Ripper (4 page)

Unbagging the hands, she scraped each nail before the Ident man printed Marsh's fingers. "No defense slashes on the palms," she noted, severing both hands at the wrist to preserve them.

"Professional work," Macbeth said, returning to the head. "The face is thoroughly skinned of all underflesh yet there are no instrument scratches on the bone. The hair is scalped from the top of the skull and back from both sides of the face. The skinner knows anatomy, at least the rudiments. Possibly a doctor, or medical student."

The Ident man with Craven was a forensic knot specialist. He photographed the ligature around Marsh's neck in place, then cut the cord so as to retain the knot. "Recognize the hitch?" he asked Macbeth.

"It's a suture knot," she replied. "We use it to close wounds and tie off blood vessels. The advantage is the first bend won't slip before the knot is completed. Being flat it doesn't produce disfiguring scars."

The Ident man pulled a length of cord from his pocket. One end in hand, he looped it three turns around the other, then pointed both ends upward and looped them again. Tugging the ends tight completed the knot.

"As it doesn't slip, the hitch is ideal for slow strangulation," he said. "This knot was tied by a left-handed person."

The Ident man compared the twist and weave of the ligature cut from Marsh's neck to rope burns on her severed wrists and ankles. "She was bound with cord cut from the same line."

As Macbeth leaned forward to examine the lower wounds, the apron snagged her hospital greens, gaping them from her chest.

Nick was caught in a moral conundrum.
Am I harassing her if I take a surreptitious peek
? he wondered.
Or is she harassing me by exposing such an erotic vista?

He peeked.

No bra.

And wanted her even more.

You don't suppose . . .?

Christ,
he thought.
Don't even think such things. What if the feminist Thought Police got wind of this sexist crime? Probably burn me at the stake like some McCarthy witch.

Macbeth glanced up, and caught his wayward eyes.

Oh, oh,
Nick thought, and tried a squiggly smile.

Macbeth responded by wrinkling her nose like he was stale fish.

"Twenty stab wounds," she said, freeing her top from the apron. "Punctures, not slashes. And all in the womb. Punctures are more sexual than mutilating swipes."

With a wicked-looking instrument she probed the raw slits. "Some were enlarged through frenzied stabbing or struggling by the victim. Some show tears from twisting of the knife. Others were doubled by partial withdrawal and reentry of the blade. The fishtail or notch at the top of each wound means the weapon is single-edged. Some cuts—but not others—have bled into the subcutaneous tissue. That indicates the wounds were made before
and
after death. She was stabbed as she was strangled."

"Two killers?" Nick asked, recalling the vagrant's comment about footsteps on the bridge.

"Likely," Macbeth replied.

Again the apron gaped her greens as scalpel in hand she bent over the corpse. "You're sure you're up to this?" she said, glancing at Nick.
What in hell does that mean
? he thought.

With a sweeping cut from throat to pubis, Macbeth peeled skin and fat away to access the internal organs, cracking the rib cage with bone shears to get at the lungs and heart. She preserved the relationship between organs by removing some in groups. Each organ was weighed and a note made of its appearance and characteristics. Slices cut from tissue were placed on microscope slides, while blood and fluid samples were bottled and sealed. Macbeth examined the stomach and found what looked like grass inside, mixed with other half-digested food. The stomach contents were packaged for transport to the lab, Macbeth signing each exhibit tag as did the exhibit man.

Because Marsh was suspended under Lynn Canyon Bridge, gravity had bulged bowel balloons from some of the slits. As Macbeth stripped the corpse of its abdominal muscles, one by one the ugly tongues popped back inside. She reached to remove the coils en masse and leave Marsh a dugout canoe, but paused, frowned, and then reached for a magnifying glass instead.

"Find something?" Craven asked.

"Lice," Macbeth said. One eye gigantic behind the convex lens, she used a thin flat tool to transfer specks from the intestines to slides. The autopsy attendant fetched a microscope.

"This body is well-groomed, exercised, and manicured. Lice don't fit such a lifestyle," she said.

"Perhaps they were on a wrapping used to transport it? A blanket or sheet?" Nick suggested.

"The lice are
in
the wounds, not on the skin. All covering was removed
before
gravity bulged the guts." "What's your opinion?"

"Lice are only in the wounds with underskin bleeding. That links them to premortal stabs. They were probably transferred on the weapon used."

In turn, Macbeth and Craven examined one of the slides. The bug on it was hairy and leggy with claws and vicious jaws.

"Human lice are Anoplura. Sucking lice," Gill said. "Lice with jaws are Mallophaga. Chewing lice," she added. "Whatever host shed these, it didn't walk on two legs."

Mindhunter

2:25
P.M.

The mindhunter of today evolved from the manhunter of the past. It used to be a cop's rule of thumb was in 80 percent of murder cases the victim knew the killer. Money, hate, passion, revenge: these were real-life motives, not the psycho fantasies peddled in comics and crime fiction. The Joker, Goldfmger, and Fu Manchu gave cops a good laugh.

Then, thirty years ago, evil began to change.

The demons who brought this change about are now household names: the Mad Bomber, the Plainfield Ghoul, the Boston Strangler, the Moors Murderers, the Nurse Killer, the Tower Sniper, the Manson Family, the Son of Sam, Zodiac, the People's Temple, the Killer Clown, the Hillside Stranglers, the Coed Killer, the Yorkshire Ripper, the Milwaukee Cannibal, to list a few. Forty-five percent of today's murders are "stranger-to-stranger crimes," and more than half of those result from psycho fantasies.

Serial killers have stalked the unwary throughout history, but only recently have their atrocities reached epidemic proportions. Random, seemingly motiveless murders offer few physical clues to the killer's identity, especially when such crimes are sexual in nature.

Sexual homicide is defined as one person killing another in the context of power, control, sexuality, and aggressive brutality. The hallmark of sexual sadism is the infliction of physical or psychological suffering on the victim in order to achieve sexual excitement. Such crimes are never "motiveless," but often the motive is one understood only by the killer. Sexual homicide originates in fantasy, for fantasy is what drives sadistic behavior.

Clearly, hunting this type of killer requires a special cop. A mindhunter able to peer inside the killer's head.

Psychological profiling from crime scene analysis is the latest weapon in the Mounties' arsenal. Developed by the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, profiling is the means by which mindhunters solve fantasy-driven crimes. The premise behind its effectiveness is the
way
a person thinks directs his behavior. Behavior reflects personality, so reconstructing what the killer did to produce the crime scene profiles the makeup of who's responsible.

A psychiatrist studies a person to predict how he will act in the future. What a mindhunter does is reverse the process. He studies a killer's deeds to deduce what kind of person the killer is.

"From a drop of water," said Sherlock Holmes, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other."

A crime scene speaks its own language of behavior patterns. Unlike detective fiction where the case is often solved by one tiny clue, a profiler considers
all
clues and how they interrelate. His skill is in recognizing the crime scene dynamics that link the murder in question to a known deviant type. Most victims of bizarre murder are women or children. Overwhelmingly the killers are men. The weirder the crime scene, the darker the psychological fingerprint left behind. Profiling narrows the police investigation.

The mindhunter with Special X was Inspector Eric Chan.

Robert DeClercq's office at E Division Headquarters was on the second floor of the Tudor building at 33rd and Heather. The room was an airy, high-vaulted loft, with windows facing the Conservatory in Queen Elizabeth Park. Three Victorian library tables U'd to form a horseshoe served as his desk. His chair was an antique from the Force's curly days, high-backed with a barley-sugar frame crowned with the crest of the North-West Mounted Police. DeClercq returned from Rosetown where he'd talked with Zinc to find Chan feet-up in the chair, contemplating an input model on one of the corkboard walls. Inputting was step one in generating a profile.

"What's with the protesters? And U.S. TV crews?" DeClercq shook the rain from his parka and hung it by the door.

"Media circus," Chan said, "and feminist feeding frenzy. North Van GIS referred the vultures here. I've already given a statement to quell their appetite."

"Some of the faces I recognize from the Headhunter case. Let's hope we don't have a repeat of that. Riots we can do without."

"Amen," said Chan.

Balding, with a foxlike face and quizzical eyes, the Inspector was the first nonwhite to join the Mounted Police. While training at "Depot" Division in 1961, he was nicknamed "Charlie" by the ghost recruits. Ostracized, Chan was the butt of hazing and racist jokes, but being Chinese, had persevered by "taking the long view." When Hong Kong's Triads chose Vancouver as their main heroin port, he was the only Mountie who could speak Cantonese. Forming the Asian Gang Squad was his idea, after he drove the Five Dragons from the West Coast. When the Force began selecting members for college degrees, he studied random processes and probability at UBC. Graduating with honors, Chan computerized the RCMP, programming the Headhunter dragnet in 1982.

The Violent Crimes Analysis Section was also his idea. By definition, serial killers and rapists repeat their crimes, so this subsection of Special X looks for common threads in crimes of violence coast-to-coast. The investigating officer in every case must fill out a sex crime and murder analysis form. The form is a checklist of 211 questions eliciting details a computer can categorize. How did the offender first approach the victim? What kind of weapon and/or bindings were used? Is fantasy or ritual evident in the crime? Because this data is compared and cross-referred, a VCAS mindhunter needs only a desktop computer to establish links. Bang, bang, bang, mix and match, there's the thread.

Chan was using the computer on DeClercq's desk.

"So?" the Chief Superintendent said. "What have we got?"

"Looks like a stalking team."

The Inspector rounded the desk to join DeClercq at the corkboard wall. The input model was split into four sections. The first section was a collage recording the scene of the crime. Aerial photographs followed Lynn Canyon up the mountainside, while 8x10 color glossies detailed the body and the bridge. There were maps of the North Shore area, crime scene sketches noting distances and scale, and a weather report that overlapped a chart of the neighboring homes.

"The vagrant who called it in," said Chan, "heard
two
people on the bridge. Footsteps, no talking, so we don't know their sex. The victim wasn't killed where her body was found. If she was murdered in someone's home, the killers may live together or at least one lives alone. The murder site is somewhere the team feels safe, because this killing took some time. The victim was tied spread-eagled and her face was ritually skinned."

"Could be
one
killer and an accessory after the fact."

"I doubt it," Chan said, moving along the wall.

The second section was a collection of forensic reports. Preliminary morgue shots of the cleansed wounds circled a fax containing Macbeth's autopsy results. Toxicology and serology tests were underway, but analysis of the stomach contents would take a few days. The food was on its way to an expert in California. The estimated time of death was early Monday morning, two and a half days ago. The cause of death was asphyxia
and
stabbing. As yet Ident had turned up nothing at the scene.

"Strangling and stabbing combined means
two
killers," said Chan. "See the ligature around her neck? One killer pulled both ends of the cord while the other stabbed, or each pulled an end while one of them used the knife. No weapon was recovered from the canyon."

"What do we know about the victim?" asked DeClercq.

"Not much," Chan replied. He moved to the third section of the wall. It was reserved for information on Marsh's background: age, occupation, marital status, employment history, family tree, reputation, criminal record, health, habits, fears, politics, personality, and social relations. Where the victim was last seen alive is crucial. The section was almost bare.

"Brigid Marsh," Chan said. "Professional feminist. One of the angry type. All men conspire to enslave women. Made her living writing and doing the lecture circuit.
Mannequin, Amazon,
and
Witch Hunt
are her books. All were bestsellers. We've ordered copies. Flew here Sunday from her home in New York. Was to speak at this week's feminist convention. Left her hotel Sunday night and didn't return. No one knows where she went."

"Could be someone didn't like her politics. Someone here or in New York. She might have been stalked to foreign ground to hide a U.S. motive."

"The NYPD's doing a background check. That'll take a day or two, but said they'd fax something by late this afternoon."

"Who's available to go to New York?"

"Politically, Spann would be the best choice." Chan glanced at the protesters on the street. "She's bogged down in Thailand, and won't be back till Monday. Davis is free."