Korsak stepped off the elevator and paused when Jane didn't immediately follow him. All the way down to the morgue, she had been silent. "Are you coming, Jane." There was a nervous edge in his voice.
"Yeah, in a minute, Korsak, I'll catch up. I just need to make one more call." Jane dug her cell phone out of her pocket. Quite obviously, she was waiting for Korsak to go ahead.
Korsak glanced down the hall and made a face. He hated that part of the building. It was the only part of his job that still gave him trouble, even after all these years and hundreds of murder victims. Yet it wasn't so much the deaths in the cold chambers that got to him. He could sit next to a corpse all day and didn't care. Even the decomposed ones or the "floaters" left him cold, often missing their eyes or entire body parts and pulled almost daily from the rivers, lakes, and ponds in and around Boston. None of this stirred Korsak, unless, of course, it was a child. He couldn't stand it when the victim was a child; that was always bad. But in principle it wasn't the corpses that bothered him, but what happened to them in this institute.
Of course, the autopsies were part of his job, and as one of the lead detectives in a homicide case, he always had to be there. Which of the thirteen bullets that pierced the victim's back had been fatal? Which stab was fatal? Was it suicide or homicide? So he'd seen his share of autopsies, and he wouldn't quit the profession right away because of it. But he hated it from the bottom of his heart, the clinical coldness of the whole procedure. He had always loathed it and had never been able to get used to it. The man-sized refrigerators, the icy white-tiled rooms, the metal tables, the harsh lights, the organ scales, the bone saws and rib levers, the black thread used to stitch up the bodies at the end. When the corpses were opened, the dead were no longer victims; they were just cadavers, objects with which a few freaks amused themselves, who also enjoyed it, who liked to cut up bodies, who looked forward to their work every day. In these arctic rooms, the bodies lay naked and bare on the metal table, and everyone could gawk at them, from janitors to students. Until some doctor came in with a universal cutter and cut open the top of their skulls to see what was inside and how much it weighed. Korsak found it all far too clinical, and he thought it was ghastly. Plain and simple. And he thought medical examiners were creepy people anyway. Why would anyone choose this as a profession, slicing up dead bodies and messing around with entrails? If he was honest, he had to admit that one could wonder the same thing about a member of the homicide squad. With some justification, even ... Maybe it was because Korsak always had to imagine himself lying on the metal table one day, naked and cold and stripped of all dignity, while the electric saw shrieked and the ME and his intern made jokes about the size of his dick and the amount of fat tissue he had.
Today, he and Jane were only going to meet with Dr. Neilson to ask him a few questions about yesterday's autopsy on Anna Prado. But just being on the floor, aware of what was going on down in the basement while they sat upstairs with coffee and cookies, gave Korsak heart palpitations. And if he succumbed to a heart attack on the cold tile floor today, he certainly didn't want it to be Dr. Neilson fiddling with him.
Korsak gave Jane a pleading look. Don't do this to me, Jane. "Neilson gives me the creeps. He's disgusting."
"Any ME gives you the creeps, Vince."
"Yeah, but -" He looked again at Jane, who was still holding the cell phone, waiting for Korsak to finally back off. "Okay, okay. You know what? You make your call, and I'll wait for you at the door. Better yet, outside the door."
"For a big, dangerous cop, you're really quite a shithead, Vince. All right. I'll meet you at the door. One minute" replied Jane with a hint of a smile. As soon as Korsak was out of sight, Jane dialed Maura's office extension again, hoping to get her on the line in person. But only the answering machine picked up. She left a brief message. "Hey. This is Jane. Korsak and I are in the morgue now. I already called you, but I guess you're busy. I thought you were going to join us. Get back to me when you get this message. You have my phone number."
She held the cell phone in her hand for a moment longer. Against all reason, she was already starting to worry about Maura again. First thing in the morning, she had left word with Cara that they were meeting at Dr. Neilson's at 11:30 a.m., and she knew Maura had come to the office. But she hadn't called the detective back. Jane had texted the attorney a couple of times, but she still hadn't heard from the blonde, and that was out of character for Maura. In any case, that's what Jane would have thought twenty-four hours ago. Something had been going on with Maura since Bantling's hearing, she could deny it all she wanted. Jane had seen the fear in her eyes, watched her body language in the courtroom when Maura went deathly pale and had that meltdown in front of Judge Katz. And then, last night, when the name Bantling came up, all the color had drained from Maura's face again, and she'd sent Jane home pretty quickly. Jane wasn't a mastermind, but she didn't need to be to realize that Maura Isles, the iron-fisted prosecutor, was scared to death of something. But of what, exactly? And how was this related to William Rupert Bantling?
Besides, Jane was laboriously trying to figure out her emotions. When she had seen Maura like that, in the courtroom, in her kitchen, looking so scared and depressed and vulnerable, she had suddenly just wanted to protect Maura. Jane wanted to take her in her arms and keep everything bad away from her. That was strange because such feelings were not at all like the detective. All right, they had flirted a little in the last few months, and of course, she liked Maura. More importantly, Jane respected Maura. The detective liked Maura's acumen, her independence, her willingness to navigate a system that had more pitfalls than solid ground. Maura fought passionately in court for her charges, the victims, almost as if she had something to prove not only to the twelve jurors but to herself. It was great to watch the prosecutor make a closing argument or push through complicated objections against the best, the most egotistical, the most narcissistic star defense lawyer in Boston. Jane liked all that about her.
Over the past few months, as they had talked more and more casually, Jane realized they had more in common than just clients, judges, and defense attorneys. Before the Boogeyman task force, Jane had respected the blonde as a prosecutor. But now she also liked Maura as a person, as a woman. Jane had thought about maybe taking her out to dinner one night, or to a movie, but for the last ten months Jane had been working on this case sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, and somehow she just hadn't gotten around to it. Or maybe she hadn't made the time for other reasons either? Probably the same psycho stuff that Jane should have been dealing with five years ago, according to her shrink. When Natalie had died. But last night she had pushed aside whatever it was that was consciously or unconsciously weighing on her and had given in to an impulse at the door. Jane regretted that now. Perhaps she had frightened Maura away with the kiss.
Jane was now finally walking down the hall. A woman she knew as a lab technician was standing at a table with a microscope and other assorted forensic tools. As the detective did so, she chatted with a forensics investigator who would have to be twice her age. Jane knew him; he had formerly been a detective with the BPD and had moved here for the better pension benefits and work hours. They were having too good a time to talk professional, so Jane walked by without saying hello. She looked around. Korsak was nowhere to be seen. Either he had hidden in a dark corner, or he had been dragged alive to the morgue or into an office by Joe Neilson, the redoubtable Chief Medical Examiner. When Jane got to the glass door, she found that the latter was the case.
Joe Neilson had pushed Korsak into his office with his back to the turquoise and brown seventies sofa, cutting off her partner's escape route. Neilson wore his black scrubs and a mint-green pulp headgear.
Jane saw him talking excitedly, gesturing wildly in front of Korsak's face. Judging by his attire, the good doctor had been at work in the morgue before he noticed the living. At least he had taken off his gloves before shaking hands with Detective Vince Korsak, who was by now quite pale and looked like he desperately needed a barf bag.
Noble as she was, Jane rescued Korsak from the clutches of the enemy. "Hello, Dr. Neilson. I hope I didn't keep you waiting. I just had to make a quick phone call."
Dr. Neilson left Korsak standing and shook Jane's hand vigorously. "No, not at all. I was just asking Detective Korsak how the investigation was going. And I told him I was looking forward to our meeting. I have something very interesting to show you." Joe Neilson's uninhibited enthusiasm for his job was one of the reasons Korsak felt so uncomfortable with him. Neilson was tall, very thin and sinewy, and had deep-set eyes.
Jane wondered if he had had ADHD as a child because he was a man who could never sit still. His hands, his feet, his thoughts, his eyes, something was always moving. If you held him in one spot too long, he would step from one foot to the other, start blinking violently, and twitching his nose. It was as if his head was about to explode. "Very well. Prado or one of the other women?"
"Well, right now I've got my eye on Prado again. But I got out the files on the others and I think I need to take another look at all of them now that I know what I'm looking for. Shall we get started?" Dr. Neilson's eyebrows bounced up and down, and he began to blink faster. It was high time. The train had to leave. Right now.
Korsak looked terribly miserable. He was really green in the face.
"Korsak, are you all right? Would you rather stay outside?"
"Of course he wouldn't want to miss this!" exclaimed Neilson excitedly between them. "Come on."
"Yeah, yeah, I'm on my way." Korsak sounded resigned.
The office doors opened, and all three entered the morgue.
"Dr. Neilson, the DA was going to possibly join us as well. I left her a message -"
But the doctor cut Jane off. "Maura Isles? She called half an hour ago. She can't make it. She's coming over tomorrow or the next day by herself, so we're supposed to go ahead without her. She's busy at the courthouse or something."
Anna Prado's body lay on a metal table with her eyes closed. Jane couldn't help but think of her face in the family photo at the "Wall": the once creamy white skin was now ashen gray, and her bright freckles on her nose were barely visible under the pale pallor of death. Her long blond hair framed her head and shoulders in a radiating pattern. A few strands caked with dried blood hung down from the edge. A white sheet covered the body to the neck, hiding the hideousness beneath. "When you called yesterday and said you found Haloperidol at the suspect's house, I ran some more tests, and the results came back this morning." Dr. Neilson stood beside the body, absentmindedly playing with the hand that hung over the edge of the table. Jane noticed the long but unkempt fingernails. The pink polish was chipped almost everywhere.
"Haloperidol is a very powerful anti-psychotic prescribed to relieve delirium in psychotic or schizophrenic patients. It is better known as Haldol, the name under which it is marketed. It's a powerful sedative. It relaxes and calms the patient and brings auditory hallucinations and delusions under control; even violent psychotics become docile. In extreme cases, it can be injected intramuscularly to achieve immediate submission. At heavy doses, Haloperidol can cause catatonia, unconsciousness, coma, and even death. Do you have any idea where I'm going with this, Detectives?" Dr. Neilson's eyelids fluttered. "The problem with Haloperidol is, our standard toxicology tests that we run on every autopsy don't detect it. To find Haloperidol, you have to know what you're looking for. We did suspect from the lung weight that Nicolette Torrence and Anna Prado were both drugged, but beyond the standard list of sedatives, that is Valium, Dextropropoxyohene, or Hydrocodone, we didn't know what to look for. We even still tested for Rohypnol, Ketamine, and GHB, better known as Roofies, Special K, and Liquid Ecstasy. Nothing. But after you called me yesterday, Detective Rizzoli, I knew right away that Haloperidol would fit, undeniably. It's a very powerful narcotic. That was quite exciting! So I did another series of tox screens and ... voila!" He tapped the yellow slip of paper from the lab on his brown clipboard. "Here we go! Haloperidol! I took another look at Ms. Prado's stomach contents first to see if I might have missed something. No. Nothing.
But that didn't mean much, because Haloperidol has a half-life of maybe six hours. So only if death occurred within six hours of taking the drug would you still find traces of it in the tissues and blood, even after complete digestion. So I went through a number of different possibilities. Please listen for a moment, detectives, and consider if this fits any of your theories. The prescription on the vial you found prescribed a dose of twenty milligrams twice a day. That is an extremely strong dosage, even for a large man who has already developed a tolerance. For a person who does not have that tolerance, and a lower body weight to boot, such an amount would be enough to completely incapacitate them. For example, if your suspect gave your victim a pill in a drink, or perhaps sold it to her as 'E', within fifteen minutes the person would begin to slur and stagger as if intoxicated with alcohol, the same gross motor skills and throttled reactions. Their brain would no longer function properly. The person would be extremely easy to manipulate. But as I said, Haloperidol can also be injected. Then the effect is immediate and also lasts longer. So patients who don't take their medication get their Haloperidol injected regularly. The effect lasts two to four weeks. So I took another look at the body." Neilson stretched his audience through a dramatic pause. Then, like a magician, he pulled the white sheet off Anna Prado's body. Korsak almost expected an "Abracadabra!" But there was no white rabbit sitting there. Instead, Anna Prado's naked, disgraced body lay on the cold metal table. And now Dr. Neilson rolled her onto her side and showed her buttocks to the detectives with the enthusiasm of a used car salesman. It was clear from the dark discoloration under the skin on her buttocks, elbows, and the backs of her knees that she had died lying on her back. After her heart stopped beating, gravity took over, and the blood that had been flowing through her veins until then gathered in the deepest parts of her body. This phenomenon was what was popularly called livor mortis. "Now look at this!" Neilson handed Korsak and Jane a magnifying glass. A small piece of skin and tissue had been removed. Next to it was a tiny pin-sized puncture, barely visible to the naked eye. "There are two of these. I had missed them because the livor mortis had already appeared. And I wasn't looking for them originally, after all. I took a tissue sample, as you can see, to examine more closely the injury to the blood vessels at this site. Both punctures, detectives, were from syringes. As I suspect, from Haloperidol injections."
Korsak looked skeptically. Was he suddenly going to play Quincy, the mastermind of the morgue? "Wait a minute, Doc. These women were tortured with all kinds of kinky stuff before they died. Couldn't it be that the maniac stuck needles in her butt just for kicks? Why are you so sure they were syringes?"
Dr. Neilson looked almost offended, but he recovered quickly. He simply ignored Korsak's interjection and continued with a small grin, I know something you don't. "So, detective, after I discovered this, I kept looking. And I found something even more interesting." He turned Anna Prado onto her back again, then reached for her right arm. Both arms showed bruising, especially at the wrists, where she had probably been tied with a rope or duct tape. Dr. Neilson pointed to a small purple spot in the crook of her arm. "Another puncture consistent with a cannula. But this isn't just a needle puncture. There was an IV on that vein. Obviously, he had to try it a couple of times first, because I found two more poked veins, one on the other arm and one on the ankle."
"An IV? What's that for?" Now Jane was officially confused. "So you think he injected her Haldol first and then put in another IV? Why both? That's nonsensical." The Hillside Stranglers came to mind, the murdering cousins from California who had injected the women they kidnapped with glass cleaner and other cleaning products just to see what happened.
"No. No, of course not." Dr. Neilson was growing impatient. They didn't have time for that kind of interjection now. He tapped his foot on the tile floor and gritted his teeth frantically. "So I started looking again and did more tests, and then I found something else. Something I would never have looked for. But it would explain the infusion."
"What? What the hell do you mean?" Korsak was irritated. He didn't think the time or place was appropriate for a quiz show.
Dr. Neilson turned to Jane. "In these tests, I found another substance in her body," he said quickly. "Mivacurium chloride."
"Mivacurium chloride? What is that?" asked Jane.
"Mivacurium chloride can only be administered intravenously. It's a pure skeletal muscle relaxant. It was originally developed as an anesthetic and muscle relaxant during surgical procedures. But after a series of trials on patients in Africa, it was found that while it was an extremely effective muscle relaxant, it, unfortunately, had no anesthetic or analgesic effect at all. However, the problem only became clear after the surgery, after the effect wore off and the patients were able to talk again. At least those who had survived. Because only then could they tell the doctors that they had been conscious during the operation. All the time."
"And they just couldn't make themselves heard -" Jane's voice trailed off as she gradually became aware of the horrific implications of this information.
"That's correct. Their tongues and facial muscles were paralyzed, and they couldn't speak." Neilson waited a moment to let that sink in. Judging by the detectives' facial expressions, they understood. So he had surprised Starsky and Hutch after all. Then he said a little too cheerfully, "I must say, you've caught an exceptionally resourceful sadist there!"
"How much of that stuff did you find, can you tell?"
"I can't determine the exact amount. The value of the Haloperidol was relatively manageable. I think that's what he used to sedate her for a while before she died. As for the Mivacurium chloride ... probably enough to paralyze her completely. But remember, Mivacurium chloride has no effect on consciousness. So she was awake but unable to move. The drug only works for a short time, which is why it has to be given as an IV, and after death, it has a short half-life, so she probably died while still on the drip. This also explains why the hematoma is so fresh. The IV was started just before her death."
"So this psycho, and if he needs Haloperidol, he really is a psycho -" With anger at the unbelievable, sick picture that was coming together in her mind, Jane could speak no further. As if the deaths of these young women hadn't been tragic enough anyway! Or not bestial enough! She pulled herself together and asked, "What does that even mean, Dr. Neilson? Is he a schizo, a manic-depressive, or a psychopath? Why exactly does someone get prescribed Haldol?"
"I'm not a psychiatrist, Detective Rizzoli. I can't tell you off the top of my head. Haloperidol is prescribed for a variety of mental illnesses."
"Oh, man. There they go again pleading insanity," Korsak groaned. Questioning culpability was an exceedingly popular defense strategy when the defendant had a history of it. In such a case, if his lawyers could make a credible case that he didn't understand the nature or effect of his actions or couldn't distinguish between good and evil, the court or jury would find the defendant not guilty. Then the defendant skipped the "go directly to jail" box and went to the insane asylum instead. The only problem was, there was no minimum prison sentence there. Once he regained his "sanity," he would be released. It was as simple as that. With a bit of luck and enough money to get cheap psychological evaluations, he could buy his ticket back home to his tranquil suburb, after barely ten years.
Jane imagined the last minutes of poor Anna Prado's short life. She thought of how her blue eyes had stared at her from the trunk, the horror she had seen during those last moments forever etched in that gaze. Korsak wasn't the only one who felt sick anymore. Jane stammered, trying to sort out her thoughts, to comprehend the incomprehensible. Slowly, she found the words for the scenario that played out like a horror movie in her head. "So this psycho gives this girl Haldol that was actually meant for him. She immediately goes into a helpless daze, and he leads her out from the counter to the main exit of the Level.
Under the eyes of hundreds of witnesses, half of whom are either so coked up or drunk that they wouldn't even notice if their own date was a serial killer. Once he has her out, he leaves her in slumberland for a while, giving her shots or pills, and amuses himself with her for that long. And after enjoying her for a few days or even weeks, playing games, and probably raping her in an infinite number of perverted ways, he has her come back so she can be there for the grand finale. He puts an IV in her and gives her a good dose of a drug that completely paralyzes every muscle in her body, just not consciousness, unfortunately. So she gets to fully experience the inhuman agony as he slashes her chest with a scalpel, cracks her sternum, and cuts out her heart. God damn. This one really is even worse than Bundy or Rolling were."
Dr. Neilson spoke up once again. Fortunately, he wasn't bubbling over with enthusiasm quite as much as he had been five minutes ago, or Jane probably would have punched him, or at least held him down, while Korsak punched. "I found band-aid marks on the eyes, part of the eyelashes were missing from both lids."
"What does that mean?"
"I think he taped her eyelids so she couldn't close her eyes."
"He made her watch it happen? When he ripped her heart out? What a deviant motherfucker!" Jane shook her head, trying to shoo the images from her mind. "Thank God we nailed that guy, Korsak."
Korsak looked down at Anna Prado's naked, mutilated body. She had been a daughter, a sister, a friend. A girl pretty enough to model. Now the skin on her chest was held together by thick black threads, from navel to neck, the black zigzag cross closing the hole where her heart had been. "I hate this fucking morgue," was all he could get out.