Riverwatch

Chapter Twenty: Forensics

Damon sat staring at the forensic reports in short-tempered silence. The interviews earlier that morning hadn’t produced anything useful and these reports seemed to be a dead-end as well. The scientific team had examined the bullets recovered at the scene. Ballistic tests proved that all of them had come from Jones’ sidearm. The flattened condition of each bullet proved they had struck their target, a conclusion bolstered by the presence of blood samples on each. So far, the technicians had been unable to match the blood to any known species, however, making them come to the conclusion that the samples were somehow contaminated. Further tests were being conducted.

What a damned mess.

Glancing at his watch, Damon realized he’d have to get moving if he was going to be on time for his meeting with Strickland. The Sheriff left the stationhouse and drove over to the Medical Examiner’s office. He rode the elevator down to the hospital basement with three surgeons; his manner hard and grim, the two dead officers very much on his mind, the physicians enduring the ride in silence, studiously not looking in his direction. At the lower level Damon stepped off the elevator and moved briskly down the hall until he came to the morgue.

The room was starkly lit with bright fluorescent lights. Three autopsy tables were spaced evenly, a bank of moveable lamps hanging within easy reach over each one. Large drains dotted the floor. Two of the tables were occupied, their contents covered with white plastic sheets. Around the lip of the drain beneath the table containing the larger bundle, Damon could see a thin pink froth left over from when the floors had been hosed down after the morning’s work. His shoes squeaked as they crossed the still damp linoleum.

Strickland was at one of the sinks, washing up.

"Hello, Ed," said Damon, entering the room.

"Sheriff."

Ed dried his hands and then moved to close the morgue’s doors, assuring them of privacy. "I’ve spent the last ten hours doing multiple autopsies, first on the Cummings couple and then on your two officers."

Damon’s jaw clenched at the thought of his murdered men but he did not interrupt the other man.

"In each and every case, I found the same types of evidence, the same confusing issues." He moved over to one of the autopsy tables. A body lay on top of it, covered by a clean white sheet. Reaching up, he switched on the bank of lamps above it, then pulled the sheet down to unveil the remains of George Cummings.

"The reason I called you down is simple." Stirckland hesitated, took a deep breath, and then said, "whatever killed this man wasn’t human."

Damon stared at his friend for a moment in silence and then said, "Come again?"

Ed looked down at the corpse before him, an expression of honest bafflement on his face. "In all my years of pathology I’ve never run across something as strange as this. Every time I think I’m getting somewhere, I find something else which completely shatters my current theory. I haven’t finished all the tests I intend to do, but I’ve got the feeling that once I do, I still won’t know anymore than I do right now, which is practically nothing. There’s only one thing of which I am positive." Strickland looked up and met Damon’s disbelieving gaze, "Nothing human killed this man."

The words hung in the air between them.

Maneuvering the lights down closer to the body, Strickland tried to explain. "First of all, the man’s head wasn’t cut off his body. It was torn off."

He bent over the corpse. "See this ragged tear here?" he asked, pointing to what was left of the man’s neck. The flesh at that point rose and fell in uneven peaks and valleys. "If the killer had used a knife or some other sharp object to sever the head, we’d see a relatively smooth cut."

"What about a saw?" Damon asked. "That wouldn’t leave a smooth edge, would it?"

"No, but it would be a uniform tear. This is too uneven to be a saw blade." He paused and looked up to make certain Damon was following his explanation. When he saw that he was, Strickland continued. "Do you remember a game we used to play with dandelions when we were kids? Something about Momma having a baby and her head popped off?"

"You’re not saying…?"

Ed smiled a strange and bitter smile. "Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Something pulled this man’s head from his body as easily as we used to flip those flowers off their stems."

Damon stared down at the corpse with a whole new sense of horror.

"It gets worse. With the exception of his eyes, still in the head you recovered from the toilet and the intestines you found strung all over the bedroom, all the other soft organs in the body have been removed."

"Removed?" The slight tremor in Damon’s voice suggested he already knew what Strickland meant by the euphemism.

Again the smile. "Removed. Eaten. Devoured. Call it what you will. As far as I can tell, the beast, whatever it is, got his heart, his kidneys, his liver, even his tongue and testicles."

"Oh, God," said Damon, as he fought to make his mind accept what he was hearing.

"My thoughts exactly." Strickland flipped off the lights and covered the body.

Damon finally got his thoughts in order. "How come you’re so certain it’s an animal? Couldn’t a human, albeit a very sick one, have done the same thing? Look at that guy Dahmer. He was certainly capable of something like that."

"Sure, I guess it would be possible. But not in this case. No human left the teeth marks I found."

"Teeth marks?" Damon echoed. He was starting to feel a little slow on the uptake.

Ed moved over to the other table. Turning on the lights and drawing back the sheet as he had before, he exposed Cumming’s head and limbs.

"The bones had been deeply scored at the point of separation from the rest of the limb. My first hunch was that the marks were caused by some kind of tool, maybe a tire iron or an axe, but on closer examination I realized that they were really the imprints left when the beast crushed the limbs between its jaws. Its teeth are curved inward, at an angle, so when they cut through the skin and hit the bone, they leave evidence of their passing," Ed turned the foot so Damon could see the exposed cross-section of the bone, "and if you look closely, you’ll see that the marrow has been sucked out as well. While the creature had less time with Bannerman and Jones, their bodies showed many of the same results."

"Jesus! What kind of animal are we talking about here, Ed?"

The Medical examiner shrugged. "Damned if I know. Something big enough to tackle a full-grown man. Something that’s not only not afraid of him, but also happens to like how he tastes. But I’m afraid there’s more. I found the same strange lack of blood with this body as I did with Halloran’s corpse."

"You’re kidding me, right?"

" ‘Fraid not. No blood, and the veins themselves collapsed throughout the entire system. I can’t explain it any more than I could when I talked to you yesterday. I’ve never seen anything like it."

"So what you’re saying is that whatever killed Halloran also killed the Cummings’ as well?"

"It appears that way."

Damon was perplexed. "Why didn’t it feast on Halloran, too? Why just the older couple and my men?"

"Who knows? Could be for a variety of reasons. Maybe it was just thirsty the first time." Strickland’s weak attempt at humor blew right past Damon. For all he knew, it might not be a joke at all.

"You ready for the rest?"

"There’s more?" Damon asked him, incredulously.

Strickland picked the head up off the table and turned it around so Damon could see the fist-sized hole in the back of the man’s skull.

The white gleam of bone could clearly be seen inside the empty skull cavity.

"It ate his brain, too," Strickland replied.