Читать книгу The Pearl Drop Killer - Joshua Questin Hawk - Страница 6

a killing field

in a damp meadow on a cool spring morning, the sun rises on the sleepy fishing town of Jackson Hole. Small patches of snow still on the ground as the sun continues through the forest onto the bay. As the wind rustles through the shrubs and treetops, a small white mutt of a dog that no one owns but everyone cares for and feeds scurries out with a woman’s left hand in his mouth. He runs up to a man, who is in his sixties, with shaggy gray hair and a long shaggy beard. He is wearing a bright-yellow raincoat, pants, and cap, heading down toward the pier along the bay to start his day, smoking his corncob pipe and carrying four fishing rods. The dog drops the hand and barks a few times to get the old man’s attention. He turns back toward the dog, stoops down, petting him, and sees the hand.

“What you got there, boy?” the old man asks, picking up the hand slowly, barely holding on to it with his index finger and thumb. “And where did you find this?”

The dog barks a few more times, runs back to the shrubs he came out of, sits, and barks for the old man to follow him. He pushes the shrubs away, “What you got in there, boy?” He looks down into the shrubs and stumbles back in fright, seeing a young girl, white, with blond hair, and sixteen, wearing a string of teardrop pearls around her neck.

She is dressed in a white ball gown, with heavy makeup as if she has just come from a debutant ball. Her lifeless green eyes stare up at him, and one hand—her left hand, which the dog had found—cut off with surgical precision. The man turns to the side, vomits, and drops it.

Jackson Hole Deputies—khaki slacks and short-sleeved khaki dress shirts with brown pocket flaps—tape off the area and start searching the woods. A black Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV speeds up, with red lights flashing in the back window. Out comes a tall heavyset man in his late forties dressed in a nice black suit but looks as if he has slept in it. No tie, thinning black hair combed straight back, a real bad dye job. His new partner follows, an African American woman in her late twenties, with long black hair down just past her shoulders, with bangs running halfway down her forehead and wearing a black business suit. They walk toward the tapeline where two Deputies are waiting and talking with an older Deputy, a Sergeant.

The Detective raises his seven-point gold shield with blue lettering, that reads jackson hole county and his rank, Lieutenant. “O’Malley and Sergeant Stein,” he advises the young man and then points to his partner as the man raises the tape. They step up to the older officer, who is in his fifties, white with dark-olive skin and bald.

“How the hell did they drag you out of bed this early, O’Malley? You’re normally closing the bars.”

“Nice one, Duke, you know my new partner, Detective Stein?” Duke nods. “What you got?” He stoops down over the body; the shrubs are now cleared away.

“I think it’s called a crime scene, Lieutenant,” Duke replies. Stein smiles coyly.

“And where is the Crime Scene Unit?” O’Malley asks, looking right at him and not finding any of this funny. Taking out a pair of gloves, he picks up the young girl’s hand.

“Not here yet—a record for you! This is a first, you beat ’em,” Duke comments.

O’Malley stands and is about to crack one of his own when another Deputy calls out, “Got another one!”

O’Malley and Stein start, stepping past Duke, continuing toward the Deputy’s voice. Then a female Deputy calls out over O’Malley’s left shoulder with another body. O’Malley points to Stein, waving her onto the first Deputy, and he heads off toward the new call.

Four more Deputies call out. O’Malley looks back at Duke, each man knowing this was not good.

“All hands on deck, Duke.”

O’Malley waves Stein off and continues on to the second one. A female Deputy with red hair and Corporal stripes, points to an area between them. He stoops down beside this new body, sixteen-year-old girl, white but, this time, in a black dress. A string of teardrop pearls hangs around her neck. Her left hand is cut off and missing.

She is also wearing heavy makeup, just like the first victim. He moves the foliage around with a stick but finding no sign of her hand.

“Mark it,” he says, pointing to the body and then back to the Corporal and heads back toward Stein.

Stein is stooping over a young woman in her early twenties, wearing a white dress and teardrop pearl necklace. Her left hand has been surgically removed and missing. Like the others, also with heavy makeup.

“Mark it,” Stein tells the young African American Deputy standing near her and moves off to the next body—another young woman in her twenties, wearing a black dress and teardrop pearl necklace. Her left hand is cut off and missing.

O’Malley stoops, noticing the woman has been here for some time. There is more decomposition and animal bites, and her eyes have been eaten out, and parts of her thighs and arms have been gnawed at. She’s been here a week maybe more, he thinks.

They continue on to the next one, same description: twenties, left hand surgically removed and missing, wearing a teardrop pearl necklace and ball gown. This victim is more recent, like the first one.

O’Malley looks over at Stein and then up at the Deputy. He looks around at each Deputy near him and rubs his face slowly, seven girls.

He had seen this type of site before and was hoping he would never see it again. He knows he will need Donovan’s help.

“What is this?” Stein asks.

He looks down at the girl and then slowly back up at Stein. “A killing field. We have ourselves a dumping ground and a serial killer.”

Duke joins them, coming through some foliage behind him, “The Captain is on her way, and with as many as she can get. It’s a holiday, remember. How many we got?”

O’Malley looks at the Deputy near him, “I heard six call out, Sir.”

“Seven. I want a ten-by-ten-mile radius perimeter, Duke, and no damn press!” He walks past Duke, heading back to his SUV, with Stein following.

“Have you worked a serial before?” Stein asks.

“Yeah, but not this bad, but I know someone who has.” Reaching the tape, he raises it and walks up to his SUV. He pulls a map from under a half-empty whiskey bottle from his glove box, opening the map on the hood and circles the area.

Captain Sarah MacBride pushes her way through the crowd of Deputies, her red hair emerging from the sea of brown hats like a beacon. Though she looks tough in her black business suit, the pink blouse she wears beneath offers a hint to her softer side. In her forties, MacBride has seen it all, and the stress shows in the wrinkles around her eyes as she yanks her sunglasses off. “What we got, O’Malley? Duke said all hands on deck.”

“We have seven bodies, anywhere from last night to maybe about a month ago. A dumping ground.”

Three more Deputies call out, “Make that ten.”

“Serial killer?”

“Looks that way. We’ll know more after CSU processes the scenes.” He circles another area on the map. “You know, if Donovan was still on the force, he could be a big help.”

She knew it was true but was not wishing to believe it.

Stein watches them and steps up to Duke, who has now returned to the base camp. “Who they talking about?”

“Donovan, O’Malley’s ex-partner,” Duke answers.

“I heard he retired.”

“She fired him. The best damn Forensic Psychologist and Investigator we ever had, ex-FBI. She didn’t like how he was handling a murder case two years ago, said she thought he was taking his sweet time. It was politics, and she fired him. It took O’Malley and six other Detectives from three nearby counties to catch the bastard, and it took almost another year…” He pauses seeing MacBride looking over. “He was right where Donovan said he would be. If she had let Donovan do his job in the first place, then we could have saved the other six girls of the eight that he had killed,” Duke explains in a fatherly way.

MacBride heard him, knowing he was right. “You’ll call him, right?” MacBride asks, trying to get on O’Malley’s good side.

Without looking up from the map, he says, “You married him, you divorced him, and you fired him. This is all on you, Sarah.” He picks up the map and walks back to Duke and Stein, showing them the map and the areas to search. Duke takes the map and heads off into the forest with several Deputies.

“Any word on CSU?” O’Malley asks.

“Right there,” Stein says, pointing over his shoulder as two black vans and a white one pull up. Four women and two men in light-blue jumpsuits labeled CSU climb out of the vans. One of the women with brunette hair just past her shoulders walks up to O’Malley. Her suit says Medical Examiner. She joins them at the first victim, where they have returned.

“I heard it’s a big one,” she asks.

“Duke will assign areas. We have ten bodies so far,” O’Malley says as he waves all but the brunette toward Duke. “This is victim one from what I can tell. She was dropped within the last twenty-four hours. We will know more from your reports. Some have been here for weeks. A few others, maybe a month.”

She stoops down and looks over the body as MacBride walks up.

“You got this?” MacBride asks, putting her cell phone back in her pocket.

“Yeah,” O’Malley replies without looking up and pulls out his cell phone.

“He is not answering, so I am going to have to find him,” MacBride tells O’Malley.

“Try the Roadhouse. I’ve seen him there a few times since the divorce. He has a trailer there,” he offers, still pondering over the scene.

She walks off, and Stein stoops down with gloves, picking up some small flakes of metal, yellow in color, near the severed wrist.

She puts them in an evidence bag from her pocket and passes it to the brunette. Their eyes lock, and they look each other over, hoping no one sees them, and smile. The brunette looks back down at the body and moves the head from side to side, pointing at the faint finger markings around the neck. “She has been strangled. I see no bloodstains, so she was not shot. I will know more once I get her on the table.”

O’Malley steps away from the body, dialing. “We have ten. She is coming to grovel…yeah.” He hangs up and puts it back in his pocket.

The CSU team passes by him again with their kits and gloves, a couple with masks covering their faces.

Returning back to the base camp, a tall African American man in his late fifties yells, “O’Malley?”

The years have not been good to him; we can see it around his face. As a black man, he has been through many trials to prove himself. Richard McKnight is the head of Forensics. He is bald, with a black goatee, and is wearing a nice black three-piece suit with vest and has two large rings on his left hand. He yells out and waves from across the dirt road. He is also wearing black-frame glasses. “I see my team is here. What you got?”

O’Malley raises the tape and walks toward him. He sees the Reporters down the road as he steps up to him. “Serial killer—we have found ten bodies so far, ranging from last night till about a month ago.”

“Well, Alice Roberts, the county’s M.E., best in her field, I see is on the case. Anything else my department can do, let me know,” McKnight says as he walks back to his nice, mint condition 1988 black Lincoln Continental town car. “And we sure could use Donovan on this!”

“She’s working on it,” O’Malley says. McKnight looks at him, with slight shock that MacBride is going to ask Donovan, knowing that was a first. She is one who never asks; she requires it, a virtue she has acquired since she made Captain and Chief of Detectives.

“O’Malley?” A young blond in her mid-thirties, wearing a short gray skirt and business jacket stands next to a man with a TV camera. He is wearing jeans and a white T-shirt and is standing behind a second tapeline among other Reporters, Any comments? “Can you confirm?”

O’Malley whistles loud toward four Deputies standing near the second tapeline not doing their jobs and motions with his hands to push them back, “Ten—no, twenty feet!”

He turns back toward the forest and looks up. “I am too old for this crap. Roberta told me to give this shit up years ago.”

Stein runs back toward him, “We’ve got four more, a total of fourteen, ranging from sixteen to twenty-five, according to Alice.”

O’Malley runs back the best he can with his bad knees, bone on bone, following her into the forest and catching back up with Roberts. “So what we got?”

“From what I can tell, fourteen young women, sixteen to late twenties, all strangled and left hand cut off. Four to five have been here from two to four weeks, from signs of decomp and animal bites.”

T. K. Donovan comes crashing out the Roadhouse Grill’s large front window. The old roadhouse club and grill has white large stone bricks around the outside, right out of the fifties, and a large neon sign on the roof. The building has a white double-door freezer unit for bags of ice out front and a large seven-foot-tall carved Indian, like the ones they have outside old tobacco shops near the large, oversized window.

Out front, near the blacktop, is a large parking lot, a dirt area with two old rotary-style gas pumps right out of the thirties, neither working anymore.

“And stay out!” The Cook—a burly, large man in his sixties wearing a white sailor’s cap, white T-shirt, and blue jeans—yells from inside the grill.

Donovan rolls over and sits up facing the bar. “I own it!”

“Then sober up!” the man yells back, laughing.

MacBride drives up in her black Ford Crown Victoria sedan, with red lights flashing in the back window and along the front grille and two quick chirps of the siren. Stopping just shy of Donovan’s head, MacBride gets out, waves over at the Cook. “Hi, Daddy,” she says as he moves back inside.

Donovan turns his head back toward her, shielding his eyes from the bright sun over her shoulder and his massive headache and hangover from the night before.

“I have nothing to say to you!” He stands, losing his balance and leaned against the car and then shuffles off toward the roadhouse.

“I was wrong,” she yells.

He stops, turns, and puts a hand up to his ear. “What?”

“I was wrong, Donovan. I should have left you on the case.”

“You only apologize when you need something, and no, thank you.”

He continues off to the side of the building, up to his trailer, a long fifth-wheel mobile trailer, white with green and black waves, passing a 1956 red Chevy pickup truck, a real classic, and pees under the bunk section.

Rolling her eyes, she yells, “Donovan, O’Malley has ten bodies in Sherman’s Forest.”

He pauses, scratches his two-week growth of brown facial hair, looks back over at her, leaning closer against the trailer, and continues peeing. “What’s the catch? I come with you, and you put me on a bus out of town? You always hated working with me,” he replies, walking back toward her.

“I hated living with you, not working with you. Please?”

“Please.” He laughs. “Okay,” he says, stumbling back to car.

“Donovan!” she yells and points down at his zipper, which is still open, and then looks away with a bit of embarrassment.

He stops and looks down at his oversized orange cargo shorts and black T-shirt, seeing his zipper open. He turns around and zips it up, adjusting his crotch. She rolls her eyes and then he stumbles around toward the driver’s door.

“Oh, hell, no! No, you don’t, Mister. Coffee first!” she says, turning him around and walking him back to the bar. “Daddy, black coffee, and make it strong!”

The Cook, now back at the window, watches this farce between them and, laughing, tosses a white towel onto his right shoulder. “Yes, dear.”

“Why does your Dad hate me so much?” he asks, breathing on her. She turns his face away.

At the counter, and many cups of coffee later, Donovan is resting his head on the edge of the bar, which is over eight feet on one side and four on the other, covered with black marble countertops and black padding along the edges. The bar has a good-sized pass-through window and many bottles around it on the back wall.

“Daddy, why did you throw him out the window?”

Jock MacBride walks down the bar toward them. “Do I need a reason with this bum?”

“This bum is the Father of your Granddaughters!”

“He tried to sell me a bill of goods, some land he has in Colorado—”

Before Jock could finish, she slaps Donovan on the back of his head. He jumps and sits up. “Bastard, how many times have I told you not to screw with my Dad? He is the golden gloves champion six years running. Next time, I will leave you on the ground, and the land is for Marci and Gina. Your Mother left it to them.”

“He knows I was kidding,” Donovan replies, pointing at Jock.

“I did and needed to fix that window anyhow. It’s cheaper if it’s broken.” Jock giggles as he walks off through a set of double doors at the far end of the bar, back into the kitchen.

“Stop messing with my Dad, please?”

“I own this bar. He works for me.”

“He just lost Mom, and you won it in a poker game because you had the better hand. Get over it,” she replies, smacking the back of his head.

“Okay, okay. What you mean O’Malley has ten bodies in Sherman’s Forest?” he asks while pouring more coffee from the pot.

“He was called to a body dump early this morning and, so far, has found ten young women, ranging anywhere from last night to a month ago. We need your help, Donovan.”

He sips some coffee. “Say please?”

A shiver runs down her back. “I am not playing this game again.”

“Say please?”

“Okay. Please?”

“Say pretty please with sugar on top?” Donovan asks with a big grin on his face.

She rolls her eyes and shrugs her shoulders. “Fine! Pretty please with sugar on top. Are you happy now?”

Jock returns from the kitchen and hands Donovan a fifty. She looks at him, then back at Donovan as Jock tosses him his black jeans and black leather boots onto the bar. Jock then leans over the bar toward her. “Get him out of here.” He motions with his left thumb, pointing at the front window.

Putting his pants on, she waits, standing near the front driver’s side door. “So what was that with Dad and the fifty bucks?”

“Before you came, I bet him I could get you to say pretty please with sugar on top.”

“How did you know I was coming?” But she already knew the answer, O’Malley.

He laughs. “I knew you would have only done it if you thought I was messing with your Dad, so when we saw you driving up, I told him to toss me out the window. He was more than happy to oblige.”

She looks back at the bar, seeing her Dad standing in the window. He waves at her with a big smile on his face.

“You’re both children!” she yells as she climbs back in and speeds off with his side door still open. It shuts quickly as she spins around onto the blacktop, racing away with lights on.

“So what can you tell me about the scene?”

“I got a call from Duke, one of the first on the scene, that O’Malley had bodies and called for all hands on deck. By the time I got there, he had ten bodies. CSU had not arrived, and he, Stein, and half the department were still securing the scene. He called you?”

“Yeah, I knew it would eat you up.”

“I’ll get him.”

“Another time, love,” Donovan says, putting his boots on.

“Don’t call me that!”

“Okay, okay. Let it go for now.”

Her phone rings, and she presses a button on the steering wheel.

“Did you find him?” O’Malley asks.

“You two are both children. What am I going to do with you both?”

“What you got?” Donovan says, speaking over her.

“Fourteen so far. I am going to need your help, T.”

“On my way. What can you tell me?”

“Fourteen young women, sixteen to twenty-five, all in fancy white or black ball gowns and teardrop pearl necklaces, and get this—their left hands are cut off and missing, except the first one that a dog found. All strangled, according to Alice,” O’Malley reports.

Something in the back of Donovan’s mind recognized the outfits and necklaces, but he could not place them, “Did you get the dog’s statement?”

MacBride turns to him with hers eyes wide open. She swerves, catching herself, nearly hitting a tanker truck, and moves back onto her side of the road as the tanker sounds its horn.

“Yeah, bark, bark, bark-bark.”

She presses the button, turning the phone off. “Will you grow up and take this seriously?”

“If the dog took it, we need to swab its mouth for trace.”

She looked right him. He may be drunk and an ass at times, but sometimes, he thinks of the oddest things that can actually help a case.

“As a Consultant or Detective?” Donovan asks, looking right at her.

She opens the case between the seats and hands him his shield and gun, a Navy SIG P226, still in its holster, “I could never turn them in, and I fought hard to get you back on the force. But the Chief wouldn’t have it, but we need you, so I am making a lateral decision. Can you follow orders this time?”

“Can you leave politics out of it?”

There is a long pause, and she bites her upper lip. “I will try.”

“Me, too, Captain MacBride.”

For the first time, she feels that he truly means it, and she actually heard the respect in his voice. “Where do you want to start?”

“I need to see the scene.”

“Thought you would say that,” MacBride says, driving up near the Reporters as a Deputy moves one of the two barricades aside.

She drives through and parks near O’Malley’s SUV and a few other white patrol cars with a blue strip running down each side and jackson hole county printed on the rear fenders.

Donovan looks around and steps out of the sedan, but she hands him a stick of gum first. He comes around and steps up to the tape at the same time Duke returns with three Deputies.

“Good to have you back, Nephew,” Duke says, raising the tape up for them to pass, and gives MacBride a look—it’s about time.

“Where’s the first girl, Unc?” Donovan asks, greeting his Uncle with a hug. He walks them back to the first girl, where the CSU is about to pick up the body and put her on a gurney. Donovan puts his left hand out for them to wait and stoops for a better look, moving some leaves and twigs with a pen he took from MacBride’s inside coat pocket. “All are the same?”

“Except for their ages and stages of decomposition, the color of their dresses, and this one with her hand, yes,” Roberts explains.

“What colors?”

“White like hers or black,” Roberts replies.

“I have seen this outfit and pearls before,” Donovan comments under his breath, but before anyone can respond, O’Malley and Stein return.

“About damn time, T,” O’Malley says, looking at the group and then at MacBride.

Donovan looks up. “Still only fourteen, O’Malley?”

“Yeah, I have them looking an additional five miles in all directions.”

Roberts and another Tech pick the body up and transfer it to a body bag and then onto a gurney.

“Wait,” O’Malley says, watching as a small white card falls. He quickly picks it up, turns it over, and shows it to Stein.

She looks at MacBride, and O’Malley hands it to Donovan.

Donovan puts his hand out toward Roberts. “Gloves?”

Roberts hands him one from her pocket. He slips it on and flips the card over, “It’s one of my Dad’s old business cards. Bag it, run it, and make sure you are careful with the others. They may also have something hidden,” Donovan states, looking at Roberts.

Roberts nods, places it in an evidence bag, and fills it out, then closes the body bag around the young girl.

Donovan looks over the ground. “Okay, and the oldest one?”

“Over this way, by the creek,” O’Malley says, heading off.

Donovan and MacBride follow Stein and O’Malley back deep into the woods to a point near a creek bed. MacBride vomits seeing the body’s decomposition. Most of the woman’s face has been gnawed at, her eyes and nose are missing, and there is a lot of dry blood. A few maggots are working their way around and under what skin remains on her face and through the eye sockets. MacBride vomits again, and Donovan shoves her a bit to her right, holding on to her so she does not vomit near the body and contaminate the scene.

“We have called Forensic Anthropologists from the University for help,” Stein says.

“Good, leave the ones that are at least three weeks old or older so they can judge the full decomp,” Donovan explains, stooping down for a better look, “Did you find any witnesses?”

“A fisherman found the dog with the hand and a Ranger, who was through this area about three hours earlier,” O’Malley reports.

“We still have the dog?” Donovan says, looking up at him.

Stein looks puzzled. “Why?”

“There may be some trace in the dog’s mouth from the hand,” MacBride explains like a first-year student who knows the answer and blurts it out. She wipes her mouth with a white handkerchief O’Malley gave her. Donovan smiles and continues looking around.

“Where’s the Ranger?” Donovan asks.

“After we took his statement, he needed to finish his rounds through the forest,” O’Malley answers.

“I’ll want to talk with him,” Donovan says, stooping over the woman. O’Malley nods. Donovan walks back into the woods, back toward the base camp, with MacBride following, “Sushi, anyone?”

“Keep it up! Keep it up,” MacBride yells, slapping Donovan on his back and then Stein vomits. O’Malley holds her by her waistband and wrist, moving some distance from the body.

“Document, document, document!” Donovan yells back.

O’Malley holds Stein as she continues vomiting. “Good to have you back, T.”