David Jackson - Marked

The past is whispering to him. Calling to him. Reminding him of things he thought were over and done with. Avenues he believed were closed suddenly seem to be yawning wide open again, beckoning him to enter.

After his shower he lies on the bed and tries to sleep, but his subconscious keeps hurling out sporadic images and sounds that jolt him awake. He sees a girl. Sees what is being done to her. Sees a man. The ace of spades. The skull and crossbones. He hears the girl’s screams.

When sleep eventually claims him, it is short-lived and fitful. He tosses and turns for three hours, and when he drags himself off the bed again he does not feel refreshed.

He needs to get back into work.

He needs to find out whether this is what he thinks it is.

And if it is, he must find closure this time.

While Steve goes out for a jog, she puts on the television. The news channel. It’s the only thing on which she can properly focus her attention. She forces herself to watch it. Just in case.

There’s a story about a police search in the East Village. Nicole and Steve live in Forest Hills, which is in Queens, which is way over on the other side of the East River. So it can’t have anything to do with them.

The reporters conjecture that the police may be hunting for body parts, following the gruesome discovery of a severed head in a restaurant.

But it’s in the East Village. Megan wouldn’t have gone to the East Village. Not alone. So that’s all right, then. No news is good news, as they say.

She is aware of all kinds of synapses firing in her brain, trying to make connections, trying to posit various scenarios. She refuses to let them. This is nothing to do with their life. It’s a world away. Their life is a nice big white house in a tree-lined road in a friendly part of Forest Hills, Queens, where the neighbors have time to talk and smile and help each other out. That stuff on the TV is dirt and violence and crime and sadness. Megan would not visit that world.

She shuts the television off. It’s annoying her now. Why can’t they ever talk about nice things on the news? Good news. Happy news. Why does it always have to be about disaster and death and shock and war? Is that really what people want to hear? What if they created a channel that carried only good news? Surely there would be an audience for that? And surely it would make for a happier, more positive-thinking population?

When I’m president, she thinks. But she doesn’t smile.

She goes over to her chair at the front window. The chair never used to be there, but now she won’t allow Steve to return it to its four indentations in the rug. She spends a lot of time in that chair.

She sits at the window and she looks out at the leaden sky and she tells herself that it will rain soon. And that means that Megan will come home, because she hates the rain.

Nicole stares at that sky. It is a deep, oppressive gray. It looks bloated with moisture. It has no option but to relieve itself of the pressure it contains. It will unburden itself. And then Megan will come home.

It’ll be a phone call, thinks Nicole. She won’t just turn up at the door, because she’s worried that we’ll be angry with her. She’ll phone instead. She’ll say, ‘Mom,’ and her voice will be cracking and fearful, and then she will say, ‘I want to come home.’ That’s how it will be. That’s how the agony will end. And when they meet up, Megan will appear tired and hungry and not a little frightened by her experience, and there will be hugs and tears and a lot of emotional release, and everyone will say sorry and promise to do better and they will forgive but not forget and they will all be supremely grateful for the happy outcome.

That’s what will happen.

When it rains.

Doyle at his desk in the squadroom. On the phone to Norman Chin.

‘What can you tell us, Norm?’

‘I can tell you many things, oh seeker of wisdom. What I can’t tell you is cause of death. Not with just three body parts. She could have had her heart ripped out for all I know, but without a torso. .’

‘Yeah, I know, Norm. We did our best. So far, that’s all we got.’

‘No problem. With a genius like me on the case, who needs a body, right? So, we’re running a tox screen. Results aren’t back yet, but I’ll let you know.’

‘What about time of death?’

‘Again, not easy. I got no core temperature readings to work with, not much in the way of body fluids, the parts were tightly sealed in the garbage bags against infestation. .’

‘Best guess?’

‘Recent. No more than about twenty hours ago.’

Doyle checks his watch. It’s one-thirty in the afternoon now. That puts TOD at somewhere after 5.30 p.m. yesterday.

‘Anything else?’

‘Yeah. The body was cut up with a serrated blade. There’s no finesse about it. No evidence of any surgical expertise. She was basically sawn into pieces, probably just to make her easier to dispose of.’

‘What about the other wounds you mentioned, on her face?’

‘I was coming to that. They’re present on the other parts too. Numerous incisions made by a sharp blade — a razor blade or scalpel, probably. Burn marks. I don’t know what caused them, but I don’t think it was a cigarette. Then, on the buttocks in particular, there are many long raised welts. It looks as though somebody got their kicks by whipping the hell out of her. Sometimes they’ve ripped right through the skin.’

Doyle closes his eyes. The images return. A naked girl, terrified and screaming. A man standing over her. The whip he yields lashing at her flesh.

The feeling of déjà vu is nauseating.

‘Jesus,’ he says.

‘Yeah, and that’s not the worst of it. There is extensive damage to the anus, rectum and vagina, consistent with the insertion of sharp-edged implements. This poor girl was subject to intense and prolonged torture of the worst kind. This is one sick individual you’re looking for here, Doyle.’

Doyle finds himself nodding. His lips curl in disgust and fury at what this bastard did. He badly wants to get his hands on the twisted fuck.

‘Tell me about the tattoo,’ he says.

‘Sure. You ever had one?’

‘No.’

‘What, not even a little one somewhere? One that only your darling wife knows about?’

‘Not even that. Get on with it, Norm.’

‘All right. What you should know about tattoos is that they tend to fade over time. When they’re new, the colors are vivid. The colors on this girl’s tattoo are really bright. The other thing you need to know is that a tattoo isn’t like a painting. It’s an open wound to the skin. That means it has to heal. Because of that, fresh tattoos often scab over until the healing process is complete.’

‘And this one had scabs, right?’

‘Correct. It’s a very recent tattoo. Put there in the last few days.’

That’s all Doyle needed to hear. He didn’t need the explanation of the deductive process. He’s heard it all before. He knows a lot more about tattoos than he’s willing to reveal right now.

‘You said it’s a picture of an angel.’

‘Yeah. It’s good work. Very artistic. This is no backstreet hack job. Should make it easier to narrow down the list of people who could have put it there.’

Doyle already has a list in mind. If it were any narrower it would be squeezing the fuck out of the one person it contains. Something he would be perfectly content to watch.

‘How old was she?’

He waits for the evasive answer. Another rough estimate. Still, it could be helpful.

‘Sixteen. She’d have been seventeen on the third of next month.’

Doyle feels the surprise, takes a mental step back to determine what he would have been thinking if it hadn’t been a surprise.