neighborhood.”
The body, gone rotting and decomposing over a weekend and discovered under a harsh sun, had been discovered in a New Jersey junkyard by a couple who had come in search of some used auto part.
Having learned of the dead man's much mutilated and torn body, Chesterfield police proceeded to the scene, only to find six hungry and nasty pit bulls in various, eerily posed stances on and around the body-white, foaming slaver dripping from each muzzle. The animals, standing guard about the body, protective of their kill, had prompted the elderly couple to call 911 immediately. Each of the starved and rabid dogs continued to take additional strips of meat from the carcass from time to time until the arrival of the infamous Pet Patrol police. They came armed with their dart guns. Six of the dogs by this time, lying over the body, were in the throes of paralysis, the rabies overtaking them completely. They were easily put down, one shot after the next, but the seventh-only recently infected and in the first stages of the disease-proved more difficult to target, hiding in the recesses of the yard. The seventh dog belonged to the junkyard owner, who professed no knowledge of the other dogs or Horace.
The junk dealer, it was reported, had been more upset about the loss of his dog than the fact a man had died on his premises.
The police could not identify the dead man. He remained a person the junkyard dealer claimed not to know, or to ever have done business with in the past.
Business had been bad, the junk man told police, so he had shut down for a couple of weeks and had taken a long-needed vacation. He claimed not to know how six additional pit bulls and a dead guy wound up inside his fence without any apparent break-in. Somebody lied somewhere, somehow, to someone. Either that or the killer knew not only how to make rabid dogs but how to pick expensive locks and subdue a junkyard dog on hand.
Regardless, Jessica Coran, having dissected hundreds of corpses, hadn't been so amazed by a body in years. J. T., her male counterpart in the lab and her most trusted friend, pointed out that she really ought to at least attempt to contain her amazement over Horace. J. T. had jokingly told her, “I fear that the young and impressionable interns might get the wrong idea-that maybe you like seeing unknown victims of brutal attacks by vicious pit bulls come rolling through the door.”
“Short of a bear attack or an attack by a wolf pack,” Jessica retorted, “I imagine Horace's end to be the worst way to go out of this world, the pain absolutely excruciating.”
J. T. nodded, bit on his lower lip, and replied, “I can't imagine a worse way to die.”
“Maybe one,” she countered. “Did you read that horrible story in the Post about the woman's body discovered in a park someplace in London in which the victim had been staked to some sort of cross and actually crucified?”
“Oh, yeah… how awful. Suffocation, slow and painful. Still, I think the rabid dog attack even worse.”
“You really think so?” Jessica had her doubts.
“Oh, absolutely. I mean these dogs were hungry, mad, and vicious.”
The dogs, all but the junkyard dog, had been rabid. They'd not only killed John Doe, aka Horace, their mindless attack had filled his body with the rabies virus. The neurological toxin commonly referred to as rabies did not kill Horace, as it had not the time to incubate in his wounds as yet. Given the number of bites and tears to his flesh, and the fact he'd been attacked by not one but six rabid animals who had ripped at one another as well, meant that the level of neurotoxin in his system would begin to work in half the normal three days to three months.
In time, the poison would have reached its full deadly power. His killers, banking on getting away, meant to leave him with a little something extra.
“Someone desperately wanted Horace dead.”
Their eyes had met over the autopsy a hundred times, matching the number of punctures to the body. Each realizing that Horace could not have lived long even had he somehow miraculously been able to find an escape route from the gang of starved and rabid animals that'd repeatedly bitten and torn away at him. In fact, Horace's corpse remained riddled with the rabies virus, frozen in place. Perhaps his killers believed it a fitting gift to leave him with in the hereafter, a kind of forged chain for his ghost to rattle for eternity.
J. T. said, “Police in Chesterfield, New Jersey, tell us by all indications that Horace had put up a hell of a fight. He broke some doggy legs and bit off a couple of ears during the struggle.”
This made Holbrook and Chen gulp in unison.
Jessica continued the assault on the young interns by saying, “They also surmise from cigarette butts, chewing tobacco wrappers, and a woman's cosmetic case dropped at the gate where Horace's final moments of agony ended, that his killers had had a front-row party, applauding the man's death even as he must have begged their mercy.”
“Still,” cautioned J. T., “all the speculation remains circumstantial with the consistency of candlewick smoke, nothing that can hold a DA's attention. The most interesting element about the case, aside from the full-body tattoos, so far as Jessica and I are concerned, is the total lack of identification save the tattoos. Perhaps our only hope of ever IDing this brutalized man is here in his skin-art.” J. T. punctuated by jabbing his ballpoint at Horace.
Jessica felt a great pang of remorse for the unidentified man, telling the others in the room that “Horace, here, suffered a death as no one should, in a trap from which he could not survive even if he had managed to somehow claw his way free of the dog attack. Given the remoteness of the area and the time of death, which the New Jersey coroner placed at between two and three in the a.m., what hope did he have for survival? His blood loss alone was massive.”
J. T. fielded the question with a question, replying, “Short of stumbling over a ten-foot-high fence and then stumbling on a medical team, what chance did poor Horace have?”
“He… he had no hope whatsoever,” replied young Holbrook, who then bit back his lower lip.
“What kind of devious mind could concoct so heinous a murder and so pitiable a death?” Jessica now asked, as much to herself as her two interns. “Six dogs, each one infected, the dogs themselves at the slavering stage of the rabid animal. All timed perfectly. The dogs had to've belonged to some one-or to more than someone; they had to have had a sales history, a past of their own.”
“Needle marks screamed out, located after the hair on each dog carcass had been shaved and the skin microscopically examined, revealing the puncture wounds where the rabies had been introduced to the dogs,” explained J. T., who lifted a set of photos from a nearby table, adding, “We have photos of the dog autopsies. If we solve this case, believe me, it will be one for the books.”
Jessica continued, using her scalpel like an index finger and saying, “Whoever the killer or killers are, they knew about animal venoms, and how to handle them. The doctor in Jersey who examined the executed dogs knew her stuff as well. She was said to have once been a veterinarian before becoming an autopsy specialist. This helped tremendously. Any other well-meaning autopsiest might not have taken as much time and care with the executed animals.”
“Meanwhile,” added J. T., “local authorities scoured every pet shop and animal shelter and anyone with a license to raise dogs, and anyone with a history of killing or brutalizing animals. For the dogs, too, are victims in this crime.”
The two young people stood dumbfounded at such intentional brutality. Jessica feared for both that the first case involving them, even peripherally, could prove their last if their stomachs gave out. Still, Jessica believed in throwing the young who dared enter the field of death investigation into the deep end of the cesspool.
When neither student had anything to add, and it became painfully obvious that this was so, Jessica nearly shouted at her young Asian intern, Yon Chen, “Get a lot of photos, rolls and rolls of photos. And I want close-ups of every tattoo remaining intact.”
“You mean? Effery wound, jes?“ That, too, but I want clear and large shots of the tattoos, understand? And I want them blown up to eight by tens, got it?”
“Got it?” Yon Chen bit back another question, letting it slide. “No, Yon… Don't ask me if I've got it, do you got-have it? Do you know what 1 want?”
“Jes, got it.”
Jessica gnashed her teeth, hoping nothing was lost in the translation, and went on. “Then we're finished here, Yon, except for those photos. See to it they're on my desk by tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, Doctor. First thing 'morrow on your desk.”
Jessica looked dubiously at the girl whose big, innocent, black marble eyes seemed to mark her as entirely
