"You can go in, all clear," they heard Marc say. "One hostage. Female."
"She's alive?" was Elizabeth's first question.
"Yes," came the curt reply.
Elizabeth and Jane climbed the stairs and entered the door from where lock pieces dangled on the wall.
The walls were soundproofed. Vast slabs of Styrofoam and glass wool. A camera on a tripod. Above it, a blue tarp.
In the middle of the room, a chair. And on the chair, a tied-up girl. Bound and gagged. On the body, a tight T-shirt. The smell of vomit.
"Where are the paramedics?" hissed Jane.
The girl looked at the cops with a mixture of fear and relief. As if to say, Is it over? Or is this just a trick?
Three paramedics rushed into the room.
"Can you hear me?" the female paramedic asked.
"Yes," the girl said in a brittle voice. One of the RRT officers cut the handcuffs with bolt cutters and handed them to Elizabeth. Elizabeth had put on latex gloves and dropped the handcuffs into an evidence bag.
"What's your name?" asked Elizabeth. She wanted to distract the young woman while the female paramedic and the two men unpacked their equipment.
"Nada --" she whispered, "Nada Vidovic."
"Nada," the detective said with a slightly furrowed brow and a calm voice. "You are safe! That's all that matters for now. We'll discuss everything else later."
Nada nodded. Tears sprang from her eyes again.
"No blood, no predilection sites," the female paramedic murmured. "No force against the neck, no strangulation marks." She attached an EKG to Nada's chest and shined a small flashlight into the girl's eyes.
Elizabeth took a breath and nodded. Only now did she see the face. Very pretty, actually. But eyes full of fear, tears, and mascara that had run down her cheeks. The lips chapped and cracked. The face was pale and white, like the Styrofoam sheets attached to the walls throughout the room.
"I'm putting an IV in her," the female paramedic said. "NaCi."
NaCi meant sodium chloride, which was a saline solution mixed with glucose. The male paramedic attached the bag of fluid to a tripod. "You're dehydrated." The girl just nodded. He took a syringe to start the IV. Applied a tourniquet. "Damn, no vein."
Elizabeth knew the phenomenon. When people were too dehydrated, the vein in the crook of the arm was hard to find because of the lack of fluid. And then you couldn't put an IV there. The body centralized in extreme fluid deficits. Which meant that only the trunk of the body and the brain were supplied with sufficient blood. The vessels in the so-called 'extremities', the arms and legs, contracted to use as little blood as possible.
The woman breathed heavily. "The large access, then." She looked at Elizabeth. "Listen. We need to put an IV in the jugular vein. It might be a little --"
"Just do it," the detective replied. The girl had just nodded silently and stared ahead. She was probably still in too much shock.
The woman stabbed the needle for access into the jugular vein. The girl twitched briefly. Then, the male paramedic let the IV snap into the tube. Fluid gurgled down. Out of the bag into the tube, then into the access, and then into the girl's neck.
The third paramedic brought the gurney. "We're taking her to the nearest hospital," he said.
"We'll come with you," Jane said firmly. "We have to let the family know. And see that they put a hold on information at the hospital."
The paramedics put the girl on the gurney and heaved her down the stairs.
Jane stopped and held Elizabeth by the arm on the stairs. "Are you with me?"
Elizabeth's eyes darted back and forth as if trying to determine her current priorities, and she gritted her teeth again. "Sure. Why not go from one hospital to another?"
Jane nodded slowly and pressed her lips together. She knew her daughter was avoiding another visit with Maggie for now.
xxx
"She's well settled there, isn't she?" asked Jane as she got out of the car with Elizabeth. They were back at the abandoned warehouse, at the killer's lair. Or maybe it was just one of many dungeons the killer had spread all over town. Nick was in the back seat, struggling to get out as well.
"Beth Israel is one of the best hospitals in Boston," Elizabeth said. "The information block worked, and Nada has a single room, too. Everything so far so good." Only relatives and parents were allowed to see Nada. And even they had to register.
"If you have a friend like her, you don't need any more enemies," Jane growled.
"Well," Elizabeth retorted. "What would you do if you got a text like that?" Samantha, the friend of Nada's whom she had visited in Boston, had left for Philadelphia again. She had received a text from Nada. It said, "Got huge stress with my parents. Have to go back home. Have fun in Boston. Samantha, however, didn't have fun in Boston but had felt uncomfortable. Had got on the next plane and flew back to Philadelphia. That the killer had sent the text, Samantha had no idea. At that hour, Samantha was at the PPD to have a sketch made. That's because she had seen, before the message came in, a sanitation worker outside the apartment with a suspiciously large trash can on his rolling trash cart. The investigators hoped that this picture was similar to what the phantom sketch artists of the BPD had made, according to the escort Viola.
Elizabeth, Jane, and Nick walked past the officers at the perimeter in front of the North End warehouse and entered the building.
"Any word yet on who owns the building?" asked Jane with her eyebrows drawn together.
"Yes and no," Nick replied. "The current owner of the warehouse is a real estate investor in London who places hundreds of ads on real estate portals via some nesting."
"Could the killer be part of that?"
"Maybe. He could also be some janitor."
"Anyway, he seems to have a key," Jane noted. "So he must have some role after all. And this weird investor should be able to tell us soon, right?"
Nick took a deep breath and nodded slowly. "Yeah, I agree."
"Otherwise, we'll send Interpol after this guy," the Chief growled with a scowl.
Nick nodded in agreement and looked at his sister-in-law, who had become unusually silent. "Don't worry, Chief. We'll get on top of that guy. Boonstra will see to that!"
They took a few steps up the stairs, then turned left and were at the entrance to the torture room. The Last House on the Left, Elizabeth thought. Hadn't that once been a horror movie in the seventies? But she'd have to ask her sister, who knew more about that. "Where is Kate, anyway?" she asked as they walked down the dark connecting corridor into the great room. Again, the walls were insulated with glass wool and Styrofoam sheets. The voices sounded strangely muffled. Muffled and eerie.
"Well," Jane said, turning a little. "We should have told her you weren't at the hospital by your wife's side as planned. She wanted to talk to you about something and was confused that you weren't there."
"Oh, God," Elizabeth groaned, already suspecting that her sister was about to suggest some professional grief counseling for her and Maggie. "That was a stupid thing to do. But now she knows."
"Yes, Kate will get right back to you. She wanted to see you right away. I told her you're safe."
"Very well," Elizabeth said, nodding. "What is she doing right now?"
"Right now, she's in BPD putting together a big survey of everything we know about the perpetrator and the victims. What the offender might want, and all the psychological stuff. Whether he had a lousy childhood, didn't get Master-of-the-Universe figures for Christmas, and so on."
Elizabeth let the darkness and silence of the room take over. "I think that son of a bitch didn't get a lot of things for Christmas." Her gaze fell not only on the camera but also on the chair bolted to the floor. The table with the ... Tools: knives, pliers, hatchets. Various scalpels. And a drill. Behind it was a monitor on which the killer probably watched his work over and over again, doing God knows what. Again, Styrofoam and glass wool everywhere.
Jane recognized the look on her daughter's face and knew that Elizabeth would much rather be buried in work at that moment than be at home or in the hospital to be confronted with the brutal reality. Elizabeth had already done that after Sarah shot herself. Emotionally, she shut herself off from the world and everyone the detective loved. She took a deep breath and looked at her son-in-law with a furrowed brow. "Nick, will you do me a favor?"
Nick nodded eagerly. "Yeah, sure."
"Okay, I'm going to go out the front of the warehouse for a minute, and I want you to stay up here, wait a minute, and then yell as loud as you can."
Nick looked at the Chief in confusion. "Here?"
Jane rolled her eyes at Nick's obtuseness. "No, in Los Angeles! Man, of course, here! I want to know if the isolations work."
Jane left. Nick was screaming at the top of his lungs after a minute, so Elizabeth had to cover her ears. He had vented his frustration about the case and the events of the last forty-eight hours with profanity, insults, and cursing.
After three minutes, Jane was back upstairs. "Did he yell?"
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "He did. Very loudly, in fact. Used some curses and swear words."
Jane looked at her son-in-law and could well understand his frustration. "So outside, I didn't hear any of that."
Nick breathed heavily and relaxed his clenched fists. "Then the insulations seem to be working."
Jane pulled on a pair of latex gloves. "That's the good news for the killer. The bad news is, he probably really tortured his victims here." She sucked the air deep into her lungs. The room did indeed smell of sweat and fear and blood. Mixed with a pinch of vomit and excrement. Just the way a torture room smelled. The smell of the wrong thing. Of the perverted. The scent of evil. "What else did you find out with Boonstra?" she asked as she inspired the side table with the knives and the drill. "What's this kind of Internet torture chamber called again? A Red Room?"
Nick looked around in detail. "Yeah. Some interactive snuff movie. This must be his studio."
"Pervert asshole," Jane growled. "Well, let's see." Nick and Elizabeth also put on latex gloves and searched the boxes in the room. Boxes and shelves. One shelf was hidden behind a black tarp. On it was a bizarre mix of items. Stun guns, pills, rags, and a bottle containing a transparent liquid labeled Trichloroethylene, a substitute for chloroform. Then, a so-called stiff neck to fix the neck, as it is often used in the S scene. Plus, mouth gags, masks, and leg shackles. And a few other devices Elizabeth didn't even want to know what the killer needed them for. Battery acid, salt, a car battery with two cables, and a soldering iron.
Next to the shelf was a large cork wall. On it were pinned pictures. Faces of women. "Look at this," Elizabeth said.
Jane glanced at the pictures. "But these aren't women he's kidnapped or killed?"
Elizabeth shook her head. "No, he cut those out somewhere." She shined her flashlight under the pictures. There were small post-its taped there. Under the pictures of women were short words.
Women - Knives
Women - Drilling
Women - Bondage
Women - Fucking
Women - Eating
"Tell the CSRU photographer we need pictures of all this," Jane told Nick.
Elizabeth set about taking a few pictures with her smartphone already in place.
"This is going to be a feast for Kate," Jane shook her head. "Women knives, women, eating... My God, you idiot." She was referring to the perpetrator, "Get a decent job, get your face fixed, and find yourself a wife. Then you'll be busy, too."
Elizabeth shook her head. "Guys like that are never busy. You know that as well as I do, Ma."
Jane nodded in resignation. "I do know that. That was more wishful thinking. He won't stop until he's killed."
Nick's eyebrows drew together. "Whether he's a cannibal. I mean ... Women eater?"
Elizabeth looked at him intently and shrugged. "Unlikely for me, at first. Most cannibals coordinate with the victim before they eat them."
"Jeffrey Dahmer doesn't."
"True. Jeffrey Dahmer doesn't. Our guy also seems right into doing maximum violence to the victim. And it's all against the victim's will. We don't have a dominant-devote relationship. He first makes a friendly appearance and give gifts women as 'Smiley', the friendly guy, and then very quickly shows his true colors."
Nick took a deep breath and looked at the pictures. "And that's the kind of woman he's looking for? Brunette and rather voluptuous?"
Elizabeth nodded again. "Yes, I suppose that's exactly what he's after here. The type of woman he goes for. And that he doesn't get. And punishes for it."
"And kills for it," Jane added.
"Which comes down to the same thing with serial killers. They always kill the women they're into."
"Here's something else," Nick said suddenly.
On another shelf was a plethora of DVDs. He carefully picked up the cases in his gloved hand. " The Flowers of Flesh and Blood, Bloody Reunion, MPD Psycho --"
"Horror movies, right?" asked Jane with furrowed brows.
Nick gritted his teeth and shook his head. "And porn. But only hardcore. English, and some even from Russia. Inside Lydia's Ass. Taken and Hung. The Punishment Part 9. Madame Blowtorch --"
Jane's gaze darkened. "This is all going into BPD. I want Kate to deal with it. And what is this?" She almost tripped over something.
"A bathtub," Nick observed.
"I can see that," the chief growled. "And what's in it?" She got to her knees and felt with her gloved hand for the strange, coarse-grained, blue-white substance in the tub,
"Cat litter, maybe?" Nick had had several cats in his childhood and early adult life before switching to dogs. "Hell yeah, it's kitty litter."
Jane looked at him with a deeply furrowed brow. "What the hell does our killer need kitty litter for?"
A horrible thought occurred to Elizabeth. "Cat litter binds fluids, doesn't it?"
"Yes." Nick and Jane nodded.
"Maybe he uses it to dry out bodies. Sort of a ... accelerated mummification."