Our deeds determine us, As much as we determine our deeds.
—George Eliot, Adam Bede
The autopsies were becoming routine. That scared Cat. It meant the killer was getting better at his work. It meant she was numbing to it.
This time the recording camera’s whirl was joined by lights that beckoned from an overhead viewing area. Standing in front of four rows of seats were Chief Richmond, agents McGregor and Gray, Director Sanchez, and, for some reason, Mayor Needleman. Inside two hours of retrieving evidence from the body, Cat was standing over a stainless-steel table. To her left, a gleaming stainless-steel scale; above her important men waited for the autopsy to begin.
“We meet again, Dr. Powers,” Conrad said smoothly as he entered the room. His eyes roamed hers, then her torso, down to her feet, and back up to her eyes. “I see our guests have arrived.” He looked up to the viewing gallery, his lips curled in an odd grin.
“You invited them?” Cat tried not to sound angry, but it was difficult.
“Yes, I did.” He glared at her, then the smile returned. It was immediately evident that the man felt at home here. “Shall we begin?”
Cat nodded, holding her gloved hands up, and let her anger go, reciting the standard jargon. Time of day, tag number, age, height, weight, sex, the victim’s name, which at the moment was Jane Doe. Like the others the cuts were clean, not jagged, made with an extremely sharp knife of some kind, the blade perhaps an inch or so long. The cuts ran in a vertical pattern over the anterior portion of the body, bare horizontal rents sometimes intersecting like some bizarre crossword puzzle. The wounds were not hacks, nor placed randomly. Each one was precise, often repeating itself on both the left and right sides, as if the killer had slashed one side, held the body to a mirror, and the identical wounds had magically appeared on the corpse’s other side. After close scrutiny of the wounds, Cat could tell sulfuric acid had been used; the tissue deep in each wound had been eaten away. Occasionally, however, there was a laceration that appeared to be only that, just a laceration, as if the killer had been torn between using the acid and a slow painful death due to blood loss.
Each of Cat’s findings was recorded, the camera zooming in and out as needed. Again, the largest wound appeared to be a ventral wound to the abdomen. Cat looked closely at this area and determined the wound was placed like the others, just above the haustra of the ascending colon, not deep enough to penetrate, although the fish had chewed their way through.
From above, Cat could hear the occasional gasps as she examined, dictating her findings. The agents had seen their share of autopsies, but it was clear Needleman had not. “Bend at the knees if you start to go,” she could faintly hear McGregor coaching the politician, who was visibly sweating through a tasteless blue and white striped seersucker suit.
There were no scars, tattoos, moles, or other obvious identifying scars on the victim. A detailed external examination of the genitals revealed no rape or sexual assault. Fluids were withdrawn, swabs taken and sent off to toxicology.
The victim’s breasts were speckled with freckles in a star array, much like the Big Dipper. This provided little, if any, help in finding out who Jane Doe was. But it was the only thing Cat had to work with. Maybe it would be enough to help her identify this Jane Doe.
Cat took her time, trying not to feel rushed, despite six pairs of eyes watching her. In a Jane Doe autopsy, missing just one detail could mean the difference between a victim being identified, with a proper burial, and a pauper’s funeral. This girl deserved a proper resting place, given the sheer terror in which she died.
Carefully, Cat drew a scalpel down the center of Jane Doe’s blue-white breasts. The skin parted, revealing the pink muscle of the pectoralis major. Cat cut a Y-shaped incision, as she had a thousand times before, down the midsection. Drawing the flaps back, she cut through the ribs, lifting out the breast plate onto the stainless-steel table to her right. Then she put her hands into the body, working below the sternum, as she continued to whisper into the microphone.
The internal organs, first from the chest cavity, then the lower abdomen, finally the pelvic area, Cat meticulously removed and weighed. She removed a thin tissue from each after taking its weight. Like the external examination, the internal prodding revealed no evidence of voluntary sex or sexual assault.
Coming upon the stomach, she carefully analyzed the contents for excessive fluids, a sign the girl drowned. As she expected, Jane Doe had not drowned.
Blood, semen, and hair were collected and sent to the FBI’s labs of DNA typing. The bladder was removed and sent to toxicology. It would reveal if the killer had pumped Jane Doe full of drugs, such as barbiturates or street drugs, prior to her untimely death. From the postmortem bruises to the wrists, ankles, and neck, Cat suspected they would find no drugs in this girl. The Burning Man had wanted her very much awake.
Cat moved the young woman’s head. Leaning over the girl’s lifeless eye sockets, she found petechiae in her conjunctiva. The tiny red and purple spots to the mucous membrane that lined the inside of the lids revealed that Jane Doe had been strangled or choked during the final minutes of her life. This went hand-in-hand with the deep, penetrating discoloration to the neck, Cat thought. Probably tied her down to something.
Cat’s fingers probed the waxy pale body’s scalp, her eyes just inches away. “I’ve got something here. Take a look.” She parted the hair.
Dr. Conrad James leaned closer. “What is it?”
“You tell me.”
“Appears to be a letter carved into her head.”
They both looked down at the letter “I.”
“How do you get that from just one carving? He might not even have intended to make a letter, just came out that way.”
“Come on, McGregor. Most serial killers either take something or leave something. This guy’s not a trophy collector, at least not as far as I can see. So what’s the next best thing? He leaves us something. Can’t you see it? He wants us to know him. He wants recognition for his actions. He wants the media attention. He likes the media circus.”
From the courses she had taught in Applied Criminal Psychology, Cat could tell there was step-by-step escalation to this killer’s fantasy. She wondered if this case was typical, if those escalations were fueled by childhood physical abuse from a person in a position of trust, usually a parent, relative, coach, or teacher. She sensed the fantasy was not driven by pornography or macabre experimentation on animals. No, from the looks of it, this man had no need to experiment on animals; he was cutting people for a living every day. In all this, the need for recognition was dominant and overriding. He’d gotten the nerve to face what he really wanted to do: to send a message to the FBI. To her.
“Don’t you see, if you break down the components of this latest crime…” She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “If you break it down, pre- and post-offensive behavior, the vast majority of the mutilation is premortem, before death. He watches them cry out while they are alive; his motive is to inflict pain. Their screams are like a symphony to him, and he is the maestro. He wants us to share his work, wants us to know.”
“Come on, Cat, we won’t know till we get another body.”
“I’m telling you, I’ve dealt with this type before. If you want to understand the craftsman, take a look at his work. This latest body is a refinement of his style, the ligature bruises.”
She padded up and down the floor. “Equally significant is the way he disposes of the bodies. The first three were dumped out in the middle of nowhere for the animals to get them. This latest one was dumped in the sea. All the corpses have been left out in the open. This is another signal to us, that he wants us to know him. He makes no effort to bury them. He treats the bodies with no respect. He is taunting us.”
“You’re getting too tied up in this.” McGregor rolled his eyes and went to get coffee. Once this woman had her mind set on something, he knew there was no turning back.
“No. I’m not. I’m telling you. He is sharing a piece of himself with us, with me.”
The words left a bad taste in her mouth.
“And he is watching.”