Jessica took a deep breath, sighed heavily, and released her pent-up frustration all in what seemed a single, flowing movement. “The choice of American women everywhere these days, yes.”
SIX
… the blood of the moon steeps through me, but you cannot find me, as I have disappeared into your darkness, while seeking out your flesh, only to find instead your deepest secret.
Jessica encouraged Kim to rise to her feet. Together they sized up each other's tolerance level, and without words, each decided she would go on from here to autopsy room number three. “Something in me needs to get this done tonight,” Kim insisted.
“All in one fell swoop? Kim, suppose it puts you out of commission for the duration of the case?”
“I can't tell you what it is; all I can tell you is that I have to… I must see all three victims in quick succession. That is what my intuition is telling me.”
Autopsy room number three housed the third victim, as Shockley had told them. The doctor stood waiting at the door, a grim look on his face, a single wave of the hand inviting them in; the stance and manner of his invitation called to mind a maniacal ringmaster in a circus, but Shockley's little circus had death in all three rings.
The seasoned old ME had prattled on about the increase in crime and the necessity for still more autopsy rooms and MEs to do the work. He moaned over the circumstances, the fact that hospital pathologists knew less today than they had known when butchers and barbers were the local coroners. Then, apropos apparently of murder-minded barbers, he started telling them how he had recently seen a revival of the musical Sweeney Todd at the local opera house. Finally, he muttered to Jessica, “Don't suppose you'd care to come to work for me, heh?” His wrinkles danced with his laughter, the gray-framed eyes twinkling.
The third victim, although male, possessed a soft and beautiful countenance like the deceased women: a pouting mouth, high cheekbones, and skin every bit as flawless as the other two victims. “Beginning to see a pattern here,” Jessica said to the others.
As if wanting to get it over with, Kim had instantly put her gloved hands on the body. From her deep trance, she struggled to say, “This one, like Micellina, thought the killer loved him.”
“How long had he known him?” asked Jessica, fishing for more detail.
“Forever and never, but perhaps only since nineteen.”
Jessica was beginning to feel some of the angst Parry felt around Kim. She always spoke in riddles, because she saw in images, symbols as opposed to facts. Jessica knew it was useless to ask if she meant nineteen days, weeks, years, or since the young man's nineteenth birthday. Instead she asked, “What does he look like?”
“An angel, like Michael, the Messenger… angel on a rampage. The letters arranged spell quark!'
Jessica moaned, but managed to ask, “Quark? As in physics?”
“Astrophysics,” Shockley corrected.
“Like the way rampage came to me; in Ouija-board fashion; now the word quark has arranged itself.”
Jessica felt this line of questioning useless. So she changed her tactics, asking, “Hair color?”
“Like light.”
“Light? Light gray, light brown?”
“Light… like white jewels, like goldenness open to the sky.”
Giving up on hair, Jessica asked, “Eyes?”
“Lime green, radiant, radiating light. A green reflecting pool.”
“Sounds gorgeous, or maybe not… Maybe the SOB wears contacts?”
Jessica knew from experience with Kim that no image could be taken at face value; lime-green eyes might simply mean that the killer saw life through a green lens. Lime suggested bitterness, so perhaps the killer saw the world as green bile, slime even, the opposite of green lawns and green as the color of hope, new life, and growth. She knew that the moment one locked down on the meaning of a psychic image, it was hard to shift the idea. Like interpreting dream images, there was more art to it than science. Certainly, psychic symbols and representations could not be taken on face value.
“How tall is our man?”
“A giant in his eyes.”
“How is he in bed?”
Dr. Shockley gasped, then laughed at this.
“No way to know. He did not sleep with the women; he sees the women as virginal, pure, angelic.”
“Virginal? Are you sure? They're both over twenty.”
“It's how he, the killer, perceived them.”
“And the young man?”
“Virginal as well.”
“A virgin? Are you sure?”
Shockley, shaking his head, put in, “The boy's twenty-three years of age. He's hardly likely to be a virgin at his age, unless of course he was raised a Mormon!”
Kim countered, saying, “It appears… that is, it feels so.”
“Feels so to the killer, you mean?” asked Jessica.
Kim shook her head. “No, feels so to me, here and now.”
“I didn't bother to look with the women,” Shockley confessed, “whether or not… the question of their virginity…” His shoulders rose as if attached to puppet strings as he stared across the cadaver at Jessica. “It isn't something one goes looking for, not since the late seventies anyway. Once I established that there was no sexual assault, I saw no need to… to search any further, you see.”
“Do it now, for the first victim, the Petryna woman, and I'll check the Mercedes woman,” suggested Jessica.
“But the police told me that each had multiple boyfriends, including our young Mr. Barona Gaitano, here.”
Kim erupted, saying, “Barona? His name was Barona?”
“Changed his name to it, yes. Was Luis. Quite a leap, wouldn't you say? Gaitano's his real name, though.”
“Barona Gaitano… has a showbiz sound to it, doesn't it?” asked Kim.
Ignoring this, Jessica said, “Check on victim one's virginity, Dr. Shockley. See if there is any evidence of sexual activity or assault. I'll do the same for the other woman.”
“Will do.”
Returning to where victim numbers one and two had been stored, Dr. Shockley at their side, Jessica said, “If they could be proven to be virgins, and if we can determine that the young man was saving himself for a true love, it will tell us something about the sort of people the killer targets, and it will hand us one more piece to add to our jigsaw puzzle.”
Kim agreed. “Yes, this could all figure into the killer's game plan. If he selects virgins as his victims, flawless in every way, it tells us something about him.”
The white-haired Shockley nodded all the way down the corridor, muttering, “Virgin sacrifices? Is that what we're dealing with here? It'd be a first for me! Unfortunately, there is no way to prove it.”
They soon had their answer when Shockley examined the first body and Jessica examined the second. The attendant was annoyed to remove the cadaver from its freezer compartment for a second time and wheel it into the room where Shockley worked. Beside him, Jessica quickly examined victim number two for any signs of sexual activity. Kim anxiously looked on, pacing behind her.
“False alarm,” announced Jessica, who felt no surprise in learning that Caterina Mercedes was no virgin. Shockley had come to the same conclusion with respect to Micellina Petryna.
Kim, looking on, said, “I felt it so strongly.”
“No more virgins out there to sacrifice, I'm afraid,” the old coroner said.
“As for the male,” Kim began, “only his friends-”
“Could possibly know,” finished Jessica.
Shockley added, “And they might not tell. Something else Sturtevante needs to run down.”
After some silence, Jessica heaved her shoulders and sighed. “Nothing else to accomplish here. I can listen to Shockley's protocols on tape at my leisure, back at the hotel.”