Dead River (14 page)

Now the odor was unbearable. He opened his eyes and looked down. He saw his daughter’s face. Sara Ann was dead. His stomach churned. Her face was blue and she had cuts, scrapes, and gouges on both of her cheeks and forehead. What was once brilliant blond hair was now dingy and matted. Her tongue was partially chewed off and hung out of the right side of her mouth. But what repulsed him most of all were the maggots that had colonized the wounds on her face. Adam’s body felt like it was on fire, his head began to spin, and a salty taste filled his mouth.

Darrell Bloomfield immediately grabbed Adam’s right arm and helped him to a sink only a few feet away. Adam stood with both hands on the sink and emptied his stomach. He gasped for breath and heaved again, but nothing came out.

“Are you all right, Mr. Riley?” Bloomfield asked. “This is never easy, sir,” he added, squinting and wrinkling his nose. “Yes indeed, it’s never easy.”

“I think I’m okay now.” His head started to clear. “How was she killed?”

“We won’t know for certain until the autopsy’s performed,” Bloomfield explained. “Yes, sir, we have to do the autopsy first.”

Albright joined them. Adam turned to him. “What’s on her forehead? For God’s sake what did the sick bastard do to her?”

“We don’t know yet, Mr. Riley.”

Adam found the hospital chapel on the second floor. He entered the small, dimly-lit room. There were eight simple wooden pews, four on either side of a narrow aisle that led to the pulpit. On the wall behind the pulpit was a large ornate piece of stained glass with religious symbology of no particular denomination. There was also a small wooden table under the stained glass. Sitting on top of the table was a wooden finial that held a polished brass cross.

He sat in the front pew and stared at the cross through teary eyes for a few moments. What’s happened? Why has God let this happen? What possible purpose could this serve? He had no explanation. Adam lowered his head and closed his eyes.

The uneven road rocked his car, but Gabriel didn’t notice. He just wanted to drive and think. Think about the beautiful blond hair of Sara Ann. He could smell her hair and feel her body against his. The thought of her perfumed neck sent his head spinning. A surge of excitement shot throughout his body. It was as though his mind and soul were being lifted from him.

His escalating arousal suddenly turned. But she was a whore, a whore that deserved to die. Mother never wanted me to be with them. I had to kill her. God and Mother want this. I must obey. As he drove, he saw images of her struggling as the nylon rope tightened around her neck. They all must die.

 27

SOON AFTER ADAM LEFT THE HOSPITAL, Dr. Harold Albright called everyone to the center autopsy table. Darrell Bloomfield already had the body on the table, still in the white vinyl bag. Several shiny instruments were neatly placed on a steel tray next to the autopsy table that had a large grocery-type metal scale at its foot.

“Mr. Bloomfield, the tape recorder,” Albright said.

“Yes indeed, the tape recorder,” Bloomfield mumbled. He walked over to a metal rack on the wall and pushed two buttons on the face of a silver box.

Albright reached up over the table and turned on the microphone hanging from the ceiling. The recorded notes would become the autopsy report after being transcribed. He wore a plastic apron and a pair of latex gloves, and had booties over each of his shoes. But he didn’t don a rebreather; he never did, even though OSHA required that they be worn. Besides, one of the best tools a medical examiner possesses is his sense of smell.

“If anyone needs a mask, they’re on the table over there,” Albright said as he pointed to a small table against the wall. “And for those of you that need it, there’s also a bottle of wintergreen oil.”

Albright was ready to start the autopsy. The observers had their white masks on, the metal strips pinched firmly against their noses. All of them had smeared wintergreen oil on the inside.

Albright pulled the zipper down to the bottom of the bag. Bloomfield assisted as the two removed the body and placed the dead girl face-up on the autopsy table. The man with the camera snapped several pictures. The only piece of clothing on the body was a white top with several tears in the material. There were plastic bags tied around her hands.

The autopsy table had two tiers. The top was perforated stainless steel where the corpse rested. The perforations allowed body fluids to drain to the bottom tier, made of solid stainless steel. Bloomfield reached over to the head of the table and turned on a faucet. Water trickled down the smooth surface and gurgled in a drain in the tile floor.

The spectators observed at a distance. Bloomfield hovered over the corpse, also without a rebreather, as Albright began his examination.

“This is a seventeen-year-old female Caucasian. Her name is Sara Ann Riley,” Albright stated. “Blond hair, she measures five feet four inches and, upon arrival, weighed 102 pounds. There are two remarkable features. The first is a deep cut around her neck, and—”

“What about those letters carved in her forehead?” Averly asked, his voice muffled through the mask.

Both Albright and Bloomfield glared at Averly.

“I will get to that next,” Albright said with a stern tone.

Averly’s face turned an even deeper red.

Albright lifted the dead girl’s right arm and rotated it slightly. “And there are also deep cuts around both wrists. All three wounds appear to be the same width. Also noted are the larvae in and around the wounds.” Albright looked around to make sure all eyes were on him. “Maggots.”

That was enough for Glenn Wilkerson. Without a word he left the room.

Albright continued. “From the cut around her neck, the bruising about the mouth, and the protruding tongue, I’m certain this person was strangled to death with some type of cord. I would say a nylon rope.” He paused for a moment. “The killer probably strangled her from behind as she lay in the prone position on the ground.”

“How do you know that?” Averly asked.

“Because of the cuts and gouges on her face. They were most likely a result of the struggle she put up while she was being choked. There was probably some gravel on the ground. Note again the cuts on both wrists. They appear to be the same width as the one on her neck. He probably had her hands tied behind her back with the same type of nylon rope. Was any rope found at the crime scene?”

“No,” Averly answered.

“The killer probably took the pieces of rope with him,” Goldman said. “He knew they could be analyzed and possibly traced back to him.”

“Can you tell if she was raped, Dr. Albright?” Averly asked.

“Without lab work and a detailed physical examination, we don’t know for sure,” Albright said. “But she probably was both raped and sodomized.”

“How do you know?” Averly pressed. “You just said you haven’t run any lab tests or performed a complete physical exam.”

“Some tricks of the trade,” Albright said smugly. “When we received the body early this morning we performed our standard pre-exam. It was then I noticed larvae around her labia majora, so I checked her vagina and found an aggregation of them. Then I checked her anus and also found larvae there. Maggots would quickly swarm an area where they would have something to feed on, in this case blood. And the blood could come from a violent sex act carried out on the victim.”

“Yes indeed, larvae,” Bloomfield hissed. “They tell us a lot. Yes indeed.”

Goldman turned to Albright. “What’s your estimate of the time of death?”

“It’s difficult to determine the exact time because of the advanced stage of decomposition, but I would estimate that she has probably been dead for about four days. And because of the intense heat, the decomposition process was accelerated.”

“So that would put the time of death between some time late Saturday night and early Sunday morning,” Goldman said.

“That’s correct,” replied Albright.

Goldman looked around at the men, demanding their attention. “Here’s what I think. This man is sophisticated. I believe the killer left the body out in the blazing sun for a specified amount of time before he called to let us know where it was. Long enough to make it difficult to determine the exact time of death.”

“Probably so,” Albright agreed.

Goldman formed a faint smile.

“The second remarkable feature on the body is the three letters incised on the decedent’s forehead,” Albright said. He looked around at the men who were now huddled around the table. “Does anyone have an idea what they might mean?” he asked.

“Maybe they’re initials,” Averly offered, “maybe the killer’s. But not many names start with an X. The only one I can think of is Xavier.”

“There’s also Xanthus and Xerxes,” Goldman snarled. “But the letters aren’t initials. The killer isn’t going to leave his initials. Not this guy. The letters mean something else.”

“What then?” Averly asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. I have a friend that might know.”

 28

“LOOK, YOU CAN’T ROUGH up the girls, then start throwing drinks—”

“But I wasn’t rough with her,” Sikes said, as he tried to position the handcuffs behind his back so they didn’t dig into his wrists.

“Not according to the girl,” the Cocoa Beach police officer explained. “You’re lucky she didn’t press charges.”

Sikes lowered his head. His oily dark hair tousled about with each wind gust.

“If I have to come out here again, you’ll go to jail. Understood?”

Sikes looked up. “Yes. May I go now?”

“No,” the police officer said sharply. “I have paperwork to fill out because of you.” He helped guide Sikes’s plump body into the back of the patrol car and then shut the door. The officer checked his watch; it was 11:45 am. Shaking his head, he wondered how anyone could cause this much trouble in a strip club before lunch.

As the officer swung open the driver’s door, another police car wheeled into the parking lot. “Hey, Alex, I heard there was a scuffle inside Baby Dolls,” the new arrival yelled through the open window of his patrol car. “What’s goin’ on?”

“Hey, Drew. Give me a few minutes while I finish this paperwork.”

“Sure.”

The arresting officer slid back out of his cruiser and leaned against the front fender, listening to the blaring police radio while he wrote up the incident. Warm bursts of air kicked up sand, sending small vortices swirling around the parking lot.

When the forms were filled out, the officer walked over to the second police car.

“How’re you doin’, Drew?”

“All right. What happened?”

“Seems Mr. Sikes there decided he wanted a little more than the girl gave him after his table dance. So he refused to pay her.”

“What do you mean a little more? He propositioned her?”

“No—no, nothing like that. The song finished and she stopped dancing. He wanted a kiss but she refused. He got upset, grabbed her arm, she tried to get away, so he threw his drink in her face.”

“A weirdo, huh?”

“Yeah. He finally let go of her arm, but by that time one of the bouncers was all over him. Marcy, the bartender, called it in and they dispatched me to check it out. And here we are.”

“How do the girls look in there?”

“Give me a break, like you’ve never been in Baby Dolls.”

“Never, I swear.”

“Now that’s bullshit.”

“Any wants or warrants on him?”

“Nope. He’s your standard frequenter of strip clubs. Marcy said he’s been a regular at Baby Dolls ever since she started there. That’s been about two years. According to her, this is the first time he’s caused a problem. Said he always comes in alone and never talks to anyone except the girls.”

“Are you going to release him?”

“Yeah, I don’t see why not. They aren’t pressing charges. Besides, he hasn’t given me any trouble.”