Whats going on? she asked her friend Ana, who lived down the street and was her own age. Ana had come to the funeral and then back to the house afterward, of course, along with her parents and her cousin Jedidiah, looking handsome in his military uniform. Her grandparents next door neighbor was there, too, Tony, who was eighteen already. He and Jed were off talking, so she was able to talk to Ana alone.
You didnt know? Ana asked her. They got that guy that was killing people. I guess maybe you didnt hear as much about him down south, but up here, people were paranoid. He was buried today, too.
And she had put a rose on his coffin.
Later, when she was alone with her grandmother, she was told again to stop talking about seeing her grandfather.
You loved him, my girl. I know that. But you must stop saying youve seen him, though I know you are only trying to ease my heart.
Am I hurting you, Gran? she asked.
No, its not that.
Then what?
Gran looked at her very seriously. Its dangerous. Very dangerous. So today youve said goodbye. Never, ever think of him as speaking to youbeing near youagain.
Granda would never hurt me.
Not Granda.
But
Gran was suddenly intense. To see Grandayou have opened a door. And God alone knows who else might pass through that door.
Grans words chilled her.
Gran, was Ana telling me the truth? No one thinks twelve is old enough to understand anything, but it is. Tell me, please, was a murderer buried today?
Her grandmothers face went white. Never speak of it, never speak that name in connection with your grandfather!
What name?
Never you mind. Its over. An awful time is over. And your grandfatherwell, hes in Gods arms now. Where monsters go, I do not know.
Gran kissed her then, and held her. Tis all right, my girl, tis all right. We have love. I have you, and I have your Mom, and my dear son and his lads. Tis all right.
Christie looked at her. She wanted to scream, because it wasnt all right. They were always trying to shelter her from the world, but surely it was better to understand the world than hide from it.
But here in her grandparentsher grandmothers nowhouse, everyone was too upset.
Too lost.
She didnt know why, and it made her afraid. Not afraid of Granda, but just
Afraid.
Afraid of the dead.
That night, she didnt sleep. She lay awake, praying silently in her soul that he wouldnt come.
And he didnt.
She had probably just been so upset that she was imagining things.
Granda, dont come again. Dont ever come again. If you love me at all, please, dont ever come again.
She told herself that all she felt was the whisper of a breeze, though there was none. A gentle touch, as if
As if she had been heard and understood.
Her grandfather didnt appear.
In fact, she never saw him again, not even in dreams.
And as the years passed by, slowly, certainly, she forgot.
It had only been a dream, just as her mother had said.
She was able to believe that for nearly twelve years. And then one day she learned that her grandmothers words were true.
Seeing the dead
Was dangerous.
1
An autopsy room always smelled like death, no matter how sterile it was.
And it was never dark, the way it was in so many movies. If anything, it was too bright. Everything about it rendered death matter-of-fact.
Facts, yes. It was the facts they were after. The victims voice was forever silenced, and only the eloquent, hushed cry of the body was left to help those who sought to catch a killer.
Jed Braden could never figure out how the medical examiner and the cops got so blasé about the place that they managed not only to eat but to wolf down their food in the autopsy room.
Not that he wasnt familiar enough with autopsy rooms himself. He was, in fact, far more acquainted with his current surroundings than he had ever wanted to be. But eating here? Not him.
This morning, it was doughnuts for the rest of them, but hed even refused coffee. Hed never passed out at an autopsy, even when hed been a rookie in Homicide, and he didnt feel like starting now.
Even a fresh corpse smelled. The bodyany bodyreleased gases with death. And if it had taken a while for someone to discover the corpse, whether it was a victim of natural, self-inflicted or violent death, growing bacteria and the process of decay could really wreak havoc with the senses.
But sometimes he thought the worst smells of all were those that just accompanied the business of discovering evidence: formaldehyde and other tissue preservers and the heavy astringents used to whitewash death and decay. Some M.E.s and their assistants wore masks or even re-breatherssince the nation had become litigation crazy, some jurisdictions even required them.
Not Doc Martin. He had always felt that the smells associated with death were an important tool. He was one of the fifty percent of people who could smell cyanide. He was also a stickler; he hated it when a corpse had to be disinterred because something had been done wrong or neglected the first time around.
There wasnt a better man to have on a case.
Whenever a death was suspicious, there had to be an autopsy, and it always felt like the last, the ultimate, invasion. Everything that had once been part and parcel of a living soul was not just spread out naked, but sliced and probed.
At least an autopsy had not been required for Margaritte. She had been pumped full of morphine, and at the end, her eyes had opened once, looked into his, then closed. A flutter had lifted her chest, and she had died in his arms, looking as if she were only sleeping, but truly at rest at last.
Doc Martin finished intoning the time and date into his recorder and shut off the device for a moment, staring at him.
He didnt speak straight to Jed, though. He spoke to Jerry Dwyer, at his side.
Lieutenant. Whats he doing here?
Inwardly, Jed groaned.
Doc Jerry murmured unhappily. I think its hisconscience.
The M.E. hiked a bushy gray eyebrow. But hes not a cop anymore. Hes a writer.
He managed to say the word writer as if it were a synonym for scumbag.
Why not? Jed thought. He was feeling a little bit like a scumbag this morning.
Doc Martin sniffed. He used to be a cop. A good one, too, he admitted gruffly.
Yeah, so give him a break, Jerry Dwyer told him. And hes got his private investigators license, too. Hes still legit.
This time Martin made a skeptical sound at the back of his throat. Yeah, he got that license so he could keep sticking his nose into other peoples businessso he could write about it. He working for the dead girl? He know her folks? I dont think so.
Maybe I want to see justice done, Jed said quietly. Maybe the entire force was wrong twelve years ago.
Maybe weve got a copycat, Martin said.
And maybe we got the wrong guy, Jed said.
Technically, we didnt get any guy, exactly, Jerry reminded them both uncomfortably.
And you feel like shit for having written about it, as if the cop who was killed really did do it, huh? Doc Martin asked Jed.
Maybe I want to see justice done, Jed said quietly. Maybe the entire force was wrong twelve years ago.
Maybe weve got a copycat, Martin said.
And maybe we got the wrong guy, Jed said.
Technically, we didnt get any guy, exactly, Jerry reminded them both uncomfortably.
And you feel like shit for having written about it, as if the cop who was killed really did do it, huh? Doc Martin asked Jed.
Yeah, if thats the case, I feel like shit, Jed agreed.
Jerry came to his defense again. Listen, the guys own partner thought he was guilty. Hell, he was the one who shot him. And Robert Gessup, the A.D.A., compiled plenty of evidence for an arrest and an indictment. Jerry cleared his throat. And so far, no one has been proved wrong about anything. We all know about copycats.
Thing about copycats is, they always miss something, some little trick, Doc Martin said. Unfortunately, I wasnt the M.E. on the earlier victims. Old Dr. Mackleby was, but he passed away last summer from a heart attack, and the younger fellow who was working the case, Dr. Austin, was killed in an automobile accident. But dont worry, if theres something off-kilter here, Ill find it. Im good. Damned good.
Yeah, Jerry Dwyer said, adding dryly, Hell, Doc, we knew that before you told us.
Martin grunted and turned the tape recorder back on. Jerry gave Jed a glance, shrugging. Hed warned Jed that they might have trouble. Hed told him right out that if Martin said he had to leave, he had to leave.
An autopsy was a long, hard business, and Jed knew it. In his five years in Homicide, hed learned too well just how much had to be done meticulously and tediously. And messily.
Hed never expected to attend one when his presence wasnt necessary in solving a case, but the truth was, he didnt have to be here today.
Except in his own mind.
The woman on the table was already out of her body bag. There had been no need to inspect her clothing. She hadnt been found with any.
The discovery of her body on the I-4 had been not just a tragedy but a shock to the police and anyone who had been in the area for the original killings twelve years ago. Her name was Sherri Mason; she had come to what the locals called Theme Park Central in the middle of the Florida peninsula because shed wanted to be a star. The police knew her identity because her purseholding not just her ID but fifty-five dollars and change and several credit cardshad been found discarded near her naked body.
She had been found not just lying there but carefully displayed, arranged, stretched out on her back as if she were sleeping, her arms crossed over her chest, mummy-style. They were assuming, an assumption to be verified during the autopsy, that she had been sexually assaulted.
Just like the other five victimsthose whod been slain twelve years ago.
The problem was, everyone had spent the past twelve years assuming that the killer of those five young womenfound beside the same highway and left in the exact same positionhad perished himself. He had been a cop named Beau Kidd, shot by his own partner, who had discovered him with the body of the fifth woman. Beau had drawn his own weapon, giving his partner no choice but to fire. Hed never gone to trial, since hed been pronounced dead at the site, exhaling his last breath over the body of his final victim.
Assuming he really had been the killer. Certainly the remaining detectives working the case and the D.A.s office had thought so, and there had been enough circumstantial evidence to make the case.
That evidence had been sound, Jed knew. He had investigated the case himself after he left the force. He had interviewed as many people whod been involved as he could find. His first book, the one that had made his reputation as an author, had been about the case. A work of fiction, names changed, but it had been clearly based on the career of the Interstate Killer.
Like everyone else, hed unquestioningly blamed the deaths on the man who had died, one of the detectives assigned to the case.
Jed put the past and all his doubts out of his mind as Doc Martin went on to make observations and take photographs. The body showed signs of rough handling, with abundant bruising. As expected, she had been sexually assaulted, but, as in the past, the killer had been careful. More testing would be necessary, but every one of them was glumly certain there would be no fluids found from which to extract DNA.
The majority of the bruising was around her neck. Like the original victims, shed been strangled.
Occasionally the M.E. had a question for Jerry, who explained that Sherri had last been seen at a local mall, and that her car had been found in the parking lot there. She had met friends to see a movie, then left alone. When she hadnt shown up for work the following day, a co-worker had reported her missing and filed the report when the requisite twenty-four hours had passed. On the third day after her disappearance, she had been found alongside the highway.
Jed realized that Jerry was staring at him. The same? he inquired.
I didnt attend any of the original autopsies, remember? Jed replied.
You did the research, Jerry reminded him.
Jed hesitated, shook his head grimly, and spoke. The previous victims disappeared and were discovered within a few days. They bore bruises, as if theyd fought with their captor. There were signs of force, but no slashes, no cigarette burns or anything like that. No DNA was ever pulled from beneath fingernails, and no DNA was acquired from the rape kits. That was one of the reasons for thinking the killer was a cop. Whoever killed those girls knew how to commit a murder without leaving evidence.
None of you were on the case, or even near it? Doc Martin asked, looking up.
Both men shook their heads.
I wasnt here, either, at the time. I was working Broward County back then, Doc Martin murmured. Hell, come to think of it, Jed, you werent much more than a kid at the time.
Eighteen, and in the service, Jed told him.
Doc Martin settled down to work then. After the back of the body had been inspected, it was bathed and any trace evidence collected in the drain. Tools clicked against the stainless steel of the autopsy table. Scrapings were taken from beneath Sherris nails, but Jed was already certain that they would find nothing. Next came the scalpel, the Y incision, the removal of organs and fluids for testing. Everyone went quiet. Jed found himself thinking about Sherris dreams. She had come to Orlando looking for a start. To create a résumé to take with her to New York or California. With all the theme parks in the area, shed had a solid chance of finding work as a dancer or singer.
So who had she met, what had she done, that had changed the shimmering promise of life that had stretched before her?
Well, Doc? Jerry asked quietly. Jed gazed at his old friend. Jerry had been on the force for several years before hed joined himself. He, too, had spent his fair share of time in the autopsy room. But todayThis death had affected them all. Shed been so young. Death was part of living. But losing life at a time when dreams were at their strongest was especially poignant.
Doc Martin looked at them, shaking his head sadly. The tox screens will take a little time, but Im not expecting theyll turn up anything. The kid was clean. Dancer, I imagine, hoping to grow up to be a fairy princess. Cause of death? Strangulation. Was she tortured before death? Hell, yesId sure call it torture to be continually assaulted, knowing that death is probably imminent. The bruising appears to be indicative of her having been forced and the fact that she fought. Well analyze the nail scrapings, of course, but