Harm None: A Rowan Gant Investigation (22 page)

Ben was talking to the medical examiner when
we walked in, and he looked up as we ventured farther into the
room. The forensics team had recently finished dusting for
fingerprints, and the dark grey powder coated any likely surface
they had checked.

“Keep it up and the department is going to
have to issue you a badge.” A grim-faced Dr. Sanders greeted us as
we stopped at the foot of the bed.

“Dr. Sanders,” I said and motioned to the
medical examiner. “This is my wife, Felicity O’Brien. Felicity, Dr.
Christine Sanders. The doc here is the one that stitched up my
head.”

“O’Brien, huh,” Dr. Sanders said as she
canted her head in my wife’s direction. “Maiden name?”

“Aye,” she answered.

“Good for you,” the doctor approved. “I kept
mine too.”

Felicity smiled and then returned her own
nod. I’m sure she was relieved at not having to explain the
difference in our last names for once.

“Thanks for comin’ down, you two,” Ben said,
once the introductions were over.

“No problem,” I replied and then motioned to
the covered body. “Same as before?”

“Not entirely,” he answered. “That’s why I
called you.”

“What’s different?” I queried.

Ben nodded to Dr. Sanders, who skirted around
us to the other side of the bed and grasped the corner of the
sheet.

“You gonna be okay with this?” He directed
the question at my wife. “The real thing’s different than pictures,
ya’know.”

“Aye,” Felicity drew in a deep breath and let
it out heavily. “I’ll be all right, then.”

“You must be really tired,” he observed
aloud.

“Well it IS the middle of the night.”

“Yeah, and yer doin’ the accent.”

“I don’t have an accent,” she replied. “You
do.”

“Yeah, right.” He nodded then turned. “Go
ahead, Doc.”

Dr. Sanders threw back the covering to reveal
the nude corpse of a young blonde woman. The victim’s glassy, dead
eyes stared up at the ceiling, frozen for all time in sheer terror.
Her torso had been flayed but not completely as with the previous
two. This time the killer had removed only patches of her skin,
carefully arranged in a geometric pattern that formed a
Pentagram.

“The killer removed the heart in a fashion
similar to that of the Barnes woman,” Dr. Sanders began, “but the
removal of the skin was much more precise than the previous cases.
I would venture to say he’s getting better at it.”

“I was wrong,” I said, kneeling down to have
a closer look. “Karen Barnes was just lesson number two for
him.”

“Whaddaya mean?” Ben asked.

“He’s still practicing,” I explained. “Lesson
one was Ariel Tanner. He taught himself to skin a living human.
Lesson two, Karen Barnes. How to remove a still beating heart...
Now, lesson three... He’s refining his technique. Making it more
complex... More exacting...” My words trailed off as my eyes roamed
over the mutilated remains of the young woman. My stomach revolted
against the sight, and I forced it back down, fending off the
nausea.

“There’s another twist to the whole thing,”
Ben told me then turned his attention to the medical examiner.
“Doc?”

“There is trace evidence of semen on the
sheets,” she explained. “I’ll have to check her back at the morgue,
but the preliminary exam indicates that she was subject to sexual
intercourse very recently.”

“Maybe the asshole is startin’ to get off on
what he’s doin’ to these women,” Ben spat.

“I don’t think so,” I told him. “The killer
is too involved with the ritual. To defile his sacrifice would make
no sense.”

“Skinnin’ people alive then rippin’ their
hearts out doesn’t make any sense either.” Ben was becoming angry
with the situation, and it showed in his voice.

“To you and me, no it doesn’t,” I calmly
stated. “To him, I think it does.”

“Well, when I find this son-of-a-bitch, it’s
gonna stop makin’ sense to him real quick,” Ben returned. “As for
the semen, I have to assume he raped her, and that might let us ID
his blood type and maybe narrow the field down.”

“I know,” I answered, “but I don’t think
that’s what happened.”

“Who is she?” Felicity, who had been silent
until now, asked somberly. “Do you know?”

She was facing the wall, avoiding the hideous
display. I could see that the color was just returning to her pale
cheeks.

“Ellen Gray, per her driver’s license and
work ID in her purse,” stated Detective Deckert who had been
observing quietly. “According to the neighbor, she’s separated. Her
old man moved out about two weeks ago.”

“Does he know yet?” she pressed.

“No. Not yet.”

“I take it the door was propped open like the
others?” I questioned.

“Yeah,” Deckert answered. “Lady across the
street works the three-to-eleven and noticed it when she got home.
She came over to see if something was wrong and found her. Luckily,
she had enough wits left to dial nine-one-one. By the time the
paramedics showed up, she was so hysterical they had to sedate ‘er
and take ‘er to the hospital.”

“Any ideas about how the killer got in?”

“Sliding doors on the basement,” he returned.
“Looks like someone popped the latch with a pry bar or
something.”

“Then she probably didn’t know him,” I
submitted.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Ben announced. “She was a
nurse at County Hospital.”

“Where R.J. works,” Felicity almost
whispered.

“‘Zactly,” Ben replied.

“Did you talk to him like you planned?” I
queried.

“He wasn’t home. And it was his day off, so
he wasn’t at work.”

“That still doesn’t prove anything, Ben,”
Felicity told him.

“Maybe not, but he sure as hell just moved
another coupl’a bricks over to the other side of the scale.”

“Has anything turned up to indicate that R.J.
knew Karen Barnes, then?” she asked.

“No, not yet,” Ben answered, “but we’ll be
talkin’ to the husband and neighbors again in the mornin’.”

“Ahem,” Dr. Sanders cleared her throat, and
we all turned to her. “I hate to interrupt, but if you’re finished
with the body, I need to get her to the morgue.”

“Sorry ‘bout that, Doc,” Ben told her. “Go
ahead. We’re done.”

“Any revelations, Mr. Gant?” she said,
looking at me.

“Excuse me?”

“You were correct about the fingerprint on
the Barnes woman, even if it was smudged,” she explained. “I was
just wondering if you had any new ideas.”

“Not at this point in time,” I answered.
“Sorry.”

“Just checking,” she said with a thin
smile.

We moved off to the side and allowed Dr.
Sanders and her assistant to carefully place the lifeless young
woman into a body bag and zip it shut. They expertly placed her on
a gurney and proceeded to wheel her out.

“I guess she’s been reading what the papers
have had to say about me,” I stated after they left.

“She’s okay with it,” Ben told me. “She
doesn’t necessarily believe in it, but she’s okay.”

Felicity was still looking a bit pale, but
she seemed to be holding up well so far. She had retrieved a camera
from her bag and was going about the task of photographing the back
area of the room where the killer had performed his atonement
ritual. We knew the pictures would be redundant, but cameras were
like a focal point for her, probably due to her profession. Simply
peering through a lens brought an entirely different clarity and
dimension to the world around her, and she used it to her
advantage.

“When do you think you’ll be notifying the
husband?” I asked.

“We’ll be contacting him as soon as the M.E.
gets to the morgue,” Deckert told me. “It shouldn’t be long.
Why?”

“Something just doesn’t feel right,” I
answered.

“You think the old man did it?” he
questioned. “Like a copy cat or something, to cover it up?”

“No, that’s not it,” I replied. “I think it
was the same guy, but I’ve got a really weird feeling. The whole
sex thing just doesn’t fit with what this guy seems to be up to.
Maybe she and the husband got together for a fling, or maybe she’s
got a boyfriend, and that’s why they split up. I just don’t believe
the killer raped her.”

“We’ll be checkin’ all of that out,” Ben
agreed. “But remember, we’re dealin’ with a sicko here.”

“You’re right,” I told him. “But it’s too
much of a deviation. I think there has to be some other
explanation.”

“Hey, you two,” Felicity’s voice came from
behind us. “Come over here and have a look at this.”

My wife was still holding the camera deftly
in her hands but had pulled it away from her eye and was staring at
the dressing table with a puzzled expression.

“Aye, is this fingerprint stuff supposed to
do this?” she asked, pointing at the hardened puddle of white wax
where a candle had once been.

“Supposed to do what?” Ben responded to her
query with one of his own.

“Glow like that. Don’t you see it, then?”

“See what, honey?” I asked. “All I see is
what’s left of a candle.”

“The fingerprint,” she pled in exasperation.
“Right there in the wax. Open your eyes.”

“There can’t be a fingerprint there,” Deckert
asserted. “Forensics already dusted over here, and they said the
candles were clean. Besides,” he contended, “an imprint on wax
would be pretty obvious.”

“It’s not an imprint on the wax,” explained
Felicity. “It’s a fingerprint IN the wax. It’s like it’s inside
it.” She stepped closer and thrust her index finger at the center
of the small mound.

Ben and I both leaned closer but still
couldn’t see anything other than the remains of a candle. Felicity
was becoming more agitated each time we told her as much.

“It’s glowing, you guys,” she volunteered.
“It’s like the person had something phosphorescent on his fingers
or something.”

Her last statement gave me
the clue I needed. Though I was still unable to see what she was
seeing—and neither was Ben nor Detective Deckert, I was sure—I
suddenly realized what was happening. My wife was definitely seeing
the fingerprint in the wax; however, she was
seeing
it with what a Witch calls
Second Sight. This ability is not something that can always be
turned on or off at will. It is the stuff of clairvoyance and
psychometry—the talent to witness the future and read the energies
and impressions of inanimate objects. It was the simple gift of
being able to observe those things that are hidden from earthly
eyes.

“Felicity,” I posed, “could the fingerprint
be on the underside of the candle? Is it possible that you’re
visualizing it?”

“Aye, I suppose it could,” she said as a look
of understanding spread across her face. “Yes. Yes, I think that
could be it!”

“You’d better get your forensic guys to check
the underside of that pile of wax,” I told Detective Deckert as I
turned. “If they plan on collecting and bagging this stuff for
evidence, they might destroy the print if they aren’t careful.”

Deckert hurriedly left the room and soon
returned with a member of the crime scene unit who had been working
elsewhere in the house.

“We already dusted this area,” he told us as
he was led to the melted candle. “There’s nothing there.”

“Just humor us,” Ben told him. “I need ya’
ta’ check the bottom of the wax.”

“The bottom?” the evidence technician
echoed.

“Yeah, the bottom,” Ben replied.

The young man stared at the hardened puddles
with a baffled expression on his face, then shrugged. He knelt on
the floor and opened a thick case he had been carrying. After
rummaging briefly through its contents, his hands emerged holding a
can of compressed air and a tool resembling a putty knife. Using
the compressed air, he blew away the residue from the earlier
dusting and cleared the area around the piles of wax.

“The white one,” Felicity volunteered.
“That’s where it is.”

“Okay,” the forensics tech acknowledged in a
humorless tone.

After rapidly shaking the can of air, he
turned it upside down and aimed it at the remains of the white
candle. The propellant in the can that normally expelled as a jet
of gas when held properly upright now streamed from the nozzle as a
frigid mist.

“What’re you doin’ that for?” Detective
Deckert questioned.

“If I cool it down enough,” the tech
explained, “I should be able to lift it off the surface in one
piece.”

The technician quickly moved the spray back
and forth across the wax for a few moments then released the
trigger and set the can aside. Slowly and carefully, he slipped the
thin, knife-like tool under the edge of the now somewhat frosted
mass. With great patience and skill, he worked the blade gently
around the edge as we watched on, until finally, the oblong heap of
dull white paraffin popped loose in one complete piece. Setting the
bladed tool aside, the technician gingerly turned the wax over in
his gloved hands and inspected it closely.

“Right there in the middle,” Felicity
intoned, trying to peer around him.

He remained silent, but from where I stood, I
could see his face, and the expression now crossing it was one of
disbelief. He placed the wax upside down on the counter then
quickly retrieved a brush and small bottle of powder from his kit
and began gently dusting the mass.

The candle had been a votive type and had
apparently been mass-produced in a factory as was evidenced by a
thin metal plate embedded in the center. The piece of metal had
been the anchor used for the wick when it was originally made, and
it was the focus of the evidence technician’s scrutiny at this very
moment.

“I don’t believe it,” he muttered. “There’s a
print there big as shit. It’s partial, but it’s a good one.”

“Son-of-a-bitch,” Deckert said slowly.

“How in hell did you know that print was
there?” the forensics tech asked, turning to Felicity.