At The Stroke Of Madness Part 8

Henry glanced down at her, trying not to show his surprise or that he was impressed.

"This is all premature," she continued without him prompting her, "but just from looking at the place he chose to dump the bodies says a lot about him. Most serial killers leave their victims out in the open, some even display their handiwork. It's part of their ritual or, in some cases, part of their thrill to see others shocked by what they're capable of doing. This guy goes through a lot of trouble to hide the bodies. He didn't want them found. I'm wondering if he might even be embarra.s.sed about what he's done. Because of that, I'm guessing he has a paranoid delusional personality, which means he'll feel threatened by us discovering his hiding place. He'll think we're out to get him, and it might make him do something irrational."

"In other words, he might screw up, and we'll be able to catch him?"

"He might panic and kill someone he thinks is out to destroy him. In other words, a panic kill. Yes, that could mean he screws up and leaves something behind for us to use to catch him, but it also means someone else could be killed."

"Not at all what I wanted to hear, O'Dell," Henry said, almost wis.h.i.+ng he hadn't asked. He already had the governor up his a.s.s. What the h.e.l.l would happen if this madman started killing again? Jesus! He hadn't even thought of that.

As they got to the road, Henry noticed that the state patrol had arrived, two fresh officers to relieve Trotter and set up guard posts for the night. Earlier Randal Graham, the governor's gopher, had offered the local National Guard. All Henry could think of at the time was that the locals would panic if they started seeing the f.u.c.king National Guard moving in. This was bad enough. He didn't need to draw more attention.

"Sheriff Watermeier-" the media mongrels began the barrage as soon as he and O'Dell were in earshot "-what's going on?"

"How many bodies are there?"

"Is it true a serial killer is on the loose?"

"When will the victims' names be released?"

"How long has this been going on?"

"Hold on a minute." Watermeier raised one hand and stopped O'Dell with his other by gently taking hold of her arm. She shot him a look, part surprise and part irritation, just enough for him to know that this was not in her plans. He didn't care. What he did care about was retiring in a community that respected him. And that community d.a.m.n well better think he was doing everything he could to protect it.

"I can't tell you any details, except to say that yes, there are fifty-five-gallon drums, sealed barrels that have been buried under some rock," he told them, slowing his words so that no one had an excuse to misquote him. "And yes, some of those barrels do have bodies inside. That's all I can say about that right now. But I will tell you that we have everything under control. We have experts on the scene collecting evidence and we have-"

"But what about the killer, Sheriff?" someone from the back yelled, interrupting him. "You have a serial killer on the loose. What are you doing about that, Sheriff?"

Jesus! These a.s.sholes were h.e.l.l-bent on starting a panic. Henry tucked his hat lower over his brow, as if to ward off further blows and hopefully to let them know he couldn't be goaded into their hysteria.

"We're working on that," he lied. It was only the second day. How the h.e.l.l was he supposed to have a list of suspects already? "That's why we have Special Agent Maggie O'Dell here." He gave her a slight shove forward. "She's a criminal profiler with the FBI, up here from Quantico, Virginia. Her specialty is catching guys like this. So you see we've got the very best working on our team. That's all for now."

This time he grabbed O'Dell's arm to lead her out of the crowd, Officer Trotter clearing a path for them.

"Have you brought in any suspects yet, Sheriff?"

"When will you give us more information? Like a profile of the killer?"

"That's it, folks. That's all I have for today." He waved a hand at them and continued to plow through, shoving the cameras aside when they refused to move.

As soon as they were across the road, O'Dell wrenched her arm from his hold and without a word marched to her Ford Escort. He didn't care if she was p.i.s.sed. Tomorrow she would probably be long gone. All she wanted was to find her precious missing person, and there was a good chance the woman was waiting for them in the morgue.

CHAPTER 25.

Maggie waited, gloved hands at her sides, while Dr. Stolz unzipped the body bag. She was used to partic.i.p.ating in autopsies. Her forensic and medical background had prepared her for doing everything from helping place the body block to taking fluid samples to weighing organs. But she knew when not to partic.i.p.ate, too, and this was one of those times. Dr. Stolz had made that clear. So she waited, alongside Sheriff Henry Watermeier, still angry with him for blindsiding her, but anxious to have this trip over and done with.

She was trying to be patient despite her anger and her urge to help. She wanted to help clean the woman's chest wound so they could see the incision, the puncture marks, the rips and tears. There had to be multiple ones to have caused such an eruption.

Stolz must have sensed her restlessness when he said, "The chest wound is not the cause of death. Not as far as I can tell from my preliminary exam." He began parting the long tangled hair, his gloved fingers carefully splitting dried, b.l.o.o.d.y clumps to reveal a large crescent-shaped wound to the side of the corpse's head. "I'm betting this is what knocked her lights out for good."

"There was an awful lot of blood in the chest area," Maggie said, trying not to contradict the doctor. "Are you sure she wasn't just knocked unconscious?"

Stolz looked at Sheriff Watermeier and pursed his thin lips as if showing him that he was purposely refraining from what he'd like to say. Then he began sponging the woman's chest, cleaning the wound, the mess. "If he started cutting her immediately after he killed her, there would still be a boatload of blood. Especially here in the chest where there's some major gushers. And he cut deep. May have even punctured the heart."

"Wait a minute. Deep wounds sound like fatal wounds," Watermeier said, which drew a scowl from Stolz.

"Not stab wounds." The medical examiner lifted skin he had just cleaned. "She's cut open. Nothing pretty about this handiwork, though. At least not as precise and detailed as with Mr. Earlman."

"What did he remove?" Watermeier asked before Maggie got the chance.

"I'll show you." Dr. Stolz began opening the wound with one hand and with the other flushed the wound with the sprayer hose attached to the side of the stainless steel table. "My first guess would have been the heart, maybe a lung. You know, stuff like the usual crazies take. But this one sort of defies anything I've ever seen."

With the wound now washed clean, Stolz pressed the mangled skin to the side and moved back for Watermeier and Maggie to take a closer look.

Watermeier stared, scratching his head, puzzled and not recognizing the scarred tissue. But Maggie knew immediately. And without getting out the photo Gwen had given her, Maggie also knew that this was not Joan Begley.

"I don't understand," Watermeier finally said, looking from Maggie to Stolz and realizing he was the only one in the dark.

"This woman must have been a breast cancer survivor," Stolz explained. "The killer took her breast implants."

Maggie had already prepared herself, had already planned what she would say to Gwen when she called with the news that her patient had been murdered. She should have felt relief. But for some reason she felt beginning panic instead. If Joan Begley wasn't dead, where the h.e.l.l was she?

CHAPTER 26.

Joan Begley woke to the sound of doves cooing. Or at least that was what it sounded like through the spiderweb in her brain. Her eyes felt matted at the lashes, stuck down with webs. Her mouth was cotton dry. But the cooing reminded her of summer mornings, waking up at Granny's dairy farm outside of Wallingford, Connecticut. A distant humming lulled her in and out of sleep. The breeze over her head felt and smelled like dew-laced gra.s.s, the fresh air wafting in from the meadow. Along with the breeze and the cooing came a feeling of contentment.

A click startled her awake. A click and then a low rumble of a motor coming to life. She sat up, her eyes flying open, her arms straining. It was the leather wrist restraints that renewed the panic, that brought her back to reality. Or rather brought her back to her nightmare.

She stared down at the restraints clamping her to the bed rails, and for a brief moment she thought she might be in a hospital. Had he taken her to a hospital? The room was dimly lit, darkness filled the huge windows. She looked around the area and could see walls made of st.u.r.dy timber, rafters of the same, more windows with thick gla.s.s, none of which were open. The breeze she had dreamed of was only the ventilation fan above the bed, the hum of a chest freezer in the corner. It looked like she was in a cabin or converted shed. As frightened as she was she had to admit this place had a warm and almost cozy feeling, despite the smell of disinfectant laced with, of all things, the scent of lilac.

Where in the world had he taken her? And why?

She looked around again, her vision still blurred, distorting the items on the shelves, elongating and swirling them like something out of a van Gogh painting. Maybe she was hallucinating. Yes, maybe this was all a dream, a nightmare.

She tried to think through the cobwebs in her brain. She needed to stay calm. No good would come from panic. And she didn't seem to have any energy left. She couldn't allow the panic to take control of her again, to exhaust her. Last night...or was it days ago? How could she be sure? He had drugged her. Asked in his polite tone that she drink a bottle of some concoction.

"It won't hurt," he had promised her in that little-boy voice that she had once found endearing. "It tastes like cough syrup."

But when she refused, she remembered how he grabbed her, shoving her into a headlock. She had been surprised by his strength, by his frenzy, by his...his madness. He had forced the liquid down her throat despite her clawing at him, despite her kicking and coughing and gagging. Yes, he had become a madman, totally out of control. Someone she didn't recognize, and certainly not the Sonny she thought she had gotten to know.

She began to cry, thinking about it. Why had he done this? Why had he brought her here? What did he intend to do with her? If she screamed would anyone hear her?

She looked around the room again. The door was certainly bolted even if she could escape her restraints. Now she noticed that there were leather bindings attaching her ankles to the bed rails, as well. She couldn't focus on that. She wouldn't panic. She would talk to him. Yes, they would talk. Where was he? Had he left her? What in the world did he intend to do with her? She knew he hadn't s.e.xually a.s.saulted her. If that wasn't what he wanted, then what was it?

As if trying to find the answer, she began examining the room. There were shelves with jars of all sizes, crocks with metal-clasp lids, plastic containers, bottles and gallon gla.s.s containers. Close to her bed was a table with a lighted aquarium, illuminated jellyfish floating along the surface. On the other side was another table with what looked like bowls made of bits and pieces of sh.e.l.ls.

There were pictures on the wall. Black-and-white photos of a boy and his parents. She couldn't tell if the boy was Sonny. This was definitely someone's work s.p.a.ce or hideaway. There was no need to feel frightened, she tried to convince herself. She could talk to Sonny. Yes, talk and see what he wanted from her.

She lay back down, feeling better. The pillows were so soft. He had gone to some trouble to make her comfortable, despite whatever drug he had forced down her. But even the drug had simply made her sleepy. No headache, no hangover. She would just wait. Eventually he would come in and they would talk. She could feel herself relaxing. That was when she saw the shelf above her head.

She bolted up in bed, straining against the leather and twisting to get a better view, making herself look despite a fresh panic and the urge to flee. On the shelf above her were three skulls, hollow eye sockets staring out at her.

Oh, dear G.o.d! Why? What was this place?

She tried to focus on what was in the jars across the room, but it was too far to see anything more than blobs. Then she stared at the jellyfish in the aquarium next to the bed. They were transparent, illuminated from the backlighting, floating on the surface. There was nothing else in the aquarium. No little rocks at the bottom, none of the colorful greenery. She pulled herself closer for a better look. Did jellyfish always float on the surface like that?

Then in the light she noticed that both jellyfish had numbers imprinted on their surfaces. A string of numbers like a serial number, some sort of identification.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Suddenly, she recognized them from a visit she had made to a plastic surgeon. These weren't jellyfish at all. They were breast implants.

CHAPTER 27.

Dr. Stolz didn't bother to hide his displeasure. Maggie saw the scowl he gave Sheriff Watermeier-it was the third or fourth one of the day, Maggie had lost count. The sheriff announced he needed to leave but that she was welcome to stay. For a brief moment she expected Stolz to forbid it. But how could he? Instead, he muttered something into his mask about outsiders. Maggie got the impression he didn't just mean her, but Watermeier, as well.

She wasn't sure why she stayed. The only reason she was here was to identify Joan Begley. Perhaps she hoped that this victim, this woman, might be able to provide some answers of where Maggie could start looking for Gwen's missing patient.

She watched from beside the stainless steel table. Her hands stayed in her pockets beneath the gown. It was an effort to keep them from helping, part instinct and part annoying habit. Already once she had reached for a forceps, stopping herself before Stolz could see.

He was slow. Slow but not necessarily meticulous. In fact, his movements seemed a bit sloppy, slicing here and there around the edges of the body cavity, reminding Maggie of a fisherman severing all the linings before gutting a fish in one swift scoop. It wasn't the usual reverence she was accustomed to seeing medical examiners use. Perhaps it was simply a performance for her benefit. At first she worried that he would use the less-popular Rokitansky procedure where all the organs come out at once-one block of the internal system-instead of the Virchow method where each organ was removed separately to be examined.

She watched him cut with his elbow bent, hand zigging back and forth, a strange, almost sawing motion. But then she was relieved to see his gloved fingers reach in and scoop out the lungs, one at a time. First the right lung, which he plopped on the scale, then he yelled over the utensil tray to the recorder on the counter, "Right lung, 680 grams." He dropped it into a container of for-malyn and scooped up the left one. "Left lung, 510 grams. Color in both, pink."

Maggie disagreed. She wanted to mention that the left lung was not quite as pink as the right, but kept quiet. It wasn't enough to note. No signs of foul play, at least none that had affected the lungs. In the killer's mutilation to get at the breast implants, he hadn't even punctured the lungs. And there wasn't enough discoloration to indicate that the woman had ever been a smoker. The darker pink of the left lung may have only suggested that she had spent a good deal of her life as a city dweller.

Dr. Stolz picked up a needle and syringe off the tray, looked it over, then exchanged it for a larger one. He inserted the needle into the heart, drawing blood into the syringe. The heart showed definite signs of being punctured by the killer. Maggie could easily see a cut that didn't belong, next to the area where Stolz took his sample. Satisfied, he labeled the sample and set aside the syringe, but he didn't bother to remove the heart. Instead, he moved down to the stomach.

Maggie didn't let him see her impatience. Okay, so he had his own way of doing things.

Of all the incredible workings and mysteries of the human body, Maggie always thought the stomach to be one of the most whimsical of the organs. It resembled a small, saggy pink pouch. A simple and soft touch of a scalpel was usually all that was needed to slit it open, and Stolz, despite his bull-in-a-china-shop approach, handled this organ with a gentleness that surprised Maggie. He laid it on a small stainless steel tray of its own, slit it open slowly and carefully. Using just his fingertips, he spread back the walls. Then, reverting to his normal routine, he grabbed a stainless steel ladle and began scooping out the contents, pouring them into a small basin on the tray.

Maggie moved around the table for a closer look. Stolz didn't seem to mind. Now he seemed excited and anxious to share.

"Still lots here," he said, continuing to scoop and stir the contents, clanking the metal ladle against the metal side of the basin with each pour. "This might be our best estimate of time of death. Being in that barrel threw off too many of the other indicators."

So that was why he was so interested. Finally, something to show off his expertise.

"Is that green pepper?" Maggie asked.

"Green pepper, onions, maybe pepperoni. Looks like she had pizza. Lots still here, which means she was most likely murdered shortly after her meal."

"What do you think? Two hours?" Maggie knew that almost ninety-five-percent of food moved out of the stomach within two hours of being consumed. However, it wasn't an exact science, either. There were things that sped up digestion, just as there were things that slowed it, stress being a major factor.

"Not much has made it into to the small intestine yet," he said, his fingers back in the body cavity examining the coil of intestine. "I'd guess less than two hours. Closer to one."

"So the next question, can you tell whether or not it was frozen or restaurant style?"

He looked up at her with raised eyebrows. "The pizza? Why in the world would that matter?"

"If it was restaurant style, chances are she ate out that night. Maybe even with someone. We might be able to track where she was-and with whom-right before she was murdered."

"Well, that's simply impossible to know," he told her, shaking his head. "But-" he seemed to reconsider as he stirred the contents with what looked like an ordinary b.u.t.ter knife "-the colors, especially of the vegetables, seem brighter than normal, which from my experience could indicate that they were fresh and not frozen."

Maggie brought out a pocket notebook and jotted down the contents. When she looked back up, Stolz was staring at her, his arms folded over his chest. The scowl had returned and was now directed at her, the only person left to try his patience.

"You can't be serious?" he said. "You think the killer took her out for pizza first, then bashed in her head and sliced out her breast implants? That's absurd."

"Really? And why do you say that, Dr. Stolz?" It was her turn to grow impatient with his questioning of her expertise, his distrust that an outsider might have an answer.

"For one thing, that would suggest it could be someone local."

"And you don't think that's possible?"

"This is the middle of Connecticut, Agent O'Dell. Maybe on the coast or closer to New York. This guy, whoever he may be, is using the quarry as a dumping ground for his sick game. My guess is that he lives miles away. Why would he risk dumping bodies in his own backyard?"

"Didn't Richard Craft do that?"

"Who?"

"Richard Craft, the guy who killed his wife and then put her dismembered body through a wood chipper." She watched Stolz's expression go from arrogance to embarra.s.sment. "In the middle of a snowstorm, if I'm not mistaken, and not far from his home in Newtown. Newtown, Connecticut-isn't that just west of here?"

CHAPTER 28.