Jessie, really!”
“ Forget sorry, just get in there and set up the shots.”
He nodded sheepishly, grinning in an attempt to further apologize. “Madhouse around here,” he muttered, but she pushed through to the conference room.
Boutine instantly welcomed them, his voice cordial. Around a large oak table some of the sternest-looking men and women she had ever seen gathered in one place stared at her. She knew some of them by name, others by reputation. They were all top-notch agents brought together as a think-tank team to brainstorm what had happened at Wekosha. One job they had to do was to determine if in fact the Wekosha killer was a serial killer or not.
Jessica stared back at the eyes pinned on her. Some of these people must surely resent the intrusion her presence represented. It was a break with the way things were normally done, and they must wonder why. Boutine began by introducing her, a completely unnecessary gesture, since they'd all heard that she was coming to the meeting. Earlier her presence at such a meeting was purely absentee, representation only through forensics reports. Boutine had been around for enough years to remember the time when coroners and pathologists were called in much more often, when physical evidence and psychological profiling were more closely aligned. He was speaking of that now.
“ We're trying an old approach, and we're calling it psychological autopsy. Psychological autopsies have been done since Marilyn Monroe's death, to determine the psychological state of the victim by behavioral scientists, but we're going to twist that a bit and add to our behavioral scientists in this team, a medical examiner, so that the 'autopsy' in psychological autopsies isn't forgotten. Enter Dr. Coran, who, by the way, did the field forensics work we've been discussing. I trust she has more for us to ponder. Jessica,” he finished, gesturing for her to take the floor.
She breathed deeply, noticing for the first time that Chief William Leamy was among those at the table. “I've brought you some items that may assist you in the Wekosha case, some slides in particular which are quite revealing.”
“ We've seen the photos,” said Ken Schultz, one of the field agents at the table.
“ You've seen nothing like these,” she countered. “I assure you.”
“ From what we've seen, some of us are thinking ritual murder, satanism,” said Stan Byrnes. “The condition of the body, the staging, the draining of blood, ropes and-”
“ I think we're satanism-happy lately,” said Teresa O'Rourke. O'Rourke had a quiet yet powerful style, and she'd chalked up enough wins to turn heads, make people listen. “If you read the photos and the reports closely enough, the fact the body parts were removed after death, and that a kind of 'staging' went into it all… well, most satanic ritual staging of one kind or another goes on before the actual death blow. They like to prolong the suffering of a sacrificial lamb.”
“ True, but-” one of the men started to counter. “Agent O'Rourke is right,” said Jessica quickly, trying to seize back control of the meeting, and to gain the other female's support in the bargain. Everyone fell silent to hear her explanation.
“ You all know as well as I that all murders are not equal… that someone has to decide on the level of viciousness. In the past it was easy-if a jury decided you were guilty, you were executed. Now, much to our horror, there are nuances and calibrations beyond any nightmare concocted in any film or fiction. One way to measure the heinousness of a crime is by the pain and suffering of the victim.”
Everyone was nodding, a good sign. Boutine signaled her with his eyes to continue.
“ Was the victim conscious? For how long? What was done during that period of time to inflict pain, suffering? I can tell you this much…” She slowed, pausing, gathering speed. “The killer took most of her blood away with him.”
“ What?” asked Byrnes.
“ In jars or packs or Tupperware, I don't know… but he carried most of it off with him. Indications and information tell us that the cabin where the murder occurred was not occupied long enough by the killer to allow him sufficient time to consume the blood before he left, and having not found it on the premises, I've assumed-”
“ But to carry it away?”
“ For what, future use?”
“ All I know is that it'd be difficult to consume two-and-a-half liters of blood in one sitting. Given the victim's body weight, the killer would've likely taken her blood in two sittings, hours apart… possibly three sittings. He didn't stay long enough in the area to do that, so he had to have packed it and carried it off with him.”
“ This Bud's for you,” said O'Rourke dryly.
There was muted, nervous laughter in response. “But there's more,” she said, “and worse information for you to swallow.”
She indicated to J.T. that she was ready for the slide presentation. When the first slide came up, no one aside from Jessica Coran and John Thorpe knew what they were looking at. The super-magnified photo of the throat section she had taken from Candy Copeland looked like an enormous spongy landscape on some barren planet, pockmarked and dune-covered. The photo was three-dimensional and in color, state-of-the-art.
“ What're we looking at, Dr. Coran?” Boutine asked for the others.
“ A close-up of the dead girl's jugular at the exact center.” She moved closer and using a pointer she located the geographic center of the jugular. “You will see here the perfectly formed circle like a Cheerio. This is not a normal aberration, but a wound, a wound that takes a great deal more precision to make than any slash to the throat such as the one you saw in the photos of the victim.”
“ But what does it mean?” asked O'Rourke, nearly off her seat with curiosity.
“ The killer used some sort of control mechanism-a device for gauging the flow of the victim's blood from her body.”
There was a long silence in the room before Byrnes said, “What kind of device?”
“ I don't know.”
“ Christ, you don't suppose it's a… a fang incision, a bite?” asked Ken Schultz.
O'Rourke said, “Don't be ridiculous.” Everyone else remained silent.
“ You must have some idea, a guess?” persisted Byrnes.
“ A valve, a tube… something to tap into the… well, her blood supply…” She hesitated.
“ Before the bastard got around to lapping up the remainder,” finished Boutine. “This guy's bad news… real bad news, people.” Chief William Leamy cleared his throat in the darkened room and asked, “Dr. Coran, do you know of any device used in medicine to drain away blood?”
“ Certain catheters working on a syphoning principle are used to draw off unwanted liquids from the lungs, but no. This is like putting a T-section in the blood vessel and rerouting the blood flow. No such device I know of in medicine works this way.”
“ How long did she suffer?”
“ Between twenty and thirty minutes. Lower extremities would have gone numb first, while the muscles in the head, eyes, and mouth would've continued to function, as blood was getting to these areas. Death would have ensued before all the blood was drained, but it would have been a slow death, and a death in which the victim would feel her life virtually running out of her. As to the crime scene itself, sir, a true crazy quilt of clues which were intentionally scattered-in more ways than one.”
Will Leamy spoke for them all when he said, “We can all agree on the heinousness of the crime. We've got to locate and put this madman away, before he strikes again.”
Everyone in the room knew that this was no simple task. Even if they could determine a suspect, so far they had nothing but DNA evidence from the semen to connect him to the scene. Furthermore, it had been determined that the semen possessed a virtual plethora of common elements, and so far nothing even remotely striking about it. Further analysis would be done, but Jessica was skeptical that J.T. would find anything additional, much less useful. It was like having the fingerprint but no suspect to match it with.
Jessica was pleasantly surprised by the warm looks and the nods and a few handshakes the others offered when the lights came up and Boutine called an end to the meeting. The method of proceeding from this point was to give the evidence presented time to saturate, for the PPT people to form some opinions about the kind of killer they were dealing with. Jessica had expected that the think-tank psycho-profiling team would be cooler toward her
