Authors: Jean Lorrah
Dr. Sanford continued, “No sign of a struggle, but the murderer coulda held a gun on her. What's so strange is, she didn't struggle even when he hurt her. She was found in the same position and wearing the same expression as five other corpses I've examined recently.
“Other than that damned smile, there is no connection among three separate incidents.” He shook his head. “I've never seen nothin’ like it. What does this murderer do—knock his victims out with the Vulcan nerve pinch?"
Brandy started, causing Church look at her. She covered by asking, “The cause of death was definitely the throat wound?"
“Yeah. She bled to death,” said Sanford. “There's only one odd finding,” he added.
“What's that?” asked Church.
“Besides the wounds that killed her, there are two puncture wounds in her throat immediately over the jugular."
“As if the murderer stabbed as well as slicing?” Brandy asked.
“No—as if there were two weapons. Something like a meat fork with two prongs, maybe, as well as a knife."
“Oh, Jesus,” said Chief Benton. “A knife and fork? Some cannibal thing?"
Doc Sanford seemed reluctant, but then steeled himself. “There were traces of saliva in the puncture wounds."
That was too much for Rory Sanford. He rushed from the room, undoubtedly seeking the nearest bathroom.
Brandy was too horrified to ask a coherent question. Church shuddered in disgust, but maintained his composure. “What have we got here? A Jeff Dahmer?"
“Not the same MO,” said Dr. Sanford. “Except for the throat wounds, the body wasn't mutilated. Nobody bit her—” His voice trailed off as he gave it a second thought. “No human being, anyway. Those puncture wounds look like a snakebite, like they were made by curved fangs,” he held up two curved fingers to demonstrate, “but that don't make sense. Only poisonous snakes strike like that, with just their top fangs. There was no venom.” He shook his head. “Forget I said that. All I found is that she had two puncture wounds inflicted before the knife wounds, and whatever punctured her had saliva on it."
Disgusting as the idea was, Brandy had to ask, “The killer—licked the fork or ice pick or whatever it was?"
“Looks that way,” the coroner replied. “Real sick mind. I've got a theory, but you gotta understand it's pure speculation: the killer somehow put the victim out cold—we don't know how yet, but he had to. Then he punctured her throat with something and—licked the blood off of it. Maybe he licked or sucked the blood from her throat."
Brandy said, “Doc, you're talking vampires."
“The murderer may think that's what he is,” Doc Sanford replied. “With Halloween so close, television's full of horror movies that could have inspired this guy. The victim's blood clotted and the wounds closed up. So he stuck her again, introducing a trace of saliva into the wounds. But she still wasn't bleeding enough to satisfy him, and obviously she wasn't going to die, so he slit her throat. His anger at having to change his plans would account for the hacking and slashing."
“Crazy as it sounds, I have to ask,” Chief Benton put in. “Could those wounds be made with false teeth? You know, theatrical dentures actors wear to play vampires?"
“I know what you mean,” said the coroner. “I don't think those things are long or sharp enough to cause these wounds without the incisors leaving an impression. There's no evidence of that, but it fits my alternate theory. After he got his kicks the killer got frightened either that the victim would identify him or that the MO would give him away. He hacked her throat to kill her and to hide the puncture wounds. It did obliterate everything except the two deepest punctures."
“DNA identification from the saliva?” Church asked.
“There's no genetic material in saliva,” explained Dr. Sanford. “You get enough of it, there's a possibility of cells from mouth tissues, but not in this little trace. Besides, if we did have a DNA analysis, we don't have anything to test it against."
“You didn't find saliva anywhere but in the puncture wounds?” Brandy asked. “You said he might have—drunk some of her blood."
“The blood washed away any evidence on the victim's neck,” the coroner explained.
“We've been saying ‘he,'” Brandy noted. “Are you sure the murderer was male?"
“Can't tell,” Sanford admitted. “Obsessive, fetishistic crimes are usually carried out against the opposite sex, but not always. Dahmer's victims were male. Women almost never commit this kind of murder, but no, officially we can't determine the sex of the killer."
“Or connect him with the killer or killers in the Car 108 case,” added Benton.
Church looked down at the dead woman. “All through the attack, without drugs, without a blow to her head, she just lay there smiling."
Brandy forced herself to look at Carrie. The dead woman's expression reminded her of something. All the other smiling corpses, of course, but something else as well, that her mind refused to process.
Carrie's photo went up beside those of the Car 108 victims, and again Chief Benton gathered his officers. “There shouldn't be a connection between a professional hit, like the Car 108 murders obviously were, and a psycho killing like Carrie Wyman's. But look at those pictures. Murder victims don't lie back and smile, people. They're laughing at us, for not making the damn connection!"
“Chief,” said Brandy, “if that smile is the link, then the Land case should be reopened."
A series of expressions flitted across the police chief's face. Brandy understood his reluctance; it was hard to believe that only a month ago she had reveled in the mystery of Everett C. Land, welcoming the chance to exercise her deductive powers on a real challenge. But then, a month ago she had fully expected to solve the mystery.
Ideas flitted through Brandy's mind, Church's comments about Land hobnobbing with Russians during the Cold War, the possibility that he was in the Witness Protection Program. What if he knew about some new drug? Carrie had worked with drug addicts; any one of them might be in the employ of organized crime—and why wouldn't the CIA, the KGB, and the mob all want the formula for something that would make a person so compliant that he would sit and smile while his brains were blown out, or her throat was cut? Could someone in such a trance be ordered to stop his heart? Could an old man like Everett Land simply be ordered to die?
This could be far more dangerous than heroin.
Finally Chief Benton said, “Put the Land picture up there. Maybe somebody will figure out what the hell's going on in this town!"
Unsolved murders were almost unheard of in Murphy. Paducah was large enough that the occasional street person was killed without much follow-up. Nashville, Louisville, St. Louis—all were large enough for organized crime to bring in hit men.
But Murphy didn't admit to having homeless people, or anyone else that nobody cared about. No one here knew how to contact professional hit men. Murders were crimes of passion—when someone like Matt Perkins killed his whole family, even if he didn't also commit suicide, other people were safe. The volcano had blown and would go back to quiescence.
The citizenry had been reassured, too, that the Car 108 murders would not be repeated. It was assumed that the Andersons were the targets; there was speculation that their activities in Southern Illinois had angered Chicago mobsters—or alternatively that they were the pawns of said mobsters, who had had them executed to keep them from turning state's evidence. It was all speculation, but it kept the people of Murphy from fearing for their own lives.
Now, somebody had slashed a woman's throat in the park where their children played. The city hall switchboard was flooded, and the mayor called a special session of the city council. Chief Benton put an extra patrol on the park, and fought with the mayor about overtime funding.
Leads to Carrie Wyman's friends and acquaintances went nowhere. She hadn't had a steady boyfriend since her divorce, not even a date in the past six weeks. Her ex-husband turned out to have been visiting relatives in Elizabethtown over the weekend. Unfortunately, Carrie had been in daily contact with unbalanced people. She could have been the focus of any number of fantasies, and never known it.
Harry and Melody Davis’ honeymoon was interrupted by the police, but they knew nothing about Carrie after they left the wedding reception. Harry recalled no threats to Carrie concerning her radio appearances. The bride and groom were able to leave Monday morning as planned.
Ed Mifune, who had run the radio station for the past two weeks, also had no clues. The police searched through Carrie's notes, played the tapes of her interviews, and came up zip. Brandy remembered something, though: the camcorder Carrie had used at the wedding and reception. It had not been found with her body or in her car, nor was it at her apartment. It had not been returned to the radio station. A potential clue at last: if they found that camcorder, they might find the murderer.
But Murphy, Kentucky, and all the surrounding county was a very large haystack in which to hide one electronic needle. It would have been tempting to enlist public help, but that would have told the murderer to get rid of the incriminating evidence.
By Tuesday evening, the Murphy police were even more frustrated. In 72 hours they had not found a single useful clue. On the heels of their failure to find the killers of their colleagues, it made them feel useless, incompetent, and angry. On the first two, the populace of Murphy agreed.
When she got off work, Brandy called Dan. No answer at his apartment. When she called his office at the university, he told her, “I have to cover the lab tonight."
“I need to talk to you."
“Sure. I'm finished at ten o'clock."
Oh, damn. She was tired, and this discussion would require diplomacy. “Let's make it tomorrow,” she said. “What's your schedule? Can you come down to the station?"
“Is 12:30 okay? I'll take you to lunch."
“Yeah, that's fine,” she replied. She felt guilty for misleading him into thinking it was a social invitation. What she wanted was more help with the computer, to search for connections—other than the smiles on their faces—between Everett C. Land, Chase and Jenny Anderson, and Carrie Wyman.
Sylvester nudged Brandy, demanding attention. She petted the cat distractedly while she nuked a TV dinner, watched a sitcom, and drifted into mindless stupor.
Brandy was interested in the show when she sat down; soon she drifted between wanting to wake up and follow the plot, and wanting it to be over so she could go to sleep.
Sleep won.
Brandy was in the Land Between the Lakes, hearing the cries of Jeff Jones. Then she and Dan were down on the rocky outcropping, trying to help.
Church was not in the dream, only Jeff, Brandy, and Dan. Brandy held Jeff spoon fashion, his weight heavy on her chest.
Dan touched the boy, pinching his neck where it met his shoulder. He slumped back against Brandy, unconscious. She and Jeff were alone in the night, the full moon casting black shadows across the silver rock face. The boy's back was warm where it touched her, but his arms and legs were already growing cold.
He was dead.
I'm dreaming, Brandy thought, struggling to wake from the nightmare. She forced herself awake, finding herself in her own bed, the room almost as bright as day with the moonlight streaming in the window.
But her breathing was hampered by the weight still on her chest. She was half sitting up, against the piled-up pillows. Jeff lay dead in her arms. She couldn't move, and realized that she, too, was dead.
She could see both their faces in the mirror on the opposite wall, both wearing that same serene smile—
“No!” Brandy gasped, sitting up.
Sylvester, who had been lying on her diaphragm, kicked the breath out of her as he leaped to the back of the couch.
Brandy sat shivering and panting, putting together the shards of reality that had formed her dream. She had fallen asleep on the couch, propped against the cushions at one end, the television playing. She had slept through the news, for Nightline was now on. The sounds had kept her from deep sleep, making her dream horribly real.
The temperature was dropping; that's why her arms and legs were cold. In typical cat opportunism, Sylvester had decided to use her as a heating pad, and his warm weight had become the body in her dream.
It made sense, sort of.
But Brandy's mind could not dismiss it as a nonsensical mix of recent events with sensory input, like the toilet dream everybody had, searching and searching through streets or corridors for a bathroom. That always occurred toward morning, on a full bladder. This dream had similarities, but the toilet dream had no significance. Brandy could not help thinking that this dream did.
As she got up and turned the heat on, she tried to analyze what her subconscious was telling her. Why had Jeff been dead in her dream, when she knew he was alive? She remembered Dan's “Vulcan nerve pinch,” and the pang that had gone through her when Dr. Sanford had mentioned it in connection with the mysteriously smiling corpses. Hence the association with death in her dream.
Okay. It made sense. She dug flannel pajamas from her bottom drawer, hoping to drive the chill from her bones.
But as she tossed the extra pillows from her bed and prepared to crawl under the covers, she saw her reflection in the mirror. It brought back the dream image of herself and Jeff, both smiling that damned mysterious smile—and the real image of herself the morning after Dan had put her to bed, smiling that same smile.
What if the undetectable drug that put people into a cooperative trance were not a drug at all? What if it were some technique involving acupressure points?
Jeff had slumped when Dan touched him. She hadn't seen his face—it had been dark, no moon that night.
But if she had seen it, would Jeff's face have worn that same serene smile that was the single clue uniting six mysterious deaths in Murphy, Kentucky?
* * * *
Dan Martin showed up promptly at 12:30 Wednesday. Brandy deliberately took him into the room where they had set up the bulletin board with the photos of the smiling corpses. As she expected, he was immediately drawn to it.