In all the information she'd absorbed over the last three days and nights, she had seen this but she had paid little heed to it. At least, for now, Raynack was mollified. And before leaving, he even said that he was sorry for having stormed in the way he had.
Jessica, who hated pettiness and whining and old-fashioned thinking, went back to scanning the catalogues for any sign of the instrument used to kill three confirmed cases of murder.?
FOURTEEN
Otto Boutine stood just outside the glass partition surrounding the lab, staring at her. She'd worked straight through lunch, and she'd for a time put him and the night before out of her mind. Apparently he meant to keep in touch with his people, and obviously he would continue with the 2 P.M. meeting regardless of all that was on his mind. She waved him in to learn that he was anxious for any new results on the exhumations or any of the 101 tests being run on samples taken. He seemed agitated, as if once more he had to prove himself to Leamy, the chief of operations. She led him back into her office, where he said, “I'm sorry about last night… really.”
“ No need to apologize for being human, Otto. Christ, as much as you've been through.”
“ I had no right to drag you down with me.”
“ Otto, really, I was glad that I could be there for you. Someday, you may be able to repay the kindness.”
“ No, I'll never be able to quite repay you.”
“ Now you're getting me mad with this silliness.”
“ Just accept my thanks, Jess.”
“ Consider it done.”
After a few words about the wake and how he must leave by four, he got around to the questions on his mind. “What did the exhumations prove, if anything? I just saw Zach Raynack, and he was actually civil, said something about his part in unmasking the Wekosha vampire. What did you tell him?” She explained in some detail what the exhumations had shown, and she explained to him what she had said to Raynack, and why.
He laughed. It was the first time she'd seen him smile in several days. His laugh was genuine and strong. “I take it all back, Jess, you do know how to be tactful when you want to be.”
“ I think he's calmed his brain at least to a simmer.”
“ Ahhh, Jess, you're doing so well for me here, and you're a good friend.”
She blushed in response.
“ Maybe,” he continued, “after a decent interval, I mean, maybe we could see each other outside of our official cloaks.
She smiled. “I'd like that, Otto.”
“ So, sounds like we've got something to continue our psychological autopsy with, and I think you're in for a few surprises. My people have put together a preliminary profile on our man. You're in for a treat.”
She picked up all the information she needed, including a hospital tourniquet that Robertson had placed on her earlier, tightened and removed, after which he had photographed the slight discoloration about her throat. The control mechanism of the killer? Possibly. She also carried a trach tube with a razor-sharp, beveled cutting edge. “Show-and-tell time,” she said.
J.T. met them at the conference room with a medical teaching tool, a see-through clinical model of a man's throat, some of the organ pieces spilling across the table when he placed it on the slick surface. Byrnes picked one up and shoved it back across at J.T. Ken Schultz examined the plastic voice box with curious fascination, asking J.T., “What gives with the dummy?”
“ A little reenactment of the murder according to Dr. Coran, I assume,” said Teresa O'Rourke. “This should be interesting.”
And it was. The P.P. team were glued to their seats when Jessica lowered the lights and displayed on a screen the rudiments of a tracheotomy. The trach tube was displayed in a profile view, in relation to the cricoid cartilage and the trachea. The short film explained how a tracheotomy was performed. Then the lights came up and she directed their attention to the see-through bust on the table before them. She carefully placed a tourniquet around the unwieldy shape of the see-through plastic model and after tightening it, she held up a trach tube to her eyes for them to see clearly. She then quickly and surely plunged the tube into the transparent tube that represented the see-through man's jugular, just to the right of the trachea.
The trach tube stuck and wobbled in the throat of the model, hanging there like a straw. “If there was blood passing through the jugular, it would shoot through this tube,” said Jessica. “We believe the tourniquet somewhat controlled the flow, but it would have to be a hell of a tourniquet to control it all. Still… this is how he did it, we believe.”
“ Using these exact tools?” asked O'Rourke.
“ Or something very similar.”
The team sat below a pall of silence for a long moment. Byrnes, the heftier of the two men, said, “Looks kind of awkward. Can the tourniquet be held in place, or do you have to keep hold of it?''
“ This model requires a hand be on it,” said J.T., “but there are others that do not. These are calibrated and notched.”
“ We believe the killer used the most sophisticated equipment, and that he is very knowledgeable-”
“- of anatomy, yes,” said O'Rourke. “Yes, he'd have to know exactly where the artery was located… precisely how deep to go with the cutting tube.”
“ Fits… all fits,” said Byrnes.
Jessica showed them slides of the left-handed slash wound to the throat and pointed out the blown-up pattern that indicated that the killer had painted blood on the body after she was dead and after he had slit the throat. AH these steps he took after draining all the blood he could get from the corpse.
The darkened room filled with a combined awe and a few groans.
# # #
He knew he needed more blood if he wished to continue doing blood baths. And the boss had sent him out to the Baptist Hospital in Zion, Illinois, on a special order, and there he met a mousy, bespectacled, brown-haired nurse who was left without a ride home. He gave her a ride in his van with the cooler in the back and the briefcase on the floor. He talked her into a nightcap, and before the night was over, he had capped off the night with some of her blood.
Zion was a little close to home, but the opportunity was just too perfect. The woman lived alone at the end of a street where several houses were abandoned and up for sale. He knew that no one had seen him pull into her driveway. She was so anxious for company. It was all too easy to pass on.
Her name was Renee. And now he had jars labeled Renee. Janel was gone forever, and so was Toni and so was Melanie.
He was home safe now, enjoying Renee. It could be days before the shell of her was found; meanwhile he had captured her essence, her soul, in his jars, syphoned out with her blood through his instruments.
He had once wanted to be a doctor, and when that dream ended, he had tried teaching for a while. The kids called him Teach, and he had allowed it. He taught biology but not for long. When he taught, he liked to use the real thing, and this upset some of the more immature of his students who preferred specimens to come in neatly wrapped, formaldehyde-soaked packages. He personally could not stand the stench of the stuff, but the odor of fresh blood-now, that was a different story.
He bullied the boys into being macho enough to be cut for blood samples. They responded just as he expected them to. When he pushed a girl into the same kind of corner, someone came to her defense, and there was a bit of a nasty scene, and afterward he was called into the boss's office and the principal put him on notice.
By the end of the term, he knew his contract would not be renewed. Just another person with power over his life putting it to him.
He was in his late twenties, nearing thirty, and what did he have to show for it? He had been a failure at everything he did. It was just as his father had told him all his life, that everything he touched turned to shit. The
