred bucks. That puts hydroponic at four grand, at least.”

“This room is worth a fortune.”

“Was. .”

After a long moment, Payne said, “Have you ever seen an operation like this, Jim?”

Byrth turned to him.

“Well,” he said, “I have seen acre after acre of pot fields. And I have seen grow houses in everything from Houston condos to suburban Fort Worth ranch homes. And, I’m sorry to say, to my grave I will take the memory of seeing the horror in the barrels of Pozole. But all this?” He slowly shook his head. “I have never seen anything close to this place. And pray I never do again.”

Byrth felt his phone vibrate. He pulled it from his pocket and read the text message:

GLENN PABODY

JUST GOT WORD THAT THEY FOUND IN THAT RV TRAILER A BUNCH MORE IDS AND THOSE STRIP CLUB BUSINESS CARDS.

FIFTEEN IDS WERE MEXICO NATIONAL ONES, ALL BUT TWO OF THEM GIRLS IN THEIR EARLY 20S.

THE STRIPPER CARDS WERE FROM THE HACIENDA BUT ALSO FROM CLUBS IN HOUSTON AND, HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE GONNA WANT TO HEAR, FOR A PLACE CALLED PLAYERS CORNER LOUNGE.

Byrth looked at the message for a long moment and thought, And how many more girls were killed and then put in those barrels of acid?

That bastard probably called himself “El Pozolero,” too.

He shook his head as he replied:

THANKS, GLENN.

I’LL SEND YOU SHOTS OF WHAT WE JUST FOUND IN PHILLY. AND CATCH YOU UP ON WHAT WE LEARNED ABOUT THE FIRST GIRL’S ID YOU FOUND.

SO, WHAT PART OF HOUSTON IS PLAYERS IN?

A moment later Byrth read:

GLENN PABODY

NOT HOUSTON, JIM. IT’S GOT A PHILLY ADDRESS. I’LL SEND A PHOTO WHEN I CAN.

As Byrth typed the bar’s name into an Internet search on his phone, he said, “You ever hear of a strip club called Players Corner Lounge, Marshal?”

“Sounds just like my kind of place. Sorry. Never heard of it.”

“Apparently it’s at Front and Master.”

“That’s Fishtown. Not far. What’s the significance?”

“Sheriff Pabody just said they found more of those stripper cards in the trailer, and this Players place was one of them.”

Payne checked his phone. There was no message-not from Maggie, not from anyone.

“It’s more or less on the way home. Should be hopping at this hour. Crime Scene’s got this place. Let’s get the hell out of here.”