Henry and Lucas stood over opposite sides of an exam table in the morgue. They had arranged the parts of the victim recovered so far in an approximation of where they belonged anatomically. The result looked like a human puzzle missing half its pieces.
Of course, that was precisely what it was. As predicted, about half the body was missing, including the hands and face.
"So much for an easy I.D.," Jo remarked when she arrived at Henry's side. "Any clues as to cause of death? I'm assuming this wasn't 'death by rabid alpaca attack.' "
"Not unless this alpaca had thumbs." Henry nodded toward the creature on the large exam table behind her, and she turned to look.
"He doesn't, by the way," Lucas put in. "I checked."
"Thanks, Lucas. Very thorough." Jo's compliment was undercut by both her sarcastic tone and the four cloven, thumbless hooves jutting out over the edge of the table.
Henry picked up the human foot before him, still attached to a partial shin, and ran a finger over the more or less flat surface at the end of the fragment. "No indication yet of what killed our John Doe, but striations on the bone indicate a small-toothed saw was used to dismember the body."
"Like a hacksaw?" Jo asked.
"Yes, most likely. The color of the affected bone surface indicates that he was dead first, rather than dismemberment being the cause of death. Unfortunately, without his head or the majority of his torso, it will be very difficult to determine how he did die."
"It's also making an I.D. trickier," Jo added.
Hanson approached from the elevator and joined their circle. He winced at the condition of the body.
"Yikes, what a mess." He tapped his pen on his notebook. "Not many leads on what happened to the fuzzball, either." He flicked a nod at the alpaca. "The owners put all the animals in their trailers when the petting zoo closed for the evening at five. They were gone for less than ten minutes to find a park employee to open the back gate, and when they got back, one of the trailers had been jimmied open, and this fellow was missing."
"Sounds like the thief planned for this," Jo said. "That's not much time to pick a lock and find somewhere to hide an alpaca on impulse."
"The farmers searched the park," Hanson continued, "including the area near the ice rink, but they didn't find any sign of the critter or see anything unusual. They filed a police report by phone, but the rest of the animals needed to get back to the farm, so they didn't stick around."
"Who did they think was responsible?" Jo asked.
Hanson shrugged. "Rival petting zoo, sweater mafia—who knows. The owner was too distraught about Al to be very helpful. He mostly just glared at me with this wounded look because the NYPD didn't send officers immediately. What was he expecting for a glorified sheep, search helicopters?"
"Wait a minute," Lucas interjected, and pointed to their secondary victim. "His name was Al? Al the Alpaca?"
"The owner was devoted; I never said he was creative." Hanson returned to his notes. "According to the main office, the only vehicles in the park that evening belonged to park employees or the zoo people."
"It would have been very difficult to transport even half of the victim's body on foot from outside the gates without raising suspicion," Henry remarked. "Lividity suggests he was killed between two and three p.m., no more than three hours before the alpaca went missing. This degree of dismemberment would have taken most of that time to accomplish."
"So we're looking for a murder site within the park," Jo concluded, and her partner nodded his agreement.
A lab tech approached Lucas to deliver a report. Lucas's eyebrows rose as he read the single sheet. He handed it off to Henry, whose eyebrows arched up as well.
"Impressive. Well done, Lucas." His assistant beamed at the compliment.
"What is it?" Jo prompted.
"For some reason, Lucas suggested we run a rather unusual test for a certain type of spore on the body. It came back positive."
Hanson held out one palm impatiently. "Meaning…?"
Henry deferred to Lucas. "Our victim was in a cave just before he died." Jo and Hanson looked mildly confused, yet impressed. "It was just a hunch," he went on with exaggerated modesty. "A shot in the dark based on my extensive knowledge of all things Star Wars." When Jo and Hanson's confusion didn't fade, he prompted, "Episode V? Luke's confrontation with his own Dark Side in the cave?"
"Oh right, that trippy scene where Vader shows up but not really," Hanson said.
"This park isn't quite the swamps of Dagobah, but maybe a general outdoorsy vibe is all you need if you're a deranged serial killer."
"That is a deep cut. Good catch, Lucas," Jo added.
"Am I to understand," Henry began, looking at his assistant with something between confusion and distaste, "that you made this unlikely intuitive leap based on…a science fiction film? With puppets?"
"To be fair, Doc," Hanson said, "it's not just a sci-fi movie. It's one of the sci-fi movies. My boys went through a phase where they watched original Star Wars every day for two months, and by the end I still didn't want to gouge my own eyes out. I can't say the same about their Frozen phase." He shuddered at the thought. "You really haven't seen any Star Wars?"
"Somehow I have led a full and productive life without it."
"You think so now because you haven't seen it." Lucas shook his head slowly, almost sadly, clearly pained by his boss's self-imposed deprivation.
"I'll fill you in later, Henry." Jo steered them back on course. "For now, where is the nearest cave to the park?"
"I'll contact the U.S. Geological Survey," Hanson offered.
"No need." Henry looked pleased to be back on familiar footing again. "I know just the place."
The mouth of the cave was mostly obscured by low brush, tree branches, and the natural contours of the shallow ravine it occupied. Even if it hadn't been after ten o'clock at night, this would not have been an easy place to find. Entrance had been further discouraged by a hodgepodge of particle board, two-by-fours, and rebar pounded into the rock to form a door blocking the opening. At least, it used to block the entrance; currently the panel had been pulled away and was scattered on the ravine floor in splintered chunks.
"We try to keep people out," the park ranger accompanying Henry and Jo explained, "but it's a losing battle. Homeless folks have been using this place for decades."
"Longer than that," Henry commented under his breath. Their three flashlight beams scanned the surrounding brush and revealed scattered evidence of those passing residents: a dirty white sock here, a crushed beer can there.
"In the park office we call them our 'renters.' They don't usually cause much serious trouble," the ranger went on. "The police only file the occasional charge for minor drug possession or vagrancy. The renters chase away underage drinkers on their turf, so they're usually the lesser of two evils."
"Has anyone been 'renting' lately?" Jo asked.
He shook his head. "We cleared out a guy and finished rebuilding the door just last week." He picked up the bent remains of a metal "No Trespassing" sign and sighed. "It usually takes a lot longer than this for someone to break back in."
Without further comment, the ranger gestured them through the jagged edge of the doorway. The opening remained narrow for several feet, keeping the broader space beyond completely dark to their eyes. Jo went first, followed by Henry.
The cave was not large; even at its highest point, they needed to stoop slightly to avoid hitting their heads on the damp ceiling, and it was no more than six feet by seven feet side to side. Their flashlights landed on the cave floor and froze there. After a moment to interpret the partly-illuminated scene before them, they knew they had found the right place.
"Oh God. I'm going to be sick." The ranger had entered behind them, but he quickly exited to make good on his word in the bushes outside.
Jo scanned her new crime scene. "No homeless guy drunk on cheap beer did this."
"No," Henry agreed. "This was carefully planned and executed." He cast his flashlight methodically over the space, mentally cataloging what he saw: organs, viscera, and partial limbs. He handed his flashlight to Jo while he snapped latex gloves into place.
"That said, this site doesn't look very careful." Jo gestured to the seemingly haphazard blood spatters and scattered remains. She suspected that one twisted pile was alpaca guts.
"The staging on the ice was his statement to the world. I believe we are seeing behind the scenes, so to speak." Henry took back his flashlight and picked his way across the cave floor, trying not to disturb the evidence. It wasn't easy; almost every square foot was covered with remains or darkened with blood. When he reached his goal, the largely-intact torso at the center of the cave, he bent down to shine his flashlight over the skin from several angles.
"Well, at least we can get an easy I.D. now." Jo pointed out a hand in one dark corner. The hand was also leaning against something vaguely spherical and covered in enough blood-matted brown hair to suggest a partially-concealed skull.
"We also have cause of death." Henry pointed to something on the victim's chest that Jo couldn't see through the poor light and thick blood, but her partner looked satisfied with his discovery. "This was murder."
"Shocker." Jo pulled out her cell phone and dialed. "Hey, we found the rest of him. Send CSU, would you? And Hanson? They're gonna need the body suits again."
The jigsaw puzzle that was their victim was finally coming together.
"Reunited and it feels so good—well, for me, anyway. Sorry, dude." Lucas laid the final piece, the left patella, in place with what he considered a respectful flourish. Henry didn't notice the small ceremony; he was positioning the magnifier over the victim's ribcage to examine the slit between two ribs he had first spotted in the cave.
"The shape of the entrance and exit wounds are consistent with a double-edged blade, slightly curved and three centimeters wide with little to no variation in width."
"Some kind of sword?" Lucas offered.
"Not just some kind," Henry answered, his eyes still set in the magnifier's eyepieces. "A sword dictated by the ancient bushido code in Japan."
"A samurai sword?" Lucas's eyebrows shot up. "That is so badass. But then again," he added, "we should have expected that, right? I mean, since functional lightsabers don't exist, and Jedi are basically samurai in space."
That finally got Henry's attention, and he looked up to frown at Lucas. "Star Wars again? This is a murder investigation, Lucas, not a fan club." He returned to fine-tuning the focus on one particular area surrounding the fatal wound. With a scalpel, Henry carefully lifted a small sample from the area, loaded it onto a slide, and placed it under a waiting microscope. Meanwhile, Lucas was protesting Henry's dismissal of George Lucas's masterwork.
"Doc, with how this case is shaping up so far, you seriously need to rethink seeing—what?" He cut himself off when Henry jerked his head up from the viewfinder with an expression that had become familiar to his assistant. "What did you find?"
"Something Jo needs to know immediately." Without further explanation, Henry pulled off his blood-spattered apron and gloves, strode to the elevator, and pushed the button impatiently until the car arrived and whisked him away.
Lucas blinked into the vacuum of quiet and stillness that Henry had left behind. After a few moments, his curiosity kicked in, and he sidled over to the microscope and leaned in to have a look.
"Oh. Oh!" First his eyebrows furrowed in concentration over the eyepieces, then they spiked up in realization.
Henry had a natural talent for dramatic flair, which Lucas totally respected—envied, even. However, given the evidence under this microscope, Henry's reaction had actually been restrained. So cool, Lucas thought. Someday, he would learn to exit like that.
Right. Maybe if he had, like, a hundred years to practice.
"Facial recognition came through." Hanson held up a file folder in victory before slapping it down on Jo's desk and opening it. "Our victim's name was Mike Lovitz."
Jo frowned slightly. "Why does that name sound familiar?"
"He got his fifteen minutes of fame earlier this year, though not for the best reasons. He was an executive at Empire Pharmaceuticals."
"Oh, now I remember." Jo tapped the photo on the first page of the file. "He took an inexpensive drug used to fight malaria in developing countries and quadrupled the price. Instant hero to Empire's shareholders."
"And overnight villain to the rest of the world," Hanson finished.
"There's probably no shortage of people who wished he was dead," Jo said. "We just need to narrow the list somehow."
"I may be able to help with that." Henry strode towards them from the elevator, buzzing with energy.
"What did you find?" Hanson asked. "Did the killer leave DNA?"
"Yes, but not his own."
"Whose was it, then?" Jo asked.
"The first question is not who, but how. Our victim was killed with a katana—a samurai sword—thrust through his heart." Henry extended one hand out toward Hanson's rib cage and began to pantomime the motion, but Hanson took a step back with two raised palms.
"Nope, sorry, Doc. If you wanted a crash test dummy, you should have dragged Lucas up here."
"The killer struck deep," Henry continued, too excited to be put off by Hanson's rejection. "He ran the victim through so forcefully that the tsuba, or guard, of the sword was pressed against the victim's skin. The tsuba left a slight impression, like a seal in wax. In the impression, I found traces of human liver tissue." He paused then, allowing the detectives to process what he obviously considered a vital revelation.
"That body was a mess," Hanson countered. "There must have been all kinds of tissue in places where it didn't belong."
"Not liver, though." To Hanson's surprise, it was Jo who spoke. "Mike Lovitz's liver was intact." She was picturing the undamaged organ Henry had held up at the ice rink. The pieces were falling into place, and suddenly she understood why Henry was so worked up. "We have a second victim."
He nodded in confirmation. "More accurately, a first victim, killed with the same sword no more than two days ago, judging by the viability of the cells I found."
"Are you telling me we have a Star Wars serial killer on our hands?" Hanson groaned. "I hate the weird ones."
A/N: I totally made up the park and the cave. My apologies to any NYC park system aficionados out there. ;)