Already dead, p.9
Already Dead, page 9
“Why didn't you clean her?”
“I did. Believe it or not, this is after I cleaned the cadaver. There’s just only so much I can do… it’s hard to tell where the dirt ends, and skin begins.”
Chase wasn’t well versed in forensic pathology, but she would have bet a significant sum of money that what this man was saying was the absolute truth.
“How old is she?”
“The body is in such a state of decomp that I can’t tell for sure. Best guess: between fifteen and thirty.”
“Broad range. Is there any test we can do to narrow that down?”
“There’s something called the Horvath clock, which uses DNA methylation to determine age. Usually, it can get within three years or so. That’s on normal samples though. Not sure of the accuracy we’re going to get from her tissue. I sent a sample out anyway, just in case.”
“Sounds expensive,” Chase remarked.
The ME shrugged.
“My lab is covering the cost. We’ll write this case up when we’re all done here. Rare to see this degree of decomp—”
“Yeah, you said that,” Chase interjected. She wasn’t interested in this man’s publishing plans or career aspirations. “What would make someone do this to themselves?”
“Not sure. Could be a psychiatric disorder, I suppose although I’ve never seen self-destruction to this level before. If we had a psych history…” As the ME spoke, Chase stared at the body, silently asking the corpse the very same question she’d posed to him. “Another possibility is that she didn’t do this to herself.”
This was something that Chase had considered. The girl was kidnapped and held without food, water, no access to personal hygiene. She escapes and hunts down her captor and exacts revenge. Ashamed of what she’d done, or perhaps just unable to suffer her own body odor, she then takes her own life. Except that Dr. Wayne Griffith III was a plastic surgeon and Roger Evans ran an electronics store—hardly the kidnapping types. They also had no connection to each other and lived in completely different states.
“…drugs.”
Chase turned to face the ME.
“What was that?”
“I said long-term drug abuse can induce psychotic episodes, delusions, and hallucinations.”
Don’t I know it, Chase thought grimly.
“Did she have drugs in her system?”
The ME shook his head, which made his mask slip a little. He adjusted it before answering.
“Ran the standard tox-screen, nothing came up. No drugs, no alcohol.”
This guy really thinks that this is some sort of academic exercise.
“Run a full panel, everything you can. I want to know what was in her system no matter how obscure or unrelated.”
“On a murderer? Who’s going to pay for—”
“It’ll make the article better, don’t you think?” Chase recalled something Leroy had said when they were investigating possible motives for the Suicide Girls’ case and how Cerebrum hadn’t shown up on any normal test. “Check for monoclonal antibodies, too.”
Instead of waiting for a reply, she moved closer to the body.
“I’m not sure you want to—” the ME let his hands fall to his thighs. “Fine, go ahead.”
Chase felt the stench physically pushing up against her, so she pushed back. She pulled the leather glove off her left hand and extended it toward the gurney. It was trembling slightly, but Chase wasn’t sure why.
Was it her fear that if she touched the body, nothing would happen? Or was she scared that if she did, the contents of her stomach would evacuate themselves and fill the mask? That would necessitate removing the mask, which would only make things worse.
Just do it, Chase. Touch the body.
Her thoughts turned to what happened when she’d come in contact with Brian Jalston.
What was that? Why did it seem so fucking peaceful? There was the tall grass, the flowing dresses… is that why I saw the woman in the white dress outside the bar in Franklin? Was Terrence right? Did I imagine it?
For most people, what they saw was reality. But Chase knew that this was not necessarily true. What you saw was what your brain interpreted as reality—your reality. Drugs, alcohol, physiological state, experiences, memories, superstitions, and biases, they can all change what you see.
But that didn’t make it real.
“Ma’am? Are you alright?”
The voice startled Chase.
Ma’am?
It was the motivation she needed. Chase extended her hand and felt slime against her palm as she came in contact with the decrepit corpse.
Chapter 18
Darkness.
No, not darkness. The notion of darkness suggests the presence of light.
There is no light.
There is nothing.
“I do not eat, for I am dead. I do not sleep, for I am dead. I do not bathe, for I am dead.”
Her liver is decomposed, her brain encephalitic. Her lungs, fibrotic. Her skin, ulcerative.
“Kill.”
The word comes from nowhere and everywhere and it fills every putrid pore and every fetid cavity.
“Kill.”
There was something in her hand.
“Kill.”
Something sharp.
“Kill.”
A knife.
“Kill.”
A promise.
“Kill.”
A way out.
“Kill.”
The word had come from the nowhere and everywhere, but now it came from her.
Chapter 19
Chase pulled her hand back and gasped. Her stomach was in knots, but it was no longer because of the smell.
What the fuck was that?
She moaned and doubled over.
“It’s okay, you’re gonna be okay.”
The ME put a hand on her shoulder, and she swatted him away.
I do not eat, for I am dead. I do not sleep, for I am dead. I do not bathe, for I am dead.
Chase forced herself straight and then, like a reverse ink blot, the darkness receded, and her vision cleared.
“I’m fine,” she said, but her voice betrayed her. It was hoarse and dry.
Thankfully, the mask muted most of this change.
Chase stepped back from the gurney. Her eyes happened on the corpse, and she immediately averted her gaze for fear of becoming nauseous again.
She had no idea what had happened. There had been a time that her subconscious had value. It was helpful. A useful tool.
But now? Now, she touched a dead body and she just felt death. She touched a pedophile rapist and felt joy.
“Fuck me,” she whispered.
“Do you want to see the other body? Roger Evans?”
Chase shook her head.
“I understand. Listen, uhh, I’m pretty much immune to what I see in here, day in, day out, but it can be quite alarming, even to an FBI agent such as yourself.”
The condescension in the man’s voice was thicker than the smell in the air. And both elicited the same urge to puke.
“Sure,” Chase muttered, unwilling to even justify the man’s comment with an argument. “I gave the secretary my card. Let me know what the drug screens pick up and how old she actually is.”
Chase walked to the door and started to remove her mask on the way.
“You can keep that on until you leave. Just put it outside the door and I’ll grab it later.”
As much as she wanted to rip the mask off and throw it at the ME, she knew that this would cause her more pain and discomfort than him.
She wore it until she was outside and then tore it off.
Floyd took one look at her and started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
Perhaps it was her tone, perhaps it was her expression.
Floyd immediately stopped laughing.
“Come on, let’s go,” she said and strode down the hallway. Floyd and the confused officer followed.
“Where we going?” Floyd asked.
“I want to see where she was killed,” Chase said.
She and he, a voice in her head reminded her. Roger Evans is the real victim here.
Chase agreed with the ethereal voice, but she also knew that the key to finding out what really happened lay with her and not with him.
***
Chase placed her hands on her hips and looked around.
They were standing outside a strip mall that consisted of a mattress shop, a dentist, and an electronics store. The latter had been co-owned by the victim, Roger Evans.
“He was killed here?”
For some reason, perhaps due to the bizarre nature of the murderer herself, Chase expected the scene to be equally as strange.
This was mundane, however, and bordered on boring.
“Just around the corner,” the police officer confirmed. “He was killed in the alley. The killer stabbed him in the throat, then slit her own. Both bodies were discovered by the owner of the mattress shop when they left for the night.”
Chase found the spot almost immediately: a dark stain on the ground next to the dumpster. She squatted and then looked up and down the alley.
The way it was angled was odd.
“You can't see the electronics store and you can barely see the parking lot from here. Was his car here?”
“Yeah, we found it parked directly in front of the shop.”
“So, Roger couldn’t see the alley from his car, either.”
Chase stood and then scratched the back of her head.
“Why would he come down here?” she asked absently. “Why would Roger leave his store and come down the alley?”
“Taking out the trash?” Floyd suggested. “Or maybe she called out to him?”
The beat cop was less interesting and less helpful.
“Nobody saw him leave the store. All we know for sure is that this is where they died.”
“We can’t be sure that this is where they first met, though,” Chase remarked. It was an innocent enough comment, but full of implication. Normally, this idea would have come sooner—a man meeting a woman in an alleyway for carnal reasons—but the condition of the killer made this seem repulsive. But so was necrophilia, and countless other equally pathological sexual perversions.
“Was Roger married?”
The officer shook his head.
“No.”
Chase moved toward the mouth of the alley and let her eyes bounce from the store to the parking lot, to the dumpster.
Why did you come down here, Roger?
Her gaze settled on Roger’s store, E-Tronics. There was a CLOSED sign hanging from the door—more evidence that the man was indeed leaving for the night when he was murdered—and numerous stickers on the glass announcing one sale or another.
“Did Roger have any employees?”
Even though the lights were off, Chase could see inside well enough to conclude that it was a small store and that the shelves didn’t appear fully stocked.
“No employees,” Floyd said, after consulting the case file. “The store was run by Roger and his partner Henry Saburra.”
“Looks like another visit is—”
Just as Chase was turning her head, something flashed in her periphery. At the back of the alley, she thought she spotted a woman in a white dress.
“Did you see that?”
It wasn’t just a woman in a white dress, but the woman in the white dress—the same one that she'd seen outside the bar in Tennessee.
“See what?” Floyd asked.
Chase pushed by him and started to walk briskly back down the alley. She thought it ended at a fence that was sprouting hedges to protect the privacy of the adjacent residential backyard, but it didn’t. It continued behind the building. There were loading bays, and additional dumpsters, but no woman in white.
“What?” Floyd asked, breathing heavily. “What is it, Chase?”
“A woman in a white dress,” Chase said as she continued to scan the laneway behind the strip mall.
There was nobody there—not a person or a car. Nothing. Not even a rat.
“You sure?”
Chase was sure. She was as sure as she had been back in Tennessee. Or was she? That was before the incident at the morgue.
Chase grimaced.
“She must've gone over the fence into someone’s yard.” But there was no indication of this, no depressed sections of shrubbery. “I saw her. She was here.”
“You want me to go around the front?” Floyd asked.
She looked at him then. His stark naivety was both pathetic and endearing.
“Yeah, go—”
“What’s happening?” The officer appeared confused and out of breath. “Did you see something?”
“Agent Adams saw—”
“Nothing,” Chase interrupted. “I didn’t see anything.”
“Then why’d you rush back here?” the cop asked.
“No reason,” Chase repeated, shaking her head. “Floyd, let’s go pay Henry a visit.”
The cop exhaled and looked confused, but he wasn’t Chase’s concern. Floyd was. And Floyd didn’t look confused, he looked uncomfortable and anxious.
“Don’t worry,” she added, “I'll do the talking.”
Chapter 20
“I can see why you left the FBI,” Floyd muttered under his breath. “All we do is drive around going to people’s houses that we can never afford.”
Chase pulled into the driveway of Henry Saburra’s two-story house on the outskirts of Charleston.
It was nice, but Chase disputed her partner’s claim that they would never be able to afford it. She, for one, was fairly certain she could afford two or three such houses. But that wasn’t worth commenting on.
“Getting disgruntled already, Floyd? You only just started your career.”
“Yeah, but some of that time was with you,” Floyd replied. He was ducking down and looking up at the house through the windshield when he said this, but when he continued, his gaze went to Chase. There was a grin on his face, but she wasn’t confident that it was one-hundred percent genuine. “That’s worth at least double.”
He’s just nervous. Nervous because he’s going to have to interact with someone grieving. He’s not nervous because he’s with me.
Maybe.
Chase turned her entire body so that she was square with Floyd. To his credit, he managed to hold her gaze for a few sentences before looking away.
“I know this is hard, Floyd. But you have to try. You have to try to get over this.”
“I know.”
Floyd interlaced his fingers in his lap and cracked his knuckles in sequence.
Pop, pop, pop.
His PTSD ran deep.
“When I have to give people bad news, I take the band-aid approach. Just say it and get it out there. As emotionless as possible.” Chase took a deep breath. “I treat them as victims, put the widow or father or whatever in a silo. They’re just—”
“I can’t do that,” Floyd whispered.
“You can. Disassociate what you’re doing from the people—why are you shaking your head? Floyd?”
He looked at her again and she saw that there were tears in his eyes.
“I can’t do that. Chase, I’ve tried. I’ve tried to look at those girls in the subway as just a collection of skin, blood, and bone. I tried to compartmentalize, to pretend that these… bodies aren’t people, they’re victims or unsubs or whatever the fuck you want to call them. But I can’t do it. I just can’t.”
Chase opened her mouth to speak then closed it again. She knew that Floyd—hell, most people—couldn’t do what she did. They hadn’t been through what she had.
There was no pride in this understanding.
There was shame.
Chase nodded continuously as she said, “Okay. Okay, follow my lead. Find what works for you. But you have to find something. You have to. Because what you’re feeling isn’t just about giving someone bad—no, not bad, the worst news you can ever imagine. It’s about you dealing with the absolutely vile things that humans are capable of. It’s about you being able to live without being so haunted by what you see during this job that you find yourself descending into a pit that you can never—never—crawl out of.”
Darkness.
No, not darkness. The notion of darkness suggests the presence of light.
There is no light.
There is nothing.
Floyd wiped his eyes and nodded.
It wasn’t a hoorah, thank you for the pep talk, coach, that Chase might have expected, but it was something.
Truthfully, she wasn’t even sure where the words had come from. It hadn’t been a planned speech but, boy, had it been a speech.
I’ve spent too much time alone with Georgina, Chase thought. Louisa is right… I need to spend more time around adults.
She got out of the car and walked up to the door.
Adults that aren’t pedophiles, murderers, and parasites.
The door was opened by a man with short, thinning blond hair and wireframe glasses. He held a black and white spotted cat to his chest, and he was stroking it gently.
“Can I help you?”
Chase and Floyd showed Henry Saburra their badges and introduced themselves.
“Is this about Roger?”
What else would it be about?
“Yes, I’m afraid it is. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“That's fine,” the soft-spoken man replied.
“Thank you. You co-own E-Tronics with Roger Evans, correct?”
Henry nodded.
“And your partner was killed in the alleyway beside the store?”
Henry’s eyes widened behind his glasses.
“Yes. That’s—” he paused and then nodded. “Yes.”
“I know this is hard, but we’re just trying to make sense of this, okay?”
Another nod.
“Why would… do you have any idea why Roger would be down the side alley? Would he regularly go down there?”
“I don’t—usually, we take turns running the store. We aren’t often there together.”
“Right, but would he maybe be taking out the garbage? Getting a delivery, maybe?”
“Yes. Garbage, maybe. After we close up, we usually dump the garbage in the bin down the side alley.”
