Chapter One - Klempner-2
983 Words
THE PARKING LOT IS divided: the closer area for general use, but beyond that, a zone designated for commercial vehicles. Stanton leads me between a pair of parked trucks, large multi-wheeled affairs. Scrubby undergrowth further obscures the view of the area from the main entrance.
“Same as before?” I ask.
He spreads fingers. Rocks the hand to and fro. “Yes and no. You’d better see for yourself. You understand you mustn’t contaminate the scene? Don’t touch anything. Follow only the designated route.” He offers me vinyl gloves and a pair of overshoes. “Put these on.”
A screen is already in place, being extended and roofed over as we approach. At the entrance, an officer draws a curtain to one side, stepping courteously aside for his commissioner. “Sir.”
Stanton thumbs toward me. “Arrange a visitor’s pass. Lars Waterman.”
“Yes, sir.”
Inside, the area is floodlit, the lighting harsh and clear. A white-overalled figure steps over...
I stop mid-stride.
Christ...
The previous scene I only saw from a distance, and indirectly, beyond a doorway when I made my unauthorised excursion into the crime scene area. Stanton showed me photographs, and I saw the ruined body of the victim only after she’d lain in the mortuary for some time.
This time, it’s different. I’m seeing the scene as left by the killer.
He’s staked her out. Spreadeagled her. Cable ties at wrist and ankle roped to ground pegs. Perhaps, given opportunity, she could have worked the pegs loose.
She had no opportunity.
As with the previous victim, he’s disembowelled her, scattered her guts over the surrounding ground in a b****y riot of red and purple. Long strands of something are wrapped around her neck. Her face...
I’ve seen corpses a-plenty. Been responsible for many of them. Sometimes I’ve used a pistol or a rifle. If it’s up close, a slit throat does the job. It’s b****y, but sure.
I’ve never done anything like this.
“If you need to throw up...” murmurs Stanton... “there’s a...”
“Thank you, Commissioner, but no. I’ll manage.” Nonetheless, I find my hand rising to cover my mouth.
Stanton slants a look to me, pauses, then calls to the white figure. “Doctor...”
The figure raises a masked face. Glacial eyes look from above the mask. Borje. “You ready for this, Larry?”
“I’m ready. So... what’s the same. And what’s different?”
From behind the mask, Borje’s words are a little muffled. “What is the same is the evisceration of the body cavity. What is different is the damage to the head and face.”
In the photos I saw of the Surgeon’s earlier victims, the face was more or less untouched. In this case...
Her face is not really a face anymore, slashed repeatedly. One eye stares blindly out, an orb of blood. The other is missing from its socket, bone and flesh crushed, almost pulped. Her cap of short mousy hair is stained black where blood has dried, but around the corpse, it lies spattered and spilled.
Short hair?
That’s new...
The previous women all had long hair.
I wave a hand over the ground. “This spatter pattern from the blood? I’m no expert, but...”
Borje nods. “You’re right... This isn’t passive bleeding; of the kind you get from a corpse when the blood simply settles under gravity.” He traces a line through the air, following a b****y splatter. “This is arterial spurting. Her heart was pumping. She was alive for at least part of the time. Conscious for at least part of it.” His voice has the toneless quality of one drawing a firm line between self and emotional distance.
“Conscious during the... evisceration?”
“I don’t think so. At that point he had reverted to pattern. She was dead by the time he opened the abdominal cavity.”
I angle a closer look. “What’s that around her neck? Strands or fibres of some kind. It looks as though he used it to strangle her?”
Another toneless reply. “It appears to be a wig.”
“A wig? He strangled her with a wig?” My mind churns. “... Her own wig, do we know?”
“I’ll have a better idea on that when I get everything back to the lab. I’ll be able to check if she’d worn it. But off-hand, I’d say yes.”
Stanton interrupts. “Given that the previous victims were all long-haired and this one is short-haired, I think we can make a working assumption it was her own hairpiece. Unless evidence arises to say otherwise. Doctor, can you say yet what the cause of death was?”
Borje maintains the monotone. “I’ll need to get her back to the lab to assess properly, but I’m pretty sure it was asphyxiation again. I doubt she’d have survived the beating to her head and face, but I think actual C.o.D was asphyxiation.”
“From strangulation? Have you checked her throat contents yet?”
“I was just about to when you arrived.” Carefully easing open the mouth of the corpse Borje fits in something like a dental gag, easing, then holding the jaws apart. With long-handled forceps, he reaches inside. Then, pausing, he peers in more closely.
Stanton moves closer. “What is it?”
“Something’s different,” says Borje. “Could you move please, Commissioner. You’re blocking the light.”
Silently, Stanton shifts. Juggling the forceps in one hand, Borje angles the narrow beam of a small flashlight with the other, then passes it to me, “Larry, could you hold that for me. Directly down her throat.”
Straddling behind him, I aim the light, canting the beam around his hand. Again, Borje reaches in with the forceps, before withdrawing them, trailing long fibres which glint chestnut in the torchlight.
Stanton’s brow furrows. “More of the hairs from the wig? Blocking the airway?” He exchanges a glance with me. “Is that everything, Doctor? What about the bank notes?”
“Yes, Commissioner, there’s more.” Once more, Borje delves in. This time, he draws out crumpled paper, sodden, trailing dark, glutinous threads.
Borje straightens up. “The killer’s normal signature, I’d say.” Then, blowing out his cheeks. “I’d prefer to report fully when I’ve made the formal autopsy.”
“Fine,” says Stanton. “Keep me informed.” Then he nods to me. “Keep us both informed.”
*****
* * * *
- Writer
