Side Effects: An FBI Psychological Thriller (4 page)

“Can I help you?” I said, my eyes still on the grave.

He didn’t seem to care I’d noticed him staring. “Anything?” he asked.

“Doesn’t work like that, Tim.”

“So how does it work, exactly?”

“If I knew, we’d have the guy already. Just let me do my thing, all right?”

Morris turned and started surveying the crime scene on his own, periodically thumbing through the file.

My thing,
I thought.
Whatever the hell that is.

I remained at the grave and closed my eyes. I took a deep breath through my nose and let it out slowly through my mouth.

Just listen, smell, and feel. Open your eyes and look too. No, keep them closed for now. Keep still. Whenever it’s happened before you never had to do anything; everything presented itself. Just stand here and be still. Let it happen.

Be still…

Still…

Sti—

Fire shot up my nose. I recoiled and spun, my eyes watering instantly.

Morris was immediately at my side, rubbing my back and consoling me. “You all right? You all right?”

I nodded and stood upright, wiping the tears from my eyes. My nostrils burned.

“What is it?” Morris insisted.

“Alcohol,” I said. “Isopropyl alcohol. It feels like I just snorted it.”

“Isoprop—rubbing alcohol?”

I nodded, still wiping my eyes, still massaging my nose.

Morris started flipping through the file, silently mouthing the words isopropyl alcohol over and over as he did so.

I pushed the file out of his face and placed my hand on his chest. “Take my hand,” I said.

“What?”

I closed my eyes. “Take my hand. Go where I say, and make sure I don’t trip on anything.”

I could feel the uncertainty in his grip, and for a moment I thought he was going to pull away and ask more questions. Instead, he did as I asked him.

I told him to take me east. Then north. Then east again. When I told him to take us north some more, he stopped me.

“You’re taking us outside the tape,” he said.

I opened my eyes. We were almost touching the yellow tape. “So?”

Morris shrugged. “Just saying it’s time to duck.”

We ducked under the tape. It didn’t take long after that. Morris snapped on a pair of latex gloves and squatted down to retrieve a small square of black cloth. He stood and held it up to the fading light. The smell of rubbing alcohol was so strong I had to tuck my nose into my collar. My eyes started watering again.

Morris looked at me with more personal than professional curiosity this time, then brought his attention back to the square of cloth. “Microfiber cloth. Used on camera lenses and the like.”

Nose still in my collar, I said: “That would explain the alcohol.”

“Huh?”

I pulled my nose free. “
That would explain the smell of alcohol
. Clean the lens with the isopropyl and then dry it with the microfiber.”

Morris lowered the cloth and looked at me. “So what are we saying here? Someone snapped a picture of our guy in action?”

“Doubtful,” I said. “You think someone who happens upon a murder in the woods is going to stop and clean his or her lens first?”

“Maybe it was one of the teens who found him.”

“No—they told us about the body. No reason to lie about catching it on film.”

“There is if they were snapping pictures instead of trying to help the guy.”

I took the file from Morris. I found the information I wanted and spoke with my eyes on the page. “Teens were heading north when they found the body. After coming clean, their statements were unanimous in that they headed back south to phone it in.” I lifted my head and gestured to the cloth in Morris’ hand. “We found that farther north, beyond the crime scene.”

“
You
found it.”

“You don’t have to try anymore; I’m already on board.”

Morris smirked.

“So what do we have then?” I asked.

Morris held the dark square of cloth up to the fading light again. “Looks relatively new. Odds are slim it’s been out here a while. Think you would have smelled the rubbing alcohol if it had?”

“No idea.”

“Then we have a piece of microfiber cloth soaked in isopropyl alcohol about—” He turned back to the crime scene to gauge distance. “Five yards north of the crime scene.” He glanced at me. “It could belong to our guy.”

“Maybe.”

“He could have used it for wiping down prints—the shovel handle, the cuffs, the victim…”

“Nah—our guy’s too careful. To go without gloves and hope to clean up after would be foolish. Besides, microfiber cloths are pretty solid at removing prints without the aid of a cleanser. An isopropyl mixture would likely be used for something delicate, like a lens.”

“Okay, a lens it is. Let’s play.”

“Go.”

“Option A,” Morris began. “The cloth
is
days old and belongs to a shutterbug who was taking a walk through the woods, snapping up nature or whatever. He dropped the cloth and never noticed.”

“Very likely. Option B?”

“Some other shutterbug is in the woods, except he’s clicking away
last night
. He stops to clean his lens with an isopropyl alcohol-based cleanser and a microfiber cloth, but then he sees something. Something that spooks him. Our guy and his victim.”

I joined in now. “He jams his gear into his camera bag and hightails it out of there, keen on not being victim number two in the hole.”

Morris: “But as he jams his gear into his bag, he drops the microfiber cloth. It’s dark, the cloth is dark, and he doesn’t notice. And even if he did, he doesn’t give a shit—the cloth is cheap, his life is not.”

“But did he get a picture before he bolted?” I asked. “And if so, is he planning on telling anyone?”

A brief pause.

“Something irks me about Option B,” Morris eventually said.

“What?”

“Who the hell takes pictures of nature at night?”

“It’s possible,” I said. “Owls, foxes, raccoons… just need an infrared camera. Or maybe he wasn’t even taking pictures of nature.”

“Well that makes even less sense then. What else would you take pictures of out here?” He waved a hand all over our forested surroundings.

“All right, Option B isn’t as likely as Option A,” I said. “How about Option C?”

“Option C,” Morris said.

I waited.

“Option C…” Morris said again, looking uncertain if he wanted to continue.

“Yeeeeessss…?”

“Option C—the microfiber cloth belongs to our guy.”

“You had to second-guess that?” I asked.

“What’s he need a camera for?”

“Scouting ahead? Making sure the area was secure enough to do his thing?”

“Yeah…maybe.” He frowned. “So he sits back here and takes pictures what—fifteen feet away, looking for the ideal spot to dig his grave? Why bother? It’s fifteen feet.”

“Maybe he was—” My surroundings disappeared. My whole world was suddenly a solitary page in the file, a page I had not consciously studied while flipping for the teens’ statements, yet somehow it had registered all the same.

“What?” Morris said. “More?
You smell more?
”

I ignored him and immediately opened the file. Found the page I wanted and hurried back towards the crime scene.

“
What?
” Morris pleaded behind me as he followed.

I ducked under the tape and approached grid block D where a square of earth had been sectioned off a few feet from the base of the grave. It had been sectioned off because a manhole-sized circle had been cleared away among the surrounding foliage. It looked deliberate. Local PD thought it might have been a spot where the victim was kneeling before being struck with the shovel and then dumped into the hole.

I squatted and studied the circle. Morris loomed over me.

“You gonna tell me what the hell?” he said.

I handed the file up to him. “Read.”

He did. “Local PD marked it off because it looked like a deliberate circle made in the earth. They’re right too”—he looked around—“the rest is completely carpeted with leaves and twigs.”

“Local surmised this was where the victim was kneeling before being struck, thus the circle.”

“Yeah?”

“You kneel on the ground, it’s going to flatten debris, not clear it,” I said. “And a circle this big?” I spun an index finger over the spot.

“If he’s kneeling long enough, squirming and shifting, doing his goddamnedest to escape the cuffs like all the others had, he could move things around,” Morris said.

“Except this guy didn’t have the extreme ligature marks on the wrists the others had, remember?” I got as close as I could without disturbing the evidence. “I don’t see any indentation in the earth either. You’re on your knees long enough to move stuff around and clear a big spot, you’re going to leave a depression, yes?”

“Most likely.”

I stood and backed up until the circle of earth was directly in front of me. Directly in front of that was the grave. I pulled my phone from my pocket, aimed it down at the grave, and snapped a picture. I looked at my phone. I’d captured everything.

I handed the phone to Morris and said: “I think I know what his trophies are.”

.

Plausible as it was, Morris’ veteran gut wasn’t wild about Option A. He liked Option C—my theory. I was pleased. My gut liked my theory too.

And so now, sitting in the car while Detective Sill, his partner, and at least half a dozen flashlights were busy sweeping the newly expanded crime scene, Morris and I recapped my theory while sharing a box of Cheez-Its.

“So, you think he cleared away the foliage on the ground to make room for a tripod,” Morris said.

“Possibly. You saw the ground—lots of twigs, rocks. He’d want the tripod to be as steady as possible to capture his trophies, wouldn’t he?”

“And he’d want the lens to be as clean as possible,” Morris said, alluding to the microfiber cloth and the smell of rubbing alcohol.

“Right.”

“But I didn’t see any little holes in that circle he cleared, did you? Little holes that the legs of a tripod might make? We didn’t see
any
indentations in the circle, hence, your ruling out local PD’s theory about the victim kneeling before he was killed.”

“Okay, so he clears the spot on the ground first, cleans his lens, but then gets interrupted before he can set the tripod up,” I said.

Morris took the Cheez-Its box out of my lap. “Okay then, he’s interrupted, has to kill the guy quickly—”

“Why?” I interrupted.

“Huh?”

“Why kill him?” I said.

Morris frowned. “Because that’s what he does.”

“No—no, he
didn’t
do what he does. No caveman job on the head, no marks on the right palm. Why take the chance of killing him at all when a group of teens are approaching? Why not just get the hell out of there ASAP?”

Morris’ frown dissolved. He knew what I was getting at. “Because the victim could’ve ID’d him,” he said.

“Exactly. Which could mean two things. One, our guy doesn’t wear a mask or conceal his identity in any significant way. Or two, the victim
knew
our guy, which would make a decent answer to the ‘why bury this one?’ question. He didn’t want any connection between him and the victim to be investigated.”

Morris, munching away as I spoke, washed it all down with a swig from his bottle of water and said: “I’m sold on the no mask thing. But I’m not so sold on the
he knew the guy
thing. Why would victim number six be someone he knew? It’s too risky. Usually victim one has some kind of significance, not victims four, five, or six. And so far we’ve gotten zip on victim one.”

“His cooling off period between victims is getting shorter and shorter. Maybe this was opportunistic, something he couldn’t pass up,” I said.

“The grave had already been dug. That’s premeditation at its best.”

He was right. I took the Cheez-Its back and stuffed a handful into my mouth.

“Let’s stay with the evidence and your theory for a minute,” he said. “Our guy has the victim cuffed and gagged and ready to go into the hole he’d already dug. This one, unlike the other five, was likely gagged because they were outdoors. That and time of death tells us the victim was still alive. It also tells us that the last five were killed someplace that offered exceptional privacy, a place where screaming would go unheard.”

I chased my mouthful down from my own bottle of water and nodded. Morris continued.

“All right, so he clears away a spot for his tripod, and then starts cleaning his camera lens with the alcohol and cloth before setting everything up. He hears the teens in the distance, panics, picks up the shovel and whacks the victim just enough to do the job—nothing excessive—and then kicks him into the hole.”

I came in. “He doesn’t even have time to lob a few shovels of soil onto the victim. He packs up his gear lickety split and bolts north, dropping the microfiber cloth en route.”

“No time to snap photos or record video.”

“And no time for the right palm to be damaged.”

“His fantasy has been cut short. He’s got metaphorical blue balls now.”

I gave Morris a look that told him he was a perv.

He rolled his eyes and amended it with: “He’s
frustrated
now—does that mean we can expect another sooner than later to compensate?”

“I don’t know.”

Morris took the box of Cheez-Its from me. “I still wanna know what the grave was all about.”

“Maybe he
didn’t
know him, but it’s certainly possible he was burying him because he didn’t want him found.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

He cursed and flung a handful of Cheez-Its out the driver’s side window.

“
Tim
…”