Chris Carter - The Crucifix Killer

Chris’s first job was as a jack-of-all-trades in a mortuary. His duties ranged from funeral arrangements to lining the inside of coffins and preparing bodies, but that just wasn’t enough. Chris wanted the life he’d always dreamed of. He wanted the blood-stained rags, the stainless-steel tables, the stinging and intoxicating smell of death. He wanted to work with bodies in their raw state, before they were cleaned up and made ready for the funeral. After applying for almost every lower-level position with the County Department of Coroner he was finally offered a job as a lab porter. His new duties included cleaning autopsy rooms, moving bodies to and from the cooling chambers and making sure that all equipment was clean and ready to be used. The medical examiners in the Coroner’s office had never seen anyone take so much pride in his work. Chris was in everyone’s good books. What he loved doing more than anything else was sitting in on autopsies. None of the examiners minded.

Chris’s night shift went from 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. He liked to take his first break just before midnight; it gave him a chance to light up a cigarette and have a quick banana, peanut-butter and honey sandwich.

Chris took a last drag of his cigarette and flicked the butt in the air and watched it produce a dim, yellow arc. He got up from the small bench he’d been sitting on, folded his empty plastic sandwich bag and started walking back towards the Coroner’s building. A cold hand grabbed his left shoulder.

‘Hi there, Chris!’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Chris jumped and turned to face the figure standing behind him, his heart halfway up his throat. ‘Are you crazy? You scared the fuck out of me.’

Mark Culhane gave Chris a rehearsed yellow smile.

‘If I had a gun, you could be dead right now. How do you get off on sneaking up on people like that?’ Chris asked placing a hand over his chest, his heart pounding against it.

‘I’m a detective, I love sneaking up on people,’ Culhane said with a new smile. ‘Besides, why the fuck would you carry a gun? Everyone you deal with is already dead.’

‘Everybody packs these days, this is LA remember? Anyway, I haven’t seen you for a while, what the hell do you want?’

Chris was in his early thirties, a few pounds overweight with straight dark-brown hair that he kept quite short. He had strange cat-like brown eyes, a reddish complexion and a prominent nose.

‘Oh, Chris, that’s no way to greet an old friend.’

Chris didn’t answer back. He simply raised his eyebrows waiting for Culhane to state his business.

‘I need to check whatever new entries you’ve had in the past few days,’ Culhane finally said.

‘By entries, you mean bodies?’

‘What else would I mean, smart ass?’

‘Why don’t you just put in a request, you’re a cop, aren’t you?’

‘This is a friend, not necessarily official business.’

‘A friend?’ Chris’s voice took a dubious tone.

‘Are you training to be a cop? What’s with all the goddamn questions? Just show me the bodies, will you?’

‘And if I told you I couldn’t do that because it’s against regulations?’

Culhane placed his right arm around Chris’s neck and pulled him closer. ‘Well, that would certainly piss me off, and I don’t think you’d wanna do that, do you?’

Silence.

Culhane tightened his grip.

‘OK… OK, I was going back in anyway,’ Chris said, lifting both hands.

‘Adda boy,’ Culhane said, letting go of the headlock.

They both walked back to the Coroner’s building in silence. One of the advantages of visiting Chris at this hour was that Culhane wouldn’t have to go in through the front door; the building would be a lot quieter, no badges needed to be shown, no papers to sign – less suspicion.

They reached the staff entrance door on the south side of the building and Chris punched a six-digit code into the electronic keypad. The thick metal door buzzed open.

‘Wait here, I’ll be right back,’ he said and quickly disappeared into the building leaving Culhane standing outside with a curious look on his face. Less than a minute later Chris re-emerged carrying a standard coroner’s white overall. ‘Put this on, it should fit. It’s the largest one I could find.’

‘Are you trying to be funny?’

The last thing Chris wanted was for anyone to find out he’d allowed a stranger into the building without signing in at the front desk, even if that stranger was a cop. He guided Culhane through the deserted lower-floor corridor, through a pair of heavy swing doors and up the staircase to the first floor. Culhane had walked these corridors more times than he cared to remember. It still made his stomach turn inside out. Culhane would never have admitted it, but he was glad he wasn’t alone. They reached the last room at the end of the hall.

After every autopsy, the bodies were brought to the cold-storage room, or as everyone in the Coroner’s office called it ‘the big chill .’ The room had enough freezer space on its west wall to store over fifty bodies. Culhane and the other detectives from the Narcotics division had their own name for that room – ‘the honeycomb of death . ’

Chris locked the door behind him so they wouldn’t be interrupted and walked over to the computer desk at the far end of the room.

‘OK, let’s try an initial search… male or female?’ he asked wasting no time. The faster he got rid of Culhane the better.

‘Female.’

‘Is she white, black…?’

‘Caucasian, blond, blue eyes, slim and very attractive.’

Chris gave Culhane a coy smile. ‘OK, from what date would you like me to search from?’

‘Let’s try from last Friday.’

Chris instinctively looked at his watch. ‘That’d be… June 1st right?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘OK.’ Chris typed in the information and hit the enter key. It took less than five seconds for the computer to return an answer.

‘Yep, we’ve got sixteen matches. Do you have a name?’

‘Yes, Jenny Farnborough, but I’m sure she won’t show up on your screen.’

Chris’s eyes quickly searched the list. ‘Nope, you’re right, she’s not on this list.’

‘Any unidentified female bodies?’

Chris checked the list once again. ‘Yep, we’ve got four.’

‘Let’s check them.’

After a few mouse clicks they had a printout. ‘OK, let’s go have a look,’ Chris said, walking towards the freezers. They stopped in front of the door marked C11, the first one on his list. It took them a little more than five minutes to go through the four unidentified bodies. Jenny Farnborough’s wasn’t one of them.

‘Are these all the bodies? I mean, is there another cold-storage room in the building?’ Culhane asked.

‘Yes, there’s another one in the basement, but I have no access to it,’ Chris replied.

‘What do you mean, why not?’

‘It’s a sealed-off area.’

‘Why is there a sealed-off area in a Coroner’s?’

Chris was glad to offer an explanation to something an LA detective didn’t know. ‘Certain cases can still be too dangerous – radiation, poison victims, high risk of contamination – cases like that. In those circumstances, the autopsy is conducted in the sealed-off area by the chief medical examiner.’

‘And do you know if there’s a body down there at the moment?’

‘Doctor Winston was working on an autopsy in there until really late last night. The body has never come up to this room, so I’m pretty sure it’s still down there.’

‘But the body has to come up to the honeycomb right?’

‘Honeycomb?’ Chris frowned.

‘This room… the fridge.’ There was a hint of irritation in Culhane’s voice.