Read Online Vanished - A Mystery (Dixon & Baudin Book 1) by Victor Methos - Free Book Online

like his arms and shoulders were too heavy for him. And he was missing his shoelaces.”
    “So?”
    “So they use those to tie off injection sites.”
    Dixon shook his head. “No way, man. They test ’em here.”
    “Yeah? And who does the testing?”
    Gil’s office was overflowing with junk. Paper binders were now stacked outside of the office in the corridor. Dixon sighed as he stepped over them.
    Gil was behind his desk filling out a paper form with a pen. He looked up, and it seemed for a moment he didn’t recognize Dixon. Then a smile crept over his face, and he said, “Detective Dixon? So glad you chose to light our dreary day.”
    “Gil, you gotta clean some of this shit out, man. This isn’t healthy.”
    He shrugged. “Nothing’s healthy. You ready to see your gal?”
    They followed Gil down another corridor to the elevators. The old, creaking elevators jolted several times as though cables were snapping above them. Baudin didn’t seem to notice. He was studying Gil’s face.
    They stepped off in the basement, where the bodies were kept. Gil opened one of the old-style refrigeration units and pulled out the metal panel the body lay on.
    Their Jane Doe looked different from when Dixon had seen her last. She was much whiter. The genitals were where his eyes went first, to the gaping, open wounds that revealed the dried, crimson interior. He had to look away, down to her feet and the mangled toes with the skin falling off the bone. He’d once watched something on the Discovery Channel about a caveman who had been found frozen into the ice. They thawed him out and determined that he’d been murdered. Jane Doe looked like that caveman, with ancient, crusted flesh.
    Dixon closed his eyes and said a quick prayer for her.
    “She suffocated,” Gil said, staring down at her face. “Suffocation’s what kills someone when they’re crucified. Their lungs can’t get enough air, but it’s too painful to put pressure on your feet to stand and give your lungs space. So they slowly suffocate. It takes days.”
    “About three days, wouldn’t you say, Doc?” Baudin said.
    “Guess so. Though I’d guesstimate she’d been out there at least twenty days. She’s got maggots inside her. We can get an ento person out here from UW to take a look and give you a date certain.”
    Baudin walked around the table to the head and looked at her eyes. “Was there anything in her throat?”
    “Like what?”
    “Anything that shouldn’t be there?”
    “I didn’t see nothin’.”
    Baudin leaned over her. “What was she cut with?”
    “Something sharp, a knife or razor. Some organs missing.”
    “Which ones?”
    “The pancreas and thymus. Odd ones to take. That heart, though, that ain’t hers. That’s a deer’s heart, best I can figure.”
    “Deer heart?” Baudin said, looking up at him.
    “Yessir, her heart was still in her chest. Couldn’t get through the breastplate, though it looks like he tried. See right there? She’s got scrape marks on it. He tried to lift it like a lid on Tupperware. But you gotta cut the ribs first to release the breastplate. Don’t reckon this fella had any medical knowledge. Shoved the deer heart right where her stomach goes.”
    Dixon said, “What about the breasts?”
    “Those were torn away. Nothing sharp there. Just cut a little bit and then torn right off. Damn brutal.”
    “Can you tell if she was raped or sodomized?”
    “Nothin’ there for a SANE kit to analyze. The rectum’s so deteriorated I can’t tell. Any semen or hair from this fella’s long gone. Sorry, boys, but there just ain’t enough here for me to tell you anything.”
    Baudin said, “How long were the nails?”
    “Fingernails?”
    “No, the nails she was hammered in with.”
    “Oh, four inches, about. Why?”
    “Christ’s nails were supposedly between seven and nine inches long. If this was symbolic, he should’ve used the same-sized nails. Anything else you can tell us?”
    “She bled out, so I