Malevolent (Lieutenant Kane series Book 1) (3 page)

“Cause of death was a brain injury.”

I nodded. “That wound on her head?”

“Yup. I have to say, it’s a new one for me.”

“New one?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s new, all right. You guys want the office version or the look-and-see?”

I glanced at Hank, who shrugged. I figured the look-and-see option couldn’t hurt. Maybe we could learn something from Ed’s presentation. “Look-and-see,” I said.

“All right. Follow me on back.” Ed turned and started down the hall.

We trailed after Ed, past the refrigerated storage area of the morgue. They conducted the autopsies in the room ahead. The thick odor of death grew stronger as we walked. Ed pushed opened the swinging doors, and we entered the room. Stainless steel covered the walls while, for some reason, red was the color of choice for the floors. Ed continued past a row of covered bodies, stopping at the second from the last. He laid the folder he was carrying on a shelf and grabbed a set of latex gloves from a push cart. He pulled the gloves onto his hands. “This is her.” He drew back the white sheet.

Hank and I stepped in closer.

“Here’s our cause of death.” Ed pointed above her right ear. Red damaged skin was visible through the stubble of her shaved head. “Her hair was doing a good job of covering the extent of the damage,” Ed said.

“What are we looking at here? Small-caliber bullet?” I asked.

Ed shook his head. “Nope. X-ray showed nothing inside. I’m about ninety-nine percent sure it’s from a drill.”

“Someone drilled into her head?” Hank asked.

“That’s not all. They poured boiling water in the hole. The damaged skin around the hole is from scalding. Brain was, for lack of better words, cooked by boiling water.”

I rubbed at my eyes. This was bad.

“Anything that suggested she fought back?” Hank asked.

Ed shook his head. “We scraped her nails and looked her knuckles over for any signs of bruising—nothing. We checked in her mouth—no flesh from biting or anything like that. I found faint traces of bruising around her chest and waist. I think she was tied down. She couldn’t fight back.”

“Was she dead before any of this happened to her?” I asked.

Ed shook his head. “No. She was alive.”

“Any signs of sexual abuse?” I asked.

“Negative.” He paused. “I just got the tox report back before you guys showed up. We got a little something there.”

“What’s the something?” I asked.

“She tested positive for Xylazine.”

Hank shrugged. “And that is?”

“It’s a horse anesthesia and tranquilizer.”

“Spelling?” I asked.

Ed gave it to me.

I jotted the word
Xylazine
in my notepad. “Is that something that’s injected?”

Ed nodded in confirmation.

“That stuff is all regulated, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, if you want to call it that. Every vet, zoo, Department of Natural Resources, and game farm in the state should have it. There is a black market for it as well. They have a big problem with it in Puerto Rico. I saw a show on it. Guess they mix it with heroin—turns people into walking zombies.”

“Don’t zombies normally walk?” Hank asked.

Ed didn’t respond.

“Any more highlights?”

“Small clover tattoo on her hip. It could help with an ID.”

I made a note of the tattoo. “Can you tell us anything about the brand she had on her hand?”

“It was early in the healing process, so my guess of not more than a day old should be pretty accurate.”

“Any idea what it means?” Hank asked.

Ed shrugged. “I took some close-up photos of it and placed them in the file.”

“Where is the lingerie she was wearing?” I asked.

“I have the clothing bagged for your forensics guys. You want to take it with?”

“That’s fine. I’ll drop it off with Rick when we get back,” I said.

“Okay, her clothes are right over here.” He pulled the sheet back over her head and walked to a row of slotted shelves at the side of the room. Ed took a bag from the shelf and handed it to Hank.

I jerked my head toward the folder he’d brought in. “Is that our report there?”

“Yup.” He grabbed it and passed it over.

I thumbed it open. Photos of her injuries and photos from the scene and the autopsy report filled the file. “So animal tranquilizers, tied up, branded, and dressed in lingerie?”

“Death by drill and boiling water,” Hank interjected.

Ed nodded. “Looks like you gentlemen have your work cut out for you.”

“Yeah.” I flipped the file closed and put it under my arm.

“That’s about all I have for you. I need to get started with these other autopsies. Everything else is in the file there. Good luck on the investigation, guys.”

“Okay, Ed. We’ll see you,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows. “Not too soon, I hope.”

We headed back toward the station.

He’d experienced many ways of taking women’s lives. The first, second, and third he’d overdosed. Beating, strangulation, and drowning befell his next victims. He had shot a woman a few years back, but it had left him unfulfilled. 2013 marked his twenty-third year—he was an old pro at his trade. His changing methods and locations kept him out of the spotlight.

His last year had been filled with hospitals, doctors, and an inevitable death sentence. Before he went, he planned to achieve something he’d never had in his forty years—his fifteen minutes of fame. The plan for the women wasn’t death though it was always a possibility. He had something more in mind—something more dramatic.

He pulled his baseball hat low on his head—his dark, thinning, stringy hair curled out from beneath it. A thick, black-and-gray beard covered most of his sunken face. He peered out of the windshield at cars and people. They came and went, some quicker than others. He was keeping a watchful eye on a loading zone. His car was third in line. His cell phone rested on his stomach—a stomach that had once fallen over his belt line. It was now flat. The phone sat on a light-yellow polo shirt tucked into a pair of jeans. He tapped the button to play his video, which loaded and began. On the screen was a close-up of a woman’s face—the woman that had died by the dumpsters of the Manchester building. Tears ran from her cheeks into the pillow below her head.

Her voice trembled through the small speaker of the phone. “I have money. Please, don’t do this.” Her words came slow and slurred. She was drugged.

The camera blurred, zoomed out, and then focused on the female, bound to a bed. Two tie-down straps, over her chest and midsection, kept her movements at a minimum. The sheets covered her legs. She wore a green teddy—a lacy piece of lingerie with a low, plunging neckline. She wore a matching green thong bottom. Rope wrapped her wrists.

She wiggled against the straps. “What are you doing? Please. Please.”

The same man watching the video walked on screen. He held a syringe and a glass vial. The tip of the needle drew a measured dose of Xylazine from inside. He gave it a squirt into the air and then plunged it into her arm. The fluid inside the needle disappeared into her vein.

“That should do for now,” he said.

“Please don’t. Let me go.” Her pleading faded off as the drug made its way through her bloodstream.

His attention focused outside the car’s windshield, and he pulled up one car length. Then his eyes reverted back to the phone’s small screen.

The woman’s head lay facing the camera. Her blond hair fell against her shoulders and covered her right eye. He walked back on screen holding a blowtorch in one hand and a branding iron in the other. He fired up the blowtorch and held the flame over the iron until it glowed a fiery orange. Her skin sizzled as the iron sank into the flesh of her hand.

He looked up from the video playing on his cell phone and smiled. The branding was his calling card. The press, police and world would know who was responsible.

He walked off screen and returned with a small pull cart on casters. The little wheels squeaked as it moved. A cordless drill and miscellaneous tools sat on the right side of the cart, an assortment of books and syringes covering the rest.

He picked up a tape measure and a marker. With the tip of the marker, he made a circle at his desired entry point. He loaded a bit into the drill’s chuck, spun it closed, and tightened it with his hand. The Xylazine he’d pushed into her arm rendered her unconscious. His knees rubbed her sides while he straddled her. With a handful of her blond hair to pull against, he put the tip of the drill bit on the marked area of her skin.

The motor of the drill whirred as he squeezed the trigger. Her hair wrapped around the bit and pulled from her scalp. The metal twisted into her flesh. Blood flowed from her head, ran down her face, and began to pool on the sheets. Small droplets of blood from the rotating bit spattered around the room. More blood hit him in the chest and face. The drill bit spun through her skin and hit skull. He held it steady against the side of her head and applied pressure. Thirty seconds later, he still hadn’t penetrated the bone. The bit, dull from earlier use, began to smoke. He swapped it out with a new bit and went back into the hole he’d started. He pulled the trigger again. His pressure was steady. The tip needed to just penetrate the skull so he could pour in the boiling water. With one more squeeze of the trigger, he removed the drill to examine the entry point. Between pumps of blood, he could see that he was through.

The video went black before resuming with the man holding a tea kettle over her head. Steam rose as he thumbed the kettle’s flapper. He began. A faint trickle of water came from the kettle into the funnel. The water steamed as it fell into the drilled hole. He pulled himself off of her and went to the camera. It went black.

When the video started again, it showed a close-up of the woman. Her mouth hung half open, her right eye remained closed. Her left eye floated up and down. A man’s voice could be heard on the video—his voice. “Let’s go drop you off and start my rise to fame.”

The camera zoomed closer to her face. Drool ran from her mouth. The video went black again.

“Dammit!” He clicked the garbage can button on his phone to delete the video. “She was alive when I left her there. She was perfect!”

One car still remained in front of him. He clicked the button on his phone for the Internet. He pulled up the Tampa Police’s website and thumbed through the tabs of the different departments. Each department listed a handful of the higher-ranked officers with photos of them in uniform—captains, lieutenants and sergeants. His thumb scrolled through the photos and stopped when a face looked familiar. He raised his phone to eye level for a closer look. The man on the screen was Lieutenant Carl Kane from the homicide division. He was the bigger cop in command of the scene at the Manchester building.

A smile crept across his face. The identity of his adversary was in front of him. The car waiting ahead of him moved. He pulled his cab forward for his fare.

I dropped off the lingerie in the forensics lab on the first floor. Rick said he would let me know if they got anything from it. The clock inched toward 7:00 p.m. Until we got an ID on the woman, we were dead in the water. We’d put together a description of the deceased and sent it out to the media, hoping someone would come forward. Aside from the crime scene of the morning and the presentation at the medical examiner’s office, I spent the rest of my day off wrapping up Luis Alonso’s case from the prior week. He was a low-level pusher that got robbed and murdered during a drug deal. The girlfriend of one Jose Lapsey had phoned us after Jose came back to their apartment with blood on his clothes and a handful of bloody cash. The investigation didn’t take long. Jose is now enjoying our jail facilities until his trial. The paperwork was just about ready to be filed when Hank knocked on the sill of my office door.

“You’re still here?”

I didn’t look up from the paperwork. “About to bug out.”

“What’s on the agenda tonight?”

I signed off the bottom of the report, closed the file folder, and gave him my attention. “Head home. Maybe go grab a beer.”

A smile crept across his face. “You ask that bartender out yet?”

Callie was the name of the bartender he referred to. She had long black hair and striking eyes and was a solid ten years too young for me. She worked at a little hole-in-the-wall bar a few blocks away from the station. The place reminded me of the corner bars in Wisconsin that I grew up in—small, dark, and smoky with an endless supply of cheap beer. I popped in there a few times a week for dinner. The bar had a great steak sandwich. Hank had tagged along a couple weeks prior. He caught the back and forth between Callie and me. He did his best to bring her up whenever he could.

I rocked back in my big leather office chair. “No, I haven’t asked her out yet.”

“Why not? I don’t think that girl could make her interest in you clearer.”

I shook my head and shrugged. I didn’t need relationship advice from Hank. “Don’t know.”

“How long has it been since Samantha left?”

That wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. If there was ever a hot-button issue that I would lose my cool on, it was my ex-wife. “Two years.”

He slapped the edge of my doorway. “It’s time to move on, partner. I don’t think she’s coming back.”

I furrowed my brow and tried not to let the topic send me into a rant. “Not looking for her to come back. I wouldn’t take her back if she tried. Besides, she’s enjoying her new dentist husband and family.” I stood from my desk and motioned for Hank to leave. “I’m heading out.”

He rolled himself out of the doorway. “All right, see you tomorrow.”

I locked up my office and left the station. My condo was just a couple-minute drive from work. It kept the mileage on my car low. I pulled into the underground parking and put the Shelby Mustang away for the night. It had been a spur-of-the-moment purchase a year back. Hank referred to it as an early midlife crisis. After a year of ownership, the car had a touch over a thousand miles on it. I took the stairs up and headed to my place, unit 502B. I turned the key in the lock and cracked the front door.