is nothing of the care we saw taken with the removal of the hand.' Nielsen's Scandinavian voice echoed in the silent room, deep and rumbling. 'That bit of butchery we determined to be accomplished with a rotary medical saw of the sort we use in autopsies.'
'Those things are loud as hell, aren't they?' asked Lincoln.
'Only when going through bone or the skull,' Nielsen countered.
'So whoever this creep is, either people are used to his noise, or it's perfectly normal given the circumstances, as in a butcher's shop,' suggested Stan Kelton, who'd remained stoically silent until now.
'Yes, Stan, or an autopsy room,' added Chang.
'Or he's in an area where the noise can't be heard,' suggested Lucas.
Chang, expanding on these comments, added, 'None of the previous parts of our Jane Doe-now Mira Lourdes-indicated cause of death, but now we know how she died. Here is our answer, a ruthless and clumsy beheading.'
'But who is behind this circus of death, and why?' asked Lincoln. 'Why all the care and preparation and surgical neatness and tidiness with each part after you've clumsily put an ax through someone's neck? Explain that one!'
'He's deemed it time to show us exactly how Mira died,' said Lucas, 'rubbing it in our faces.'
'I fear it's more than that,' added Meredyth. 'It's almost as if the killer is playing some sort of endgame, the rules, boundaries, bonuses, and goals known only to him. He means to shock us, to make us play against our will, to force it on us. Behind it, I believe there's a cry…a cry for help.'
Dr. Davies, gnashing his teeth, suddenly exploded. 'A cry for help, Dr. Sanger? You call what this freak is doing a cry for help? I suppose you think he needs coddling as well? Foul murdering heathen.' Davies stood and added, 'Between pulling the woman's eyes and teeth out and now this, I've seen enough to agree with the governor about the future of the electric chair in Texas, thank you.' Dr. Davies paced to the opposite end of the room, as far from the severed head as he could get.
After a silence, Chang continued. 'Once Mira was dead, the killer began the autopsy cuts from the abdominal cavity, the removal of the eyes, die teeth, the hand most of us have seen.'
Meredyth replied, 'Apparently the SOB was disappointed by our lack of response to his earlier parcels, likely dissatisfied with the lack of play he's gotten in the press as well.'
'Exactly,' agreed Jana North. 'Apparently he means to shock us more deeply into a greater response and achieve more media attention in the process.'
Lincoln asked Meredyth and Lucas to share their belief that the killer might simply be seeking serial-killer status and fame in all his efforts. The others listened to the theory, nodding, contemplating its validity and any weakness it might have. Davies returned to his seat, jaw clenched, listening to the conversation.
Anna Tewes quietly and shyly reentered the room, going to her seat, which Lucas had righted and replaced at the table. She made no eye contact with anyone in the room, looking like a deer going for her nesting ground.
'Put it away, Dr. Chang,' said Gordon Lincoln of the severed head, echoing everyone's sentiments. 'I think we've seen enough of this horror.'
Chang, with Nielsen's assistance, placed the head into a red and white ice-filled medical cooler, and Nielsen tagged it with a case number. The odors emanating from the head and the Styrofoam-lined cardboard box had begun to make people in the room choke and squirm in their seats.
'So, let me see if I understand correctly, Dr. Sanger,' said Dr. Davies, staring at Meredyth. 'You believe that this homicidal nutcase is sending us a wake-up call of sorts, that in escalating the size and awfulness of the body parts he's forwarded, that he's saying play my game and give me more media attention or else?'
'Quite possibly, yes.'
Catrina Purvis asked, 'Or else what? That if we fail to share what we know with the six o'clock news, that he'll send larger sections of his victim, and possibly parts of another victim and another until he gets what he needs from us?'
'He's always sent a written note before now, Dr. Chang,' said Lucas. 'You'll want to look closely inside the box.'
Meredyth, seeing confusion written across many of the faces in the room, explained. 'In each of the earlier treats, the Ripper was considerate enough to forward a handwritten note, and in one case a CD.'
'Is there anything else in that bloody box, Leonard?' Lincoln asked.
While Leonard tipped the box, searching for anything in addition, young Anna Tewes, a handkerchief over her mouth, her curiosity greater than her embarrassment, found her voice. 'What kind of CD was it?'
'Music from the film Dirty Dancing.'
' Time of My Life'?' Tewes asked.
Lucas nodded to a collective groan.
Leonard Chang announced, 'There's something at the bottom of the box, a note, swimming amid the fluid left by the decaying head.'
'I am detecting the odor of formaldehyde below the odor of decay,' said Nielsen.
'Yes, quite,' said Purvis. 'The head spent some time in a formaldehyde solution.'
'Folded paper,' added Chang as he fished for it and plucked it from the soup in the Styrofoam-lined box. As Leonard Chang held it up to the light, everyone stared at the spoiled, folded note that dripped of foul and runny liquid. Chang dropped the messy note onto the white sheet beside the medical cooler, which Nielsen removed to a chair beside her, giving everyone a clear view of the opening of the folded note.
Using his gloved hands and tweezers, Chang carefully plucked open the sticky folds of the note and plastered it down. Lucas came close, Meredyth inching alongside, both looking over Chang's shoulder. Perelli squeezed in as well, rolling film.
'What the hell does it say?' roared Lincoln.
Lucas read the note aloud, ''Works of magic oft do require cool heads of logic and fathomless eyes of fire….' It is written in poetic lines.'
'What the hell does that mean?' asked a frustrated Captain Lincoln.
'Like his motives, the killer's little rhymes may only have meaning for himself, a kind of mirror only he is reflected in, you see,' suggested Meredyth.
'Come again?' asked Hoskins.
'He's obviously psychotic, so it becomes necessary to appease only himself. Classic symptoms if we read between the lines.'
Jana North said, 'Or his written messages and the music may be just another way to taunt you and Lucas, to piss you off, Meredyth.'
'The son of a bitch is doing a good job of that,'
Meredyth agreed, feeling a smile flash over her, allowing a diminutive laugh to escape. But she didn't feel as brave as she wanted others in the room to think, as her eyes scanned the blurred words on the blood- and bile- stained note:
Works of magic oft do require cool heads of logic and fathomless eyes of fire….
CHAPTER 9
Captain Gordon Lincoln had given everyone a fifteen-minute break, 'Time enough to call home, let your significant other know you're going to be running late, grab a snack, make for the johns, whatever cranks your shaft.'
That fifteen minutes had gone by in the blink of an eye, it seemed, and now they had reassembled at the conference table.
'All right, people, quiet now…listen up,' began Lincoln. 'I want cooperation among you all, and I want this case cleared posthaste, pun intended. If there's any upside to this Postmortem Ripper guy, it's that we have only one victim to our knowledge, but the downside is this continued butchering of her body. Dr. Sanger informs me this may well have a powerful symbolic meaning for the killer, that he is killing her over and over with each severing.
