That’s the last thing I wanted to hear, of course, but there is something in her tone, something to the glint in her eyes, that tells me I’m still in the game.
“But their deaths were no accident,” she says. “These were homicides. And these were the most ingenious, meticulous, and cold-blooded murders I’ve ever seen.”
47
“I WANT to make sure I’m on record telling you this,” says Dr. Janus. “If I’d received these bodies in a routine fashion, without having spoken with you about them first, I likely would have come to the same conclusion as these local MEs did—that the manner of death was accidental.”
She opens the first file and passes around copies of photos and forms. “We have Curtis Valentine of Champaign, Illinois, male, age thirty-nine. And Joelle Swanson of Lisle, Illinois, female, age twenty-three.” Dr. Janus continues in a dry, raspy voice, as if she is reading something she’s read a thousand times before. “In each decedent, there is clear soot deposition on tracheal mucosa and the dorsum of the tongue. The soft tissue and blood in the organs was cherry red, which is usually evident with carboxyhemoglobin levels above thirty percent and is therefore indicative of inhalation of toxic levels of carbon monoxide and cyanide.
“All of this evidence, as you know, is consistent with the decedents being alive at the time of the fire and inhaling smoke and other toxic chemicals—which is exactly the conclusion reached by the medical examiners in Champaign and DuPage counties.”
We all nod in agreement.
She pauses, looking at each of us for just a beat longer than is comfortable. It’s pretty hard to make the four of us uncomfortable, after the week we’ve had. It seems as though she’s assessing us.
“But you told me to dig deeper,” she says. “So I did things medical examiners wouldn’t ordinarily do. For example, I examined the soot in their mouths and throats and lungs more closely. I analyzed the toxic gases present. It’s usually carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, of course. Those are usually the main culprits, and any damage caused by other gases is difficult to separate from direct particulate injury. That’s the logical assumption. But when I dug deeper, guess what I found?”
“What?” I ask, like an eager student, wanting the gory details to justify my original hypothesis—but not wanting them, at the same time, knowing that my sister was one of his victims. I don’t know which emotion is causing the buzz in my head, the tremble in my limbs.
“The chemical residue in their lungs and throat—it’s not what I would have expected, based on someone lying in their bed, surrounded by fabric and polyurethane and carpeting and books. What I found was an unusually high presence of sulfur dioxide,” she says. “Much higher than you’d ever expect from a normal house fire. It’s like…well.” She laughs, as if apologizing.
“It’s like what?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “It’s like they inhaled the smoke coming off a tire fire.”
“A tire fire?” I repeat.
“Correct.” She gives me a grim smile. “And I saw nothing in the reports or background information that suggested any burned rubber at the scenes.”
“No, of course not,” says Denny Sasser.
“And that’s not all,” says Janus. “There isn’t evidence of burning inside the trachea and lungs. The smoke they inhaled wasn’t hot.” She taps the table with a manicured fingernail. “If they’d inhaled smoke from the fire, it would have scalded their trachea and lungs.”
“So—what are you saying?” asks Books.
Dr. Janus shrugs. “Off the record, I would say that someone must have created this kind of smoke and forced them to inhale it, to make it appear that they were alive at the time of the fire—so that a medical examiner would conclude that smoke inhalation caused their death. But these individuals didn’t inhale the smoke from their house fires. The smoke came from a different source. By the time their houses were burning, they were already dead.”
It’s as if the entire room collectively releases a tightly held breath. The composition of the smoke, and the lack of heat, eliminate any possibility that Curtis Valentine and Joelle Swanson breathed the fire smoke. That, alone, refutes the findings of the coroners in Champaign and DuPage.
I note, for the first time, the drumming of my fingers on the tabletop—not idle, distracted tapping, but quaking spasms. Hold steady, I warn myself. You need to hear this. Don’t think about her. This isn’t about Marta. It’s about catching a killer.
“I assume that’s not all you have to tell us,” says Books.
Lia Janus lets out a nervous chuckle. “No, that’s not all,” she agrees. “If that were all, then last night I wouldn’t have had nightmares about my work for the first time in twenty years.”
48
WE LISTEN with anticipation to the next phase of Dr. Olympia Janus’s findings. But make no mistake, we have already scored a major victory. The conclusions reached by the local coroners have been tossed out the window.
So why don’t I feel like celebrating? Because, under the category of careful-what-you-wish-for, Dr. Janus is about to give us some very specific details about how Curtis Valentine and Joelle Swanson died—and thus, how my sister was murdered, too.
Each of the four members of our team, in his or her own way—eyes downcast, shoulders closed in, feet tapping—is reacting the same way right now, even without the personal connection I have. We already know the heights of his brilliance. Now we’re going to learn about the depths of his depravity.
Janus passes around glossy photographs that, she explains, are close-up photos of the upper thigh of Curtis Valentine and of the areas immediately surrounding the elbows and knees of Joelle Swanson.
“Look, here, at the splits in the tissue,” she says. “Splits, in and of themselves, are normal in a death like this. Heat from a fire will cause splits in the skin as the flames cause the outer layers to fry and peel off. After that, the thicker dermal layer begins to dehydrate, shrink, and split. This splitting occurs parallel to the muscle fibers, do you see that?”
I guess I do. It’s hard for someone like me to make sense of these photos. But it looks like the skin has split open vertically to reveal muscle in the same direction, like the husk stripped down to reveal the corn.
“That’s the key,” Janus continues. “The skin splits caused from a fire’s heat will be parallel to the muscle fibers. When the splits are caused by lacerations—a knife, some kind of slashing wound, what have you—the lacerations will typically be across muscle fibers. That is a key way that an autopsy will reveal foul play, by comparing the laceration’s direction to the muscle fibers. Do you follow?”
“Yes,” Books says. “So these skin splits are parallel to the muscle. They look like they resulted naturally from the heat of the fire.”
“Correct. But upon closer scrutiny, these lacerations are quite precise. And by precise, I mean of surgical quality. They are even and symmetrical. They are simply too perfect to be natural.
“And he was clever,” she adds. “He chose his spots wisely. These lacerations occur in areas of the body that were nearly completely consumed by fire, leaving little but a greasy layer of flesh over charred bone, or in areas riddled with natural splits in the skin. Whoever did this had solid medical knowledge and a steady hand. Your subject sliced them up, and he did so right where he knew we wouldn’t discover it.”
I catch my hands trembling again and lace my fingers together to calm them. The slow buzz between my ears, the gentle hum, rises in volume, like the charge off a high-voltage battery.
“I’m sure you’ve heard of the pugilistic attitude that bodies assume when burned, yes?” Dr. Janus asks. My mind flashes back to Marta, burned up into a boxer’s stance—knees and arms bent, a defensive crouch. I close my eyes and take deep breaths.
“In fire-related deaths, this heat-induced contraction results in exposure of the peripheral joint spaces like the wrists, elbows, and knees, and there is often charring of the articulating surface of the bo
nes. Deterioration of bone here would not be unusual. But look here,” she says, pointing to Joelle’s elbow joint. “Here, I found that a portion of the bone was missing, while the depth of char is consistent with the surrounding area, as if some of the bone had been removed prior to the fire. The surrounding tissue in that area was profoundly burned, but shows evidence of deep bone-level skin splits.”
“Translation, please,” says Books.
“Sorry. I’m saying the subject cut through their skin, moved aside their muscle tissue or sliced through it with methodical vertical cuts, and shaved a chunk of their bone off before they died. Basically, he cut them to shreds on their elbows, wrists, and knees—he sliced skin and he removed bone. Imagine someone performing knee surgery on you without anesthetic, while you’re awake, and you get some idea of what these people went through. Except it was both knees, both elbows, and both wrists—so multiply the experience by six.”
“Jesus, Mary, Mother of God,” Denny Sasser whispers.
“And he knew it would be nearly impossible to detect, because these areas of the body are some of the parts that are most exposed in a fire.”
Somehow, my hands have split apart again, resuming their spasmodic quaking, and only now do I realize the lighting in the room has turned a blinding shade of white, and the buzzing in my head has reached a dizzying volume, the odor in the air turning foul and putrid—
“Are you okay?” says Dr. Janus, presumably to me.
My face is sizzling, my stomach in revolt—
“Emmy,” says Books.
“I forgot,” says Janus. “There’s a personal connection—”
“No,” I hear myself say. “Keep…going…there’s more…isn’t there?”
“There’s more. In fact, this is where the two deaths diverge,” says Janus. “Believe it or not, this is where it gets worse.”
49
“SO HE didn’t do the same things to the two victims?” Denny Sasser asks.
“Well, not entirely,” says Olympia Janus. “Each of them inhaled that smoke, however he accomplished that. And the very painful slicing and bone-cutting at their limb joints was present in each victim. But yes, at this point, the examinations of the two bodies diverge. Let’s start with Curtis Valentine.”
She pulls out two sets of photos from her file. “I found evidence of injuries inflicted at his temporal bones—his skull, basically. You see there are two skull fractures, here and here,” she says, pointing to either side of the skull just behind the temple. “Is that unusual? Not at all, for someone burned in a fire. Heat-related fractures commonly occur in the temporal bone just behind or below the temples. They are normally jagged, radiate from a center point, and may cross those suture lines. For all intents and purposes, these fractures look like normal heat-related, postmortem fractures—each of the two fractures is jagged, and each radiates from a center point.
“However,” she continues, tracing the line of fracture with the eraser of her pencil, “look at the center points of each of these two fractures. They are identical in diameter. Identical. What are the odds that two heat-related fractures in the same individual would have identically sized center points? A diameter, by the way, that is consistent with your average ice pick.”
“You think he punctured Curtis Valentine’s skull twice with an ice pick,” says Books. “In locations where a coroner would blame the fractures on the heat from the fire.”
“Exactly. And in a location where you would expect to find skin-splitting, too. And while we’re on the topic of skin-splitting—just like he did with the knees and elbows and wrists, here at the skull he kept the incisions on the skin parallel to the muscle tissue, so it would mimic a heat-related splitting.”
The room is quiet a moment. Everyone’s trying to keep up with our learned doctor, and everyone’s trying to digest this information without losing their lunch.
“Curtis Valentine was scalped,” I say, my voice flat.
“Exactly,” she says. “Our subject punctured Mr. Valentine’s skull in two places to get hold of the skin; then he tore off the skin in patches, inch by inch, like peeling an orange. The skin flaps were left attached to the skull, and as they burned, they flaked away until the damage was easily mistaken for normal fire damage.”
“Okay,” I say, though I’m not sure if I’m saying it to myself, to steady myself, to keep a clinical focus and not think of my sister. “And was he…when this happened…was Curtis—was he…”
“He was alive during all of it,” says Janus. “The shredding of the skin at the elbows and knees and wrists, the cutting of the bone, the peeling back of his scalp—there’s evidence in the histological analysis of the tissue that there was swelling at the sites, which only happens if you’re alive.”
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about her. Think about the case, the puzzle, the solve. This isn’t personal. This isn’t about Marta—
Marta. Oh, my poor, sweet Marta—
“You’re describing torture,” says Denny Sasser.
“Torture isn’t a strong enough word,” Janus says. “Emmy? Are you okay?”
I open my eyes into my hands. I didn’t realize I’d been covering my face. I squint into the light of the room.
“Emmy?”
I spin my index finger in the air, hoping that she’ll understand that I want her to continue, because I’m not sure my voice will work anymore.
“What about Joelle Swanson?” Books asks. “She wasn’t scalped?”
“No, she wasn’t.” Lia Janus sighs. “I also ordered extensive histology on her available skin samples still capable of being tested. Her skin and muscle tissue were nearly completely destroyed by the high heat of the fire, but there are a few sections of deeper tissue on her thighs that show evidence of second-degree burns occurring prior to her death—with enough time that there was vital tissue reaction, including edema, erythema, inflammation, and hemorrhage. These preliminary burns, in my opinion, are consistent with the damage caused by scalding.”
“Scalding?” Denny Sasser asks. “As in boiling liquid?”
“Correct.” Dr. Janus clears her throat. “He burned her over and over again, but only to a second-degree burn.”
“Why stop at second-degree?”
She gives a rueful smile. “If it were a third-degree burn, all her nerve cells would have died, and there would be no pain. A large second-degree burn, on the other hand, is a constant source of agony. Have you ever been to a hospital burn unit? That kind of pain will test your sanity and your will to live.” She shakes her head. “He knew exactly how to maximize her pain.”
Books clears his throat. “So…he poured boiling water over her. He cut her at the limb joints. He filled her lungs with the smoke of burning rubber to asphyxiate her. And then he burned her up in the fire.”
Not Marta…not Marta…these things didn’t happen to her….
“That covers it,” Lia Janus says. “Listen, I’m not sure you understand what I’m saying about the unifying characteristics of these injuries. First of all, every single one of the injuries he inflicted—every single one—could be explained away as having been caused by the heat from an accidental fire. Could we convict him in court based on what I’ve told you today? No. There are too many holes. I firmly believe in what I’ve told you, but a skilled defense attorney could tie me in knots because I could never fully discount the possibility of accidental death.
“But more to the point,” she continues, “each of these acts…each of these injuries was chosen with the specific intention of causing unimaginable pain without causing death. He sliced into their bodies with the skill of a surgeon, and he didn’t hit one major artery. They didn’t bleed out because he didn’t want them to bleed out.”
She looks at each of us in turn. “I don’t know how you ever discovered this monster or connected these two murders. Whatever you did, I applaud your excellent work. Because these are the closest things to a perfect crime that I’ve ever seen. And they are also, I
must say, among the most hideous I’ve encountered. Our subject has committed unspeakable acts of torture and managed to remain completely invisible.”
Dr. Olympia Janus claps her hands down on the table and stands up.
“Catch him,” she says. “Hopefully, before he does it again.”
Denny says, “Today’s, what, Wednesday the twelfth? He’s midway through his second week on the road.”
“Right,” says Books. “Which means he’s probably staking out his next victim as we speak.”
50
* * *
“Graham Session”
Recording # 12
September 12, 2012
* * *
Hello? Hey, how are you? I’m good, I’m good.
Okay, I’m just doing my fake-phone-call ruse again, because I’m at a bar doing my favorite thing, people-watching. Do you like to do that? I think everyone does, don’t they? Isn’t it strange that almost everyone seems weird to you? But you imagine that, if the shoe were on the other foot, you would seem normal to them?
Anyway, I’m traveling again tomorrow, so I’m not really on the job tonight, but I’m going to show you an example of how I do what I do—how I draw people in, how I gain their trust, because—
[Editor’s note: a woman’s voice:] “Are you a writer?”
I’m sorry. Hey, can you hang on a second? Someone’s talking to me. Hang on a second.
I’m sorry, what did you say to me?
[Woman:] “I said, are you a writer?”
Am I a writer? Why would you ask me that?
[Woman:] “Because you seem like you’re observing people and taking notes. Even though you’re pretending to be on the phone.”
I’m not pretending to be on the phone. I’m really on the phone.
[Woman:] “Okay, sorry I bothered you.”
Hey, can I call you back? Okay…okay, thanks…bye.