Vengeance Road (21 page)

T
he day after Zachary Miller found the victim, her corpse lay under a tissue-paper sheet on a cold stainless-steel tray in the autopsy room of the district coroner's office in Wichita.

Detective Candace Rose looked upon her.

For Rose, this woman was more than her first homicide. Judging from the little face in the locket, she was somebody's mother.

For a heartbeat, Rose thought of her own children.

“Ready?”

Coroner Russell Pratt and his assistant, Nancy Treggo, adjusted their aprons and surgical face shields as they prepared to begin the procedure.

Rose and her partner, Lou Cheswick, were also gowned and protected with gloves, surgical masks and face shields.

Rose was no stranger to the aftermath of death: bodies entwined with the twisted metal of car wrecks; bloated weeks after drowning; burned beyond recognition; people reduced to brain and viscera splattered on living-room floors and bedroom walls.

And the worst of them all: babies, the corpses of babies. The little ones who never had a chance.

That was what she'd seen as a street cop and it forged what she knew: that death, the great equalizer, was now her formidable foe.

Rose braced to look upon her Jane Doe.

This was her first homicide case but not her first autopsy.

She was acquainted with the room's chill, familiar overpowering smells of ammonia and formaldehyde. The victim had already been washed, weighed, measured, photographed and x-rayed.

“Go ahead,” Pratt nodded to Treggo, who slowly drew back the sheet.

Rose's nostrils flared, her breathing quickened.

She stared at what was on the table: an act that had obliterated the barrier between what was human and what was depraved. For, this woman had not been murdered. She had been destroyed.

The mutilation had rendered her face unrecognizable.

Treggo removed the brown paper bags around the victim's hands, and fingernail scrapings were collected before taking fingerprints. Pratt inspected the arms, wrists and hands for any signs of defensive wounds. Pratt and Treggo were meticulous.

Then they moved on to the internal examination.

Pratt made the primary Y incision as he proceeded.

As they worked, Pratt spoke aloud for the overhead microphone recording the process, pausing occasionally to consult a plastic-covered clipboard. At times, when Pratt exchanged observations with Treggo, Rose heard terms like subclavian, femoral, clavical and femur.

They were nearly finished and reviewing aspects when Treggo's brow wrinkled. She concentrated on the woman's forehead.

“Wait, Russ.”

Treggo spotted something amid the network of abrasions that laced the victim's flesh, something she'd missed. A jumbled line of letters below the hairline had been carved into her skin.

A white-gloved finger pointed to the word they spelled.

“See that?”

Pratt and Treggo invited Rose and Cheswick to move closer and Rose read the word.

GUILTY.

After finishing, Rose and Cheswick deposited their gowns, gloves and masks in the trash. They got some fresh air then joined Pratt in his corner office of the Sedgwick County Regional Forensic Science Center.

It was spacious and neat with a number of thriving ferns and a pleasant scent of potting soil and coffee. Rose detected a hint of cologne as Pratt typed at his computer keyboard finishing his preliminary report.

His printer hummed then he passed copies to the detectives.

“Let's go through it,” Pratt said. “You have a white female. Five feet five inches. Approximately twenty to thirty years of age. One hundred twenty pounds. Brown hair, blue eyes. No confirmed identity.”

“We have this.” Rose presented a color page of an enlarged clear photo of the locket. “She was clutching this locket in her left hand.”

“So noted,” Pratt said. “And Nancy's taking care of the prints for you.”

“Thanks.” Rose opened her notebook. “We'll run those through AFIS.”

“And,” Pratt said, “I've got a forensic odontologist coming in. He'll help prepare a dental chart for a comparison.”

“DNA?” Rose asked.

“We'll start a kit for the DNA database, but it'll take three or four weeks before they process our submission. The fingerprint database might be faster for identification.”

“What can you say about cause, time and location?”

“Indications are that the decedent died where she was found, within thirty-six to forty-eight hours prior to discovery.”

“And the cause?”

“As for cause, the decedent suffered tremendous blunt-force trauma to the entire body and head, something consistent with a heavy metal tool such as a pickax. In my estimation the dece—” Pratt stopped, removed his glasses. “In my estimation, this woman suffered approximately sixty to seventy blows, half of them piercing her body. It would have caused massive hemorrhaging that would have been fatal.”

The silence that followed Pratt's assessment may have been a moment of respect, but it allowed Rose to catch up with her note-taking before Pratt continued.

“No defensive wounds were evident. Markings on her wrists and remnants of duct tape suggest she was bound. We should have more on stomach contents, toxicology and other analysis later.”

Rose looked out Pratt's large window toward the University of Kansas School of Medicine before releasing a flood of questions.

“Why the overkill? What am I supposed to make of his message? Guilty. Who is guilty? And guilty of what?”

“I'm not a profiler,” Pratt said, “nor an expert in criminal psychosis. But I would think it all has to do with his fantasy, or maybe diminished mental capacity. Perhaps he's under the influence. The savagery and the ritualistic display could mean he's on a mission and the message is his signature. Or perhaps I'm completely wrong. What do you think, Lou?”

Cheswick had said little because beneath the surface he was seething at the violation. Furious at the arrogance, the indignity of this killer.

“Don't worry about the hows and whys, they'll only divert you,” Cheswick said. “We find out who she is, how she got there. We work the case and we hunt the animal down. Because this guy's out of control. He's right off the chart. I'm sure as hell he's done this before and I will bet you my pension that he'll do it again.”

T
hat afternoon, Rose and Cheswick joined grim-faced detectives at the City Building downtown for the first case-status meeting.

Investigators from several agencies settled into high-backed chairs at a large table in a sixth-floor meeting room of Wichita's Homicide Section.

Rose cleared her throat.

“We have the ritualistic mutilation murder of an unidentified white female discovered yesterday by boys playing at Clear Ridge Crossing. You all have copies of the coroner's preliminary report.”

Rose typed a few commands into a laptop keyboard and an aerial image of Clear Ridge Crossing surfaced on the big screen reaching down from the ceiling at one end of the room.

“I'll summarize the case. Could someone dim the lights, please?”

Rose clicked through large, crisp photographs of the massive new subdivision, the crime scene, the victim and pictures taken by the coroner.

Profanity rippled around the table.

“Identification is a challenge,” she said. “We've obtained her fingerprints and run them through AFIS. So
far we've got nothing. They've had technical problems with their mainframe and will run them again.”

Questions came to her from the dimmed light.

“What about clothing? A wallet, shoes, jacket?” a detective asked.

“Nothing like that was recovered.”

“Time of death?” he asked.

“It's estimated she was murdered at the scene thirty-six to forty-eight hours before Zachary Miller found her. We're hopeful we can also obtain a dental chart for comparison.”

“Was she sexually assaulted?” another detective asked.

“No.”

“What about traces of alcohol, controlled substances or medication? Any impairment?” someone asked.

“Toxicology results are still coming.”

“Says here the injuries are consistent with a pickax?”

“That's right.”

“Art,” Rose said to the Wichita detective who'd led the team that canvased contractors and workers on the site. “Anything come up with the canvas?”

“No, ma'am. Nothing specific.”

“Anybody see or hear anything that might help us?”

“Nope. The job site has a lot of traffic from builders, suppliers, workers, subcontractors. Lots of trucks coming and going from all over. And it's easily accessible to the Kansas Turnpike. Some folks said out-of-state long-haul truckers will arrive at all hours and park overnight in that area waiting to be offloaded in the a.m.”

“What about in that particular area and the scene?” another detective asked. “Did CSI get casts from tires, or footwear?”

“They did, and we'll use them for comparison,” Rose said.

“Start a second canvas,” the Captain said. “And let's get
a list of all suppliers. Use it to build a pool of everyone who ever had access to that site. We'll cross-reference vehicles to the tire casts, get employee lists linked to the vehicles, and driving and criminal records. That's one avenue.”

“We'll also run it against the registered-offender database,” Cheswick said. “Our guy could've somehow got off on his act.”

“What about DNA?” asked an investigator.

“The coroner has started a kit and will work with you to submit it to CODIS,” Rose said. “And we'd like some help checking all missing-person cases in Kansas and beyond, see if Jane Doe fits with any.”

“Dobson and Wurlitz, that's you with the FBI,” the lieutenant said. “Candy, let's get to the key fact and hold back. I want to remind everyone that nothing, absolutely nothing, leaves this room.”

Large, sharp photos of the locket filled the screen.

“She was clutching this in her left hand,” Rose said.

The inscription
Love Mom
was clear, as was the photo of a toddler.

“Candace, that could be your key to identification,” one detective said. “Maybe you should run this through the FBI's Jewelry and Gem database, see if it's been reported stolen.”

“The FBI no longer maintains it,” FBI special agent Nick Vester said. “It's now run by the industry. But looking at the locket, it would appear to have low dollar value and might not be included. However, we know the operators of the database make case-by-case decisions depending on the circumstances. We'll check for you.”

“Thanks,” Rose said then clicked to a gruesome image—the word carved into the victim's forehead.

“Gee Zuss,” someone said.

“This is also holdback,” Rose said.

“What's that all about?” one detective asked.

“I think we should go back to Agent Vester to give us his thoughts.” The captain nodded at Vester, who'd spent last summer at the FBI's academy at Quantico studying psychological profiling of ritualistic violent crimes.

“Off the top, just based on what we know here, it's clearly ritualistic. It exhibits his control. It's organized, almost ceremonial, as if he was adhering to a procedure. The gross mutilation, the overkill, and the obvious message let people know he's justified in his crusade. Something is raging internally.”

“The coroner suggested something along those lines,” Rose said.

“I'd suggest you submit your case, key fact evidence and all, to ViCAP. If you fill out the form I'll submit it at the field office as soon as I can.”

“Do that, Candace,” the Captain said. “Okay, people, you've got your assignments. Next meeting in twenty-four hours.”

 

It was early evening by the time Rose got to the ViCAP form. She was a true believer in the system, having learned more of its history when she had studied for the homicide detectives' exam.

The idea for the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program emerged over fifty years ago with an LAPD detective who was pursuing a killer who lured women to their deaths by placing ads for models in newspapers. After taking their photographs, he would rape, then hang them.

The investigator was convinced that the murders in Los Angeles were linked to those in other area cities and searched for patterns by studying similar murders reported
in out-of-town newspapers at the public library. The detective discovered enough links to track down his suspect.

The killer was convicted and executed.

Years later, the FBI helped develop the concept into a computerized data system for police to quickly share information on mobile suspects.

Now, as Rose completed the form, she hoped ViCAP would help her with her first homicide. She answered some one hundred detailed questions on every known aspect of the crime scene and the victim, including key fact, or holdback evidence, which most cops rarely shared.

After Rose's case was submitted to the database, FBI analysts would compare it to all other submitted files. Like the LAPD detective half a century earlier, they would look for patterns, matches or signatures linked to other crimes in other jurisdictions. The ViCAP analysts never revealed holdback, but when they got a hit, they alerted the case detectives and advised them to talk to each other.

It was late when Rose finished and hand delivered the form to Vester at the FBI's field office, which was on her way home.

Vester, working late himself, assured Rose her case was a priority and that within twenty-four hours it would be submitted “and in the mix” at the FBI's ViCAP database in Quantico, Virginia.

When Rose arrived home, she found her husband asleep on the couch in front of the TV while John Wayne looked for his abducted niece in
The Searchers
.

Rose walked softly to her son's bedroom. Jesse was asleep. She watched him breathing for several moments before bending down and tenderly touching his head. He smelled of shampoo, assuring her that her husband had gotten their youngest in the shower.

Then she went to her daughter's bedroom. Emily's
place was a mess, typical of a girl on the cusp of her teens. Rose abandoned the thought of tidying and kissed Em's cheek.

She then went downstairs, kissed her husband, who woke up and dragged himself to bed. Then she took a hot shower, washing away the autopsy, the day. Her husband was snoring when she slid into bed next to him. Rose couldn't sleep. She was determined not to drop the ball on her first case. She switched on her reading light to look at the enlarged photo of the locket.

The bright-eyed boy stared back at her.

Who do you belong to, sweetheart?

Someone was holding you so tight, so tight they'd never let go. They must have loved you so much.

So much.