William Heffernan: The Dead Detective

“Implants,” Harry observed.

“You betcha,” Vicky said. “Even when all the muscles go soft and slack, these boobs will not sag or lose their shape. Plastic surgeons should use that line in their advertising.”

“I thought they already did,” Harry said.

The flip words didn’t carry to their eyes. Each pair remained grim and focused. It was the charnel house humor again, two detectives forced to witness daily human carnage, trying to maintain their personal sanity.

Harry took a Polaroid camera from his crime scene case and took two photos of the body in situ. He took another of the woman’s feet, which were shoeless and relatively clean except for a dusting of beach sand, indicating both that she had been carried into the swamp and had recently visited a beach. Then he took a minute to study the area around them. It seemed peaceful and threatening at the same time, the way only a primal forest can, and except for the intrusion of the body of a young, modernly dressed woman he might have been standing in a place that had remained unchanged for hundreds of years. He let his eyes roam. Spread out before him were several large cypress stumps, like the one that stood next to the body, each one rotting with age; each probably there since the turn of the last century when loggers scoured Florida lands searching out and cutting all the mature cypress they could find. To the left were several Southern live oaks, their boughs heavy with Spanish moss. Between the oaks were small groupings of young pond cypress, many with butterfly orchids and resurrection ferns attached to their trunks. Larger patches of swamp fern grew in dense clusters across the black, spongy ground, their toothed edges providing protective shelter for small animals, and as Harry watched a cotton rat scurried from one patch to another, scaring up a pair of common yellowthroat, the small birds darting off in search of safer cover. In the distance he could hear the gooselike grunts of tree frogs and the high-pitched chirping of cicadas, and up in the trees he could see several parula warblers and white-eyed vireos flying from tree to tree.

He felt a hand on his arm and turned back. Vicky was staring at him strangely.

“You lost in thought, or just enjoying a Discovery Channel moment?” she asked.

Harry ignored the question and asked one of his own. “Why bring her here? We can be reasonably sure the killer drove a car in, at least as far as the swamp. But why risk it? Why risk being seen? He could have been spotted by a park ranger driving on a trail, or by any number of hikers. Why risk any of it when there are so many places to dump a body? The beaches, at night; all the thick pine forests in the middle of the state. He obviously didn’t kill her here. He brought her body here and posed it in this setting. Why? Why was that part of the overall plan, or does this place have some special significance?”

Vicky looked back at the body and the area around it. It was as the deputy had said. The woman’s throat was cut so deeply that the head was nearly severed from the body. It told her that the killer was either very powerful or very angry to use that degree of cutting force. But there was no blood splatter on the cypress trunk or the cluster of swamp ferns that grew beside it. Somewhere there was a large pool of blood that had pumped from her body when the carotid arteries had been severed, and had kept on pumping until her heart stopped beating. When they found that pool of blood- if they found that pool of blood-they would have the real crime scene. Harry’s voice brought her back.

“You’re the sex crimes expert. You see any indication she was raped?”

Vicky looked at the body more closely. “I see what looks like a small amount of dried semen in her pubic hair. But I don’t see any signs of violence. There’s no bruising or cuts or scratches.” She pointed to the woman’s right hand. “She’s got two broken fingernails, but that could have happened while she was being killed. I’m just not seeing what’s usually there when somebody’s raped. Maybe the autopsy will tell us more.”

Harry nodded. He was squatting next to the body, studying the Mardi Gras mask that covered the woman’s face. He took out the Polaroid again and took two more photos. Vicky squatted on the other side, joining him. The mask was a deep iridescent purple, with highlights of silver. There were cat’s ears at the top and whiskers sprouting from the cheeks and small, dark red plumes rising from high on the forehead. Clouded green eyes looked out blindly through the holes in the mask, giving the only hint of the face that lay beneath. The mask was not held in place by any band. It had simply been placed on the face, so Harry carefully lifted it, using one finger of each hand, and laid it on the woman’s chest.

When the woman’s face was exposed an audible gasp escaped Vicky’s throat and Harry’s head snapped back. They knew this woman. Like most of the people in the United States they had seen her picture countless times in newspapers and magazines and television screens, although now the exquisitely beautiful face had been altered. A single word had been carved in her forehead with a very sharp knife-the word EVIL. The mutilation jolted Harry, his mind immediately flashing to the small silver crosses his mother had placed on his and Jimmy’s foreheads; the way she had covered their eyes with towels.

“It’s really her,” Vicky said, bringing Harry back to the present. There was no trace of a question in her voice.

“Yeah, it’s her.” Harry felt his fists tighten into balls.

Vicky rose slowly, shaking her head. “Holy shit, it is gonna be a circus out here. We better call the captain. If this gets out we’re gonna have media moving through here like Sherman through Georgia.”

“Back out the same way you came in,” Harry said. “Try to step in your own footprints where you can.”

Vicky started to move carefully away. Harry stood there for a moment, staring down at the body of Darlene Beckett. He picked up the camera and took two more photos with the mask removed. Even then he didn’t move. He could almost feel the killer standing next to him, the last person to see her without the mask. He continued to stare at the body, bringing back the last image he had of the woman. She was standing before the TV cameras, giving them that slightly sly, very self-absorbed little smile she had displayed so often when appearing in court. Slowly, almost imperceptively, Harry nodded his head. Evil, he thought. Yes, you were definitely that. But somebody finally got to you. Somebody finally presented the bill and told you it was time to pay. He continued to stare at the woman’s face, uncontrolled words racing through his mind. The word religion kept returning, but he couldn’t tell if it came from Darlene Beckett or memories of his mother. He drew a long, steady breath as he took in the look of disbelief on her face-a disbelief that had begun to change into abject terror as the life rushed from her body. Then it all stopped-that mix of disbelief and terror frozen on her face as her life ended. He stared into her eyes. They had begun to cloud, but it was still there as well, that same mixture. Who was it you saw and why did it surprise you so? He drew another deep breath. It was all there in her eyes, but it was fading fast. He crouched down, still staring into her eyes, thinking about what the woman had done. The word evil played over and over in his mind and the image of a cross began to form. Was that it? he wondered. He continued to stare into her eyes. “Talk to me, Darlene,” he whispered. “It’s alright. You belong to me now.” He closed his eyes and drew a long breath. Now it’s my job to find out who put that disbelief and that fear in your eyes. And I’ll find him. I promise you I’ll find him. His jaw tightened and he opened his eyes and once again stared at her beautiful face. And when I find him, Darlene, maybe I’ll give the son of a bitch a medal.