Jessica heard someone shouting from behind onshore, and this noise made her look over her shoulder. She saw Santiva arguing with one of the medics, on the verge of a fistfight, it appeared, when suddenly the medic’s partner intervened and pulled his coworker away, the two of them backing off like a giant crab, kicking up sugar-white sand as they danced together until the first man finally threw up his hands in what Jessica understood to be part of that male sign language that meant control had been regained.
No doubt Eriq was protecting her honor, she thought; no doubt the medic had called Jessica a witchy ghoul woman, but in far more unappealing language. No doubt she presented a strange picture to the people ashore, to curious onlookers from hotel windows and joggers who’d stopped to stare, what with her out here performing some sort of weird travesty of a baptism to send the deceased over to the other side.
But baptisms were celebrations of life, not death. Here the recipient of the baptism was the color and texture of Styrofoam, bloodless in appearance. At the slightest touch pieces of it-pieces of her-sloughed off, floated away, marrying with the sea, dissolving, and with it precious evidence was lost. But evidence of what? she wondered while staring into the intricate pattern created against the water by the woman’s floating strands of hair.
Still, Jessica’s medical examination, this antibaptismal ritual, was absolutely necessary. Even so, few could realize or understand that such an indignant Eucharist might be needed. Something in people wanted to protect the body from the foul elements-including foul people-to snatch it from the water’s grasp, shade it from the sun’s glare, cover it with a blanket to give the corpse some semblance of modesty and dignity and consecration. She understood the impulse, but she also knew that in a capital case such as this, with a repeat offender on the loose, people like herself were rare and must be allowed to do their jobs.
She turned her entire attention back to the body. The corpse was like a plank gone pulpy with water, like plasterboard after flood damage. However, Jessica had come to the body prepared, her vials, fixatives, tweezers, bags, pliers, scalpel and more at her disposal on the floating mini- barge attached to her arm. It was a contraption she had developed with her mentor, Dr. Asa Holecraft, many years before for just such occasions as this. Beneath the still platform upon which her valise rested was a swivel that took the brunt of the mild surf here in the protected bay, and beneath the entire structure, which measured sixteen by sixteen inches, were two small pontoons.
Knowing that the victim had been in the water for as long as she had told Jessica that not one moment’s delay could be tolerated for certain tests. She drew a sample of the victim’s blood here and now. She took a splotch of skin, a swatch of hair. DNA testing could begin immediately on these samples alone, along with tests for blood alcohol level at the time of death and for whether or not certain poisons could be ruled out. Any delay now could mean that Jessica might not be able to exact from the body who she was, precisely how old she was, and if she had been drugged or abused either physically or sexually or both before her death.
“ How old is the kid?” someone from shore called. It was one of the cops, and from the size of his gut and the mileage on his weary and worn face, she guessed him to be the man who had preserved her evidence, such as it was.
When she didn’t readily answer, he said, “We got a missing persons report on a thirteen-year-old runaway. Any chance it’s her?”
“ Rest easy, officer,” Jessica replied. “This one’s in her late teens, maybe early twenties. More suitable to our profile than yours.”
He waved a thanks and returned to the ranks of others waiting for Jessica to finish so that they could do their jobs. She saw that Santiva had stripped off his shoes and had rolled up his pants and was preparing to join her. The jetty had seen some erosion and a large barricade had been erected where it met land, so no one could safely come out along the rocks.
Santiva waded toward her, his pants and pockets and shirt filling with water, the weave of the fabric drinking it in. When Eriq got to her, he looked over the body and watched Jessica’s hands at work, curiously silent for the moment.
Jessica could not help but have the impression he was sent out by the others to report on what she was doing. Either that or he couldn’t stand being with the others another second and actually preferred the company of the body and the M.E. to those ashore. He finally asked, “How’s it coming, Jess?”
“ The natives getting restless?” I think Quincey’s going to chew his fingers off. His captain’s chewed his head off already over his partner’s being a no-show and-”
“ Yeah, well… some things can’t be helped. But where the hell’s Coudriet and his boys?”
“ What exactly happened with Samernow?” he stubbornly pressed. “I saw Quincey pull over and put him out. Started to pick him up myself, but decided I’d best steer clear of that one.”
“ I’d say the case is… has gotten to him…”
“ Quincey or Samernow? Or both?”
“ Samernow for certain.”
“ Doesn’t surprise me.”
“ A case like this, Eriq… it’s enough to get to anybody, so go easy on him.”
“ None of my concern until it gets in the way.”
“ Far more important, where in hell’s Coudriet’s brigade? I’d expected him to come sloshing out to me a good twenty or thirty minutes ago.”
“ There was another call, Jess.”
“ Another call. Well, that figures, a city the size of Miami…” She continued to work over the body, snipping at loose tissue and filling vials.
Santiva was having a hard time of it now, looking at the body, turning a shade of green to rival the waters.
“ I mean another call’s come in on another floater…”
“ Another floater?”
“ Yeah, what are the odds, huh?”
Jessica continued to work. “Well, this is water country…”
“ It was in another section of beach south of here. In fact, there’ve been two additional bodies located, three in all this morning.”
She looked up at him from her work and found Eriq’s eyes now pinned on the open sea and horizon, his mouth mumbling something about how each of the bodies must have come in from a northwesterly direction, this one having gotten caught up on the jetty, the other two released elsewhere, but all within close proximity and along a straight line with the coast. As he mumbled, she kept repeating the single-word question: “Three? Three?”
“‘ Fraid so.”
“ Are you telling me-”
“ All quite possibly related, yes.”
“ Three… He gives us three in one bloody day?”
“ Coudriet is overseeing one of the others and his two assistants are taking care of number three. It would appear that our man has stepped up his timetable considerably.”
She nodded her dismayed agreement, cursing the monster under her breath. Eriq turned, stared into her eyes and then at the corpse over Jessica’s shoulder and said, “He’s decided to really rub our faces in it, hasn’t he?”
“ You sure you want to be this close to the corpse, Eriq?” she asked. “I’m going to need help any minute now to roll the body. You want to get those medics out here?”
Santiva shook his head and donned a smug look that told her he was macho enough to take whatever she could. He looked down once more at the blowfish corpse and suddenly Eriq’s large chest heaved like a machine, pulsating in staccato rhythm to the pump that was now in control of his stomach and spewing forth bile into his throat. He lurched away and vomited into the ocean.
“ Aww, damnit, Eriq, can’t I take you anywhere?” she asked, half smiling. “Maybe you had better wait onshore with the others. I’m near about done here, anyway. You can tell the others to come ahead with their ropes and nets.”