Night Butcher

CHAPTER 1

The first call of the morning came in at seven fifteen. It was a hot Missouri July morning, and the temperatures had already topped ninety two degrees. I could feel the humidity starting to build to an intolerable level. I’d heard on the news broadcast the previous evening that this summer would be one of the worst in recent history. The heat would make work nearly unbearable. I was hoping for an uneventful day when the call came in. This call would be the one call that would change my life forever, as well as the outlook I held on humanity.

The location for the call was on the thirteen hundred block of Marlin Drive. I was closer to the address than the duty patrolman so I made a right and headed in that direction. Rows of one-level houses that were nearly identical lined both sides of the street. I had to drive slowly to look for the right one. Only a few houses along the narrow street had an address stenciled above the door, so it took longer to find the residence than I preferred.

A city ordinance required that each house have the numerical address posted above the front door facing the street, for emergency identification. It was one of those municipal codes that were rarely enforced until someone died. Then the city would push to get new owners to comply by issuing a citation.

I arrived several minutes before the patrolman on duty so I waited for his arrival in front of the house. The house was in one of the older but better neighborhoods on the westernmost part of town. It was a one-story bricked house with a poorly maintained wooden front porch that had been added in an attempt to make the house look bigger than it actually was.

The white Mazda, which the caller had told the dispatcher her niece drove, was parked in the driveway, so we knew that the niece should be in the residence. When the patrol officer arrived we banged on the door and rang the bell several times. If someone was inside they surely would have come to the door, but the house was silent.

The front door was locked, so we made our way to the back of the residence to check for signs of a break-in. The back door was double locked, and both locks were intact. The windows on both sides of the residence were on the ground level, which allowed us to look in them, but we couldn’t see much because of the darkness inside the house. We found one window located on the western back corner of the residence that was unlocked, and that was where I was able to gain entry.

I had been promoted to Detective Sergeant three years earlier, after solving the third and biggest homicide case the city had ever known. My police department was in one of the larger, more affluent communities in St. Louis County, Missouri. Until the late eighties homicides were rarely committed in our community. The tide changed in the early nineties when gang activity and unemployment rose. It was then that the mayor saw the need for a special division to work nothing but homicide cases.

I thought the title of Detective Sergeant looked best on paper, especially when written in front of my name, Shane Stevens.

I’d been on the force for nearly six years, and assigned to the new homicide division for the past three and a half of them. I had progressed rapidly from patrolman, to patrol sergeant, and six months later, to the position I currently carried, Detective Sergeant. My new title put me in charge of six other plain-clothed detectives, even though they all had seniority over me on the force.

The window that we found unlocked was tight, but I could tell that it had been recently opened by the fresh dirt that lay on the sill. It took an extra grunted ‘umpf’ of muscle to get it raised, but then I was able to climb inside with little trouble.

The room I entered appeared to be either a child’s bedroom or a small guest room. There was a full sized bed stripped of its linen against the wall opposite the window, and a small dusty chest of drawers standing against the wall adjacent to the bed. The room looked like it hadn’t been used in a while.

The department’s dispatcher, Valerie Mason, had received the call from an aunt of Ms. Bernadette Michaels, in a request to check on her well being. Bernadette reportedly hadn’t been to work in nearly a week, and no one had heard from her since several days before that. The aunt, who lived out of town, told the dispatcher that it wasn’t like Bernadette not to show up for work, or not to contact anyone if she was sick. She and her co-workers were concerned that something may have happened to her, which prompted the request that we check in on her.

Once inside the room I moved out into the hallway. I detected a strong pungent odor which had to have come from one of several closed doors along the narrow passageway. It smelled like someone had been on vacation for a week, and the refrigerator’s circuit breaker had blown the second day they were gone, causing the unit to shut down. It was the same smell that would have come from a rotting two-inch, five-pound steak, only it was the smell of badly decomposing human flesh.

I flipped on my flashlight to guide my way to the front door to let in the patrolman. It was departmental operating procedure that two officers’ respond to calls to check on someone’s well being, for the officer’s safety.

Hey Tony, I shouted through the half-open doorway. Would you go to my car and get me a cigar out of the glove compartment? You may want to grab one for yourself as well. You’re probably going to need it.

Yes sir, Officer Tony Johnson answered as he turned to go to the unmarked police car I had parked alongside the curb.

Tony returned with the cigars, but two steps inside the living room he came to an abrupt stop, turned a pale shade of green, and quickly retreated back out to the front porch. He leaned over the railing and lost the battle with nausea by throwing up his breakfast.

Is this your first J4? I asked Tony as I stepped out to the porch to light his cigar.

‘J4’ is the code used when a call involves a death. Whether it be a homicide, accidental death, suicide, or natural causes, J4 is the code we use on the radio, and while on the scene. I had been to many homicides where bodies were in various stages of decomposition, and I knew the smell too well. Although I could never grow immune to the stench, I did manage to keep my own meal down.

Tony choked out that it was the first call he’d been to when the body was in that state of decomposition, before he leaned over the railing and threw up again.

I gave Tony several minutes to compose himself and let his stomach settle. I left him standing on the porch while I made my way through the living room to look for signs of foul play, and the source of the smell.

Nothing looked out of place or in disarray as I slowly crept to the area where I suspected the body to be, careful in case we would discover the perpetrator still on the scene. None of the furniture was over-turned the way it often was in a home invasion. A desk that sat in the living room, with a computer on top, was still intact. I could see that none of the equipment was missing or moved, so I continued toward the hallway. Since the strongest concentration of odor came from the back of the house I assumed that the possible J4 was there, where the master bedroom should be.

I was still hoping that if it was a cadaver, it would be a death by natural cause. Last week’s homicide victim, Ms. Karen DeWalt, was taking my full attention. I didn’t think I would have time to work two separate cases and give them both the proper amount of time. I had been promised a partner by the Chief of Police several months earlier, but I had yet to see any progress in the hiring of a competent detective.

The ability to solve homicides was what got me my detective’s shield. I solved the first three homicide cases that I was assigned to within a week from the start of each investigation. Since then the chief considered me his whiz kid.

When I hired in, each patrolmen and detective worked whatever homicide occurred during their shift. The only help we got was from the chief, who had little more experience than the rest of us. Since none of us had much real experience working homicides, we learned as much as could through the few training seminars that we were able to attend.

Seeing my ability to solve homicides, the chief promoted me to the rank of Detective Sergeant, and assigned me to be the first, and only, full time homicide detective within the department. When a homicide came in I allowed it to consume me. I worked long hours covering every lead until I had it solved and an arrest was made. I soared ahead of the other detectives’ with my promotion, and although it was deserved, it created hard feelings.

Tony had been on the department for nearly nine years, and he desperately wanted his gold shield so that he could work alongside me. As of yet I saw no indication that he had the talent needed to do the job successfully. He was a good cop, top of the line when it came to working the streets, but detective work required more than he had to offer.

He had plenty of good snitches, had good hindsight, but he didn’t have the intuition or the stamina that one needed to move forward with a grueling investigation. Some investigations could take months, and even years to solve, and I didn’t think he had the endurance or the patience.

Tony was a great help to the detectives’, but he was given only minor roles in investigations. He had a decent eye for details, but he did not know what to make of them after he found them. None of the detectives’ put him on anything major because they didn’t want him to do anything that might end up jeopardizing the case and getting it tossed in court. He lacked that most vital asset possessed by any good detective: Instinct.

I turned the knob to the last bedroom and cautiously pushed the door open. My eyes were assaulted with the sight of a naked and bloody young white female lying across a king-sized bed on her back. Her arms and legs were outstretched, possibly from having been tied to each of four bedposts. It had been some time since her blood had run from the numerous cuts and gashes across her body, and now it was encrusted in the bedding and mattress around her, forming dark red pools. The size of those hardening pools of blood made it surprising that none had spilled over onto the carpet, or splattered any of the other furniture or walls.

After I determined that no one else was in the room, I approached the bed where she lay. Her streaked brown hair was matted with blood that had seeped from the deep wounds on both sides of her neck, but I noticed that there weren’t any cuts or gashes on the facial area. It was as though the perp wanted to make certain that we’d be visibly shaken when we saw the frozen look of terror on her face, and he didn’t want to take away from the scene by disfiguring her face.

She was beautiful even in death. She had a body more like that of a twenty year old, though I knew that she was in her mid-thirties, from what the aunt had told the dispatcher. Her breasts were a too-firm D-cup. I suspected they had been given help with a couple of bags of silicone and some nips and tucks.

The way her breasts were sliced up, it was as though they’d been mutilated by a mad man, or someone who knew her personally and was very pissed off. Her left nipple was nearly severed from her body, and was folded under her breast, attached by a thin shred of skin at the bottom of the areola. There were numerous deeper cuts along the lower half of that same breast. They had been made with the same skill, near her thoracic without slicing into it, which indicated that the perpetrator wasn’t feeling rushed. In fact, he seemed to be blatantly showing that he didn’t fear getting caught.

Her right breast was cut deeply several times, also near her thoracic, but no cuts were made on top of her breast or near her nipple. The longest and deepest cut was to the underneath of her left breast, and it appeared that the perp may have tried to remove the silicone implant, but then later decided to leave it.

Her crotch had been shaved smooth, and from the bruising around her vagina I suspected that a sexual assault had most likely occurred. Her eyes were bulged out as though she had seen what no human being should ever have to see. Her lips were swollen and reddened as though frozen during mid-scream.

When I looked closer I could see what appeared to be a tacky substance around her mouth, cheeks, and jaw line. I guessed that the perp had used some sort of tape, possibly duct tape, to keep her from screaming out and alerting the neighbors.

Her wrists were badly bruised and bore deep lacerations near her hands, likely caused by her struggling to break loose from her restraints. I looked closer at her hands but I didn’t see any defensive wounds, so apparently the perp knew her well enough that she had allowed him to tie her up. Either that or he drugged her, or was able to knock her out with some type of blunt object before she realized what he was up to.

I counted at least twenty-eight wounds without moving her body. They looked like they were caused by a long, narrow, single-bladed knife. The first impression I got when I saw the way her body was mutilated was that the killer had wanted to skin her out, starting with her legs. Huge gashes ran from her crotch to her knees, and they were deep enough that the muscles gaped through the skin, causing the wounds to look ripped rather than cut.

Levity had turned her lower extremities a dark blackish purple, and rig mortis had already set and passed. Levity is the settling of blood in the parts of the body that are in direct contact with the bedding. It is caused by the gravitational pull throughout the body. The blood settles downward, creating the dark bruising. The victim had to have been dead for at least four to five weeks, based on my best educated guess. I’d have to wait for the coroner’s official report to narrow the time down.

The murder was uncomfortably similar to last week’s homicide. The first victim had only two knife wounds, and they were both to the heart, while this victim had multiple cuts and stab wounds. Yet they were both tied up and gagged in the same fashion, and even left in the same vulgar pose. Though I’d need the coroner to verify it, I was pretty sure that they’d both been raped. The way the second body was mutilated kept me from finalizing my theory that it was done by the same perp. The difference was just enough to keep me from grouping the two murders together. Though I suspected that both homicides were connected to the same perp, I couldn’t connect the dots, not yet, not until I had the evidence to back it up. The phrase ‘serial killer’ creates mass panic, and I was hesitant to used those words or even share my thoughts about this with anyone, including the chief.

I stepped outside on the front porch to smoke my cigar and get away from the stench, if only for a few minutes. I used my cell phone to call the station, and asked the dispatcher to patch me through to the chief. After I gave him the general information about the attack and the homicide, I asked him if he would have the dispatcher call the Crime Scene Unit, also known as CSU, and then the coroner. After I hung up I returned to the body to try to get a better feel for what I was dealing with.

The hairs on this victim’s eyebrows had already started to slip from body decay. At the risk of incurring the coroner’s wrath, I lightly touched the top of her head, and a small clot of her hair stuck to my palm. I could feel my blood run cold from what I felt this woman had to have endured. I couldn’t imagine the pain she had to have gone through, or the thoughts that had run through her mind while the perp slowly sliced her to ribbons. Nothing at the scene indicated that she was dead prior to the time of the attack, and the look on her face told me her mental torture had been unbearable. My heart began to race as my anger grew at the person or persons who had committed this horrific offense.

I sent Tony back to the car to retrieve the camera, since he wouldn’t be able to help me inside, then I told him to remain outside while I went to work. I wanted to get pictures of the position of the body lying on the bed, as well as the rest of the room before the coroner arrived. I drew a diagram of the body as it was lying on the bed, and then I picked stationary points in the room as focal points then took accurate measurements of the position the body. I needed to record it just as it was when we first arrived, the way the perp had left it. It would be of grave importance when trying to describe the crime scene to twelve jurors presiding over the case, should the killer be caught and it went to trial.

After the coroner arrived to do his initial investigation I stepped outside to smoke the rest of my cigar and to await the arrival of the CSU team. I had Tony stand just outside the bedroom doorway to prevent anyone from entering while the coroner examined the body. I didn’t want any part of the chain of evidence to be broken. Most often the perp would plea bargain to lesser charges to avoid the death penalty. Tampered or corrupt evidence could cast doubt on even the strongest case. I wanted to see this sick son-of-a-bitch go before the executioner.

I spent nearly five hours working the scene after the coroner removed the body and had it transported to the county morgue. An autopsy would be scheduled for the next morning to determine the precise wound, or event that took the woman’s life. It would give us a more accurate time of death. The information would help me to know what kind of sick perp we were dealing with.

Before the coroner drove off, I confirmed with him that he would fax me his report as soon as his examination was completed. Whoever killed the woman was a sick bastard, and I needed to get him off the street before he killed again.

Tony helped me stretch crime scene tape around the property perimeter. I wanted to make certain that no one entered the house or property after we left. If anyone entered before my investigation was complete it could contaminate evidence, rendering it unusable in court. The house would remain sealed up until we caught the perp, or the department reclassified the homicide as inactive. I planned to return several times over the next week to re-examine the scene.

I met with the Chief of Police for nearly an hour early the next morning. I told him what evidence we had, and my plans for the upcoming investigation. I planned to talk with the aunt who had contacted the station, then I’d talk to any and all ex-boyfriends, and, if she had one, her husband or ex-husband. I let the chief know that I thought this looked like a crime of passion, caused by someone who was holding a grudge against her. The way the perp took his time to make sure she suffered, insinuated that he had something personal against the victim, or maybe all women in general. I planned to find out which.

With permission from the chief, I brought Officer Mick Davidson on board to help until I could get a permanent partner. After telling Mick what information I needed, I sent him to talk with the deceased woman’s mother while I spoke with the aunt.

Ms. Tonya Fallbrook was the aunt who had made the call the day before. I interviewed her at her house on the far side of the Jefferson County line. I thought that I might learn more by meeting with her in person instead of by phone, even though she lived almost fifty miles away. She stated that Bernadette was a solitary person, and that she rarely, if ever dated. She told me that her niece worked at the hospital off Highway 141 in Town and Country. She was a registered nurse and had been employed with the hospital for over seven years. As far as she knew, Bernadette had no enemies.

We talked for nearly an hour, and I walked away with no usable information to help me in finding Bernadette’s killer. Mick got even less information than I did. It seemed that neither woman knew much about Bernadette, except that they were related to her.

Chapter 2

After a night of restless sleep I arrived early the next morning at the station. There was a note in my box asking me to stop in to see the chief before I went on the road. I’d kept him informed on every step of my