Sharp Force, page 2
“Please keep me informed,” I reply, dropping the handset in its cradle.
CHAPTER 2
I turn up the volume on the boom box, and the music has given way to more news updates, nothing good. Holiday travel is at an all-time high as the fierce storm rolls in from Canada. The governor is asking Virginians to stay off the roads.
An intoxicated teenager rammed his car into a police motorcycle. Meals on Wheels is asking for volunteers and contributions, food insecurity at an all-time high. A local research lab reports that three monkeys have escaped.
“… Jane and Kong were quickly captured. Their buddy Peanut is still at large. We’re assured there’s no danger of him spreading diseases like monkeypox…” the radio news goes on.
Then Keith Urban is strumming and sweetly singing “I’ll Be Your Santa Tonight” as I work my hands into clean gloves, picking up where I left off before Marino called. I place the enlarged heart into the hanging scale, saving it for last. I’m all but certain it has important things to tell me.
Grabbing a long-bladed knife, I begin slicing on my cutting board. I squeeze water from a sponge over sections, and the thickened muscle of the myocardium shows old transmural ventricular scars. The right coronary artery is completely occluded with calcified atherosclerotic plaque that crunches as I cut through it.
I imagine Rowdy O’Leary sitting in his folding chair on the pier fishing in the glow of a camping lantern, a cooler of beer next to him. At some point, he probably experienced sudden chest pain. It may have radiated to his arms, back and jaw. He might have gotten dizzy and nauseous before collapsing and toppling into the water fully clothed with his boots on.
When police arrived at his fishing spot after his wife reported him missing, they discovered his iPhone and five-shot Colt .38 revolver on the pier as if dropped there. Two spent cartridge cases in the cylinder indicate the handgun was fired twice. Possibly, this happened at an earlier time and is unrelated to his death. But I doubt it.
My preoccupations are interrupted by the buzzer blaring over the intercom, alerting me that we have company. In the video display, a hearse waits to enter the vehicle bay, the engine rumbling in the background. I can see flakes of snow blowing in the glow of streetlamps.
“Peace Brothers,” the driver announces himself in the squawk box. “Here for a pickup.”
The massive rolling door lurches to life, retracting with a lot of loud creaking and clanking. The noises are amplified as they bounce off concrete and metal. The hearse roars inside, exhaust swirling, the dark parking lot and smudges of streetlights showing in the huge square opening.
I watch Wyatt Earle on the live video feed as he hurries down the stretcher ramp. Striding with purpose past pallets of PPE and jugs of formalin, he looks ominous in his dark blue uniform, a pistol on his duty belt. I’m still getting used to my security officers being armed.
I’ve wanted better protection here for years, and now it’s the law. Certain state employees are expected to carry guns on the job. That’s both good and bad depending on who we’re talking about. Not everyone should be armed, and I don’t like politicians deciding for me when I need a concealed weapon.
Wyatt speaks to the funeral home attendant, their voices picked up by security camera microphones, the acoustics terrible. It’s hard to understand what they’re saying, but clearly the attendant is in a hurry. Several times he mentions that it’s Christmas Eve and he has young children. He’s visibly annoyed as he’s told to stay put.
Wyatt needs to “check with the chief” on whether Rowdy O’Leary’s body is ready for release. The attendant shrugs unhappily as Wyatt walks away, looking at something on his phone. Whatever’s caught his interest, his attention is riveted. He almost trips over a pressure washer hose. A few minutes later, he’s in my doorway.
“You don’t want to come inside,” I warn.
“The funeral home is here for him.” Wyatt holds a surgical mask over his lower face.
I notice him returning a Vicks inhaler to his pants pocket. At least I’ve cured him of swiping the ointment version into his nostrils. All it does is trap the molecules of putrefaction. Wyatt doesn’t like the morgue and can be squeamish.
“I’m almost finished.” I glance up at the hearse on the security monitor.
“Dana Diletti’s on TV claiming she saw the ghost from the Slasher murders,” Wyatt informs me. “It’s all over the news.”
I wonder if Marino and Fruge are still with her. I don’t trust Dana Diletti, never have. I hope to hell she’s not creating a spectacle that could impact my office. Not to mention interfering with an investigation, something she does regularly and with no compunction.
“What is she saying?” I stoop down to remove the plastic bag of sectioned organs and other tissue from the bucket under my table.
“She said the ghost floated through her window.” Wyatt looks away as I place the bag inside the empty chest cavity.
“Well, she didn’t waste any time going public about it.” I cut a long section of cotton twine from the dispenser on a countertop.
“She took a video with her phone, and the ghost looks real,” Wyatt reports as I thread a large surgical needle.
“I’m not sure what a real ghost looks like,” I reply.
“You’ll see when you watch the video I just sent you.”
“Let’s be mindful that what she and others have described isn’t a ghost.” I begin suturing the Y-incision. “Think of it as movie special effects. A computer-generated optical illusion, a hologram.”
Wyatt’s forehead is sweating, his eyes miserable. I’m used to the stench. He isn’t and never will be.
“Has Fabian come in yet?” I ask with long sweeps of the needle and twine.
“He’s with Faye.” Wyatt stares at the ceiling.
Firearms examiner Faye Hanaday typically works late whenever Fabian does. They stay in the on-call room, tiny but cozy with a sofa bed, a TV, a kitchenette.
“Please let him know I saw the mouse again.” I pick up the skull cap.
Fitting it back in place, I line up the notch I made with the Stryker saw.
“Okay.” Wyatt has closed the door most of the way, peering through the gap.
“Why don’t you go upstairs, relax and have a coffee?” I suggest. “No need for you to be down here right now. I’ll deal with the funeral home.”
“Thank you, Chief. Merry Christmas.” He can’t leave fast enough.
A half hour later, Rowdy O’Leary’s double-pouched remains have been driven away in the Peace Brothers hearse. The vehicle bay door clanks shut as I return to the intake area with its wall of shiny steel cooler and freezer doors.
Pulling off my PPE, I drop it into the biohazard trash near the floor scale. The security office is empty behind bulletproof glass, and I imagine Wyatt upstairs somewhere. He’s been working here for more than twenty years. As much as he dislikes the morgue, I’ve never understood why he stays.
My sneakers are quiet on the white tile floor as I follow the corridor, noticing speckles of dried blood that nobody bothered mopping up. Pale green cinder block walls are chipped and scuffed, the ceiling water-stained. Walking past the CT scanner and x-ray rooms, I unlock my phone to check on my husband.
“On my way out of here shortly,” I tell him when he answers. “Where are you?”
“Just leaving the CIA finally. No surprise that traffic’s a nightmare on Four-Ninety-Five,” Benton replies, and I can hear loud engines and horns blaring in the background.
A forensic psychologist for the U.S. Secret Service, he’s been in meetings much of the day at the Central Intelligence Agency. Their Langley headquarters is some twenty miles from where we live. In this part of the world, that can take forever.
“I was tied up longer than expected. We’ve been looking at the video Dana Diletti posted all over the internet,” Benton is saying.
“What’s the CIA’s interest?” I ask.
“The technology the Slasher’s using. It’s over-the-top sophisticated. They’re concerned about who might have the wherewithal to use holograms for spying.”
“As are the rest of us.”
“The worry is it’s someone with an intelligence background,” Benton says.
“Maybe one of their own who washed out of the Agency and went rogue,” I suggest.
“Or former military special ops,” Benton proposes. “Or a sophisticated software designer who works with sensitive technologies.”
“I’m about to watch Dana Diletti’s video.” I walk past the locker room, nobody inside. “Do we think it’s a hoax?”
“Lucy’s been analyzing it, says it looks genuine.”
My niece is a cyber special agent and technical expert for the FBI. Like Benton and me, she’s been on the Phantom Slasher task force since the serial killer first struck ten months ago during the early hours of Valentine’s Day. The victim was a psychiatric nurse living alone not far from here in Annandale.
A CCTV camera captured a ghostly figure in old-fashioned black clothing floating along the street in front of her house. The same holographic projection was observed early in the morning on Mother’s Day when a social worker was slashed to death in Fairfax. Then it happened again two months ago on Halloween, the victim a diversity counselor in Arlington.
Weeks before their brutal deaths, the women had complained of feeling watched. They reported peculiar things going on. Area dogs would start barking frantically after midnight. Something would knock on a window, but nothing was there. They claimed to hear a voice and eerie music softly playing with no apparent source of it.
“The storm front’s moving in from the northwest, so it’s already started snowing here at a pretty good clip,” Benton is saying over the phone. “Roads are getting slick, people having accidents, and you can imagine the traffic. I think I’ve moved three feet in the last fifteen minutes. You may get home before I do.”
“I’m afraid there won’t be time to make lasagna and everything else I’d planned.” I walk past the dark windows of the histology lab. “Hope you won’t mind if we keep it simple.”
“Whatever you make is always delicious. And we can stay up as late as we want,” Benton says. “All we’ve got to do tomorrow is show up at the airport.”
We end the call as I detect a Chopin nocturne drifting from the anthropology lab, a cramped cinder block space warehousing our coldest cases. Bright piano notes sound from a portable CD player that Cate Kingston carries with her when she visits our office to help with skeletal remains.
A forensic anthropologist, she’s on the faculty of the University of Virginia. Her input is sought in cases ranging from Civil War remains to dinosaur bones to giant footprints from a Sasquatch. She’s often hired as an expert witness in murder investigations and trials.
She doesn’t notice that I’ve paused in the doorway. Peering into a microscope, she moves a bone around on the stage, her attractive young face troubled. She mentioned today at our office Christmas lunch that she’s working on another disinterment from the ancient cemetery on Mercy Island, the location of an old psychiatric hospital.
Paper-covered tables are arranged with a skull and a scattering of bones and teeth. She’s placed them in the correct anatomical positions like puzzles missing most of their pieces. Swatches of rotting fabric on a second paper-covered table are remnants of the blue wool blanket once wrapped around the body.
On shelves are tall stacks of creamy archival boxes neatly labeled, each one a person waiting to be called by name. Tiny plastic skeletons caper on walls around the room. Some glow in the dark, and it’s disconcerting to walk past the observation window when the lab’s lights are out.
“Merry Christmas.” I hail Cate from the doorway, and she looks up, startled. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I was lost in my thoughts as usual.” She gets up from her chair.
“You’re here late compared to everyone else. Almost the only one left.” I walk inside.
“I was just this minute thinking of calling you.” She wears a baggy white lab coat with Dr. Kingston embroidered over the pocket. “But before I get to the bad news, I hope you and Benton have a wonderful time overseas.”
“Thank you, but right now I’m worried about you getting home,” I reply. “When was the last time you looked outside?”
“I don’t have the luxury very often,” she says with a sigh. “I know we’re expecting a whopper of a storm.”
“It will be far worse in Charlottesville, and I don’t like you driving there after dark on any occasion.” I’m inspecting the bones on her table. “Much less Christmas Eve with snow and sleet predicted. The winds are already picking up, the visibility dropping.”
As I hear myself, I’m reminded of what Lucy calls me, Dr. Worst-Case Scenario.
“I’m not going to Charlottesville, am staying in Old Town with a friend.” She turns down the music. “This case I’m working on from Mercy Island?” She indicates the bones I’m looking at. “Not good. Not good at all.”
“More of the same?” I’m not surprised.
“Afraid so, only more vicious and problematic,” she says. “The bones are nowhere near as old as the other ones from there. That’s what really has me going.”
Cate explains that the remains are a female likely in her twenties when buried on the grounds of Mercy Psychiatric Hospital here in Alexandria. Not long before I moved back to Virginia, a real estate developer decided the cemetery on the grounds should relocate to a churchyard. Otherwise, the valuable waterfront land couldn’t be used to build a fitness center.
Graves were dug up with a backhoe, archaeologists not involved when they should have been. Descendants of the deceased weren’t asked and had no idea this was happening. If I’d been chief then, I wouldn’t have permitted it.
But my predecessor Elvin Reddy is friends with the hospital’s director. The cemetery was an eyesore mostly ignored and overgrown in the woods close to the Potomac’s shoreline. The land was worth a fortune, and the cemetery wasn’t used anymore, hadn’t been for a hundred years. Elvin was happy to cooperate, the outcome disastrous.
Many of the coffins had rotted away, the bones completely gone or in terrible shape. Those relatively intact ended up here in the anthropology lab to be stored in boxes and ignored. Until we can confirm identity and how the people died, they can’t have proper burials.
I took over the Virginia medical examiner system five years ago, and one of my many projects is clearing out the backlog of unfinished cases, including those from Mercy Island. Cate has been coming in these past few weeks while the University of Virginia is on Christmas break.
She’s discovering evidence of trauma that gives a harrowing view at what patients endured during earlier centuries. Shattered skulls and limbs suggest some may have died from falls or chronic beatings. A fracture to the C2 spine was consistent with death by hanging.
At least one patient was shot, the lead bullet still inside the skull. The former Mercy Lunatic Asylum was a dark stain on psychiatry, and the modern version isn’t much better as far as I’m concerned.
CHAPTER 3
“I ’m just getting started on Jane Doe, and she’s definitely a homicide.” Cate Kingston continues to fill me in.
“We have no idea about her identity?” I ask.
“None.”
“Maybe forensic genealogical DNA will show a relationship with someone in an ancestral database.” I can only hope.
“As you know, samples from every Mercy Island case were sent to the lab in Massachusetts months ago,” Cate reminds me with a note of frustration. “We should have had the results long before now. But truth be told, I’ve not checked in a while. I’ll give them a call before I leave to see if there’s any news.”
“Was her grave marked?”
“Just a block of granite carved with the number thirty-three,” she says. “It correlates with a seventy-eight-year-old male patient who died in eighteen-ninety from consumption. I’m waiting on his DNA too.”
“And these remains certainly aren’t male. Or from someone that old.” I’m looking at them on the paper-covered table.
“It would appear the young woman was buried, and the marker was removed from the man’s grave and placed on top of hers,” Cate theorizes.
“Oh boy. I don’t like the implication.”
“Exactly. The murdered female isn’t accounted for in the cemetery records I’ve been reviewing. She didn’t exist.” Cate picks up a rib, showing me a cut in the medial end.
Putting on gloves, I find a magnifying lens, making out the clean edges left by a sharp blade.
“Looks like she was stabbed in the chest,” I tell her.
“And she has a cut to the left ulna,” Cate goes on.
“Possibly from holding up her arm defensively.”
“Also, two cuts to her skull.”
She picks it up, toothless, the empty eye sockets staring.
“This one on the left side of the mandible. The other on the right side of the forehead.” She shows me. “A lot of her ribs and other bones are missing, scattered by the backhoe. Likely, she had many more injuries. Someone really did a number on her.”
“All this should have been noticed at the time of the disinterment. But as we’ve been finding with the other bones you’ve examined, nobody bothered to look.” I think again of the former chief medical examiner Elvin Reddy.
When unidentified bodies or bones were found during his twenty-year tenure, he didn’t bring in the appropriate experts unless it suited him. He wasn’t interested in who the victims were or their stories beyond any political or financial implications.
Cate picks up a femur stained by clay and in better shape than I’d expect. I take it from her, feeling the weight of it, noting the relatively smooth surface. The marrow is mostly gone, and I find it perplexing that there’s any left at all.
“The sharp force injuries were to green bone,” Cate says. “She was alive or barely dead when she sustained them.”
“And we know carbon dating won’t work.” I return the femur to her. “The bones aren’t old enough for that.”
