No Chance, page 7
“Come here!” the man seethed, closing in from behind.
As Will ran through the mist, he knew the man was only seconds behind. In the poor conditions, Will didn’t see a large rock on the ground and caught his foot on it, falling forward, and sliding down a grass embankment.
He scrambled back onto his feet as quickly as he could. It was now that the injury to his arm made itself known. The pain ran up his forearm like electricity.
Will bit down on the collar of his coat to stop from screaming. Ducking down, he found a large bush and hid behind it, peering out from between its branches.
The mist still made it hard to see. Dark shapes stood nearby, some were trees, but others Will felt were more malevolent. Like watchers, figures observing the violence in Kerry County, detached from the humanity of it all.
Then Will saw one of the shapes moving closer. He could see it looking around, and there was something in its hand. He was certain that it was Lance Nielsen, but that certainty lasted only a moment.
Will heard a footfall from behind him. He turned to see his attacker standing over him.
“Leave me alone!” he screamed, lifting the hammer up over his head to strike Will down once and for all.
But something had changed. Will no longer felt alone. Someone else was there. A sure hand moved out of the mist, a gun in its grasp, and the barrel placed coldly against Lance Nielsen’s temple.
“You so much as cough, and I pull the trigger. Put the hammer down. Now.”
Will saw the face of his friend and partner, Charlie. Then he passed out from the pain of his broken arm.
CHAPTER TEN
Valerie sat in pathologist Larry Birkin’s office, a sinking feeling in her chest. She was unimpressed with how things were proceeding at the Kerry County coroner’s office.
Sheriff Glen Carter sat next to her. He was drumming his fingers on his knee over and over again.
“You do that any more and your knees will fall off,” she said.
“Sorry,” the sheriff said, stopping. “I get nervous whenever I’m around Larry.”
“Why is that?” Valerie asked sarcastically, looking at the strange arrangement of stuffed animals on various shelves in the office. Crows, a stag’s head, even what looked like a large bat.
Carter looked at the animals as well. He laughed. “Yeah, Larry is a strange one. People don’t take to him because of it. But it’s just his way.”
“Then why be nervous?” Valerie asked.
“Ugh, it’s a long story. We don’t see eye to eye, exactly.”
The door behind them opened and then closed with some force. Valerie turned to see the figure of an elderly man with a slight hunch and reading glasses at the end of his nose.
Valerie stood up and shook his hand. “Hello, Doctor Birkin, my name is Agent Valerie Law.”
“I know who you are,” he said with a grimace. “I want it known for the record that I don’t like to be rushed.”
“Time is of the essence, Doctor,” Valerie said. “A killer is on the loose in Kerry County.”
“A killer she says!” the old man laughed, looking at Sheriff Carter. “She acts like we’ve never had a homicide before. I’m eighty-six years old, and I’ve seen it all, so please don’t treat me like some sort of ill-informed country bumpkin.”
Valerie felt herself bristling. Normally, she would have been more forceful in return, but she couldn’t take the risk that the autopsy reports for the three victims be stalled any longer.
“I mean no offense, Doctor Birkin,” Valerie said.
“The FBI are here to help us, Larry,” Sheriff Carter said softly. “And from what I can see, they’ve sent their best.”
Valerie softened at that. Carter’s charm could melt an iceberg, but she was worried slightly by how much she found him charming.
“I’m not interested in your new friends, Glen,” Larry Birkin snapped. “I’m only interested in doing things in a methodical way, and this rush today is not conducive to that. I know you like to do things roughshod, but you know that I do not.”
Valerie sensed the tension between the two men. Everything about Larry Birkin’s demeanor and body language told Valerie that he really did not like Glen.
“Larry, please,” Sheriff Carter said. “I can’t explain, but we have limited time here with the FBI … At least, Agent Law and her department. They specialize in this sort of thing, and we need to make as much headway as we can while they’re here.”
“We’re here to benefit from your decades of experience, Doctor Birkin.” Valerie was trying to ease the tension in the room, but the staring eyes of the stuffed animals made everything feel especially strange and skewed. “The best way for us to catch this killer is to combine the resources of the FBI with the expertise and experience of Kerry County’s finest.”
Now the old man across from her grinned like a Cheshire cat. “She’s persuasive, I’ll give her that.”
Valerie hated the way the old man spoke about her in the third person as if she wasn’t there. But she tried to put it down to, as Sheriff Carter had called it, a quirky personality. Deep down, Valerie thought the man might simply be mean.
“May I ask?” Valerie inquired. “Has the autopsy on the third victim been completed?”
The old man sighed. “Yes, it has, Agent Law. But it is not my best work. As I said, I don’t like to be rushed. That leads to mistakes. It leads to oversights. I refuse to have either at this coroner’s office.”
“It would be of great benefit to all of us,” she said, opening her arms up as she spoke to create a sense of safety, “if it would be possible to see all three victims side by side at the same time. Comparison like that would help identify leads. I’m assuming the bodies of the victims are still held here in your morgue?”
“The bodies are here,” the old coroner said. “But it’ll take at least a day for me to put everything together for you. All the appropriate paperwork has to be carefully collated. And having the bodies moved from storage back to the autopsy room. I’ll need a porter for that and there are none here today.”
Valerie sensed deception. The man was lying through his teeth.
“For Christ’s sake, Larry!” Sheriff Carter said abruptly. “We don’t need all this runaround. You know damn fine well that the second morgue downstairs hasn’t been used due to flooding early in the spring. The bodies must be through that wall in morgue two. Why are you trying to slow things down unnecessarily? I know you don’t like me, but this is unacceptably poor. It’s obstruction. We’re supposed to be on the same team.”
Larry Birkin went red in the face. “Carter, you’ve never done things as they should be. Your predecessors knew how to treat the Kerry County coroner’s office with respect. You don’t. And I won’t be runaround here, as you put it, by your lack of manners and sloppy methods. You are a disgrace to that uniform and our community. You can come back tomorrow, and I’ll have my assistant take both of you through into the morgue. Only then, and not before!”
“Like hell,” Sheriff Carter said. “I hate to do this …” He turned to Valerie. “Agent Law, you may want to cover your ears. I wouldn’t want you privy to anything underhanded. But it is what it is.”
“No, I think I do want to hear this,” Valerie said, almost enjoying Sheriff Carter's newfound defiance in the face of the old man’s stalling.
“Glen, what the hell do you think this is? Do you think I’m scared of an outsider dressed up as Kerry County’s Sheriff. A failure. A bum. Don’t make me laugh before I have that badge forcibly taken from you for threatening an official trying to do his work,” Larry Birkin went on.
Valerie could feel the hatred coming from the old man. He really had it in for the sheriff.
“How is your son, Larry? How is he these days?” Sheriff Carter suddenly asked in relaxed fashion.
That seemed to stop the old coroner in his tracks. “Eh …” He stammered. “What … what do you mean?”
“You mentioned my predecessors a moment ago,” Sheriff Carter said, smiling. “Did you know I’ve done my due diligence on their previous exploits? Oh yes … for example, I know that the previous sheriff cut you some slack over your boy. But you know that, too, don’t you?”
“Sheriff Carter, you’re making a mistake that will prove monumentally fatal for your career,” Birkin said through gritted teeth.
But this did not deter his opponent. “Your son was caught with an unreasonable amount of cocaine in his trunk about twenty-six years ago. In fact, there was so much that there was no doubt he was dealing the stuff to our community. Your son should have ended up serving a lengthy prison sentence, and you would most probably have been out of a job for trying to get local law enforcement to ignore the matter.
“But I know the Sheriff’s Department looked the other way because of who your son is, or rather, who his father is …”
Sheriff Carter’s smile disappeared, instead replaced with a stony stare.
“It’s one call to the newspapers, Larry. I wouldn’t even have to give my name. I could do it anonymously. A concerned citizen.”
“And they’d laugh at the accusation!” Birkin said, slamming his eight-six-year-old fists onto his wooden desk.
“Probably. But only if I couldn’t support the accusation. Believe me, Larry, I would be able to give every news outlet across Kansas and beyond a mountain of evidence to back it up. You see, my predecessor, he didn’t entirely trust you. So, he kept a stash of evidence about your son as leverage. I have that evidence. And it’s in a very safe place.”
There was a strange silence. Valerie felt the stare of the stuffed animals on the shelves around her. She thought she could almost feel their glee, watching with glassy eyes as the man who had their remains turned into trophies finally got what he deserved.
“You wouldn’t dare, Carter,” Larry Birkin said now in a frailer voice, seeming every day his age now under the pressure.
“Try me,” Sheriff Carter said. “People are dying, Larry. And you want to stall things simply to make a point about manners. Instead, how about I give you a lecture about ethics and duty to those around you? You may deal with the dead here, but I happen to prefer dealing with the living. And I will protect the people of Kerry County from this animal butchering innocent people. And if you get in my way—if anyone gets in my way—they’re going to wish they had never been born.”
“You know I have friends in high places. Powerful people … Judges, lawyers …” the old man started unconvincingly.
“The higher they are, the harder they fall,” Sheriff Carter said sternly. “Don’t test me, Larry.”
“If I may, Doctor Birkin,” Valerie said. “If what Sheriff Carter says is true, there would be a large number of federal agents who would take interest in the corruption involving your son. But if I was too busy chasing down this killer, and if I was too busy getting access to the bodies of the victims and the cases today rather than tomorrow, I may not have time to mention it to anyone.”
Valerie had a strong ethical core, but sometimes she knew you had to bend the rules to get things done. And as Sheriff Carter had argued, when life was on the line, there was no time to play office politics.
Larry Birkin stood up and walked to the door of his office behind them, each step carrying with it an air of defeat.
“Come with me then,” he said in a hollow voice.
Sheriff Carter turned to Valerie and winked. Valerie wanted to enjoy the victory, but the thought of what she was about to see was enough to sully any glee.
It was time for them to look at the victims and their butchered bodies.
***
The morgue of the Kerry County coroner’s office was smaller than Valerie was used to, its cramped walls making her feel a little suffocated. But then, Kerry County was a sleepy place, or at least, it had been up until the last few days.
It wasn’t used to murders on a large scale. The killing spree was just round the corner, Valerie knew, if she couldn’t catch the killer quickly. And if she didn’t do it within forty-eight hours, she might not have the opportunity again.
Valerie looked at the cramped settings and the terrible sights awaiting her beneath three sheets of white cloth.
Sheriff Carter been right, Larry Birkin had indeed had all three bodies stored in the one morgue and could have given them access at any time. It only took him twenty minutes to pull the bodies out and find the relevant files. Valerie was sickened by how the man had been willing to postpone such an investigation due to his dislike for the Kerry County Sheriff. Glen Carter had gotten under the man’s skin previously, and Valerie would ask later how that had all started.
For now, she hoped their luck on the case was about to change.
Sheriff Carter stood beside Valerie as she looked at the outlines of three bodies lying on metal slabs covered by white sheets underneath the bright fluorescent lights of the diminutive morgue.
Two were women, one was a man.
One of the women was the victim found on the Marlane farmstead the day before. Currently, her identity was unknown to Valerie, and it was the same for the morgue. The toe tag which poked out from underneath the sheet simply said: Jane Doe.
Putting on white, latex gloves, Valerie stepped forward and then looked at Birkin. “May I?”
Larry Birkin nodded, clearly still angry about what had happened in his office.
Valerie pulled the white sheet down from the body of the third victim. She stared up at the world with lifeless eyes.
Valerie hated this part of the job, but she had to detach herself from the tragedy of it. For her sanity if nothing else.
She saw the wounds, one on each side of the chest. Moving her gaze to the rest of the body, she was drawn to the tattooed script of Post Tenebrus Lux on one of the victim’s wrists.
“I see there are bruises and marks on the victim’s neck,” Valerie said, thinking back to the tree with a broken branch and her theory that the victim had been hung first, but only until she was unconscious.
“Yes,” said Larry Birkin. “But it wasn’t what killed her.”
“I take it that it was these wounds in the woman’s chest?”
Larry Birkin nodded.
“Loss of blood, massive hemorrhages from these two cuts. Deep enough to slice into the heart.”
“Did you find anything else of interest about the victim?” Valerie asked.
“Not really,” Larry Birkin answered. “Only that I think she must have regained consciousness after being strangled.”
“Why do you say that?” Sheriff Carter finally asked, joining the conversation after looking at the victim’s body with a pained expression in his eyes.
“Here,” Birkin said, pulling back the lips of the mouth.
Valerie could see deep cuts on the inside of the bottom lip.
“She bit her bottom lip when in pain,” Valerie observed out loud. “But that could have happened during the struggle before she was cut?”
“It’s possible,” Larry Birkin said. “But if you look at the inside of her hands here, she also has nail marks on her palms. She was able to draw blood. I’d say that was a reaction to intense pain.”
“Tell me Doctor,” Valerie continued. “Has anything about the victim’s appearance stood out to you? Something that perhaps a serial killer might latch onto?”
“You mean like a profile that he has?” Birkin asked.
For all the man’s difficult ways, he did seem to be at least informed about serial killers often having a certain type of victim.
“I’d say,” Larry Birkin said, “that there is nothing to connect the three victims in terms of their genders, their ages, their race, or their appearance in any way.”
Valerie’s heart sank. She looked up at Sheriff Carter. “This makes things a lot more difficult,” she said shaking her head.
Valerie pulled the sheet back up over the woman’s body, gently resting it over her head.
She moved to the next metal slab and white sheet. Pulling it back, she saw a man with dark skin in his thirties. The tag on his toe read, "Mark Jacobsen". Instantly, she saw some of the similarities between how the killer had gone about his business.
“Mr. Jacobsen was hung or strangled first,” Valerie said. “Here on his wrists, it’s not as pronounced, but it looks like there’s a cord burn as though he was bound.”
Valerie almost hoped that she would find a cryptic tattoo on the man that was similar to that of the third victim, but there was no such marking. There was nothing to latch onto as a lead.
Looking at the trunk of the body, there was a deep wound in the man’s side.
“I take it this is what he died from?” Valerie asked.
“Yes,” Larry Birkin answered. “He was pierced by something in his side, and the blade cut up and through into his liver. He bled out. But he probably went into shock pretty quickly before he died.”
“Did all three victims die quickly?” Sheriff Carter asked.
“Yes, they did,” Larry Birkin answered. “At least once the final wounds were made. Each one bled out, massively.”
Valerie hoped that the last body on the metal slabs would give her something to follow as a lead.
She pulled the sheet back to reveal a woman in her sixties or seventies.
"She's been identified as Greta Young," Birkin said in an impatient voice.
“I see the same strangulation marks,” Valerie pointed out. “But I don’t see any wound?” She said to the coroner.
“They are on the woman’s back,” Larry Birkin said. He walked over to the cold, metal slab and pulled the shoulder of the woman until her body was on its side. When he did this, it revealed two large slices on the shoulder blades of the back.
Valerie looked at the incisions and the downward thrust of them.
“The weapon must have entered the lungs,” she mused out loud. “Death would have been pretty quick.”
“I’ll give you that, you know what you’re talking about,” Larry Birkin said. “That’s exactly what happened in my estimation. And my estimation is always right.”
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