Apocalypse Island (9 page)

A siren whelped. An unmarked Crown Vic and a black-and-white moved swiftly down Landfill Road, their tires spewing rooster-tails of dust up from the dry road surface. The officer pushed his hat to the back of his head, wiped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt and exhaled a sigh of relief.

Both cars halted behind his. Columns of dust rose and whirled. Two men in plain clothes exited the Crown Victoria, two uniformed officers from the black and white.

“Where is it, Myers?” asked a large, handsome man in a tan trench coat. His name was Jennings and he looked like an unmade bed. The trench coat was wrinkled, the tie unknotted and hanging askew, thin wisps of blond hair stood straight up, spiked by the insistent wind. His white scalp was visible beneath the thin hair.

The young officer pointed at the murky pool.

Jennings approached the corpse, staring down at it. “How’d you find it?”

“I was doing my rounds when these two kids flagged me down. Said they were taking a shortcut to school.”

“Did you question them?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well?”

“They were just kids, sir. They didn’t know anything.”

“You know they’ll talk, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir, but I didn’t feel like I had the right to hold them.”

“Get their names and addresses?”

“Yes, sir. Right there on my notepad.”

“Good work.”

“It’s a woman, sir.”

“I can see that.” Jennings thought the officer’s eyes looked haunted.

“Someone carved a cross on her,” Myers said. “And she’s got tattoos.”

“Yeah, I see that too,” Jennings replied. “You okay, Myers?”

“Look at them,” Myers said. “They’re...filthy.”

Jennings knew the officer was referring to the body art. Actually he was having trouble taking his own eyes off it. On the woman’s right front shoulder was a tattoo of a three-fanged skinless demon clinging to the back of a large, hair covered man. Or perhaps it was a monster. Jennings couldn’t really be sure. Some sort of snake continued down the arm to almost the wrist.

A sort of Christ figure in white robes, his hands held out before him in entreaty, was tattooed on the corpse’s front thigh just below the hip bone. On her left hip was a tattoo of a man dressed as a nun who seemed to be playing with his own genitals. And there were more. Most were markings of an intensely blasphemous nature. If you happened to be religious, that is. Jennings sighed. The kids that did these sorts of things to themselves evidently weren’t. These days it was common to use blasphemous religious symbols as body art. They thought it was ‘radical’ or something. New meaning for an old word. What’ll they think when they’re seventy? 

He stared down at the dead young woman and knew that the same person had killed both victims. It could not be coincidence. They’d both been stabbed to death. And on both bodies, the killer had left his mark, a crudely carved cross. Jennings was suddenly reminded of another murder from half a decade ago.

Chapter 19

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Myers said. He continued staring at the corpse, his eyes large and dulled by shock.

“Dead people bother you, Myers?” The question came from the second plainclothesman, a man named Frank Cavanaugh. He was tall and lean with close-cropped salt and pepper hair, sunken, impassionate eyes and worry lines around his cruel mouth.

“That does,” Myers said pointing at the corpse. “Those are Christian symbols.”

“Yeah, so?”

Myers stared at Cavanaugh and did not reply.

“Myers is a Jew,” said one of the other officers.

“You’re shitting me.” Cavanaugh said. He was looking at Myers like he was from another planet.

“Does that make you think any less of me?” asked Myers.

“No, Myers, I just didn’t know you were a Jew, that’s all, and I don’t think anything could make me think less of you.”

“It never ceases to amaze me how insensitive you Christians are to other religions,” Myers said.

“What, I’m supposed to be psychic?” Cavanaugh said.

“And the shit you Christian assholes do in the name of your lord,” Myers added, his voice rising. “This is sick.”

“You know something, Myers?” Cavanaugh said. “It wasn’t us Christian assholes that did this. It was some sick pervert.”

Myers eyes looked haunted. “There’s something wrong here,” he said.

“What do you mean by that?” Lieutenant Jennings asked, turning his full attention to the young officer.

“I don’t know,” Myers replied. His haunted eyes were darting around, panic filled, his tongue licking nervously from his mouth. “I...can’t really explain it. It’s...I don’t know. It’s like there’s something...evil around her. Some sort of unfinished business or something.”

“Unfinished business?”
Cavanaugh said with a harsh laugh. “Christ. Now I’ve heard everything. She looks quite finished to me, Myers.”

“No, you don’t understand. I saw something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”

Jennings kept his attention focused on the young officer. “What is it you
think
you saw, Myers?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Come on, this is important.”

Again the officer licked his lips, his eyes darting to Cavanaugh, then back to Jennings. “This is gonna sound stupid.”

“So what’s new, Myers?” Cavanaugh said.

“Shut the fuck up, Frank!” Jennings snapped. “Let the officer speak. Tell me what you saw, Myers.”

“I think it was a...ghost, sir.”

“A
ghost?”
Cavanaugh said. “What are you, some kind of fucking fruit loop—?”

“I said shut up, Frank!”

Cavanaugh glared at Jennings.

Myers stared down at his feet in embarrassment. “It was a woman,” he said. “She had on a white gown. Her hair was dark and it hung in her face. Don’t ask me to explain it, because I can’t.”

“Jesus Christ!” Cavanaugh muttered.

Jennings gave Cavanaugh a hard stare. “Where did you see this...apparition, Myers?” Jennings asked.

“Over near the corpse. She had her hands out like she was trying to...” The officer seemed at a loss for words.

“Convey something?” Jennings said.

“Yeah, that’s the word. Convey something. And she looked afraid.”

Jennings nodded thoughtfully.

“What’s going on here?” Cavanaugh asked, the confusion evident in his tone. He was glancing appraisingly between Jennings and Myers.

Neither Jennings nor the young officer answered him.

Another of the uniformed officers had ventured over to the pool. He was standing beside Jennings staring dreamily down at the corpse trying not to breathe through his nose. “Oh...fuck,” he said, raising his hand to cover his mouth, fingers splayed. He did a mechanical-looking about face and vomited on the ground at his feet. His partner turned away, gagging.

“What the hell’s wrong with you pussies?” Cavanaugh exploded. “Ain’t you ever seen a corpse before?”

The sick patrolman, whose face was mime-white, said, “Not like that one. And I hope I never do again.”

“Crime lab’s on the way,” Jennings said. He was still looking at Myers. “Don’t touch anything! They’ll want to scour the area immediately around the body. And if you guys are gonna puke, move back. I don’t want you messing up the scene.” The stench was so powerful that even he was having trouble keeping his breakfast down.

He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, clapped it over his face and stood examining the corpse. The body lay on its back, arms fanned out to the sides, legs splayed. The upper half lay partially submerged in the green pool. Nets of dark hair floated around the head like dirty cobwebs. The vacuous eye sockets were open and staring. There seemed to be an uncommon amount of greasy, dark makeup smeared around their orbits. The first victim had looked pretty much the same way and Jennings wondered if the killer had put the makeup there, and if so, then why. She looked like one of those blow-up sex dolls. The mouth was open in an O of surprise, frozen in a silent scream. Jennings’s eyes roamed up and down the body, left to right. A shiver of revulsion rippled through him. He was bothered most by the cross. He’d seen the exact same thing a week ago on a victim strapped to a cross-shaped tombstone at Oak Hill cemetery. And he’d seen a similar one five years ago on a walking trail in Falmouth that he was not supposed to talk about. Now this one, killed in exactly the same way.

Jennings looked up and glanced around at his surroundings. He turned and did a slow but complete three-sixty. The four other officers watched him carefully. “I don’t think we’ve got ourselves a crime scene here, Frank,” he said finally.

“No?”

“No! I think the body was dumped. And I’d say by the look and smell of it that she’s been here a while. Perhaps as long as three or four days. You see that old telegraph pole?” He pointed to an old wooden pole not twenty feet from where they stood on the opposite side of Land Fill Road. There was an entire line of them that followed a rusted and long abandoned railroad spur, but this one was the closest one to the crime scene. Old rotted telegraph lines hung from them like errant cobwebs. “Those poles are from the days of Morse code and probably haven’t been used in more than half a century.”

“Yeah, so?” Cavanaugh said again.

“What’s it look like to you?”

Cavanaugh frowned. “Looks like a telegraph pole.”

“Use your imagination.”

Cavanaugh made a face and shrugged.

Jennings sighed. “Oh yeah, I forgot, you don’t have an imagination, do you, Frank? Listen, I’d be willing to bet the killer was planning on hanging her from that pole and someone came along and surprised him. So he just dumped the body. I think he covered her over with trash and the wind uncovered her.”

“Why would he hang her from the...?” Cavanaugh stopped as what Jennings was trying to say began to sink in. “That’s quite a stretch, ain’t it, Rick?”

“After what happened last week I don’t think it’s a stretch at all. Just look at it, Frank.”

Cavanaugh frowned but followed Jennings’ hand. It seemed like an ordinary telegraph pole to him. About ten feet up there was a horizontal cross piece with old blue and green glass insulators still attached, some of them broken by rocks or BB guns. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “It sort of looks like a cross, I suppose.
If
you have an imagination.” He grinned smugly at Jennings.

“More sicko Christian shit,” said Myers.

“Will you stop with the Christian bullshit, Myers?” Cavanaugh said. “This guy is a sick pervert. Period! Christ, look at her.”

“How can you say it’s not religious?” Myers said.

“I don’t think you can deny the religious connotations,” Jennings said. “That woman found at Oak Hill cemetery last week had a bunch of blasphemous tattoos, she had a cross carved on her and she was strapped to a large cross-shaped tombstone. This guy is definitely hung up on religion and that pole over there is just too close for comfort. Coincidence? I don’t think so. And I’d be willing to bet forensics won’t find much evidence around the scene. The body was almost certainly dumped.” Jennings bent closer to the corpse, staring down at the artwork, both horrified and entranced. “Jesus, why would anyone do such a thing?” It was a rhetorical question spoken in a near whisper. He didn’t really expect an answer.

“Maybe she was fucking around on her old man and he decided to teach her a lesson,” Cavanaugh said.

Eight astonished eyes turned to the detective.

Chapter 20

Did he just say what I thought he said?
Jennings asked himself.

Cavanaugh saw all the staring eyes. “What?” he said. “I was just sayin’.”

“You cold son of a bitch,” Myers said in a voice that choked with disgust. “What kind of man are you? How can you even think thoughts like those? Look at her, man. What if she was your daughter, or your wife?”

Cavanaugh smirked. “If my daughter or my wife had decorated her body with filth like that I wouldn’t have been this easy on her.”

Myers went for the detective’s throat. Jennings took two lumbering steps and came between the two men, his rugged face darkly troubled. “Knock it off,” he said in a voice that was much too calm. “And Frank, grow the hell up.”

“Me?”
Cavanaugh said with a hoarse laugh. “He just told you he saw a fucking ghost. I don’t think it’s me who needs to grow up.”

“I know what I saw!” Myers said. “So screw you, Cavanaugh.”

“Oh, really,” Cavanaugh said. “You’re a religious man, aren’t you, Myers? Go to temple, get down on your knees, wear the little skull cap and all that bullshit?”

“Fuck you, asshole! What’s that have to do with anything?”

“You Holy Roller types see all sorts of things the rest of us don’t. Isn’t that right? Holy ghosts. Burning bushes. Shit like that.”

“You asshole,” Myers said. “You’re talking about Christian symbols again. I’m a Jew!”

“Same difference,” Cavanaugh said dismissively. “Fanatics are fanatics. Jews, Muslims, Christians. You’re all a bunch of fucking fruit loops.”

Myers tried to move around Jennings to get at the detective, his face purple with rage. “You bastard!” he said. “I’ll break your neck—”

Jennings grabbed both men by the lapels, one in each hand, a surprisingly swift maneuver for a man of his bulk, so adroit in fact that it shocked those who were witnessing the act. His clenched fists were the size of hams. “I told you guys to knock it off, or so help me God you’ll both be scrubbing latrines down at city hall for the next six weeks.” He was a much larger man than either the detective or the officer and one got the impression that he could do more than put them on latrine duty if he decided.

The young officer shrugged free of Jennings’s hold and stumbled away, head down, weeping.

“This may be just a walk in the park for you, Frank,” Jennings said. The fist on the detective’s lapel tightened. Jennings drew Cavanaugh to within inches of his face.  His eyes were small black beads of carefully controlled rage. “When these men see something like this they see their wives—or their sisters—or the girl next door. You think any of us
like
this? What the fuck’s gotten into you? That kid over there is doing the best he can do.”