Without Malice (The Without Series Book 1) (12 page)

Chapter 33

The third victim was discovered the next day in Rosedale near Lindy Creek, a shallow, but long body of water that stretched between homes in a newer, upscale part of the city. In the spring the creeks and streams rose to flood depths when the winter snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains melted, but now, in the dead of winter, they were shallow enough for children to play on its banks.

Two fourth-grade boys on their way to Jefferson Elementary School found the body of a young female. The victim had been murdered in much the same way as Dickey Hinchey, the body bruised and battered, stabbed and beaten.

Slater called and gave Cruz a heads up on the location and agreed to meet him at the scene. “We’ll run into Detective Flood there. He’s got the case,” Slater murmured. “Two killings in the same town, with a third one nearby – that sounds like a pattern, don’t you think?”

Cruz thought a moment, a sharp jolt of terror cutting through him, muscle to bone.
“Jesus,
a serial killer? Two homeless, one woman, one man, different dumping grounds, only one a parolee. Was the female homeless, too, or a parolee?”

“Dunno yet, but if so, he’s target specific. Why would the perp go after homeless people?

“Damn, Slater, that sounds crazy.” Cruz breathed deeply and exhaled slowly. “You’re suggesting that some crazy nut job has a hard-on for street people and is picking them off one by one?”

“Well,” Slater grumbled, “when you say it like that – ”

“Right, it’s insane.”

Cruz tapped his fingers restlessly on his desk. “Look, I let me do some research on this and get back to you. Changing the victim’s sex, choosing a young, strong girl instead of an older, weak man – that deviates from the pathology of a serial killer.”

He shifted in his swivel chair. “And there’s usually a sexual component.”

“You sound like a damned shrink,” Slater grumbled, “but, yeah, looks like no one messed with their junk.”

“And the motive?”

“Oh, there’s one. We just don’t know it.” Slater returned. “Let me handle the crime scene by myself. That’ll make Flood less prickly. You check out the psych stuff. Aren’t you a little nuts anyway?”

Cruz smothered a guilty laugh. He was
loco
for sure – following a couple of murder cases when he had parolees to check up on, and only one of the deaths directly tied to him. “Nah, I’d like a look at the body. Maybe I’ll recognize her, and I don’t mind pissing Flood off at all.”

Slater chuckled grimly before they disconnected.

Patch Wilson had returned from vacation and was present at the crime scene at Lindy Creek. Unfortunately, as Slater had predicted, so was Detective Flood.

Cruz and Slater stood out of the way and listened as Flood pontificated about the dead body, trying to act like he knew something special. While it was true he led the investigation, the medical examiner’s role was
sacrosanct.
No one touched the crime scene until the pathologist had the first look, and Patch was particularly territorial about his work.

Dr. Wilson gave Flood a discouraging frown. “Please step back, Detective Flood, until I finish my on-site examination.”

“Same as the other one, right?” Flood prompted. “Street people get into all kinds of altercations with each other. Chances are some bum had a grudge against this one. Just like with Dickey Hinchey.”

Cruz exchanged a glance with Slater and suppressed a grin, knowing Patch would be formulating a sharp reply.

“Well, now, Detective, we won’t know until we finish our examination, will we?” When Patch, the most clever medical examiner either man had ever known, went into his professorial mode, using the royal “we,” he was ready to lambast his target.

Get ready, Flood.

“Step back, now, please, “ Wilson repeated, “and let me do my work.” He paused. “Unless you have a medical degree?”

The statement had all the force of a presidential order. Flood stumbled several steps backward, regained his balance, and stuffed his fists into the pockets of his natty suit.

Dr. Wilson studied the corpse an abnormally long time while Cruz stood alongside the sheriff. “Do you recognize her?” Slater whispered to Cruz.

Cruz shook his head. “She looks too clean for a street person.”

“Looks like something caught Patch’s attention. He’s usually thorough, but quick.”

At length Wilson rose, snapped off his latex gloves, and announced to the small group of law enforcement people surrounding him. “Good, I was hoping for something complex to wrap my brain around. It appears I have it.”

He nodded Slater’s way. “I’ll begin the autopsy tomorrow morning.” He paused and stroked his smoothly-shaved jaw reflectively. “I’ll also want to re-autopsy our dead Mr. Hinchey. I’m finished now,” he added to the ambulance driver. “You can deliver the body to the hospital.”

He turned and walked away.

“Wait,” Flood called after the M.E. “What’d you find? How’d she die, same as last one, right?” He was shouting now because Wilson had arrived at his car. “The Hinchey autopsy is already done. What the fuck is going on?”

Wilson’s voice was low but clear, caught by the southward blowing wind, and wafting back to them. As if he hadn’t heard a word Flood had said, Wilson opened his car door, saying, “Sheriff Slater will have my report by noon tomorrow.

The remark was a slap in the face to Andrew Flood, and he glared at Slater and Cruz with muddy, lethal eyes.

Chapter 34

The killer glanced idly around the room where everyone scurried about, filled out forms, answered phones. Chattered like magpies. Like they performed some important job that no one else could do. When
he
was the one who conducted important business.

Sometimes he hated this job. Despised the people he worked with. He’d worked so hard to get promoted. No one appreciated what he had to deal with – the worthless scum who were everywhere in his life. No seniority, little authority. He’d once thought he was part of the inner circle. One of the guys who got the breaks, got to do something important besides complete more paperwork, answer more phones.

He fiddled with his pen, turning it over and over, end to end – his only outward sign of agitation. Restlessness skittered down his spine all the time now. Ever since the – the incident with the homeless man in Ryder Park.

An ember burned inside him, rage smoldering, ready to erupt into flame. The man roused himself from self-pity. What he’d done – that was a mercy, a favor to the community and the homeless man himself. The hobo was better off dead than living a wretched existence on the street.

And even though it was an act of kindness in the overall picture, it was still an accident, for God’s sake!

He glanced down at the newspaper on his desk.

A monster was now running around Sacramento. Copying him. He’d
never do something so outrageous, so vicious, as the newspaper reported. He thought of the poor, ravaged woman and her pathetic, brutalized body, and shuddered.

Not him! He was a person who protected people not –

He glanced down at his clenched fists. For a brief moment his mask slipped.

Fran Winston across the room gave him a strange look. She was a nosy little bitch. She’d notice the smallest change in a person and blab it to everyone.

He shut his feelings down. Shut them down fast and hard.

Glancing at the wall clock, he realized it was nearly quitting time. Good thing, too, because he could feel himself falling apart, tearing into tiny shreds of anxiety.

In his apartment he kicked off his shoes and threw his jacket on the couch. Reached for a beer in the refrigerator. He hesitated, thought a minute, and pulled his stash from the kitchen armoire he’d inherited from his mother. His cache was hidden in the soup tureen, also inherited from his mother, and which he had no use for.

Well, except for the drugs – oxy, norco, percocet – whatever he scored on the street.

Settling down in his recliner, he chased a handful of xanax with the beer. He’d rather light up a joint, take a good long toke of high quality pot, but that shit stayed in your system forever.

I am not a murderer,
he whispered aloud as he relaxed. The words echoed around the small apartment. Good. He repeated the words in his head. What happened with the homeless man at Ryder Park was – it was an accident. Anyone sitting on a jury would see that he was a normal, respectable citizen with a good job and a solid life. He wasn’t a killer.

Calmer now, he analyzed the situation. He wasn’t a killer, but someone was fucking with him, messing with his mind. The newspaper article of the murdered Sacramento woman was proof of that. And that was a serious mistake.

As the drug cocktail gradually relaxed him, he allowed himself to remember the dreams that awakened him in the middle of the night. Foggy dreams filled with violent pictures and illicit pleasure that left him soaked with sweat. He always woke up with a major boner.

The images always ended with his hands wrapped around someone’s throat, squeezing the neck, harder and harder, choking the life out of the person lying helpless beneath him while his prick swelled like a balloon ready to pop.

With the benzo slowing down his busy brain, he admitted consciously how good it had felt to kill the homeless man in Ryder Park. More than good – great! It was a rush better than any high he’d ever gotten. Not that he was much of a drug user now. Never knew when he’d get caught up in a dirty pee test.

Most of the guys he knew drank and avoided pot. Hell, they drank like fish. Suddenly this idea seemed silly and he suppressed a giggle. Must be the norco and oxycontin he’d mixed with the xanax. The half-life on that stuff was short, so he didn’t worry abou
t
getting caught taking it. And he had a ‘script for the Ambien, so
no
problemo
there.

He breathed deeply and returned to his fantasy, thinking what a rush it felt to carve the life out of another person. Thought how he’d like to do it again, but without the knife this time. The blood – and the gore – that was too risky. Choking, squeezing, tightening his fingers around the neck. Yeah, that was good. Much cleaner.

But someone else was playing his game and that disturbed him. Fucking bastard!

He stewed on the matter during the night, disturbing images racing through his dreams like thoroughbred horses. Each culmination of the chase, the attack, the vicious ending – made his heart gallop and his groin burn.

He’d have to do it again. He confessed this during these dark-night fantasies, even while his day-time brain kept him acting normally – at work, doing the job, facing co-workers. Maintaining normalcy was becoming a herculean effort.

Chapter 35

By nature and profession Patch Wilson, the Bigler County medical examiner, was a meticulous man. His recent trip to the Mediterranean was the most spontaneous act he’d ever taken. His wife had died last spring, and although he had a son and a daughter, the loss of his life-long companion had left him bereft.

The vacation had been a bad idea. He missed his work more than he’d imagined. He missed his coworkers and staff, and the precision of pathology. Patch enjoyed the structure and accuracy, the DNA and medical evidence. He liked the infallible order of the profession.

Hell, he even missed odd duck Howard Casey, who was one of his technical assistants.

Back at work in the autopsy room, Patch felt more cheerful than he had in weeks. The varied instruments, the stainless steel table, the tubing and scales – all were items of exactness and surety. He could count on the results. The facts were immutable.

He glanced over at the row of body trays where his assistant Howard pushed an autopsied body back into the vacant drawer. The man had been Wilson’s lab helper for nearly eight months, and he still didn’t understand much about what made the inscrutable man tick.

He’d hired Howard Casey, of course. The technician had a stellar
curriculum vitae,
along with outstanding letters of recommendation. Howard had completed his training and work experience at various institutions on the east coast. Patch had been very pleased with the qualifications of his new hire.

Still, eight months later, he was no closer to understanding the man than he was before he’d begun working for the county coroner. Howard wasn’t a physician, but had very strong anatomical skills, a pleasant bonus for the very busy medical examiner’s office. He was confident, knowledgeable, and very competent. If an underlying arrogance tinged his personality, well, it was something Patch could work with.

“Howard, would you get the evidence report off my desk for this young lady, please?” Patch nodded toward the young female on the autopsy table. The external examination had already been completed, the body photographed afterward, cleansed and photographed again.

He never liked to begin an examination until he knew the name of the victim, whenever possible. It seemed ... disrespectful, otherwise.

“Certainly, Dr. Wilson,” Howard answered, retrieving and handing him the file. “Will you be needing an assist for this?”

Another odd quirk – Howard never called Patch by any name except his formal title and last name. Not that Patch was complaining. He rather liked when the younger generation showed proper respect for their elders.

He thought briefly of Sheriff Slater, who always called him by his nickname “Patch.” Wilson pretended to be annoyed by it, but he enjoyed the affection that went along with the appellation. He’d known Slater a long time.

“No, thank you, I can handle this one. After you clean up, you may leave for the day.”

“Whatever you want,” Howard answered mildly.

Patch scanned the first page of the report. The girl had already been identified from fingerprints taken at the scene – Valerie Hightower, a runaway from Richmond. She’d been reported missing by her parents two months ago, and confirmed by several homeless people in Rosedale who recognized her from the street.

The pathologist examined her fingers, not yet displaying the dirt and wear of older denizens of the street, and thought what a pity her early death was. He looked sadly at the pale young face, the long hair flowing over the end of the table like tangled weeds, the hands lying parallel to her torso.

Snapping on his latex gloves, he picked up the long-bladed scalpel, and pulled the microphone toward his mouth, beginning his autopsy of seventeen-year-old Valerie Hightower from Richmond, California.

An hour later Patch stepped back from the autopsy table, his internal examination complete. Initially, he’d intended to do both autopsies back to back, the girl’s first, Dickey Hinchey’s second. Instead he called Slater.

The Sheriff arrived at the coroner’s office a half hour later with P.O. Cruz in tow. Patch supposed what he had to show them would interest Cruz as well, since Dickey Hinchey was his murdered parolee, and the cases appeared related.

Located in the basement of the hospital, a place Cruz had never been, thank God, the morgue was a spotless, rectangle of gleaming stainless steel and concrete. Wilson waited for them at the wide swinging doors and led them to the gurney which held the body. The girl’s hair hung over the edge of the shiny table and a sheet covered her legs, but her torso lay open, the flaps of the Y-incision pulled back so they could view the interior organs.

Cruz leaned closer, looking over Slater’s shoulder, but didn’t voice the thoughts in his head. A ripple of queasiness raced along his nerves at what he saw.

The body cavity gaped like the maw of a gigantic cavern.

“Where the hell are her organs?” Slater demanded.

Patch nodded. “Good point. I drained the fluids, removed her intestines and lungs, other minor material, but – ”

Suddenly, Cruz realized something as he looked back and forth between the open body and the stainless steel containers resting on a set of scales. There were no organs from the body. Kidneys, heart, liver – all missing.

Slater glanced at Cruz’s blanched face. “You see it?”

“Hell, yes.”

Patch confirmed their worst fears. “The body has been stripped of vital organs, neatly and precisely, likely someone with medical knowledge, however scant. Organs that are both vital and valuable,” he added.

“Holy shit,” Slater exclaimed. “Do you know what these particular organs go for on the black market?”