“Out here?”
“Yes. It would be helpful and speed things up if we can check to see if anything is left inside her mouth.”
“I don’t know.” Prashard shrugged and scratched his head as though Maggie was asking him to do the autopsy out in the field. “It’s highly unusual.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Prashard,” Racine yelled at him. “Just do it.”
To Maggie’s stunned surprise, Prashard started getting out latex gloves and a pair of forceps from his bag. Then he took position over the body, bending stiffly at the waist instead of getting down on his knees.
Maggie glanced at Racine, who seemed neither pleased nor angry with the assistant medical examiner. Instead, the detective came in closer, crossed her arms over her chest and waited, pointing the penlight, ready to peek inside. Suddenly moonlight streamed into the exit, just above the arch, and illuminating the woman’s whole face, making her eyes glitter.
“Jesus!” Racine said. “That’s pretty freaky.” She glanced back at Maggie, and Maggie tried to remember when there had been a full moon, or if it was still to come. And did it mean anything?
“What exactly are we looking for?” Prashard asked, ignoring Racine and the sudden moonlight as he continued to peel back the gray duct tape, inch by inch, taking care to not lift away any skin. Maggie grabbed a plastic evidence bag from Prashard’s case and held it open for him to put the tape in.
“Should be a capsule,” Racine answered. “Check the inside of her cheeks.”
“You mean like poison?”
“Just check, Prashard. Jesus!” The detective seemed a bit unnerved and impatient.
Prashard finally opened the woman’s mouth, but before he could insert a gloved finger, quarters came spilling out.
“What the hell?” Racine shone the penlight, so that even standing over Racine’s shoulder, Maggie could see quite clearly. The woman’s mouth looked like a black, decaying slot machine filled with shiny coins, spilling out like she’d just hit the jackpot.
CHAPTER 41
From his corner suite at the Ritz-Carlton, Ben Garrison could see the Boston Common in one direction and the Charles River in the other. The lush suite was a long-overdue reward to himself and hopefully a good-luck charm for more good things to come. Not that he was superstitious, but he did believe that attitude could be a powerful tool. There was no harm in a few rewards and props now and then to boost that attitude. It made all the crap he had to deal with worthwhile; crap like crank phone calls and cockroaches. Small stuff compared to what he had dealt with in the past.
He remembered several years ago living out of a leaky one-man tent in a smelly, rat-infested warehouse in Kampala, Uganda. It had taken him months to learn Swahili and gain the locals’ trust. But it paid off. In no time, he had enough explicit photographs to break the story about a mad scientist luring homeless people from the streets of Kampala for his radical experiments.
Ben still had several of those photos tacked up on the walls of his darkroom. In order to feed her family of five kids, one woman had allowed the so-called scientist to remove her perfectly healthy breast, leaving a scar that looked like the asshole had chopped it off with a machete. An old man had sold the use of his right ear, now mutilated beyond repair, for a carton of cigarettes.
Ben had chosen a slow-speed black-and-white film to bring out the textures and details with natural side lighting. When he developed the prints, he had used high-contrast-grade paper to accentuate the dramatic effect, making the blacks dense and silky and the whites blindingly bright. Through his magic, he had managed to transform those hideous scars into art.
He was a genius when it came to catching hopelessness, that flicker of despair that, if he waited long enough, would always reveal itself in his subjects’ eyes. All it took was patience. Yes, he was truly a master at capturing on film the whole spectrum of emotions, from terror to jealousy to fear and evil. After all, the eyes were the window to the soul, and Ben knew he could one day capture the image of the soul on film. Patience.
At the time, both
That was back in the days when kinky sex gave him a rush and kept him satisfied for a while. But there wasn’t anything that could equal the rush of these past several weeks.
Of course, the best rush of all would be to see the Reverend fucking Everett’s smug face when he finally got a visit from the FBI. Surely, even Racine and her bunch of Keystone Kops would make the connection and soon. Although if and when the feebies attempted to raid Everett’s precious compound, there probably wouldn’t be much left to investigate. If Everett truly believed he was in danger of being arrested, Ben knew the good reverend’s blind little sheep would be prepared for a suicide drill, like during the raid on that shitty little cabin on the Neponset River.
He had heard about the cyanide capsules from an ATF agent who had been on the scene. Couple more drinks and the guy probably would have given Ben more details. But mentioning the capsules had been enough. Besides, he had seen them firsthand when he spent two days inside Everett’s little compound, that concrete barricade that looked more like a prison than the utopia Everett professed it to be.
He’d also discovered that Everett had enough explosives to blow a nice-size hole in the Appalachian Mountains. The crazy thing was, Everett didn’t have the explosives for some terrorist attack. Just like the stockpile at that cabin in the woods-no complex, intricate conspiracy takeover. No, not at all. Instead, it was all for protection, all to protect his fucking fortress if anyone dared try to come in and take away his flock. It would be sort of a cross between Jim Jones’s purple Kool-Aid and Timothy McVeigh’s fertilizer bomb. What a mess the feebies would have to clean up. And boy, would they have some explaining to do. Probably make Waco look like a cakewalk.
That’s if the FBI even made it past all of Everett’s booby traps. The asshole had the entire woods filled with Viet Cong-like surprises. Ben couldn’t help wondering if his making shingle-nail pipe bombs and chemical-burn grass rags were a few of the reasons the guy had gotten kicked out of the military. Oh, but for good measure, the thoughtful reverend had posted what he probably believed to be disclaimer signs outside the area. Signs that said stuff like Survivors Will Be Prosecuted and Step Beyond This Point Only at Your Own Risk.
It was when Ben had seen the signs that he’d made the decision to gain entrance as a pathetic lost soul rather than as a renegade journalist sneaking through the woods. Weeks before he began his pathetic lost soul’s charade, he had muddied himself up like the Three Hills tribe of Mozambique had shown him, covering every inch of his body with a paste mixture, surprised that he could still remember its basic recipe. Even Everett’s ex-World Wrestling Federation bodyguards hadn’t seen him sliding through the tall grass and blending in with the tree bark. He had learned a lot that visit. The main thing had been that no one could sneak in-or out, for that matter-without getting his fucking head or leg blown off.
Ben checked his wristwatch. He had plenty of time. From what he had overheard at the District rally Saturday night, Everett’s boys wouldn’t be ready yet for a few hours. He decided to call down to room service. Maybe even check out the whirlpool bath. He’d enjoy himself, reward himself for a short time, then get back to work.
CHAPTER 42
