The Dead Soul (7 page)

12

Friday, September 5 - 3:45 P.M.

Jake got word that Dr. Kelsey had signed off on Lisa Marie’s body. Two blues were heading out to Cambridge to tell Lisa Marie’s parents their baby had been murdered. Jake called them off. He and Dickie were taking it.

Bringing an investigation out into a gated community near Cambridge Square gave Jake pause to despise the ultra-rich. The townhouses they passed on the way were straight out of
Architectural Digest
magazine and the cars in driveways cost more than what most cops made in a year. A nun from India visiting Father John last year astutely observed, after Jake asked how she liked living in America, “You Americans, you like every-ting
veddy
large. Big home. Big car. Big stomach.”

Jake looked over at his partner as they parked at the corner end of the Taylor’s horseshoe driveway. Dickie’s gut protruded tightly over the seat belt around him.

Who could argue with the woman?

“So how we playin’ this?” Dickie wanted to know.

“You take the lead. I’ll sit back and watch the old man. At least until we figure them out.”

“Spoke to a friend from the FBI last night. Incestual relationships that have gone on for years often involve extremely
rare and extremely
violent crimes. ‘Member that dude in California a few years back who fathered ten of his children’s children, then killed each one of them, one by one, posed their bodies in the house … left them for weeks. Several of them were dismembered. How ‘bout that sicko in Austria? Locked his daughter in the basement for—”

Jake stopped him. “Yeah, okay. I get it, Dickie. We’ll see.” They walked up the pathway to the house. There was a line of strange looking flowers planted in beds of mulch so clean and weed-free the landscaping looked fake. “Let’s focus on what we need to do here. Nobody expects death to knock at the door.” They approached the archway of the front porch. Jake took a glance around the yard. “They expect their lives—because they have money—to be carefree.” He paused for a beat as Dickie rolled his eyes.

“Ring the bell, Jake. Your resentment is obvious. Let it go.”

“You’d buy incest?” Jake shook his head in disagreement. “You get anyone on that Rookie lead yet?”

“Sure thing, Jake. Ring the damn bell already.”

“That’s some car, huh.” Jake pointed toward the garage with his head.

“Gotta special-order those.” Dickie stared at the red Ferrari. It was parked in front of the garage. They admired the car. But wondered why it wasn’t in the garage. Expensive car like that just sitting out in the elements.

“Get a load of that, Dickie.”

“What?”

“You see the way the worker cleans out those gutters?” The guy was about twenty yards away, standing on a ladder, spraying the gutters with a power-washer. He wore dark blue khakis, a white shirt, his name, Manuel, embroidered in cursive on the front pocket. When he noticed Jake staring, he stopped, winked, then went back to work.

Why was Jake so concerned with such trivial matters when they were here to tell Lisa Marie’s parents their baby girl was not missing, as the Taylors had been led to believe, but dismembered? The Taylor family was on the opposite side of the door going about a normal day, thinking their daughter had simply run away again. In a few seconds their lives would never be the same.

“Hey, we leave out the details, got it?” Jake said. “A dead child is a dead child. The path to that end meaningless right now.” They were in search of information, Jake implied. Less the Taylors knew at this point, the better.

“And why is it,” Dickie asked, “two hotshot detectives such as ourselves are out here telling these good people about their kid? Why not send a few blues last night?”

Telling Lisa Marie’s affluent parents their daughter had been murdered was not something Jake had wanted to do himself. But reaction was everything. If the Taylors knew—or had dealings with someone who could have swiped the girl—it would show on their faces. Jake knew people hid things. Sometimes out of guilt. Other times because they didn’t know better. Wealthy people had a lot to protect.

“The element of surprise, Dick. Back to basics here for the time being. It’s all we have at the moment.”

“No, Jake. You’re wrong. We got teleforensics!” Dickie laughed, mocking Jake’s iPhone crime-solving app.

“Funny. Hey, I mean that about Rookie—I want someone on his ass.”

“Maybe tie him to Ray. I get it. Ray brought Rookie into the fold. Bring’em both down. Ray’s after your ass, anyway. Rookie is Ray’s eyes.”

Jake’s mind raced.

Mr. Taylor opened the door. Looked at the two of them. Then noticed the gold badge hanging from around Jake’s neck. “What’s this?” he asked. “Who are …?”

Jake and Dickie looked down.

The Taylor father dropped his head in his hands, bawling as if he had been waiting for this knock on the door for the past two years. The mother shook her head, one tear falling down her right cheek, a sad frown, her shoulders slumped. “My baby,” she said softly. “My baby girl is gone …”

After allowing the Taylors to catch their breath, Dickie asked the standard set of questions. He took notes as Jake wandered around the downstairs, looking at knickknacks, family photographs, admiring some of the window-size paintings in the foyer.

“We’re going to need all of her computers, cell phones, friends’ names.”

“She had all that stuff with her,” the mother said. “When we filed a missing persons report days ago, they told us not to worry.”

“We’re sorry, Mrs. Taylor.” Dickie was terrible at delivering bad news.

Mr. Taylor did not speak.

“Can I take a look in Lisa’s room, Mrs. Taylor? I hate to ask,” Jake said, “but it would be very helpful.” He kept his voice streamlined. Professional. Devoid of any emotion.

“No one’s been in there, Detective, since she’s been gone,” the father said, speaking up.

“Even better.” Jake headed up the stairs. He noticed a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, Lisa Marie, their other two kids, taken at an amusement park. They were wearing western outfits. The photo was in that rustic, yellowish black and white. Every household had one of these. The kids were young. Everyone seemed happy.

“Hon,” Mrs. Taylor said to her husband, “go with the detective.”

Dickie stayed with the mother downstairs while Jake and Mr. Taylor walked up the long, three-foot-wide, arcing staircase. Lisa Marie Taylor’s father was a Harvard professor who taught philosophy. He had been written about in many of the Christian journals because he believed religion needed to play a larger role in grammar through high school classrooms. He’d written books. But it wasn’t Harvard money—or his literary endeavors—that had made the Taylor family wealthy. Mrs. Taylor’s father, Artimus Raymore Samuels, took over a brewery in Boston opened at the turn of the century and turned it into one of the most successful ale companies in America.

“Those flowers out front, you know what they’re called?” Jake asked as he and Mr. Taylor approached the top of he stairs. He had his hands in his pockets.

Mr. Taylor had a balled-up fist to this mouth. “Lisa … she,” he had a hell of time getting the words out, “… she planted them. Called them Nightblooming Cacti, or something like that. They open up at night after the sun goes down.”

A faint smell struck Jake as he and Mr. Taylor walked down the hallway toward Lisa’s bedroom. If you hadn’t been around the dead before you wouldn’t notice. It might instead smell like an expired mouse under a bureau. Or a family bathroom after a few days of the stomach flu.

They entered Lisa’s room. The odor was far more pronounced inside. Rotten eggs and spoiled meat—that empty Dumpster odor in the summer. Maybe a funeral home.

All of them combined.

“Holy shit,” Jake said under his breath, covering his nose and mouth.

Amid posters of Paris and Rome and a
Pulp Fiction
Uma Thurman, the smell made Jake’s nose wrinkle. Acclimating himself to it, Jake noticed it was mixed with a fake air freshener perfume. Lavender and evergreen. Since he’d stopped smoking, Jake had his smell back. One of the perks.

“This air freshener, where’s it coming from?” Jake asked. He looked up at the ceiling. Around the room.

“We have it pumped in,” the father said, “through the air ducts.”

Must be nice being
that
rich.
Geesh
. “You have perfumed air pumped in. Oh … K.”

“You don’t smell that?”

“Our maid is not the most efficient, Detective.”

“No, not a laundry basket smell. Rotting flesh. Like meat that’s gone bad. How have you and Mrs. Taylor managed to avoid it?”

“Now I do,” Taylor tipped his head up in the air like a dog. Took in a few quick whiffs through his nose.

“What the hell? Hasn’t anyone said anything about this?”

“We haven’t been in here, Detective, since that first day Lisa went missing. My wife told you that. Ever since Lisa ran off, there was no need to come in here. The door has been closed. She’s run off before. We never look through her things. She always comes back. When the house stinks, we turn the air freshener volume up and scold the maid.”

The smell was stronger by the closet. Jake approached the door, but decided against opening it in front of Mr. Taylor.

“Why don’t you wait out there?” Jake pointed to the hallway. Whatever was in the closet was something the father didn’t need to see.

Once he was alone, Jake opened the door with caution, walked in. It was a large room, the size of Jake’s bedroom back in Southie. Dark, too. He found one of those bulb lights hanging from the ceiling, pulled the chain. Lisa Marie’s shoes were on one side, clothes on the other.

Jake walked toward the back of the closet.

What
?

The source of the smell came from what hung off two large hooks clipped to the clothes pole.

“Sonofabitch.”

Mr. Taylor came up from behind. “What is it, Detective?”

“Get out of here,” Jake yelled, pushing him out the door. “Go—”

A pair of legs, lopped off below the knees, hung there, bloated and dripping fluids—a piece of meat in a butcher’s freezer. The toe nails were painted Barbie pink, same shade as Lisa’s room.

Jake Cooper guessed he was staring at the remains of Lisa Marie Taylor’s legs.

Dickie heard the commotion, ran up the stairs and into the room. He stood next to Jake, lost in surrealistic nature of such a horrific sight. After a moment, “Hey, kid,” Dickie said, “your phone got an app for that?”

13

Friday, September 5 - 4:36 P.M.

Gregorian chants reverberated throughout the house. The booming voices of the choir made for an ominous, enchanting late afternoon. He loved the spiritual mood it put him in. Being a Friday, he got off work, then rushed home to see if that Web order from policesupplies.com had arrived. To his delightful surprise, he saw the brown package on the front steps after getting out of his Jeep.

He hummed with the music as he stood in front of a pan of photo developer mixed with 200 Solution. This, too, he had ordered online. The combination gave him the best bang for his Kodak buck. Developing photos at home, watching the images he snapped emerge from a solution that smelled of turpentine and chemistry class, was comforting and nauseating. The pictures in the solution were snapshots of dreams coming into focus. Amazing, he thought. A few simple ingredients—film, paper, and feigned darkness—unleashed a life frozen in time.

Lisa Marie’s killer loved this.

He hung the photos from a clothes line in the room. When he finished, he inched his way backward, staring at each one.

I hate you. Leave me alone.

Memories attacked him like angry bees.

The first photo was of Lisa Marie’s face, before he thrashed her. Lisa was completely thawed by that point. He tried to make her smile, but rigor had set in, her cheeks hard as a mound of clay left out overnight, not cooperating. Frustrated, he hit her one last time and gave up.

Next to the shot of Lisa’s face were photos of pairs upon pairs of legs.

He looked down at his forearms. Those scars, the skinny bead welds. He relished in how good it felt to cut himself with a razor blade. How entirely in control of those moments in the basement he was when he cut his own skin open. The sluggishness of the blood oozing. The sense of power. There was no pain.

I alone adore you.

Out of those childhood memories, he was back focusing on the photographs of the legs—but whose were they?

One was of that young woman he had killed before Lisa. He’d recognize those legs anywhere. He had taken the photo before dismembering Alyssa, keeping her legs and heart, tossing the rest of her body to the sharks, easily fascinated by the swirling commotion of body parts and sea water before him.

An ocean of blood.

Same as he did after cutting himself, he tasted Alyssa’s blood before scrubbing the deck of her remains and tossing everything overboard. He thought he’d had the boat entirely cleaned. Then turned, walked to the aft, and almost stepped on the girl’s liver. Like a placenta, it slapped back and forth against the sides of the boat.

Alyssa …

She was now a woman, same as Lisa, without a worry in the world. In heaven, for certain. He knew this. The deacon—that bastard who had started this madness—assured him that all murder victims go to heaven.

The keepers of secrets.

He walked into the kitchen. Unfolded the morning’s paper to see what they had written about him today. He had one wall in the living room dedicated to and covered with articles about his crimes. How Alyssa, “the college co-ed,” went missing. How Lisa “vanished after leaving the library.” How her body was found mutilated and dumped in the Garden. How Lisa’s parents were offering some stupid reward in her name.

Pathetic. People with money think they can buy their daughter back.

He had made today’s front page:

BODY IN GARDEN THAT OF ALE HEIR

AND PROFESSOR’S DAUGHTER

Whistling, he took out the scissors, cut it out. Made sure the cuts were straight, taking his time. There could be no mistakes. He’d have to buy another paper and start all over.

Finished, he held it up.

“Now, look at that.” He smiled. “Faking all of you bastards out. None of you can touch me.”

He slipped back. Those bees again. He saw the menacing shadow coming at him.

“
This is for your own good, Randy.”

I don’t hear you
…

He turned the page and fastened his attention on another article. The
Globe
had given him a name.

THE OPTIMIST:
Detective Says Killer Running Out of Options

What did that mean?

Optimist
?

Every serial killer needed a name. Was he supposed to be proud? Delighted? Where’d they get that from, anyway?

He taped the articles to the wall next to the others. Then walked back into the dark room. All those legs hanging before him. They were so vital now to his point. He started collecting them out of fascination, hoping to throw off the cops. But now he pictured his next victim begging for mercy on his boat. Struggling, crying, as he told her what he was going to do.

The CD skipped on a particular chant.

“Fede … fede … fede … fede …”

He didn’t realize a chorus of monks were chanting faith, faith, faith as he walked out of his dark room and packed an overnight bag.

Camera.

Check.

Film, clothes, maps, toothbrush.

Check, check, check. Check.

Rope, flex cuffs, gauze, chloroform.

Check
.

The Comfort Inn was just outside South Boston off I-93. “When you coming into town?” the desk clerk asked over the phone.

“Should be there before six, depending on traffic.”

“Okay then. We’ll see you at six, Mr. … didn’t get your full name, sir.”

He thought about it. What would it hurt? “Howard. Mr. Charles Nelsen Howard.” He added Nelsen for effect.

“Like Charles Nelson Reilly from
Match Game
,” the clerk said, brightening up. “Loved the show. Hated Gene Rayburn’s corduroy suits and that long microphone.”

“Not really. But yes. I believe you have what you need, then?”

He hung up.

The Optimist made sure the back door to his house was locked. He snapped the deadbolt four times, counting each one. Then did the same to the turnstile lock below it, again counting off.

Confident, he walked over and stopped at the mantel above the fireplace. He brushed the closed petals of the Queen of the Night flowers, taking a deep breath in through his nose, letting it out his mouth.

“Won’t be here tonight to see you open,” he whispered to the flowers, as if talking to a person, “but I will be back soon enough. A little boat ride is in order.”

When he got to his jeep, he felt he should go back and check the locked doors once more. Just to be certain.