Surgeon – Chapter Thirteen

NOT EDITED

Chapter Thirteen

5:42 PM; CLINSTONE POLICE DEPARTMENT, MORGUE

Bo took a bite of his salad just as Jacob walked into the morgue. The detective shook his head. “How in God’s name can you eat in the same room that you just finished an autopsy in?”

Bo lifted his shoulders. “It’s clean,” he said, a hand covering his mouth. He swallowed, clearing his throat. He held his red notebook out to Jacob. “Here.”

Jacob crossed the room and grabbed the notebook. His eyes scanned the page. “Question.”

“Answer.”

“You have a sticky note on the top of the page here, labeled… killer. What does all of it stand for?” Jacob asked, turning the notebook back toward Bo.

“Do you really want to know?” Bo asked, taking another bite.

“If you’re comfortable telling me. I’m not like the jackasses upstairs, Bo.”

Bo watched the man for a moment before nodding. “I know.” He cleared his throat, pointing at the sticky note with his fork. “No HM is no hesitation marks. This person haskilled before, and slitting their throats isn’t that big of an effect on them. They’re caring, as far as I can tell, and there’s no S or P, which is suffering or pain. They don’t want their victims to fear for their lives. They don’t want their victims to feel the pain, they just need them to die.”

Jacob frowned, jumping up onto one of the counters in the lab, notebook in hand. “Why?”

Bo shrugged. “Like I told you after Tess, anything I could say would be an assumption.”

“I’m not going to let a theory, which is what I would call your assumptions, keep me from investigating a case. But theories dance around in my head all day if I don’t talk about ‘em. I doubt it’s any different for you. I’m sure you’re full of theories.”

Bo glanced up at him, sticking another forkful of lettuce into his mouth. Jacob had hit the nail on the end. It was hard not to imagine every possible scenario for each victim and killer. He used to discuss those scenarios in depth with those he’d worked with previously. The fact that only one of them turned out to be a homicidal criminal offered relatively good odds that Jacob wasn’t one either.

“My ongoing theory is that they’re killing woman that remind them of someone important. Which, by the way, we have to talk about that.”

“After you tell me what the rest of this means?” Jacob suggested.

Bo smiled faintly. “Sure. RSK, recognition serial killer. Again, they’re likely killing people they recognize as someone they used to know. UKP or IDP is unknown pattern or indiscernible pattern. At that point, it was just Tess Brown, and I didn’t have any other vics to base a pattern off of. PAG is possible age gap. As it stands, the killer is likely between the ages of forty and forty-nine, based solely on the age of their victims. MLG: MK is just most likely gender and male killer.” He lifted his shoulders. “It’s just easier to write it all out that way.”

“In case one of us is a killer,” Jacob said.

“Well… yes. Mostly. I know it’s rather unlikely that you specifically are a killer. You don’t have the mannerisms one would expect. Which, I understand is a bit ironic coming from the man who worked and lived with a killer without recognizing said mannerisms, but I believe it gives me a unique understanding of how they can present themselves,” Bo said. He looked down, aimlessly stirring his fork in his salad. “I assume you’ve killed a man before, and only one, in defense of yourself or someone else?”

Jacob froze briefly, slowly lifting his gaze from the notebook. “How’d you know that?” he asked.

“You’re an open book, Detective Mason. You said that yourself,” Bo said. Jacob’s lips were still parted, like he couldn’t believe it. “I Googled you, Detective Mason. That is also an open book.”

Jacob cackled. “Wow. You got me good, Austen. Starting to think you were a psychic mind reader or something.”

“Just a lab geek with internet access.”

Jacob snorted. His gaze fell back to the notebook in his hand. “She was killed around nine-thirty this morning?”

Bo nodded. “Evidence of chloroform damage to the esophagus, enough etorphine in her blood to immobilize a full-grown elephant.”

“Etorphine?”

“Yes, sorry. It’s an opioid, about one thousand to three thousand times more potent than morphine when it comes to its analgesic properties. Etorphine is fast-acting, practically immediate. Not to mention that it’s illegal aside from veterinary use. They use it to immobilize elephants and other large mammals. A dose of veterinary-strength etorphine is fatal to humans. Even if the killer hadn’t cut into her, she didn’t have much of a chance of survival, even if the killer had wanted her to.”

Before Jacob could respond, Bo continued, “I noticed something while I was cleaning the skin before the autopsy.” He stood up and crossed the room, his lunch forgotten. He pulled open the drawer that Jane Bishop’s body was in. He pulled back the sheet and looked back at Jacob. “You, umm, have to be over here to see it, Detective.”

Jacob chuckled as he jumped down from the counter. “Sorry.” He set Bo’s notebook on the table and crossed the room. “Okay. Talk to me.”

“This little mark on her inner forearm?”

“Yeah?”

“Sixteen gauge needle. Do you know what they use sixteen gauge needles for?”

“Umm… I’ve got nothing,” Jacob said, shaking his head.

“Drawing blood, usually. Accounting for the blood that soaked into her mattress and her sheets, accounting for the blood that she lost during the breast removal, she’s still missing two pints of blood. So I’ve been thinking, why would you cut off a woman’s breasts and take two pints of her blood?”

Jacob offered a shrug, a dull smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “We’ve got a Buffalo Bill situation on our hands?”

Bo rolled his eyes. “No. Good guess, though. I’m thinking something a little less ‘woman suit’ and a little more ‘woman repair’. Surgery.”

“Come again?”

“The women they’re kidnapping. I believe the killer wants them to look exactly like the person they’re killing for. Killing honor of.”

“So you think Jane Bishop is definitely related to Tess Brown’s case?”

“Detective Mason, I think everything that’s happened since I’ve gotten here has been connected. I’ve done a lot of digging today, and I’ve still only just breached the surface on that. But, here’s the thing, Detective. There’s a lot of weird shit going on in this town.”

Jacob’s brow furrowed. “Killing isn’t exactly ‘weird’, Bo. It might be more commonplace in other states, but it’s not ‘weird’. Humans are fucked up,” he said.

“I know that. Believe me, I know that.” Bo pulled the white sheet back over Jane’s body and pushed the slate back into its drawer. “Come here.” He walked back to the table and sat down. He pushed his bowl of salad to the side and opened up his laptop. “You can sit,” he said, lifting his gaze to Jacob’s face.

Jacob crossed the room and sat down in the chair beside Bo. “Okay, what’s this weird shit we’re talking about?”

“I wanted to know how many times Clinstone and the surrounding areas had run across a victim whose breasts have been cut off. This is actually victim four,” Bo said. “Annabel Parker and Meg Abbott last year, and Kat Wright the year before. So I dug even deeper, right? I mean, logically, that’s what you do. You keep digging until you finally get all the dirt out. Two months before Kat Wright was killed, a woman, Mary Spade, was kidnapped. A week after Kat Wright was killed, Mary Spade was found dead, her own breasts removed and a new pair in their place. Both women were A-negative type blood.

“The others are the same damn story, Jake.” Bo lifted his head. “Detective,” he corrected, clearing his throat. “A month before Joan White was found dead, breasts removed, Meg Abbott was kidnapped. Two days after Joan White was found, Meg Abbott was killed and thrown into the lake, breasts removed but not replaced.”

“She died during the surgery,” Jacob whispered.

Bo nodded. “Her blood didn’t clot. She bled out.” He raked a hand through his hair. It was a little greasier than usual. When was the last time he showered? Before arriving in Clinstone? Before his first day of work? He couldn’t remember. “Anyway, umm, both women were B-positive blood type. The next pair was Annabel Parker with Paula Duncan’s breasts, both O-positive. So, I picked up a pattern, obviously, looked at your missing person’s reports. Jane Bishop is O-negative, and you only have one report of a missing woman with O-negative blood.” He opened a page on his laptop and turned it toward Jacob. “Natalie Lambert, taken on Christmas Eve, reported missing the same day. She’s fifteen,” he said.

“Jesus Christ, Bo,” Jacob whispered.

“I–I know. I–I go overboard. Too much information at once,” Bo said, trying to recover as quickly as he could. He’d known it was a mistake, opening up with Jacob. Once you gave Bo an inch, he went a mile. The floodgates opened and every little piece of information inside his head just came rushing out like niagra falls. He couldn’t—

“No, Bo, I mean… I can’t believe our forensics team didn’t pick this up before now,” Jacob said, his gaze locked on the picture of fifteen-year-old Natalie Lambert. Bo didn’t respond. Instead, he sunk his teeth into the scar on the inside of his bottom lip. Jacob locked both hands behind his head, leaning back a little in his chair. “What else, kid?”

“Uh… not much,” Bo lied. He sighed. “Everything else I have is just a theory.”

“Yeah, because I’m sure your theories are proved incorrect so often,” Jacob said. “Lay it on me.”

“Still… judgment free?”

“You betcha.”

“I think Victor Law was killed because he was going to go out without Cleo Marshall. Tess Brown was killed because she misbehaved in some way, and Cleo Marshall is her replacement,” Bo said.

“Is Cleo Marshall missing?” “We don’t know that Cleo Marshall is missing, but I can almost guarantee you that she is. She and Tess have a lot in common, Detective Mason. They’re both five-eleven, blonde hair, green eyes. They even share a few facial features. Detective, our killer isn’t only kidnapping women that remind them of someone else. They’re doing everything they can to make the ‘replacement’ victims look exactly like the women they’re supposed to represent. The killer, kidnapper, psychopath—whatever you want to call them—they aren’t looking for reminders of these previous women,” Bo said as he pierced several pieces of lettuce with his fork. “They’re looking for replacements, making replacements. They loved, they lost, and they’re sure as hell not ready to let go.”

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