The interview with Beth Myers lasted a short ten minutes. She said she’d worked the opposite side of the bar from Gary on Friday night and didn’t speak to anyone on his side. She was swamped with drink orders and didn’t have time for socializing.
We thanked her for her time and moved on to Gary Carson’s apartment, which was only five blocks from the precinct.
I gave his door on the second floor two raps, and we waited. A voice from inside the apartment called out. Gary, I assumed, wanted to know who was there. I looked at Rue and shrugged. If Gary wanted all his neighbors to know the cops were at his door, then so be it.
I yelled back that we were detectives from the Habersham precinct and needed to speak with him.
Without a peephole to peer through, he would have to take our word for it. I had my badge in hand for the moment the door creaked open.
I assumed that on a Sunday when Gary didn’t have to work, he might be lounging in sleep pants or something of that nature. Maybe he had to brush his hair. I didn’t know, but it wasn’t the first time that we’d waited at front doors for some time before the occupant opened it.
The door finally opened, and we saw one eyeball. I held my badge in front of it so Gary could clearly see that we were being honest with him.
“Detectives, huh? Okay, what’s up?”
“May we come in?” Rue asked. “We have a few questions for you.”
Gary rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, I guess.”
I took his disheveled appearance to mean he might have been asleep when I knocked. We thanked him, walked in, and told him we wouldn’t be long.
He plopped down on the couch without offering us seats. “So, what is this about?”
Rue took the reins. “We’re here to talk to you about Friday night. You were working the bar area at Sparky’s, right?”
“Yep, that’s correct. Was there a complaint about something?”
“No, not at all. One of the young ladies you served that night came up missing after the bar closed. She was found deceased just this morning.”
“Holy shit. That’s crazy.”
“I’d have to agree,” Rue said. “There were three girls who stayed on your side of the bar for the time they were there. Names were Becky, Sherry, and Valerie. You waited on them between midnight and closing. Valerie wore a wispy flowered top, and she had long blondish hair.”
He wrinkled his forehead. “Yeah, now I remember. They seemed like nice girls.”
“Any conversations in particular you had with them?”
“Me?” Gary chuckled. “I listen to the drink orders, make said drinks, and take their money unless somebody wants to run a tab. There is zero time for conversations.” He looked from Rue to me. “I don’t know if either of you have ever been to Sparky’s, especially on a Friday or Saturday night after ten o’clock, but it’s a madhouse.”
Devon and I had both been there plenty of times, but after ten on a weekend? Chances were that we hadn’t. It wasn’t often that I stayed out late and drank the night away since there was a more than seventy percent chance that one or both of us would be working the following day.
I took my turn. “Then did you hear any conversations about after-parties or see someone ask them to one?”
Gary shook his head. “I tune people out unless they’re waving their hand to get my attention, and that’s just because they want a drink. Sorry, but I didn’t hear anything other than loud chatter and the music playing.”
Disappointed, I was leaning toward Valerie’s abduction being a crime of opportunity, not premeditation. After thanking Gary for his time, we left.
I grunted as I plopped down behind the steering wheel. “Damn it. We’ve got nothing.”
“We’ve got tomorrow, and that’s a lot more than Valerie has.”
“Yeah, sorry. When you put it that way, I sound like a real ass. Let’s head in, see what Royce says, and plan to hit the ground running as soon as those businesses open in the morning. Chances are, if there’s a camera within range of where Valerie’s heel was found, then we’ll see the abduction take place.”
Rue chuckled. “If only things were that easy.”
It was just after twelve when we walked up to the second floor of our building. We wanted to grab some vending machine food, drop it off in our office, then have a sit-down with Royce. I couldn’t remember the last time we had a positive outcome on the first day of talking to people in a murder case. Usually, the pieces began to fall into place close to a week into the investigation. I doubted that this time would be different since so far, we had zilch.
Devon and I backtracked to Royce’s office and found it empty.
“That’s weird. I wonder where he went.”
“Call his cell. It’s probably the easiest way to find him,” Rue said.
I fished my phone out of my pocket and tapped Royce’s name. He picked up immediately.
“Hey, Boss, we’re back.”
“Good. Come down to Tapper’s office immediately.”
“Okay, we’re on our way.” I hung up and was sure my expression was one of bewilderment.
“What’s up?” Devon asked.
“Royce wants us to go down to Tapper’s office.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t say. Let’s go see what the urgency is all about.”
We walked down the stairs we had just gone up. Our lunch would have to wait. Entering Tapper’s office and autopsy room on our basement level was always chilling—literally. The temperature was set at a cool sixty-eight degrees year-round, making the rooms seem much colder than on our own office floor. Most of the bodies lying in cold storage had met their fate in a violent manner, murder, and they remained there sometimes for weeks because of the investigations. The bodies of people who’d died of natural causes or car accidents were taken to a hospital’s morgue, not one in a police station.
When we walked in, I called out to Royce. He answered from the autopsy room. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that we were about to view Valerie’s body on the table.
I cupped my hand and whispered to Rue as we headed that way. “This is the part I can do without.”
He grimaced just as we walked in, and Royce and Tapper stood in front of Valerie’s sheet-covered body.
“What’s up?” I asked as we approached.
Royce groaned. “First, it appears that Valerie has only been dead for about nine hours.”
“But she’s been missing since two a.m. yesterday morning,” I said.
“That’s true,” Royce said, “but Tapper has checked her stage of rigor and took her body temperature. Of course, that might be skewed because of—”
“Of what?” Rue asked.
“I’ll let Tapper explain.”
We turned our attention to our county medical examiner and waited for him to begin.
Tapper sighed. “While at the scene, I wondered why there was so much blood around her torso area. Of course, she was partially dressed, and what was immediately visible were the cuts to her arms and neck region. I assumed she had more stab wounds to her abdomen but wanted her on the table and cleaned up before I verbalized my thoughts.”
I frowned. “So she didn’t?”
“When I first saw her, I assumed she had been redressed. Her clothes were on her haphazardly, not the way a woman would dress herself. When I removed her clothing back here in the autopsy room, I was stunned by what I saw in front of me.” Tapper shook his head. “Her chest cavity was damn near empty—a handful of her organs had been removed. That in itself would throw off her body temperature.”
I was sure my bulging eyes gave away my shock. “Did you say her organs were removed?”
“Most of the organs that can be transplanted.”
“Excuse my stupidity, but what are they? The ones that were gone?” Rue asked.
“Her heart, liver, kidneys, and lungs are missing from her body. Whoever did this left the pancreas and intestines behind.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I can only speculate,” Tapper said. “The pancreas sits above the large intestine. I’m guessing the person or people who gutted her, so to speak, didn’t want to involve themselves with the intestines.”
“So was it some kind of voodoo ritual, or did they do it for profit?” I asked.
Tapper shrugged. “No clue, but in all my years as a medical examiner—”
I cut in. “I doubt that any of us have ever come across this before.”
“Another thing that stood out was the fact that the organs were removed meticulously with a sharp knife. The remaining tissue had clean edges.” He muttered under his breath. “It wasn’t the cut-open-and-yank-out method like when an animal is hunted, killed, and field dressed.”
Royce groaned as he looked at us. “Find out if Vice has any CIs who know of people involved in spiritual things, human sacrifice, eating human organs, witchcraft, and so on. This is Savannah for God’s sake, and there’s a lot of ghostly weird shit that goes on in this city behind closed doors.”
“I’ve never heard of that kind of stuff here,” Rue said. “It’s all just ghost sightings, haunted houses, and cemeteries for the benefit of tourism.”
“Check anyway and see what pops. If nothing is discovered, then we’ll have to move on to the other motivation.”
“Profiting off of human organs?” I asked.
Royce let out an irritated-sounding huff. “Unfortunately, yes, and if that theory holds true and sales are made across state lines, it’s considered trafficking human organs, and the FBI would get involved. Organ donation is one thing, but killing someone to harvest their organs is completely unknown territory in our neck of the woods. Chances are the FBI would take over the entire case.”
“The entire case? Valerie is the only victim that we know of,” Rue said.
“Don’t be foolish enough to believe this is an isolated incident, Devon. Whoever is doing this, if that’s what it is, probably has a network of buyers. The killers could be traveling from state to state to keep from being discovered.”
I added my two cents. “And I’m sure they thought by tossing Valerie out in the marsh like that, she would never be found.”
“True, but first things first. Let’s try the voodoo angle before going off half-cocked and alerting the FBI. We don’t need egg on our faces. Cover all angles and find out everything you can before we make that leap.” Royce checked the time. “I’m heading out to the scene. As of right now, Sergeant Riley and his detectives have no idea what Tapper discovered. The weekend shift is his, and we aren’t going to step on toes, but the way it seems now is that everyone needs to pitch in on this, weekend or not.”
“So should we let Riley decide who does what or…?”
“Go talk to Vice. We may have to work together between all departments since we don’t have anyone who specifically deals in this type of thing, but start there. Vice handles all that wackadoodle stuff. See what they know and who they can point you to for an interview.”
“Roger that.”
Rue and I headed to Vice’s wing of the building. It wasn’t much of a stretch to get their take on the situation since they did handle local human trafficking, but it was unlikely that they’d ever dealt with a human-organ-trafficking situation.
We entered their department and asked for Sergeant Cal Taylor. He was the commanding officer during the weekend day shift hours. We needed a private sit-down with him before he called in his detectives for their opinions.
The receptionist, Terry, called Taylor’s office. She said he would be out in just a minute. Rue and I took seats and watched for his office door to open. When it did, he walked out, and we stood and shook his hand.
“What can I do for you, Detectives?”
“Can we talk privately?” I asked.
“Of course. Let’s go into my office.”
Once seated, I explained what we knew so far in the disappearance of Valerie Dawson. I told him she’d disappeared Friday night and that her remains were discovered early that morning by a fisherman at the Odingsell River. “What we just learned from Tapper is that most of Ms. Dawson’s organs were removed, hopefully postmortem.”
Taylor leaned forward. “What the hell?”
I continued. “What we need from your department is knowledge of any occurrences where people removed organs for voodoo stuff, like consuming them or if they were used in spiritual or ritualistic gatherings.”
“Wow. There have been situations like that but never with human organs. I mean, that would be considered murder, and our department wouldn’t be involved.”
“True, but is it so much of a leap to go from sacrificing animal organs to human organs, especially if the people involved were high on toad venom or some other hallucinogen?”
“I see your point, Mitch. Let’s get Bobby and Luke in here to see what they think.” Sergeant Taylor made a call, talked for a few seconds, then hung up. “They’ll be right in. Give any thought to this being organ trafficking?”
“Sure, but Sergeant Royce wants to eliminate it being local voodoo involvement before we alert the FBI.”
Taylor nodded. “And that makes perfect sense.”