The suffocating stench of death permeated the room.
After years of investigating crimes of violence for the FBI, John Gallagher had developed the knack of picking up the pungent smell of decaying human flesh. He was known to have a nose like a corpsesniffing police dog.
But John Gallagher never really got used to the odor.
Ever.
Even with the organic vapor-filtering mask he was wearing, Gallagher cringed as the county medical examiner from Northern New York State used a heavy duty pair of scissors to cut away the soggy bag that contained the corpse. But the body wasn’t in one of those plastic contractor bags like an amateur criminal might use.
That was the first thing Gallagher noticed, after the smell, of course. The person who had dumped the body had used a burlap bag.
“The killer knew what he was doing,” Gallagher said, standing next to the body on the stainless-steel table in the coroner’s office. “Wrapped this poor guy in burlap, so the elements could start the decaying process sooner rather than later. Then added lime to the mix.”
The coroner opened the mouth of the cadaver to examine it. But he wasn’t prepared for what he saw there. Gallagher saw it too.
Then the coroner closed the victim’s mouth and said, “But the murderer made one mistake.”
“Dumped his victim into a swamp.”
“Go on…”
“Bogs like the one where they found this victim are high in tannic acid. Acts like a preservative. Sort of like a natural form of formaldehyde.”
Gallagher thought about that. So the killer wasn’t local and didn’t know much about peat bogs or swamps. Otherwise he would have known that.
Now the coroner was inspecting the neck of the victim.
“How’d they find him?”
“Talk to Red Yankley, the county deputy. He’s out there in the lobby grabbing a cup of coffee. He’d be able to tell you.”
After a minute or so of closer examination of the larynx, the coroner looked up at Gallagher with a strange smile that reflected some professional pride.
“I think he was strangled. I’ll be able to give you a definite by tomorrow after I do the full deal, lungs and all. But I will bet my bottom dollar that the ligature marks here on the neck were from a thin metal cable.”
Gallagher was trying to keep himself calm. Zimler particularly liked to polish off his victims close up, and usually with a garrote. And he was known to be in the States.
Gallagher excused himself and stepped out into the lobby. He stripped off his mask and then hunted down the deputy who was standing next to the coffee machine with a Styrofoam cup in his hand. “Deputy Yankley, I’m Special Agent Gallagher from the FBI.”
“What can I do for you? Is this some kind of federal matter?”
“Possibly. Wondering how the body was discovered.”
“A hunter. Had his bird dog out there in the bog. No rain for a couple days and things dried up. Dog found it right off.”
“Motive?”
“Well, we found tire tracks leading to and from the site. We think they were from the victim’s car. So right there you’ve got car theft.”
But Gallagher had the feeling in the center of his gut this was no simple stolen-auto case. He was trying not to get ahead of himself. Take it easy, John. Don’t jump to conclusions.
“So, Deputy, anything else of interest?”
“Let’s see…oh yeah. All of the victim’s ID was taken from his body. He was picked clean. I mean really. If you know what I mean. Maybe the killer was a dentist or something…”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Gallagher remarked. He’d seen that the murderer had broken all the teeth of the victim and removed them in order to prevent dental identification.
“Yeah, but not that smart. The killer left the victim with his fingers still on…finger prints.”
“We just got lucky,” said Gallagher. “If that dog hadn’t come across the body when he did, the prints would have pretty well dissolved with all the lime that he’d been packed in.”
“Well,” the deputy continued, “anyway, you’ve got to wonder. Yanking teeth from a dead man. What was going on with that?”
Gallagher didn’t need to wonder. The FBI veteran had figured that the killer couldn’t afford to leave any direct connection to the victim. So he wanted to make sure that the victim wouldn’t be immediately identified. This was one sadistic, calculating killer.
The deputy slurped down the last bit of coffee and laid the hunting magazine down; then he eased his hands down on both sides of his leather gun belt. “You got some thoughts on all this, Agent Gallagher?”
Gallagher smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I do.” But he made a point not to tell him what that was and instead turned and strolled back to the swinging doors leading back to the tile-floored autopsy room.
He swung the doors open. The coroner was still bending over the body and looked up.
“You have an ETD?” Gallagher asked.
“I think so…,” the medical examiner began.
But Gallagher raised a finger to stop him before he answered.
“No, let me guess. Six to ten hours.”
The coroner’s eyes widened and he wagged his head a little.
“Other than being maybe an hour or two off, you’re right on the money, Agent Gallagher. How’d you do that?”
“It’s a theory I’m working on,” Gallagher said with a sly smile. He turned and exited the autopsy room, cut through the lobby, and threw a quick wave to Deputy Yankley as he headed to the parking lot and toward the exquisite pleasure of fresh air.
John Gallagher had more than a theory. His instincts told him that the same man who killed the Yergi Banica in Bucharest was the same one who used the dead man’s passport to gain entrance into the United States at the Canada-New York State border. Also, it followed that the killer would need to exchange cars quickly once he entered the United States. The FBI special agent was betting that this assassin was a consummate professional. So he picked the car owner at random, killed him, and dumped the body in a way that was designed to leave almost no trace. All because the killer needed to use the car for a day or two without being tracked, and then he would soon rid himself of that vehicle and steal another.
So Gallagher used the date and time that the man with the passport entered New York as the starting point, figured it was the same guy who killed this poor car owner. Presto. Time of death all figured out.
Now that the coroner agreed with his estimate, that meant that the odds were increasing that the killer of Dr. Banica was the user of the Romanian professor’s passport, and he was also the murderer of the owner of the car.
Now all he had to do was to determine whether his suspect, Atta Zimler, was the guy who strangled the professor in Romania. Back there is where the dominoes had started falling. Down deep, Gallagher just knew that Zimler was the man behind all of it, even though he couldn’t explain it in any terms that you could find inside an FBI investigation handbook.
Which led him to the much more frantic question. What was Zimler doing inside the United States?
Gallagher’s heart was pounding. His chest was tightening with the familiar burning, crushing sensation. He needed to find a quickie-stop gas station and pick up a carton of milk to soothe the pain. He thought that he had spotted one when he first drove into the sleepy little town after exiting Interstate 87.
Gallagher climbed into his car. He was hoping that there wouldn’t be more victims for a while and that maybe the stench of death was behind him. On the other hand, if he was right about Atta Zimler being in the States on business, well, that would put the chances of that at around zero to the tenth degree.