Night descended on the city with a gray pall as I sat parked around the corner from the police station, feeling like a felon. A sharp rap on the driver side window made me jump. Hairy knuckles and a gold wedding band pressed hard against the tinted glass, followed by the taut face of my friend Tony.
I powered down the window a third of the way.
“Christ on a cracker, you look like shit, Mitch. I couldn’t believe it when I heard Kris was dead. Listen up, buddy, if you don’t return this to me, as is, I’ll turn you in myself. I’m double mortgaged, Cindy has expensive tastes, and the twins are off to college soon. I’m not losing another job,” Tony said. He checked the street both ways before passing the thick folder through the narrow opening.
“Thanks, I owe you,” I said.
He kept a tight grip on the file. “You won’t be thanking me later. Unlike our one-on-one games, there are no street rules here. This is one sadistic bastard. Change your mind, don’t look at it. Nothing good can come of this.”
“I have to. I can’t tell you why.”
“I shouldn’t have caved, but you could sell swastikas to the Pope, if you wanted.” Tony’s mood grew more somber and he said, “They’ve made you for this, Mitch. They’re trying to pound square evidence into round holes and put you away. It just might work. Watch your back.”
“I know. Thanks.”
“I’m begging you as a friend, don’t do this. Let it go.”
I knew he was right. I tightened my grip on the file. “I can’t.”
We stared at each other, both pulling on the folder. He flinched first. He said, “Just remember, you asked for it.”
I nodded. He let go.
A line of sweat appeared on his brow. “LeMaster and Baker keep odd hours. Those cowboys can show up anytime. They pound the streets day and night. I’m going on a break to the newsstand around the corner. Go nowhere; read it here.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll take it back in exactly ten minutes.”
I watched him stride, head down, along the tree-lined sidewalk under a threatening green sky, briefcase and umbrella in hand. He faded into the ranks of others scurrying to beat the coming storm.
I powered up the window and stared at the plain brown jacket of Kris’s murder file. At first I didn’t open it, it weighed me down like an anchor ready to drag me to depths where humanity goes to die. I felt sick to my stomach, hands sweaty. I looked in the direction Tony had walked, half hoping he’d circle back and reclaim this thing. He was nowhere in sight.
What gruesome images lurked within the plain manila folder to burrow their tentacles into my brain?
To a certain degree, you have to detach from clients to help them. You can do it again. Detach yourself.
I had less than ten minutes to sift through crime scene evidence, review police procedures, interviews and conjecture; then locate a thread connecting one of my clients to Kris. I hoped a clue would leap out and identify her killer. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes a moment.
A drop of rain hit the windshield as I opened the cover and began my descent.
While I read, an intense childhood flashback kept worming its way into my thoughts. When I was ten, my parents took us on a summer vacation to Bull Shoals Lake. On the drive home a car loaded with teenagers sped by us in a no-passing zone like we were standing still. Five minutes later we came upon their car. It had crashed head-on into a station wagon carrying a family of six. Flames appeared from both mangled cars as my parents joined the bucket brigade, passing water from a nearby home in a futile effort to douse the flames. Frantic pounding and frenzied cries for help came from inside the crumpled vehicles. I remember seeing bloody handprints smeared on the inside of the passenger windows and a tiny arm squeezing a teddy bear. The doors reduced to crushed hulls of twisted metal, the heat became too intense at the crash site for the brigade. Somehow a boy and girl about my age had survived, along with their dog. They beat the odds by being thrown from the station wagon before its roof collapsed like an accordion. Dazed, the kids sat on a grassy field near the cars when we arrived on the scene, eyes goggled like they had landed on another planet. The short-legged mutt eagerly lapped water from a green plastic bowl. The open gash running the length of his back didn’t seem to bother him. My job was to take care of the kids while the grown-ups fought the fire and tried to rescue the other twelve trapped people, for we learned there were eight teens crammed into the speeding car. No matter what I did or said, I couldn’t get the little kids to talk or even say their names. I said things like ‘it’s going to be alright’ because I had no idea what else to say. They seemed gone, shipped off to some faraway place, oblivious of their family and pet. I made small talk about the dog, but couldn’t draw the kids out of what I later learned to be their protective cocoons. I felt like a complete failure.
Even though it was the hottest day of the year—104 degrees—the kids shook with cold. I borrowed blankets from the old man who owned the tiny A-frame near the country road. He said the kids were in shock. When I returned the little girl had rubbed her forearm so hard it bled. The boy rocked back and forth, making humming noses, sucking his thumb. I put my arms around them for warmth, not knowing what else to do. The local rural fire department and EMT vans didn’t arrive at the scene for another hour; they had been needed on the other side of the nearest town to battle a house fire. Minutes before the firemen arrived with water hoses and the Jaws of Life, all human sounds stopped from inside the doomed cars. The adults on the scene, my parents included, were covered with soot and sweat, numb or crying. Burnt flesh and smoking rubber polluted the air. More than one fireman and volunteer collapsed from the gruesome work in oppressive heat. One fireman vomited. Another wept. When the covered remains of their parents and grandparents were finally carried out on stretchers to waiting ambulances now doubling as hearses, the children did not acknowledge them. The scratching and rocking continued. The police took the kids into protective custody. We later read in the Post that an aunt in Rolla adopted them.
No one said a word during the long, extra slow ride home. I remember my mother silently crying in the front passenger seat. When it was time for bed that night, I thought she’d never stop hugging me. I still see the teenagers’ carefree faces as they rocketed past, especially one. He was sixteen, maybe seventeen, and wore a crew cut. Our eyes connected for an instant. He smiled and waved at me while leaning out the back passenger window, reveling in life, probably certain he’d live forever. Now his smiling, young face existed only in my memory. I wondered by what monstrous miracle the younger kids had survived, how much they’d recall of the accident, and what the future held for them. I became a social worker in part because of that day when hell and earth collided and the devil claimed a dozen lives.
Reading the murder file was like reliving that accident—I couldn’t avert my eyes no matter how I tried. At some point, I realized I’d been pounding my fist on the dashboard, screaming. I frantically scribbled notes and took pictures of the crime scene photos with my cell phone camera.
I didn’t see the figure approach through my fogged windows.
When the rap of knuckles returned, I reached to power down the window but my arm hit the horn. I wiped away a patch of condensation and watched Tony swivel his head nervously up and down the wet streets. An unmarked police car glided silently through the rain-soaked intersection behind us.
He made a frantic, hurry-up gesture with his hands while I fumbled for the right button.
“What are you trying to—” he said angrily, but froze when he saw my face. The last of the blurry window disappeared into the door as water dripped onto my arm. He reached inside and said, softer, “I was a fool to let you talk me into this. I am so sorry.”
I tried to speak and couldn’t.
“Damn. I have to get this thing back. Stay here until you’re sure you can drive. Take deep breaths. Go home.” He reached inside the car and squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll call you later.”
I must have missed when the sky opened up, dumping a torrent of warm rain that drove the filth of the city toward the sewers. Watching the churning runoff seek its lowest level, I told it, “You missed some.”
I don’t remember driving home. The Stranger must have been at the wheel.
I familiarized myself with police procedures after convincing Tony to steal Kris’ file. I drank while I studied the writings of Dr. Edmond Locard, an early twentieth century criminologist. His Exchange Principal postulates that with contact between two items, there will always be an exchange. No matter how minute, the criminal will leave evidence or unwittingly take physical evidence with him from the scene. Locard also said that wherever the criminal steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves, will serve as a silent witness against him. This type of evidence does not forget and cannot be wrong. Only human failure to find it, study it, and understand it can lessen its value. Fingerprints, footprints, semen, blood, hair, cloth fibers, scratch marks, tool marks, and a world of other evidence can identify a killer. Locard lived before the advent of DNA evidence, but his theories ring true today.
I can relate to this, since transference and counter-transference occur in therapy.
At home I sat at the kitchen table with a bottle and organized the notes I’d scribbled in the Solstice.
By the time I got to the photographic copy of the autopsy report by the city Medical Examiner, I was feeling no pain. It laid out the physical evidence of asphyxiation, petechiae or pinpoint hemorrhages in the skin, conjunctiva of the eyes and deep internal organs in rational, clinical, detached form.
Just the facts, ma’am. Nothing less, nothing more.
Neck dissection showed evidence of internal hemorrhaging, a damaged larynx, and fractured hyoid bone. Inspection of the cervical spine revealed other fractures. The blunt force injury to the tissues of the neck and prolonged compression led to unconsciousness and death. Most of the multiple abrasions and contusions to the head, neck, and upper torso occurred before death, but some injuries were sustained after cessation of blood flow in the body. The lack of patterned abrasions or uniform contusions on the neck led the ME to conclude that no ligature was used. The force vector of the assailant who inflicted such damage indicated pressure from an extremely strong assailant, several inches taller than the victim. The head and neck contained traces of latex and talcum powder. Inside the oral cavity were trace fibers of carpet or towel. Examination of the genitalia revealed tearing and bruising of the vaginal walls. Trace latex was also present here but no semen. Routine combing of the pubis produced one non-matching pubic hair, complete with root follicle, logged into evidence. Swabbing under the fingernails produced grit and more latex, but no human DNA. The ME concluded the deceased was a victim of forcible rape, prior to death or at the time of expiration. The rapist likely wore latex surgical gloves and used a condom, apparently leaving the scene of the crime with these items as neither was found nearby. Cause of death was strangulation by a pair of gloved hands. Liver temperature readings put the approximate time of death between four and seven o’clock the morning the body was found. Speculation was reserved for the end of the report. The ME postulated that murder was the intent and the crime was one of passion or rage, likely perpetrated by someone who knew the deceased well enough to get close. If not, then by an assailant in a drug-induced or paranoid psychotic state, severe enough to enable great short-term strength.
The how and when she died. Not why or by whom.
The caller taunted me about having had sex with her.
Was that hair mine from the last time we had sex? I had no way of knowing. When I gave LeMaster my samples, the nurse told them the preliminary report on my DNA would take a week. If my DNA was a match, LeMaster would use the physical and circumstantial evidence to arrest me. Worst-case scenario, I had seven days to find the killer before they jailed me for first-degree murder.
LeMaster lied to me about the prints at the scene. Techs found three additional sets of fingerprints other than Kris’ lifted from the Dumpster at the crime scene. Two were smaller and assumed to be latent prints of small children, while one set was that of an adult. None of the prints registered a hit in the known criminal offenders’ database. None were found on Kris’ body or anywhere else at the scene. A cataloging of the 214 separate items found in the Dumpster followed, but none seemed relevant to, or discarded from, the crime scene, except for two. For now, the unidentified fingerprints and Dumpster contents appeared to be dead ends.
Interviews with the Fed-Ex driver who discovered the body early that morning seemed fruitless. He said he saw no one else at the scene. His story remained consistent during several retellings. The driver had an arrest for burglary as a juvenile twelve years ago, but co-workers saw him preparing his truck at the loading dock during the time frame of the murder. Interviews with apartment residents living in the vicinity of the Dumpster led nowhere; no one saw or heard anything unusual that morning. Party guests corroborated Green’s constant presence into the morning, giving him an alibi for the break-in. Green told the police he had no idea why Kris left the party when she did. He assumed, as his guests did, that she’d had an argument with me. Her closest friends at the party told the detectives of her volatile separation from Steven Gray. Problem was that they still hadn’t found him. His paper trail ended, as LeMaster said, with his departure from the medical program at Gateway University. He wasn’t using his Social Security number for work, taxes, or any other reason since dropping out. He was into the wind, apparently by design. One major player at the party had no alibi. She left at about ten o’clock, shortly after Kris and I, claiming a migraine and that she spent the rest of the night alone in her sister’s home in Ladue while her sister and family were out of town. That person was Elizabeth Green.
The main person of interest the evidence kept pointing to was me, with Steven Gray a distant second. The circumstantial evidence led to me, the jilted boyfriend in an ugly crime of passion.
I was the logical choice based on the evidence here. I was their OJ. It sucks to be me right now.
I was three sheets to the wind when I got to the crime scene photos on my cell phone. They captured a brief snapshot of the agony of her last moments. I studied the crime photos in chronological order. They were beyond graphic; they were obscene. It was what I imagined a snuff film would look like, minus the perp. The first group of pictures showed what the Fed-Ex driver stumbled upon early that morning—a naked body sat propped against the green Dumpster, the face and upper torso partly covered by a grimy bath towel. The text of the report said the grime was consistent with smudge and grit from the Dumpster. The soiled towel seemed to be the only item taken from the Dumpster and used at the scene. Her clothes were cut from her body with a scalpel, folded, and neatly stacked nearby. The next set of pictures showed head shots of Kris with the towel removed. I sobered instantly, sick to my stomach. Her hands were duct-taped tightly over her mouth; her lifeless eyes open in a rictus of horror, a scream stifled. Trace amounts of latex on her eyelids indicated the killer opened her eyes to stage the scene. There were close-up shots of her bare chest. The killer had used her blood to finger-paint the following mark over her heart: II. Another photo showed a close-up of a bloody footprint at the scene with a ruler next to it. During the struggle she sustained a scalp laceration, traces of her skin and hair were found on the edge of the Dumpster, that deposited a pool of blood next to her body. The killer must have stepped in it while staging the scene, leaving a clear footprint of an old tennis shoe with a distinctive series of worn circular tread marks, size twelve. Same as mine. Examination of the footprints found at the scene pointed to a single perpetrator. If I can find the owner of the shoe I find her killer.
She wasn’t completely naked in the final set of pictures. A man’s silk tie, fashioned in a perfect half-Windsor knot, hung around her mangled neck. The autopsy report confirmed that the killer did not strangle her with it, yet he took the time and effort to dress and pose her. What’s the significance of the tie? Why pose the body? What’s the meaning of the mark: II?
The preliminary report indicated the fibers found in Kris’ mouth likely came from the Dumpster towel, which was probably used to silence any scream during the attack. The duct tape was a common brand found in any hardware store in the Midwest. It yielded no DNA or saliva other than Kris’. The necktie contained no foreign DNA or usable prints. Both the tape and tie had trace amounts of talcum powder, residue from surgical gloves.
I had two sources of evidence, the murder file and the phone conversation with the man claiming to be her killer. It took time to do what he did. There was purpose to the staging—it meant something to him. He risked being seen, identified, and captured in order to make a statement. He wasn’t some psychotic stranger influenced by the full moon who randomly crossed her path. He probably followed her, learned her habits and schedule, waiting for the right time. He timed his attack before dawn and fled unseen, leaving no apparent witnesses. He likely knew her; she was a strong, assertive woman who would have put up quite a fight unless she had some level of familiarity with her attacker. He brought duct-tape, surgical gloves, the tie, and a condom with him, maybe more. The towel over her face indicated some level of shame for the deed; he staged the scene only to cover her face later. Maybe I can use that sliver of guilt against him.
Preliminary drug tests came back negative; he didn’t subdue her with drugs. There was nothing unusual in her stomach contents, which were listed in detail. The taped hands over her mouth reminded me of the Speak-No-Evil monkey. Was she murdered because of something she knew? Because she’d already spilled a secret? Is the symbol the Roman numeral two? Was she his second victim? It holds special significance to the killer because of its position—close to the heart. What is his message and who is it meant for?
Then it hit me.
The tie around her neck.
He staged the crime scene for me. I wished I was drunk again.
He wants me to suffer and keep on suffering, until there’s nothing left of me for him to take. He wants to transform me into a modern day Job. That was my silk tie around her neck. I can tie you up and have you in police custody on a whim with one phone call.
The last time I saw the tie, I think, was in her apartment. Worse still, it was the one I wore to the television station when I decked the pimp Frank DeLuca. That segment aired for three days on local television. If the cops connect me to that tie, I’m as good as gone.
I re-read my notes four times. No clue jumped off the pages or pictures to lead me to a client, Warren Green, or Steven Gray.
The killer knows he’s smart. He’s showing off. I hope he thinks he’s smarter than I am. Somehow I need to use his hubris against him. He doesn’t know I’ve seen the murder file and know about the tie. If I can cling to that scrap of hope, maybe I can get one step ahead of him.
What does he think I’ve done to him? My gut tells me that’s the key.
He’s right—I already long for his next call.
Until the next exchange of evidence, Dr. Locard. Thanks for the help, but I’m gonna need much more than this.