Horns of the Devil - Jeff Trask [02] (2 page)

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Chapter Two

Washington, DC, August 9, 11:18 p.m.

D
ixon Carter watched as Assistant Medical Examiner Kathy Davis cut the jersey from the upper half of the headless body. It was a procedure he had watched hundreds of times before. The corpse lay under the sterile white lights, stretched out on the stainless-steel autopsy table. Drainage holes waited to dispose of the fluids which, hours before, had sustained a life.

Kathy was short, only about five-four, and she was standing on a step stool as usual, working on the top of the body. She completed the cut with the scissors and pulled the jersey open, revealing the torso.

“My God.” Carter couldn’t help himself.

The kid had been through hell; his chest had been used as a carving board. The letters “MS” and every possible variation of the number thirteen—Arabic, Roman numerals—had been sliced into his flesh.

She pointed to the body’s wrists. “Ligature marks on the wrists and bruises on each forearm. Straight lines. Looks like they had him tied to a chair with his arms behind him. They sure did a number on him, and all this happened
before
they cut his head off. See, the bleeding from all these cuts indicates that they’re
ante mortem
.”

“No cuts in the jersey, though,” Carter observed. “Other than yours.”

“Right, Dix. Just bloodstains. They put the jersey on him after all the slicing and dicing, and probably after the decapitation.”

She held the shirt up with gloved hands.

“See? No cuts in the fabric. You were right about this being a body dump, too. Lividity shows he’d been laying face down somewhere after he was killed. The blood—whatever didn’t spurt out after the decapitation—had pooled on the front side. You said he was lying on his back in front of the embassy?”

Carter nodded. “Any tats or old scars?”

“Just one tattoo,” she said. “Or what’s left of it. You’ll have to come over to this side.”

Carter walked around the table. Kathy’s gloved hand pointed to the two numerals that had been inked into the right shoulder. Several cuts had been made into the shoulder through the tattoo.

“Looks like someone wasn’t happy about it,” she said. “It’s as if they tried to remove it.”

It was the only conclusion Kathy offered that Carter disagreed with. If someone had really wanted to remove the tat, it wouldn’t have been difficult, especially after the decapitation. Instead, the cuts through the symbol seemed to be more of a sign of contempt that the killer—or killers—had for the number eighteen.

The door to the autopsy room opened, and a tall, thin figure with silver hair and bright blue eyes entered. He walked up behind the assistant ME and kissed her on the cheek.

“Hi, babe.” He nodded toward Carter. “What do we have, Dix?”

“Cap.”

Carter still used the older, familiar title for Commander Willie Sivella, the chief of Homicide and his boss. It was his third stint under Cap’n Willie. The first had been as a patrolman, the second a long tour in the District of Columbia’s Seventh District as a detective. When Sivella had been promoted out of 7D to take over Homicide, he’d persuaded Carter to come with him.

Carter hadn’t been surprised to see his boss at the morgue. It was a gruesome case, with plenty of shocked citizens on the street gawking at a headless corpse, an ambassador’s son as the victim, and certain press interest to follow. Sivella would have questions to answer, which is why he’d asked Kathy Davis, his live-in girlfriend of seven years plus, to do the body exam ASAP.

Carter pointed to the jersey.

“Seven plus six equals thirteen, Cap. And there’s an ‘18’ tattoo on the kid’s shoulder.” Carter paused for a moment. “Didn’t Barry Doroz just move over to the gang task force at FBI?”

“Yeah. I’ll give him a call. He’ll let us work the case with him if they want to pick it up, and he can deflect some of the shit storm in the press. Did we confirm this was the ambassador’s kid?”

Kathy picked up a ring from a metal tray on the side of the examining table.

“The inscription was pretty clear once I rinsed off the blood.”

“Armando Lopez-Mendez.” Sivella returned the ring to the tray. “Hispanic surname. First one’s the dad, last one’s the mom. You’ll need to get DNA from the parents for confirmation, Dix.”

“I already told the ambassador. He’ll be expecting it. Do we have a prosecutor assigned yet?”

“Yeah,” Sivella winked. “I called Bill Patrick at the US Attorney’s office right after you radioed from the scene. Told him we needed his best on this one. It’s Jeff Trask. Any objections?”

Carter shook his head. Trask was the best he’d seen in the US Attorney’s office, with the possible exception of Bob Lassiter, and Lassiter was dead now. Trask was the best choice Patrick could have made. Aggressive, no-nonsense, and smart as hell.

“No, and I don’t think Agent Doroz will have any, either.”

“Good. Let me know when you hook up.”

August 9, 6:20 p.m.

From a chair in the back of his favorite restaurant in Georgetown, Jeffrey Ethan Trask, Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, looked around the room. His back was to a wall, as usual.
No Jack McCall sneaking up from
behind. I won’t make the Hickock mistake. Wild Bill violated his rule only once, and it killed him.
He opened the filing cabinets in his mind and allowed the images and data to flow freely, waiting to settle on one in order to control the cacophony of his thoughts. The music being piped in was cycling through some late fifties hit parade and early sixties soft rock.

That music will do for now.

He had always found the songs to be a soothing way to focus when his mind wasn’t concentrating on a task at hand. He closed his eyes and challenged himself to name the next song in as few notes as possible. It took him just two.
“It’s
All in the Game.” Tommy Edwards’ biggest hit. Number one on the charts for six weeks in 1958.
Lyrics by Carl Sigman, music by Charles G. Dawes, who happened to be vice-president under
Silent Cal Coolidge. The only hit ever to be co-written by a vice president of the United States.

Trask smiled. His command of trivia had earned him many a t-shirt or free drink in bars scattered across the South while he was an Air Force JAG traveling prosecutor.

He was waiting for the next song to begin when he saw her enter from the street. He felt himself smiling.
No trouble focusing now.
She was still the most perfect thing in his life, the anchor in all the madness. Five-five and a nicely proportioned one-hundred-and-twenty pounds, dressed in black slacks and a teal blouse that perfectly set off her deep brown eyes. All the file cabinets in his head remained closed when she was with him. Lynn kissed him as he held her chair while she sat down.

She saw his fingers drumming on the table.

“What song is running through that fevered brain of yours?”

“
My Girl.
Temps.” He smiled.

“Yeah, I’ll bet.” She rolled her eyes.

“Whenever I see you,” he said. “How’s the new job?”

“Not bad, I guess. I’m going to have to get used to the support role and not being an active street agent.”

Trask smiled again and shook his head.

“What’s the big joke?” she asked.

“
I’m
going to have to get used to the idea that I’m married to an old retired woman.”

Lynn Preston had been a Special Agent with the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations. She had worked several long-term undercover operations, invariably resulting in perfect conviction rates and sending many military drug-dealers to spend hot summers and bitter winters at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Trask had met her at a base in Florida where she had done one of these undercover stints. That operation had generated dozens of courts-martial and a very strong mutual attraction. Trask had left the air force after fourteen years of active duty to become a federal prosecutor. Lynn had been reassigned to Andrews AFB, Maryland, and a chance meeting there on one of Trask’s monthly days as a JAG reservist had led to their marriage a few months later. She had stayed on active duty for the retirement, but left the moment her twenty years were up. She’d just landed a job with the FBI as an analyst.

“You forget that I enlisted when I was six,” she quipped.

“You look like that might be true.”

“Thanks, but I suspect you have a very biased opinion.”

“I admit the bias, but the opinion’s still accurate. Where’d they put you?”

“Your friend Bear has me working for him in the gang squad.”

“Good. He can keep all the young bucks in the Bureau from hitting on you.”

“Fat chance,” she said. She nodded to her left. “I think you’re the one who needs watching.”

Trask turned to see a little girl in a booster seat grinning at him from the adjacent table. She was only about sixteen months old, but she was smiling widely, showing off the few teeth she had managed to sprout. “What is it with you and babies?” Lynn asked. “You’re a baby
magnet
. Mostly little girls. They’re always smiling at you like that. I think they see some kind of halo around you and know that you’re here to protect them.”

Trask smiled back at the infant, who was beaming at him again.

“How old do they have to be before that stops?” Lynn asked.

“I’ve noticed that it drops off considerably after they hit twenty-five.”

“You’d be wearing this salad if we weren’t in public.”

Trask laughed. “After dinner, we can go home and I’ll show you how attractive I think
you
still are.”

She smiled again, but it faded quickly.

“I might have to leave Barry’s squad already.”

“Why is that? I thought he’d be a great boss to work for.”

“That’s not the problem.” She stabbed the fork into her salad before looking up again. “
You
are.”

“What?”

“Barry got a call from
your
boss just before I left work to meet you.”

“And what did smilin’ Bill Patrick say to stir this up?”

“Tim Wisniewski took a call yesterday and Dixon Carter picked it up at Homicide. The vic was an ambassador’s kid. Decapitated. Somebody threw his body out in front of his father’s embassy.”

“Which embassy?”

“El Salvador. Willie Sivella called Barry. Willie said he’d already talked to Patrick and that the case was going to be assigned to you.”

El Salvador,
Trask mused.
Decapitation. The signature of a political retaliation by the
MS-13. I’d read that they were moving into the area. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, though.
The new government was supposed to be more favorable to the gangs…

He looked back up at Lynn.

Focus, dummy. Don’t ever tune HER out.

“Great,” he said. “The case of the headless diplomatic dependent. What does that have to do with your squad assignment?”

“The murder’s probably gang-related; at least that’s the initial theory.”

Trask nodded as if the information were new to him.

“Barry had wanted me to work on gang intelligence stuff,” she continued. “He was worried that with you taking the case, it might conflict me out of the squad.”

“There’s no conflict of interest as long as you’re not a potential witness. I’d have to call the witnesses who wrote whatever you’re reading, not you. As long as you’re an analyst and not a witness to an event, no conflict.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yep. Just make sure there’s a second set of eyes on everything you do. As long as I don’t have to call you to the stand, I don’t have to kick you off Bear’s squad.”

“Great!” She dug into her salad. “We can work together again, I can stay on the desk, and I don’t even have to talk to dumb-ass lawyers in court!”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“I didn’t mean
you
. Besides, I never thought of you as a lawyer.”

“Thanks again.”

“You know what I mean. You’re as much of a cop as I am. All the guys who’ve done cases with you say that. Plus, you’re a hell of a prosecutor, and you’re not bad at some other things.”

“Like what?” He prodded, arching his left eyebrow.

“Like showing me how attractive you think I still am. I plan to take you up on that offer when we get home.”

“I think this salad will be enough, then, don’t you?”

“Not so fast, Romeo,” she laughed. “You promised me a dinner, not an appetizer.”

“All right. Just chew fast.”