The Botanist (11 page)

Chapter 18

The morgue was an extension of the funeral home, and Cody knew Linda hadn’t had this much work in years. She’d worked in an L.A. crime lab for most of her career. Though she was only in her mid-forties, Cody knew Linda considered her move here two years ago a form of retirement. Her husband had a bad case of asthma, so he needed the lower elevations and warm temperatures the southern part of the state provided. Though she was still a coroner, her workload was a fraction of what it had been in L.A. The only time she had customers was when someone died, and in a place like Mt. Dessicate, that was mostly the elderly.

Cody wondered how she was handling having twelve bodies to autopsy.

He and the captain made the ten minute walk to the funeral home in silence. They entered through the front door and the air conditioning was an immediate relief. Cody followed the captain through the foyer, the vacant viewing room, and back into the space that served as Linda’s office.

The captain knocked on Linda’s open door, and she looked up from her desk. She kept her sandy-blond hair short, but wore a lot of makeup. Linda was one of those women who always gave the impression that, if she just switched her lab coat for a dress, she’d be ready for a dinner party.

Today she looked a bit peaked with just a hint of darkness under each eye.

“Cody and I are here for your report, Linda,” the captain said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“How are you doing, Linda?” Cody stepped into the room. “You don’t look so good.”

Linda sighed as she got to her feet. “I’ve been autopsying these victims for three days, Cody. At this point, I desperately need to come up for air.”

Cody felt something clinch in his stomach. “Is it that bad?”

She eyed him steadily. “It’s pretty bad, and you know I’ve seen bad. Consider yourselves warned.”

They followed her into the small assessment room. Normally, there were only two examination tables in the morgue, and another all-purpose table that could be converted. In other words, it was only big enough for three victims at once.

For the Shakespeare case, Linda had somehow turned all three of her tables in the opposite direction, and brought in nine more. Some were makeshift tables that had been dragged in; others were gurneys that had been borrowed from the hospital; the two on the end looked like stacked crates with sheets draped over them.

All twelve skeletons were laid out in two rows of six, heads all facing in, with an isle down the middle. Cody was reminded of how the burial mounds had looked in the desert, but he pushed the thought aside; it was too haunting.

“There is very little flesh left on any of them,” Linda began. “Most of them have been in the ground long enough that it’s all decomposed, so it’s hard to say what the cause of death is with any certainty. Some have broken hyoid bones, which suggests strangulation; others have injuries that suggest blunt-force trauma. Still others have fissures in places that suggest stabbing. Overall, no two of them is similar
enough
.”

“For what?” Cody asked.

“To assume they all have the same cause of death.”

“He doesn’t have a consistent MO?”

“Not that I can tell. Cody, come here. What do you see?”

Cody came up to stand across the slab from Linda. The captain remained at the body’s head, watching. The skeleton was long, suggesting a tall woman. There was some kind of inky residue on the forehead, but Cody assumed that was due to some test the coroner had run. The thing that most distinctly caught his eye was the condition of the rib cage.

It looked . . . warped was the only word that came to mind, as though the bones were made of plastic that had melted into twisted shapes, then hardened again.

“The ribcage. It’s deformed.” He looked up at her, a few particular B-horror flicks coming to mind. “Is that due to . . . radiation?”

She shook her head. “It’s from breakage.”

“Breakage?” The captain sounded as skeptical as Cody felt. How did one break a bone into that shape?

“Yes. Take this bone, here.” She pointed to one of the lower rungs of the rib cage that looked more like a squiggly line than a rib bone. “This bone has been broken at least eight times. Each time the bone tried to heal, but it was broken severely enough that it healed crookedly. This is why doctors set bones. The body will always try to heal itself, and if the bone isn’t straight, it will just heal in whatever position it’s in. If this woman had been brought into a hospital, they would have done surgery, re-broken the bones and inserted pins to make them heal straight. Unfortunately for this woman, she died before receiving medical attention.” Linda swallowed before continuing. “But it’s not just her ribcage. Her ankles are a mess, too.”

Cody squinted. Sure enough, there were deformities in the ankle bones as well. Linda walked over to the next victim. She pointed at an obvious groove and large bulb in each of the victim’s clavicles. Her arms each had three fracture lines, two of which on the right arm were spiral breaks, reaching all the way around the humorous bone. A third skeleton had major deformities of both bones in her legs, below the knees. Her feet appeared to have been smashed, the bones crushed almost into powder at some points.

“So.” Cody stopped her from going on to other victims. He’d seen enough. “You’re saying he tortures them by breaking their bones?”

“That’s one of the ways.”

Cody clamped his mouth shut, trying to summon the courage to ask the obvious question. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer. The captain asked it for him, though.

“What are the other ways, Linda?”

Linda came over to stand next to the body Cody was closest to. “As I said, there’s almost no flesh left, no specimens to collect, so we can’t exactly do a rape kit. Any alien DNA left on the bones has been too denatured by the soil to tell us anything. However, all of the victims have marks on their pelvic bones.”

“Marks?”

“Dents, crevices, fissures.”

Cody frowned. “What does that tell us?”

“Something like rape with objects.”

“But,” the captain said, “these are evidence of something dug into the pelvic bone. Even object rape . . . doesn’t . . .”

Linda was nodding. “Doesn’t usually produce that kind of result,” she finished. “You’re right, captain. What this tells us is that it was more of a stabbing gesture than anything else. Look.” She pointed to the pelvic bone of the victim in front of them. “This mark here is both long and deep, and it has a beveled edge.”

Cody and the captain leaned in. The mark was four inches in length and had cut into the bone itself at least a quarter inch. The highest point in the cut had a small pile of calcification, as though the bone tissue had been scraped out of the groove, pushed up, then packed into the highest corner.

“This mark was probably made by a serrated blade.”

Cody waved his hands around, trying to make sense of what she was saying. “Are we talking about him stabbing them . . . between the legs?”

Linda looked very haggard. “Yes.”

Cody passed a hand over his eyes, trying to get a handle on the horror of it all, but it was too much. He took two steps back from the table, feeling claustrophobic.

Linda and the captain both set their eyes on the skeleton in front of them, saying nothing, and Cody knew they were waiting for him to regain his composure. He’d always been good at taking whatever weird or macabre things his job presented him in stride, but he couldn’t catch his breath this time. Twelve women . . . this kind of torture . . . the cold, creeping feeling he’d gotten in the desert. . . .

Resting his hands on the table, he leaned over and let his head fall forward. He took a few deep breaths, telling himself to pull it together. After the drama of last night, and going on only a few hours’ sleep, some discomposure was to be expected. But this, too, would pass.

When his head cleared, he stood up straight and stepped back toward the table. Linda looked up at him as he did. When their gazes met, he understood the dark circles under her eyes. How lonely a coroner’s job must be when they had to work alone on
this
kind of case.

“What else?”

“I kept seeing groves and markings on their foreheads, but they were faint. I couldn’t tell what caused them. Then, one of the victims over here”—she led them to the body in the far corner—“had grooves that looked distinctly like the number five. I used some colored ink to get a better look. The number turned out to be fifteen. I did the same thing on all the victim’s foreheads. I think they’re all numbered, but some of them are so faint that they’re almost undetectable.”

“So what are they?”

“I think he carved numbers into their foreheads. He carved it into the flesh, so it didn’t always go through to the bone. From what I can tell, these are victims thirteen to twenty-four.”

Cody sighed. This was getting worse by the minute. He rubbed his forehead, but it didn’t dispel the tension gathering there. “That suggests the killer is burying them in batches of twelve. If this is graveyard number two, there are at least twelve more victims out there.”

Linda nodded gravely.

“Let’s hope there isn’t a graveyard number three,” the captain said, “or anything beyond that.”

“Anything else?” he asked Linda.

“Only that, despite the fact that all of the victims are Caucasian females, there’s more of a range of values on other things than I would have expected.”

“What do you mean?”

“Two of the victims have injuries, but they didn’t get much chance to heal. They died too soon after. Of course, that could be chance. Perhaps they weren’t very strong or healthy and they went into shock from the injuries and simply died before the killer meant them to. My point is that some were only kept for days after the injuries started, others for weeks, and still others for months.

“Then there are the ages. From what I can tell, the oldest one isn’t quite old enough to be considered middle-aged, but probably late thirties or early forties. On the other side of the spectrum, the victim behind you was not fully pubescent, probably twelve or thirteen years old. It’s a wide range for a serial killer.”

Cody nodded. Then again, it was also true that serial killers were so ruled by their own individual psychoses, that there really was no “norm” for anything they did.

Linda handed him a thick manila file folder.

“The detailed reports on all twelve are in there. Let me know if you have any questions.” She turned to the captain. “Unless you have any objections, I’m going start the process of getting the bodies moved to the Salt Lake morgue.”

The captain gave her a tight smile. “No objections.”

Chapter 19

Cody followed the captain back through the funeral home and into the bright sunshine. They walked side by side in silence toward the station. One block from their destination, the captain turned to Cody.

“Are you all right, Cody? You seemed . . . out of sorts in there.”

Cody faced the captain. He took a deep breath before answering. “I’m fine, sir. Better, now. I guess I just didn’t expect it to be so . . . brutal.”

The captain nodded. “It never gets easier. I can tell you that. Is that all that’s bothering you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know your folks are planning on moving up north. I also know you and your father still don’t get along too well. I thought maybe that had something to do with it.”

Cody had to look down at his shoes to keep himself from chuckling. In recent years, their small town had become a small city. Still, the captain knew everything about everyone. It was in large part due to his socialite wife; the captain obviously made good use of her gossip. Cody supposed he ought to be used to it by now.

Seeing Cody’s reticence, the captain put his hands up. “I don’t mean to pry. I’m sorry if I’m being too personal. I just need to know that your work has your full attention right now. This is a big case, Cody. Press from out of state are already showing up. It’s bound to be national news. I need to know that you’re completely focused. If you have other things—family tie-ups and such—I understand. I can work with that. But if that is the case, I should probably make one of the other detectives the lead.”

Cody immediately shook his head. “No, Cap. My work is my first and only priority right now. My dad’s taking a job up north, but that has nothing to do with me. I’m here. One hundred percent.”

The captain looked relieved. “Good. Your instincts are better than just about anyone I’ve ever worked with. You’re the most valuable investigator I have.”

Cody couldn’t keep his eyebrows from rising. The captain had never said anything like that to him before. Cody didn’t think he was any better than Frank or Court, and certainly not better than Tom, who’d been on the job for twenty years.

“Thank you, captain.”

The captain gave him a good-natured punch in the shoulder, but thanks to his meat-hook hands, it felt more like being slugged with a dumbbell. Then the captain turned toward the station again.

“Uh, Cap? About my instincts?”

The captain turned back.

“Could I have your permission to assign a uniform to Ms. Thompson?”

“You mean a detail?”

“Yeah.”

The captain frowned.

“I know my priority is the Shakespeare case, and we can’t assume that it and her case are related without more evidence, but this man went after her very aggressively. Provided she stays off that highway, she should be safe, but I’d feel better if we had someone guarding her.”

The captain still looked indecisive.

“Cap, we’ve got all these extra cops in town, looking for some way to help. Why not put them to work?”

That seemed to sway him. He nodded.

“Put someone on her.”

“Around the clock?”

“Yes, but Cody, if the case drags out, as they usually do, interest will start to waver. All the extra cops will go back to their own jurisdictions. At that point, we won’t have the manpower for it anymore.”

“I understand, Cap. Hopefully it won’t get that far.”

They returned to the station to find that none of the other detectives had gone back to sleep. They were busy following leads and making phone calls. The captain pulled them all into the back room for a quick meeting.

“Frank, what did CSI have to say about the attack on Ms. Thompson?”

“They took molds of the tire tread. Followed it for miles. They say it eventually went up onto some rock, where there wasn’t a track anymore, and they lost it. We still have people scouring the area, looking for anything that might help, but other than the track, there’s not much to find.”

“All right, keep me apprised.” The captain made notes in his ubiquitous notebook. “Court, how about the Shakespeare case?”

“The flowers are common tulip bulbs that can be bought anywhere. The topsoil was probably brought in, so we’re trying to narrow down where it could have come from. There was very little trace evidence at the scene. A few hairs, but we’re waiting for DNA to rule them out as belonging to any of the victims. There is one interesting fact, though.”

“What’s that?”

“The tulips were a pale blue color.”

“Yes.”

“They weren’t that color naturally. They were actually white.”

“What made them blue?”

“An easy botanist trick. Apparently, if you put the stem of white flowers in water that has blue food coloring in it, it will suck up the color with the water and turn the flower pale blue. From what I was told, you can even cut a stem in half, put half in regular water and half in blue water, and only half the flower will change color. Now, granted, the lab guy said he’d only seen it with roses, but these were growing that way. My point is that this guy is going out of his way to make these flowers look how he wants them to.”

“You’re saying he has a green thumb?” the captain asked.

Court shrugged. “I’m saying he’s taking a lot of time with these grave sites. Who knows where he got the know-how?”

The captain nodded and added more notes. “Anything else, you three? Tom?”

“Just following more leads, sir. Nothing’s panned out, yet. Although, we are getting an influx of people who’ve had loved ones go missing in the area.”

The captain groaned. “How big an area?”

“Pretty much the entire intermountain west. The good news is that most of these people have been looking for said loved ones for years. Many of them already have DNA in the system, so once the autopsy results come back on the vics, it’ll be easy to rule most of them out.”

“What about the ones it doesn’t rule out?” Frank asked quietly. No one had an answer.

Cody cleared his throat. “Actually, autopsy results are already back.”

He tossed the folder Linda had given him toward Tom.

Tom looked at it pointedly. “And?”

“It’s about as gruesome as they come.”

The other detectives groaned.

“Everyone read it when they have time,” the captain said. “Cody has asked that we put a guard on Ms. Thompson for her safety.”

Cody turned sharply toward Frank, daring him to make a joke. But instead of his usual mischievousness, he looked impressed.

“You’ll get that all set up, Cody?” the captain asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Let’s try and make some order out of this chaos.”