Chapter Nine #6
And that got the normal response.
He gasped.
“What the hell happened?” he asked, as he began moving around the morgue to get his things.
Callen laughed.
“Well, we met an almost seven-foot giant who kicked the shit out of Raphael, Ivan, Elizabeth, and Ethan. We need your medical kit.”
He was worried.
“Are they okay?”
He updated him.
“Raphael’s balls need to be iced, Ivan’s got a broken nose, and he’s likely to be even more cranky than normal. Ethan landed on Elizabeth, but he might have sprained his jerking off wrist, and Elizabeth’s back met a tombstone. So, as per usual, it’s been funsies in the field.”
And not a good fun either.
“Oh, Jesus.”
Yeah, tell them about it.
“See you at the hotel. Oh, and if you don’t have something for her, she’s going to bite your head off just because she hates when someone knocks her around. My suggestion is browbeat one of the techs to give you ANYTHING for Boss-zilla.”
Oh, he bet.
“I’ll see what I can bring with me in the way of information. See you there.”
He hung up.
That’s when Callen warned them.
“Well, you four are getting lectured,” he said. “Christopher is about to get so very cranky with you, you, and you,” he said pointing at Elizabeth, Ethan, and then back at Elizabeth again.
She laughed.
Finally, she could breathe.
And it was nice.
“What do you mean us? Not at us. He’s going to ask why you two chuckle heads didn’t save us before the Not-So-Jolly-Green Giant whipped our asses.”
Callen gasped.
Oh, shit.
She was right.
UNFORTUNATELY.
Then, she continued.
“It won’t be my ass on the line. It’s yours. I did my job. Ethan didn’t end up paralyzed. Go me.”
No, but he was annoyed, but not because they’d been knocked around by the big, unpredictable man.
“This is bothering me,” he said as he proceeded to explain to them his train of thought.
“The first three graves, we know he picked due to the relatively safe location of them. Jeffrey said he did the walk twice. Once at nine, and once before dawn. That makes those hard to see at either of those times.”
No one stopped him, since he was working it out for them to be on the same page.
“Assuming he is digging up more bodies, and not getting the eyes at the funeral home post embalming, how did he pick the new targets? There are only three graves over where the ‘Grave Robber’ struck. What are we missing? It won’t be random. It never is.”
She wasn’t sure, but she had an idea as to what they were overlooking. She also had something bothering her. Maybe, it was all connected.
“That grave over there. It’s a Lory Vanbruggen. Look at the dates. The grass isn’t growing on her grave. She was buried almost two weeks ago. What’s the saying? Grass doesn’t grow on a busy street?”
Ethan was confused.
That was a saying for bald men who were getting laid, wasn’t it?
“Okay, and?” he asked, not sure where she was taking it.
Elizabeth went there.
“Gene, pull up an obituary for me, and read it to us,” she said.
“Because this is fishy as fuck. I think what you’re thinking is tied to what I’m thinking, EJ.
It’s catching in my head, and I think it is because it’s the odd thing out for me.
I know we came here because of the grave robberies, but I think we just stumbled onto something big. ”
The man pulled out his phone, and did just that.
Only, there was no cell service.
“MATE,” he said, bringing her online.
Hopefully, the satellite that MATE was attached to was getting the signal down here.
When she appeared before them, she smiled.
“You rang?”
He needed help.
“I need you to go into the local morgue database. Chris is there now. You should be able to clone the information off of their drive.”
She grinned.
“Oh, spy shit. I love some spy shit. What do you need?”
Well, it was good to see their AI was more than willing to play. Only, it wasn’t exactly sneaky. She could have just called Chris for the information—if he wasn’t on his way to the hotel to kick their asses.
Gene continued.
“Lory Vanbruggen, DOB five-seventeen, nineteen ninety-nine,” he said. “What killed her?” he asked. “The boss lady needs COD on her death certificate.”
MATE walked around, and stood by the grave as she processed the request.
Then, she shared, as soon as she had access to the files for them.
“She overdosed on drugs,” she said. “Wow. The level of drugs in her system was WILD. She was partying.”
Yeah, now, Elizabeth was curious.
“Show me the crime scene photos. Go into the local police database and pull them up. Let me also know who worked the case too.”
MATE chortled.
“I love my job. Thankfully, I was programmed not to leave a trace. The detectives who worked this case are none other than Tora Quinley and Mac Yardley. They handled it.”
Interesting.
Their phones all chimed at the same time. Taking their phones out, they began skimming through the pictures there.
And that’s how Elizabeth knew it was suspicious as fuck.
When she stopped on the one that showed the woman leaning against a dumpster, with a needle in her arm, she said one thing.
“Where are the drugs?” she asked, clueing everyone else in on it.
Ethan looked up after searching.
“The crime scene report doesn’t have them listed,” he offered.
She went there.
“So, MATE just told us the levels were so high, but this woman commits suicide by injecting one syringe of meth into her arm? And she didn’t bring backup to feel good?
She brought only a syringe to the scene, and no packet?
No lighter to heat it up? No spoon to cook the meth before lock and loading the needle?
How many meth deaths have we come across where that was the scenario? ”
That was a good question.
They knew what she was saying.
This was off.
“Now, we have a grave where the body was placed over a week ago, and it looks fresh like it was just played with two days ago?”
Ethan was putting it together.
His wife might be onto something.
“You think either he’s digging up recently dead women that he’s finding in the obituaries, or he’s killing them, setting up the scene, and then digging them up later?” he asked, taking a stab at it.
She nodded.
That was exactly what she was thinking.
“Someone has a skull-fucking kink. What if this killer is taking out people, and in the process, letting them be buried because that’s his fetish. He doesn’t want them alive, and this is the easiest way to pick the perfect corpse?”
That was gross on so many levels.
And CRAZY.
She continued.
“Then, he opens up the grave, takes the head and eyeballs as his collection, and then closes it back up OR he just likes dead bodies, and he’s digging them up to play with after the fact?”
This.
Was.
Weird.
“Because if he’s fucking skulls, and using them to jerk off, he’s likely using the rest of them,” she admitted.
Oh, lordy.
Someone was going to Hell.
That was for sure.
“I’ve never had a case like this,” Ethan said.
On that, Gene agreed.
“Ditto. I’ve had people fucking corpses, but not in a coffin and not taking their head after. It’s usually a perverted ME or funeral staff with too much time on their hands.”
On that, she agreed.
But the crazy was getting…crazier.
“Someone is doing the dead dirty. I’m willing to bet my badge that one of those sets of eyes belong to Lory Vanbruggen, because it’s in this area where the person is accustomed to hunting, a female, and it’s a death we would have tagged as suspicious.”
Ethan knew one thing.
“If they do, we have a huge problem.”
Everyone focused on him.
“What?” Gene asked.
Oh, he told them.
“We’re going to have to get federal warrants to have all the bodies exhumed.
If we get DNA back, and we have the people already embalmed the families and media are about to blow this the fuck up.
If this is a collector, and he at all likes attention, this will fuel it, and it’s going to go from what it is now to a game.
This person will escalate, and change it up to protect themselves. ”
And that was horrible for anyone investigating it.
This was out of control.
Especially for them.