Chapter 20
Adina was right. The doer was escalating.
That was my first horrified reaction.
Acorn had led us through the woods to a ten-foot square marked off with yellow police tape. The enclosed area had been cleared of all low-hanging vines and ground creepers, vegetation which now lay in a heap to one side.
A pair of uniforms stood guard, feet spread, thumbs hooked into their Sam Browne belts. Both sported dark Aviator Ray-Bans, making their eyes impossible to read.
The two CSU techs wore white, hooded, front-zippered coveralls. One was dictating notes into his phone as the other shot video.
The two-person MCME team waited off to one side. A folded body bag lay at their feet.
All but the videographer turned as the three of us emerged from the trees.
Greetings were exchanged. Names.
The cops were Hayes and Z something with a lot of syllables. And an abundance of dark hair knotted at the nape of her neck.
I’d done one recovery with Hayes. A putrefied body jammed in a culvert. He’d been competent and professional. I’d never met Z.
The MCME crew was composed of an old-timer and a newbie. Joe Hawkins and I had worked dozens of cases together over the years. He looked his usual glum, cadaverous self.
Hawkins’s younger partner introduced himself as Winslow. He was in his twenties with thin, sandy hair, pale splotchy skin, and thick glasses with weird pinkish-orange frames. I wasn’t sure if Winslow was the guy’s first or last name.
“What’s happened so far?” I asked no one in particular.
“CSU processed the scene, but we were told not to touch the DOA until you arrived,” Hawkins said.
“Pain in the ass,” Acorn said. “We could be done and out of here by now.”
Ignoring that rather rude comment, I addressed Hayes.
“Did you recover anything of interest?”
“Candy wrappers, a Bud can, and a shit ton of condoms.”
“Party hardy.” Acorn twirled one finger in the air.
“No one’s disturbed the remains?” I clarified.
“One ballsy squirrel,” Hayes said.
“I discouraged him,” Acorn said, grinning.
Wondering what “discouraged” meant, not really wanting to know, I scanned the scene.
The deceased was seated below a towering loblolly pine, legs straight out, arms twisted backward and nailed to the trunk. The head was hanging low, the neck vertebrae jutting sharp as the dorsal fins on a shark.
My mind flashed to the corpse discovered by Sister Adelbert in Cordelia Park. To the unearthed cemetery burial that was Eleanor Godric. The similarities were striking.
I logged details.
As with those bodies, this one was human and wore a ball cap. Blue paint and glitter had been applied to the head and face.
Below the cap, a red paisley bandanna covered the decedent’s scalp, knotted low in back. A gold stud in the shape of a clenched fist pierced the left ear.
I noted skin the color of weak tea. Kinky black hair corkscrewing from the bandanna’s edges.
The decedent’s pants had slipped below a level ideal for decorum. The bared genitalia looked shriveled and bluish in the bright morning sun, but clearly proclaimed that the corpse was male.
On top, the man wore a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and one word scrolling the front: Chanel. His boxers were plaid. His feet were bare.
Like the Cordelia Park vic and unlike Godric, this person hadn’t been dead long.
Rigor mortis refers to a stiffening of the body due to a decrease below critical levels of adenosine triphosphate, or ATP.
Beginning in the facial muscles approximately two hours after death, the rigidity gradually progresses to the limbs.
Completing at anywhere between six and eight hours postmortem, rigor can persist for up to two days.
Thanks to some merciful weather deity, there was a slight, though erratic breeze that morning. A fitful gust sent the man’s fingers swaying like laundry on a line. The joint flexibility suggested that rigor had come and gone.
But how long ago had he died?
More logging.
Decomposition occurs in four stages: autolysis, bloat, active decay, and skeletonization.
Early action features skin discoloration combined with the release of gases and fluids.
Both changes were evidenced by an odor strong enough to trigger a gag reflex, a fetid mix reminiscent of putrefying meat and rotting vegetation.
Necrophagous insects—mostly flies at this point—had opened a dance hall on the decedent’s face.
This pattern was typical, with the Calliphoridae, Sarcophagidae, and Muscidae ladies arriving within minutes of death and favoring the eyes, mouth, and nasal openings, orifices ideal for sheltering their eggs.
But the dense concentration seemed excessive in comparison to the rest of the body. The man’s face appeared to be moving, like a seething mass of miniature rice grains.
Pulling on latex gloves, I raised my mask and stepped closer. The flies rose in a buzzing, frenzied cloud.
Acorn’s handiwork lay beside the corpse, the number of bullets in the small furry body suggesting overkill. Though disgusted, I made no comment.
Slidell said nothing.
Ditto the uniforms and CSU techs.
Clasping my hands behind my head, I lifted my hair, hoping the brief release of heat might help stave off the vomit. Holding my breath, I squatted beside the remains.
One look confirmed my suspicion.
Below the egg mass I could see grotesquely mutilated features. Empty orbits with the lids stretched wide. A flattened nose. Lips drawn back and fixed in a macabre death grin.
Incised into the forehead were the familiar letters: PE.
And there was something new that sent a chill down my spine.
Pulling my iPhone from my back pocket, I shot pics from several angles.
“You don’t trust CSU?” Acorn asked, speaking through fingers covering his mouth.
“Never hurts to have backups,” I said without turning around.
Swatting at the aerial kamikazes dive-bombing my eyes, I rose and circled the tree for a better view of the hands.
Hand.
The left one was missing. The truncated muscles and tendons of the wrist had turned black due to exposure to the elements. As with the disfigured face, a teeming mass of ova blanketed the raw stump.
“Can we move this along?” Acorn made no effort to hide his eagerness to be gone.
Stripping off my gloves, I swiveled to face him.
“Is there somewhere else you need to be, detective?”
“Always.”
Ignoring that seemingly egotistical reply, I said, “As with the other corpses turning up, a hand has been taken.”
“Meaning?”
“I believe a profiler would call it a signature.”
Acorn eyed me with an expression I couldn’t read.
“A mosquito is lunching on your cheek,” I said following a long moment during which I’d debated not telling him.
Acorn slapped at his face, was eyeballing the squashed offender when his mobile buzzed. Flicking the bloody corpus, he wiped his hand on his pants, then yanked the phone from his belt. Without excusing himself, he stepped away and turned his back to me.
Taking Acorn’s cue, I dialed the MCME. Following the obligatory pleasantries with Mrs. Flowers, Nguyen picked up.
The chief apologized for leaving before I’d arrived, said she’d received an urgent call about an infant drowning. Thanking me for going to the preserve, she requested an update.
I obliged, assuring her that the McDowell case was linked to the earlier animal displays. Cited specifics.
Repeating that she was sorry for needlessly interrupting my day, Nguyen said there was no need for me to remain on site. She promised to phone Hawkins to authorize transfer of the body to the morgue.
After disconnecting, I watched Acorn, still engaged in animated conversation. Wondered. Why wasn’t he asking the usual cop questions about victim profile, body treatment, cause of death, PMI?
While I’d inspected and photographed the dead man, Slidell had walked over to talk to Winslow and Hawkins. Skinny rejoined us now.
“Doc,” he said, nodding to me as he swiped a sweaty forearm across his sweaty brow.
“Detective.”
“Harve,” he said, wagging his chin at Acorn.
“Erskine.”
Slidell looked back at me. “What’s your take?” He produced a small notebook with a stub of pencil shoved into the spiral binding.
“You know anything I say now will be very—” I began.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Spit-thumbing pages and positioning the stub over one.
“The deceased appears to be male.”
“No!” Skinny slapped the pad to his chest in faux shock.
“Do you want to hear this?”
Slidell circled an impatient wrist.
“Based on skin color and hair type I suspect he’s of African ancestry.”
“The guy’s Black.”
“Yes.”
“Age?”
“There’s some graying at his temples, some sag at the jawline and below the eyes, but his teeth look goo—”
“I don’t need the whole frickin’ medical file.”
“Without X-rays and dissection this is very preliminary,” I said, cool as glacial runoff. “But I’d estimate he’s somewhere between forty and sixty.”
Slidell’s eyes rolled up, brows angled low.
“You’re shitting me, right?” he said.
“At this point that’s the best I can do.”
“That age range includes half the planet.”
“Hardly.”
Slidell mumbled something I didn’t catch.
“And there’s one other thing.” I paused, creating needless drama.
“Are you trying to annoy me?”
I was. Childish, but having to deal with both Acorn and Slidell and a maggoty corpse put my nerves on edge.
I described what I’d spotted within the folds of the red bandanna.
“I’ll be goddammed,” Slidell said.
“Nguyen and I will do a full analysis to verify.”
“Sonofabitch,” Slidell said.
“Well put,” I agreed.
Acorn said nothing.
Slidell dropped me at the Annex. Before leaving the kitchen, I stripped off my smelly clothes, secured them in a plastic garbage bag, and set them out on the porch.
After showering and shampooing for a very long time, I dressed in clean jeans and a tee. A quick tuna sandwich, then I headed to the MCME.
Birdie wasn’t pleased with my lightning strike dine and dash. But in our brief phone conversation, Nguyen had said she’d begin the postmortem as soon as the body arrived at the morgue.
The McDowell case wouldn’t be assigned to me. The remains were sufficiently intact to allow a normal autopsy. So why my interest in this man?
Similarities between the McDowell scene and the earlier animal displays were undeniable. The ball cap. The blue paint. The glitter. The two-letter incision.
Driving uptown, I kept hearing Adina’s words in my head. Kept seeing the recent series of corpses.
Small forest creatures.
Larger species.
A beloved pet.
A cemetery cadaver.
A man and dog hanging from a tree.
A recently deceased human with a bullet hole in his skull.
It was clear that Adina’s prediction was coming true.
The doer had shifted from animals to people. Then from the long-dead to the recently deceased.
As I’d first realized at Cordelia Park, the bastard was escalating.
Had he or she shot the man in the bandanna found at the McDowell preserve?
Who was bandanna man?
What was the meaning of the cryptic message: PE?
Why the stolen hands?
And the big enchilada: How soon would the sick sonofabitch strike again?