Chapter 5
The five of them stood around the table in the lab while Janssen held forth, Singleton standing at her side protectively-The Flamingo Kid on sentry duty.
Pepper looked down at Yvonne Redmond lying on the slab before them. The cold bleakness of her pale white skin and the eternal stiffness of her lifeless body sent a chill tripping down his spine. He could see the others react the same way, and it wasn't just the coolness of the lab that had them feeling uncomfortable. Death had a way of doing that to people.
Janssen and Singleton had cleaned the young woman up, removing all of the makeup that the killer had applied. Her hair had been pulled back off her face, her naturally pretty features shrouded by death. She was as pristine as the day she was born.
It was Inspector Caruso who spoke first. "What can you tell us, Tanya."
"Our killer is a nasty bit of business, that's for sure," Janssen began. "First off, Tee was absolutely right-she wasn't killed by the arrow." She nodded to a metal table behind her, where they saw the arrow in a sealed evidence bag, the narrow tip covered in blood. "She was last seen two nights ago, is that right, Inspector?"
"Yes. She'd been out with some friends that night, and when she wasn't home yesterday morning, her parents figured she'd just stayed over at one of her girlfriend's. Apparently that happened with this group of girls a fair bit. They didn't think much of it. And then she didn't come home yesterday, and they couldn't reach her on her cell. According to the mayor, Councillor Redmond and his wife were up all night worried sick about it. That's when they contacted me first thing this morning."
Janssen nodded as she looked down at the young, girl, the timeline fitting with her findings. "He kept her awake for about twenty-four hours." The others looked at her, intrigued, waiting for her to continue. "Her bloodwork showed some very interesting things. First, there was a high level of Rohypnol present."
"Roofies?" Chin interjected.
Janssen nodded. "Yes. But I've never seen anything quite like this stuff before. What he gave her was extremely pure, and very effective."
They all knew about roofies-the date rape drug. It had become prevalent around the university and college in the past decade, the student councils at both schools regularly issued warnings for girls to be careful, but still, incidents were reported regularly, and who knew how many were never reported-girls were often too embarrassed or afraid to come forward.
A tranquilizer, Rohypnol was reported to be almost ten times more potent than valium. As the date rape drug, the pill was most often crushed and dissolved into the victim's drink, unbeknownst to them. It didn't take long to take effect, usually incapacitating them within twenty to thirty minutes. It could last in the bloodstream for as long as eight to twelve hours. And now Janssen was saying this was some sort of super-roofie. The idea of something like that getting out there was too frightening to even think about. Hopefully this wasn't the tip of the iceberg.
"What do you mean, Tanya?" Pepper asked. "How is this different from other roofies we've seen before?"
"The analysis I did shows it to be purer than any I've seen, which means it would work faster, and last longer. Plus, she would have remained awake the whole time the drug was in her system, but been totally incapacitated."
"Was she sexually assaulted?" McTavish asked the question that had been running through all their heads.
Janssen nodded. "Yes. From the amount of vaginal bruising, I'd say repeatedly."
"Any DNA?"
The techie shook her head. "No, he wore a condom. There were traces of latex present. And there was nothing at all on her anywhere else. She wouldn't have been able to fight back, so there is nothing under her nails where you think there might be if she tried to scratch him or fight him off, and there wasn't a single hair or anything on her other than her own." She paused, letting her words sink in. "This guy knew what he doing. He's left us nothing to go on. She was more sterile than this lab. One other thing-she wasn't wearing any panties."
"A trophy?" Chin asked.
As Janssen shrugged, Pepper responded. "That would be my guess. Keeping a souvenir like that fits in with everything else he's done."
"You said she was sexually assaulted repeatedly," Chin said. Janssen nodded. "And with the way you said those roofies acted, she would have been aware of it the whole time? She would have been able to see him?"
"Yes. I'm sure that's exactly what he wanted."
"Jesus," Wallace muttered under his breath, all of them looking at the girl and wondering what must have been going through her mind during those dreadful hours.
"But the roofies wouldn't have killed her, right?" Pepper asked.
Janssen shook her head. "No, they didn't kill her. I think he gave her more than one dose though in order to keep her incapacitated for so long. He kept her alive for close to twenty-four hours, and there were no signs on her wrists or ankles from any kind of bindings. And if she'd been relatively conscious, there would have been some evidence that she'd attempted to resist or escape wherever she was held. But like we noticed at the dumpster, there's not even one broken nail. No-he had her awake but under his control the whole time."
"Then what actually killed her?" Inspector Caruso asked.
"Bleach."
"Bleach!" Chin gasped out.
"Yes." Janssen nodded to Singleton who was standing near the foot of the examination table. He drew the sheet covering the girl up, exposing her left foot. They all stepped closer, noticing a small dark red dot on the top of her foot, the area around it bruised and swollen. "He would have had a heparin lock inserted into the top of her foot right there."
They knew what a heparin lock was, the plastic device that nurses stuck in a patient's arm and left there in order to take blood or to hook up to intravenous lines.
"The top of her foot?" Wallace asked, eyebrows knitted.
"He also fed her some saline solution to keep her hydrated. My guess is he put it in her foot so it was as far out of the way as possible when he was doing his business." She nodded back towards Yvonne Redmond's midsection, and they pictured the sick guy 'doing his business', as Janssen called it.
"Putting that heparin lock in, and feeding her saline through it, do you think our guy comes from a medical background?" Chin asked.
"I very much doubt it," Janssen said. "For one thing, there are even tutorials on YouTube on how to insert one of those locks. But look at how badly her foot is bruised and swollen in that area. Anybody who knew what they were doing wouldn't have botched it up like this. No, he was able to do it good enough for his purpose, but I'd be shocked if he came from the medical field."
"The bleach. How?.?" McTavish asked, letting his words hang out there, twisting in the wind.
"Yes, he injected partially diluted bleach directly into her bloodstream through the heparin lock."
"Jesus, what would that have been like?"
"It would have been extremely painful, but with the dose of Rohypnol she had in her, she wouldn't have been able to move a muscle."
"But the bleach, wouldn't it have burned her from the inside out?" Chin asked, a morbid shiver running down her spine.
"Yes, she would have felt like she was being burned alive. But by diluting it, he made it last longer. He must have just wanted to watch her suffer. But even diluted, it's still highly toxic, more than she could have stood for very long. We would have actually been able to smell it on her when we found her, except for all the garbage in that dumpster."
"So in the end, it was the bleach in her bloodstream that killed her?" Pepper asked.
Janssen nodded as Singleton dropped the sheet back over the girl's foot. "Yes. It would have made her internal organs start to shut down; liver, kidneys, heart-you name it."
"Oh man," Wallace muttered.
"What about the makeup you think he used on her?" the Inspector asked. "Anything special there?"
Janssen shook her head. "No, nothing special. Middle of the road stuff that he could have picked up a
t any Shoppers Drug Mart or department store makeup counter."
"What about her mouth being glued on the one side?"
"My guess is that the adhesive he used was standard Krazy Glue, which you can get at any Walmart."
"But he just did it on one side only?" Chin asked, pointing to the young girl's mouth, her lips now clean of the glossy lipstick he'd painted her with.
"Yes, the right side only. My guess would be that he didn't do the left side in order to make sure we found the note. He'd placed it so just the tip of one corner was barely visible between her lips. It wasn't until I was right over her before I noticed it."
"Anything else you can tell us?" the Inspector asked.
"No, nothing other than I've already told you." Janssen paused, and they could see her getting emotional as she looked at the girl. "We checked the arrow for prints, but there was nothing. This guy was clinical in everything he did, right down to watching her die. It must have been excruciatingly painful for her with that bleach running through her bloodstream. It's hard to think what he must have seen when he looked into her eyes as she felt that kind of pain, but was unable to move or speak."
Pepper could feel the heat rising within him, the mercury bulb racing up the thermometer as the anger towards whoever did this surged through him.
"What can you tell us about the note?" Inspector Caruso said.
"Kyle." Janssen nodded towards The Flamingo Kid, who reached to the side and brought forward the flattened piece of paper, sealed in a clear evidence bag, his long bony fingers looking like a spider's legs as he placed it carefully on the edge of a small metal table next to them.
"The paper is typical of anything you'd find in a standard office." As Singleton began, they all instinctively took a step forward. Singleton rarely spoke, but when he did, the decibel level was so low that Pepper always wanted to reach over and turn up the Kid's volume control. "The type face is Arial, font size 8. It could have been printed off any computer you'd find in any home or office. He trimmed it down after printing. You can tell from the slight irregularity of the edges that it was likely cut with scissors." One talon-like finger pointed to a tiny jagged edge on one side of the paper, where the killer had moved the scissors while cutting, the cut-line not perfectly straight. "The sheet measures 98mm by 93mm."
The precise numbers didn't surprise Pepper-that's what made Janssen and Singleton so good at their jobs. Cases were often solved by the tiniest of details, and when it came time to go to court, these two were money in the bank when it came to providing support evidence that was bang on the mark.
"I guess there were no fingerprints, or anything else of use on the note?" McTavish asked.
"Nothing," Singleton replied.
"Any ideas about those numbers at the bottom?" Inspector Caruso asked.
It was Janssen who replied before Singleton could even take a breath. "We've just had time to examine the physical evidence at this point. I thought you'd want to hear as soon as possible what we found." Her tone of voice was like a teacher addressing a whole class of unruly students, curt and assured. Her unspoken words regarding the Inspector's question about the numbers let them all know that she and Singleton had done their part, and it was up to the detectives to do theirs now.
"Of course, Tanya, I appreciate that." The Inspector paused, wiping his brow with his shirtsleeve, looking worn out and defeated already. "Sorry about that. You guys have done a great job."
"That's fine, Inspector. I know this situation is difficult for everyone."
"Can we get photocopies of that note?" Wallace asked.
"Already done. Kyle?" Janssen nodded to Singleton, who reached behind him and picked up two photocopies from a file. He handed one to Wallace while Chin took the other.
The Inspector and the detectives trooped out, feeling like they'd been punched in the gut after listening to Janssen's report. Pepper's mind was going a mile a minute, processing everything he'd heard. It was clear that this sick bastard had planned everything as meticulously as a surgeon. The way the guy had used those roofies made shivers run down his spine, like someone playing scales on a xylophone. Yvonne Redmond had suffered, suffered so much more than Pepper had originally thought. He found himself thinking it would have almost been a godsend if she'd actually been killed by that arrow. Compared to what it must have been like to feel that bleach creeping through her veins, icy cold and yet hot as lightning, that arrow through her heart would have been an arrow of mercy.
Like a curtain coming down at the end of the first act, Pepper knew there was more to follow, and this was no comedy.
PART TWO
LONDON CALLING
The Clash