Jessica felt his eyes on her as she finished what few words she could muster for the deceased young woman, for now Jane Doe. The brilliant sun reflecting off the water was blinding, burning, hateful to the eyes, which she had kept protected with her sunglasses all the while she worked. The polarized lenses didn’t distort colors like other glasses, so they had served her well here while she’d labored over the body, the lenses also cutting down on the awful glare, so much so that she could see the trail of lively, excitable minnows nipping at her feet below the surface. The miniature fish also tried to nip at the rest of the corpse, wanting it in death to give over to them continued life.
EIGHT
The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.
Rainbow Heaven Beach Resort
Dr. Andrew Coudriet, like Jessica Coran before him, stood now in an alcove of the cathedral of the saltwater Atlantic, up to his calves after having removed shoes and socks and rolled up his pants. His own near-alabaster skin was not so far removed from that of the corpse, and the sight before him was beginning to be too damned common, angering as well as disgusting him. Neither statistical data on suicides nor accidental drownings could account for the sheer number of bodies washing up on Florida shores this season.
And all this bleached-white death was so damnably stark by contrast to this brilliant, lovely morning with its heady sea breeze that whispered tales of immortality in the air. The ocean swells were mere curious creatures this morning, rising only a soft few inches in this estuary where the land developers had placed their pinnacle of a resort, which shone in the sun like something out of Oz, but the swells, like persistent, hungry dogs, kept up a constant begging at his calves, soaking the fabric of his pants in ever-higher increments, even as the water cradled the body in a rocking, back-and-forth fashion.
“ To and fro, lullaby and good night,” he murmured to the dead as the next swell hit and then moved away from him, trying to take the too-heavy body back with it.
He had taken most of what he wanted from the dead girl as other officials waited to do their jobs, each looking on from afar. One of the hotel guests, looking down from his window, had that morning stepped from his shower to a balcony and spotted the corpse as it washed ashore here. He’d immediately dialed 911 and everyone was put on alert. Coudriet was on his way to another crime scene when he was diverted here by the call.
The slightest pressure on the water-soaked corpse stripped off such vital portions as the nails and epidermal skin layer, some of which had miraculously held. He believed that if he were extremely careful fingerprints could be had from one or both hands, since the next layer of skin below the epidermis had miraculously remained intact- soupy, but intact. If he could cut away the fingertips and drop them into a preservative now, he’d have them. But it would take everything he had and another pair of hands. Unfortunately, his two assistants were on yet a third drowning victim call, likely just that-a drowning victim. Perhaps even the body which Coran and Santiva had surrounded was a simple drowning victim. He dared not think that they had three murder victims in one bright morning here. He knew for certain that door number two-this victim-was like those murdered before her. The rope burns about the wrists and neck would no doubt become evident when, back at the crime lab, Coudriet removed the ropes which still clung to the deceased, trailing ribbons of torture and abuse.
He had at first considered this a copycat killing because of the thick nylon ropes dangling about the body’s throat and tied hands, but closer examination had determined this to be the work of the Night Crawler. Of this, he was certain.
The tail ends of the ropes at both neck and hands floated in serpentine loops, two trapped black vipers.
Removing the ropes here and now would only cause a further loss of tissue, and coloration with it, to the water. Best to leave well enough alone. Still, the cause of death was as evident to him as the glare of the sun over the water’s sparkling surface, despite the bloating and the folds of tissue which worked so hard at masking the features and the facts.
“ I’ll need another man here!” he shouted over his shoulder. “A volunteer, someone experienced and capable.” Even as he shouted it, he wondered who was experienced in such horror.
One of the paramedics didn’t hesitate, wading out into the water in a pair of boots she’d donned earlier, announcing, “I’m your woman, Dr. Coudriet.”
Coudriet found himself staring back at a woman who looked like a housewife in a Pillsbury doughboy ad, her plump form and chubby cheeks offset by the stern and steely gaze of a woman who meant business despite her pleasant, white-toothed smile. “Serena Hoytler, Dr. Coudriet. I’ve hauled a few corpses to you over the years. I’ll be happy to assist in any way I can.”
He didn’t recognize her, but then he seldom mixed with the paramedics, and certainly not a woman paramedic, although he wondered how he had not noticed her before. Then again, at a distance, given her dress, she looked like a heavyset male paramedic. Still, she had a grace about her, the way she carried her weight, and how her eyes sparkled, he thought now.
“ You see these surgical scissors?”
“ Yes, sir.”
“ I want you to know what you’re in for. We can have no mistake here.”
“ Yes, sir.”
“ I’m about to cut off her-the fingertips at the joint.”
Serena swallowed hard but simply nodded.
He was delighted that she didn’t ask him why he was going to take the fingertips.
“ They will pop free and the water will eat them up if we don’t do this correctly,” he continued.
“ Just tell me what to do, sir.” He stared at her, nodding, saying, “Good… good. Now just take one of the large plastic bags from my right coat pocket and hold it around the woman’s hands.”
Serena saw that the dead girl’s hands were tied together with thick, black nylon rope in what appeared an unyielding knot. Saying nothing, she reached into Coudriet’s lab coat pocket, jerked out one of the large plastic bags and pried open its lip. She next cautiously took the dead girl’s hands without the slightest recoil and slipped them into the poly- urethane bag.
Coudriet closely watched the paramedic’s hands, and saw that Serena Hoytler was not trembling in the slightest. “I’ll make the cuts inside the bag. That way, we catch what we need, you understand?”
“ Affirmative, sir.”
“ Good… good…” He had to hand it to her. She had grit, unlike many of the other paramedics-male and female-he’d employed over the years.
They went to work, Serena looking away whenever the scissors closed around a joint; but she couldn’t close her ears to the little crunch each cut made, and she could feel the weight in the bag around the bloated hand increase with each cut.
“ There, done,” he finally said. “We have them all.”
“ Do we do the other hand now?” she asked, her voice steady.
“ You lost count. I’ve done both hands; I’ve got all the useful tips I’ll be taking. What few are left would prove a useless exercise.”
Serena Hoytler breathed in her relief. “Glad I could help, Doctor.”
“ I couldn’t’ve done it without you. Thank you, Mrs. Hotler.”
“ Hoytler, sir, Miss… Ms., actually. I divorced my husband six years ago, returned to school, got my two-year degree, finished the medic program at State, and I’ve been working the meat wagon ever since.”
Coudriet saw that she was pretty, despite her size; her eyes were filled with a radiance he hadn’t seen in a woman in a long time, and this radiance seemed to be for him, directed at him. Now, staring at her, he found her reddening up, actually blushing.
