TWO
My days are in the yellow leaf, The flowers and fruits of life are gone, The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin November 12, 2004
“Mothers… you gotta back pain in dem joints? Den back outta dem joints.”
“I'd say the cure was worse than the patient.”
“Yeah, surefire way to get rid of that pesky ol' sciatica…” muttered Special Agent in Charge, Xavier Darwin Reynolds to the others from the crime-scene unit, who were gathered about the victim, each in turn taking a verbal joust at the impossibly insane crime scene.
Not only had the victim's back been splayed wide open by an as-yet-undetermined blade, but her insides looked out at the detectives-shyly hiding, peeking out through a bloody rectangle in her back the size of a French- louvered window.
All surrounding tissue and remaining bones had collapsed inward on organs untouched by the killer and the bone cutter used to extract the spinal column from its calcified moorings. And so the back window stood open like some bizarre pirate's chest, literally plundered as if an archeological dig, and the plunderer had made off with a strange treasure indeed, leaving all the rest. He had not cored out her eyes. Had not taken any teeth. Had taken nothing of her features, asked nothing of her breasts, nothing of her genitalia. Only the serpent of bone.
An enormously disturbing sight for which the only defense seemed stark, grim humor which now, thanks to the lead investigator's having joined in, opened the floodgate wide.
“Least she had-with an emphasis on had-backbone.”
“Somebody really had a boner on for her.”
“Gonna need one helluva big pot to flavor the ol' bisque with that ham-bone!”
“Ham-bone, ham-bone!” sang a tall female agent.
“Gone are the days of spine and roses,” said a photographer.
“Gives new meaning to the old spinal tap, don't it?” came another.
“Render unto us a few bars, Jerry, 'Take me BAAAAACK to ol' Virginy
“Guy needs serious back up.”
“All right, enough with the vertebral backgammon,” said FBI Medical Examiner Dr. Jessica Coran, who stood staring from the small foyer leading into the apartment. Jessica had just arrived from the airfield, her auburn hair burnished and gleaming in the light filtering through the apartment windows. Jessica's keen eye immediately crossed swords with the awful wound done the victim, when a large policewoman stepped between her and the body-cutting off her line of vision. Jessica silently thanked the woman, wondering if it were intentional or otherwise.
The small army of men and women of the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, FBI field office crime-scene unit fell silent. The others watched this guru of forensics who'd flown in from Quantico, copiloting the FBI Lear Jet from Virginia to oversee their case.
Jessica quickly donned a hair net over her ample hair, which had been pulled tight in a ponytail for the work. She slipped a pair of gloves over her smooth, suntanned fingers and worked them over each hand. She wondered if any of the others could read what was going on behind her shining eyes. Eyes now sending messages to a brain that truly didn't want to cooperate with the image she'd seen only photos of until now. She stalled for time, swallowing back the bile that threatened to erupt on her first sight of the god-awful hacking the victim had taken.
“Ever see anything like this in the D.C. area?” asked one of the field ops, a strikingly large young woman with a blue jacket over her vomit-stained business suit. It appeared from her nonchalance that she'd been in and out of the crime-scene area, and that she'd popped something akin to Prozac. Her dangling name tag read Amanda Petersaul.
She extended a gloved hand and Jessica pumped it. “I'm Agent Petersaul. Everyone just calls me Pete.”
“You mean the boy's've decided you're OK, so they graced you with a nickname.”
“Exactly.”
“What do you make of it so far?” Jessica indicated the deceased.
“You can't be in this crime scene without steppin' in it, so you'd best-”
“Put on the booties, I can see that,” replied Jessica. A curving river of blood painted the carpet all round them there in the foyer. They stood on the dried stuff and it felt crunchy beneath Jessica's shoes. She placed on the booties and tied them about her ankles.
Jessica looked toward the body a second time. Agent Pete's considerable size continued to act as a kind of blind from which Jessica could safely view it without anyone seeing her pained wince. She'd been trained not to show emotion under any circumstance at a crime scene. Her number of years and experience had taught her the only way to gain the trust and authority required to take control in mutilation murder cases was via an aloofness and professional acumen that could not be questioned.
“This is like looking at a war wound,” commented Agent Petersaul.
“You come to us through the military?” asked Jessica.
“How'd you guess?”
“Psychic powers and that pendant around your neck, GI issue.”
“Had it made at great expense.” She fingered the golden numbers: 101st Airborne. “First in, last out.”
“You see duty in Iraq?”
“Pakistan and Iraq. Fucked up place in a fucked up world, yeah.”
“Fucked up? Which one?”
“Both.”
“Oh, yes, of course. How're we doing there in the Mideast now? Think we'll win the post-war economic crisis?”
“The natives have gone ape-shit for American goods, means and ways. They love all things Western and are embracing apple pie, Elvis, McDonald's and Fox News Network.”
“Sounds like Japan.”
“Been there? Tokyo?”
“Yeah, that and Beijing, China-worlds apart. Beijing is 1930 America, while Tokyo is futuristic America- Minority Report time.” Jessica looked into the hefty agent's wide face, and the full-figured Pete smiled back. “Best I get to work, Agent,” Jessica added now.
Petersaul nodded and stepped aside. “Yeah, best, but”- she broke into an Elvis oldie- “didja-eva, eva get, eva get one, eva get one-a-those girls boys…”
Smacks of a virgin to such horror and trying to compensate, Jessica thought, likely her first year out of the academy with a lot of questions and horror ahead of her, unless she dropped out of this line of work. Jessica calmly replied, “I believe I've seen every kind of iced and diced corpse, male and female, in the book, thanks to my boss at Quantico, Agent Petersaul.”
“So I've been told by Darwin. Sexual mutilation murders, hearts ripped out, vaginas and breasts butchered, cranium's opened and brains scooped out.”
Others listened in with interest.
“However, I can safely say that I've never come across a victim with so horrid a gash of flesh removed from her body as this unfortunate woman.”
Unfortunate, she rolled the word over in her mind. The understatement of the century, for this crime rivaled even the Skull-digger's work. Where he robbed his victims of their gray matter, cannibalizing it, whoever had done this latest, most-warped atrocity had robbed his victim of her entire vertebral column.
“Whataya suppose he does with the spine?” asked the young lady agent.
