woman’s remains. As fresh and undisturbed as the crime scene had been, it had revealed nothing to police other than the fact that they had a dead body on their hands and that said remains had been intentionally buried in a shallow grave.
The only hopes left in that empty wake were the autopsy results along with the off chance that someone had witnessed something and that they would come forward. The latter option quickly became the center of an official media blitz that rivaled almost any ad campaign you could imagine: everything from regular television appeals, radio spots, constant mentions on the nightly news, and full-page ads in the metropolitan newspaper. Calls came in to the Major Case Squad at a steady rate for the first few days and even ballooned in volume at one point before tapering off to a modest trickle. Unfortunately, each potential lead consisted only of attention seekers and frustrating dead ends.
As to the postmortem, there were clues to be had, most definitely. However, they were only indicators as to what had occurred during Larson’s final few hours of life; and eventually, what had brought about her death. Unfortunately, they were not the kind of telltale signs needed to help identify her killer or even convict him, should he be found. There were no fingerprints, no foreign hair or traceable fibers, nothing.
What the autopsy did reveal, however, was that she had been brutally tortured; and, the laundry list of things that had been done to her read like a script from a bad ‘hack and slash’ horror flick.
Ligature marks on her forearms, wrists, and calves, along with patterned bruising showed that she had been bound, possibly in a chair, for several hours. Hypostasis of the blood in her lower extremities showed that she had died in that position and remained there for some time before being moved. Deep cuts and punctures scored her torso, most having occurred while she was still alive, although some well after she had expired. Her breasts had been severely mutilated, and she was pockmarked with well over one hundred cigarette burns of varying degrees. I don’t suppose any of these came as a great surprise to us considering the stigmata that had displayed across Felicity’s body the night she channeled Larson. Still, the photos were more than just a little hard to take.
There was vaginal and anal tearing, indicating that she had been violently raped, but there was no trace of semen whatsoever. This lead the investigators to believe that either there had been no ejaculation, a condom had been used, or more likely, due to the amount and nature of the trauma, that the penetration had been performed with a foreign object. Conspicuously absent from the trauma was bruising, which meant she had been defiled post mortem, a small consolation for her.
Another of the glaring observations was, of course, the fact that her head was missing. This, and the fact that hacksaw marks were found on the exposed vertebrae instantly tied her homicide to those of Tamara Linwood and Sarah Hart. That was something we had all suspected, and in fact known in our own way, but the physical evidence simply proved us out.
The final bulleted point in the report was also one of particular note. There were various torn ligaments and ruptures within striated muscle tissues. These, coupled with several blistered marks on her skin that were consistent with electrical burns, told a gruesome tale in and of themselves.
There had been deeper dimension to her senseless torture- an added layer that had racked her both mentally and physically. And, it provided an explanation for the ethereal electrical storm my wife and I had endured and barely survived.
In the end, the listed cause of death was asphyxia. The notes explaining the possible cause outlined that various indicators pointed to the fact that it may have been due to prolonged high-voltage current passing through the thoracic wall- the result being violent spasms of the intercostal muscles and diaphragm.
In short, she had been electrocuted into suffocation but not before enduring many hours of unimaginable agony.
The report had been a horrific chore for me to read. Even as jaded as I had become these past few years, simply reading what had been done to this woman made me physically ill. The darkness one had to possess in their very soul to do such a thing to another living being was unfathomable to me. Equally distressing was the fact that I realized whoever had done this had done it not out of anger or spite, but because he enjoyed it. It brought him pleasure in the most intimate sense, and that very concept sent bile rising in my throat.
I had to set the folder aside on more than one occasion that day we spent at Police Headquarters. I simply had to place some distance between it and me for a while before I could gather the stomach to continue with the next page. Even avoiding the autopsy and crime scene photos after the first glance through didn’t give me any relief. The words on the page were enough by themselves to spark violent images in my head that I was certain would drive me insane.
One of the things that pained me as well was the fact that I couldn’t convince Felicity not to read it. She wasn’t content to hear my carefully edited version of the postmortem. She had to see it for herself, and when she did, she alternated between sorrowful tears and raging fits of anger with each clinically descriptive paragraph she digested. Before it was over, we were both inhabitants of an emotional wasteland: disgusted, overwhelmed and spent, prone to moodiness and withdrawing rapidly from the world. Had it not been for a number of sessions with Helen Storm, my wife and I would surely have imploded. I already had a healthy respect for Ben and anyone else with a badge for that matter. What I saw in this report just made me admire them that much more. How they could face this sort of thing and not simply crack, I would never understand.
On top of it all, there was a secondary driving force that kept us going. We both knew that Brittany Larson was but one of the victims. There were at least two others who had been put through the same horrors we now beheld in black and white. And, the truth was that no one knew if it stopped there. The police had a list of names that shared some very simple traits: women who were young, pretty, and more to the point, missing. Fortunately, by the blessings of The Ancients, that list was very short. Still, it existed and that was a horror in itself.
As if utter failure on a mundane level weren’t bad enough, it just got worse. True to what I had told Lieutenant Albright that first day in the interview room, it simply didn’t work the way she wanted. The winds of the ethereal plane could be as fickle as the doldrums and at times, even more unforgiving.
And, this go around, that is exactly what they were. Not only had it not worked the way she wanted, it had not worked at all. Magick, it seemed, had forsaken us.
Of course, this only served to fuel the lieutenant’s crusade against me, and it wasn’t long before she managed to sway the mayor back to her way of thinking. After less than two weeks, we were unceremoniously banned from any involvement with the investigation. Felicity and I were out, Ben was quickly reassigned back to the city homicide division, and some thirty-odd days later special agent Mandalay had no choice but to move on to more pressing FBI business.
To our chagrin, any and all ethereal contact between the spirit of Brittany Larson and Felicity had abruptly ended the moment my wife had located her decapitated corpse. Not that we hadn’t tried our best to reestablish the connection, but in some ways I was relieved that we hadn’t. After what we had been through, I was particularly gun-shy about Felicity setting foot into that realm ever again. I knew there was no way I could stop her, but each day that she didn’t cross the veil was a day I didn’t have to worry about her on that level.
Having been the one in the hot seat to begin with, I opened myself to the darkness, literally calling out to and inviting in the voices I so often wanted to quell in the worst way. Much to my surprise, those who inhabited the other side of the dark curtain were even eschewing contact with me for a change. If they were talking, it wasn’t to me.
As far as I could tell, all was quiet in both worlds, and I began to ponder the idea that it might actually be over. I wondered if my bane had truly disappeared and that the past few years had been nothing more than a bad dream. And, as much as I hated not being able to help find the killer of those three women, having my own voice be the only one to inhabit my skull was a welcome and restful change.
At the same time, as much as I had begun to consider the unwanted psychic events as a now distant memory, I knew I could never be so lucky. I had stared directly into the face of evil on a hot summer night a few scant years ago and at that moment, knew that it was my destiny to do so again and again.
Because of that, I wasn’t terribly surprised when I awoke one gentle autumn afternoon, completely disoriented, lying in a crumpled heap in the backyard; with a metallic taste in my mouth, my tongue feeling like freshly ground hamburger, and my wife’s concerned face staring down into mine.
CHAPTER 29:
