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  “Where is Rick McKinna?” I asked. “I thought the boys were together when they found the body.”

  Kelly motioned me out of the living room and told me Rick’s parents came as soon as she called to let them know what had happened to the boys that morning. Although Rick was outwardly upset and crying, he did not withdraw to the place of torment that their son Davey was experiencing. Rick described to the grownups the events at the pond and Kelly recounted his story with as much detail as she could remember.

  I walked back into the living room and Doc told me the ambulance would arrive in just a few minutes. I suggested to him that I should go ahead to the crime scene and he could catch up with me when Davey was safely on his way to Milford Hospital about half an hour away. I told him that I would call the McKinna’s and find out how Rick was doing. We would make plans to stop and question him on the way back after processing the crime scene. I knew I needed to get out to the pond and start looking for answers, and right now, I had no clue where this murder would take me.

  3

  The town furnished me with a four-wheel drive, Explorer. It came with all the bells and whistles of a standard issue police cruiser: a hand-held radio and walkie-talkies that fit into special clips on the dashboard; a GPS system was mounted on the dash; a computer system hooked directly into the NCIS data bases, and its own little arsenal of: a Colt .357 and 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun. Not bad for a little country town. I was ready for everything except a nuclear conflagration.

  I called the McKinna’s as I drove up route 146 to the turn off at Burdon Street. Meadow Pond was about one mile from the highway. The boys approached the pond by walking across the fields, from the woods, to the pond. Their trek would have taken them 15 to 20 minutes. Driving would take an additional 10 minutes because of stop-lights, stop signs and winding country roads.

  The McKinna’s told me Rick was still very upset, but he seemed to be calming down now that he was home. They called their primary care physician and were taking him to the clinic in about an hour. I asked them to give me a call when they returned, and, to be sure to ask their doctor if Rick was mentally strong enough to answer some questions later in the day.

  “Chief Kosciak to Todd Bentley: Kosciak to Bentley. Come in.”

  “Bentley here, Chief. Kim and I are at Meadow Pond. We’ve taped off an area about a hundred square feet, but haven’t approached the area directly where the body is located. We figured you would want to be the first to examine the scene. How long before you get here?”

  “I’m on my way over right now. I just left the Johnson’s house. Doc Cavanagh will be following me in a few minutes. I’m coming down Burdon Street and will see you in a couple of minutes. Inspect the area outside of the tape for anything that may seem out of place or unusual. Note any footprints leading into or out of the area, besides those of the boys. Look for ANYTHING that looks out of place. Anything at all that catches your eyes. Don’t overlook one snow flake. It’s a long shot, but we might get lucky. We don’t know how long our Jane Doe has been out here. Kosciak out.”

  I could see the cruiser at the end of the street. Meadow Pond is surrounded by country roads on the north and south sides. The east and west sides of the pond are bordered by brush, woods and fields. The boys came out onto the pond from the west side of the pond which was untouched by builders, farmers or summer campers. The woods stretch about three quarters of a mile from the pond to route 146, a two lane highway running north to New Hampshire and south to Rhode Island.

  The tires were making a crunching sound compacting snow as I pulled off of Burdon Street and onto the snow-covered dirt road leading to the pond. The only other tire tracks were those left by Todd’s cruiser. I parked my Explorer where the small trees and brush took over and the road ended. It was only a few minutes’ walk to the edge of the pond where Todd and Kim met me.

  Kim, the only female officer on our police force, worked her way up to the rank of sergeant after only five years. She was very detail oriented with a phenomenal sixth sense when it came to problem solving and investigating crime scenes. She was only five foot six, and worked out in the gym every other day. She was slender, but as strong as any of the male officers on the force. I always sent her on our initial investigations because I knew how thorough she would be. She knew how to handle herself during confrontations with drunks and belligerent, unpredictable suspects. She saved my life one night after I stopped a car with three guys speeding south on route 146.

  The car looked like it was riding low to the pavement and I suspected that they were carrying quite a load of drugs in the trunk. I called Kim for back up. She was working the graveyard shift and wasn’t too far away. Before she arrived, I got out of my cruiser and approached their vehicle with my right hand on the butt of my revolver. I could tell they were nervous because the passenger in the front seat was slapping the driver on the side of his head screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs. The man in the back seat sat straight up with his head not moving at all. It was his lack of curiosity and lack of movement that put me on my guard. As I neared the trunk of the car I saw Kim’s cruiser coming up 146 from the other direction. It would take her only 30 seconds to reach us on our side of the highway. I was looking into the car through the back window and noticed the guy in the back seat move his hands into his lap shifting his weight away from the passenger’s door. Instead of walking by the passenger’ rear window, I took out my night stick and rapped on it. Ready to hit the window again, I saw the barrel of a sawed-off shot gun move up as the guy in the rear seat moved to the other side of the car. Broken crystals of glass filled the space where I would have stood, mixed with pellets from the blast. I immediately fell back behind the car, drawing my revolver, firing twice through the shattered rear window.

  Kim, saw the initial shotgun blast blow out the window, and saw me crouched behind the car returning fire. Without hesitation, she stopped her cruiser in front of their car, jumped out and pointed her Glock at the driver telling him to give it up or she would take him out. The driver pushed open his door, began to get out of the vehicle with his weapon held in his left hand above his head. Kim did not take her attention off of him for one instant. As he brought his pistol to bear down on her, she popped off three quick bursts and the driver fell dead to the ground with three 9mm rounds in the middle of his chest.

  The remaining two guys threw their weapons out of the car and placed their hands on top of their heads without being asked. After additional back up arrived, and the two surviving passengers were cuffed and locked in the back of Kim’s cruiser, we opened the trunk of their BMW finding five kilos of heroine, six automatic assault weapons and 4 blocks of C-4 explosives. The guys were a four-wheeled battleship with their own drug store. I never forgot Kim saving my life that night and I am glad to remind her every so often.

  4

  Doc Cavanaugh called me on my cell phone as I saw the first signs of the yellow tape Todd and Kim used to cordon off the crime scene. He told me he would be there in a few minutes as he was just leaving the Johnson’s house. I told him I would send Todd up to meet him when he arrived.

  Looking over the area leading to the body, I saw the two sets of foot prints left by Dave and Ricky. The path of the toboggan followed one of the boy’s footprints and disappeared into the brush. Kim heard me approaching and was walking up from the pond to meet me.

  “Chief.” she said. “It’s pretty bad. I have never seen anything like this. The face is definitely mutilated. The eyes have been gouged out and the lips have been cut away. None of the missing body parts are in the area as far as we can determine. The only footprints outside the taped area right now are from our actual taping and subsequent visual inspection. The right arm, shoulder and head are the only parts of the body visible from the embankment. Someone took their time digging out this hiding place. I’m not sure how the body dislodged and became exposed – maybe an animal or something. If the boys had com
e by a different route, we may never have found her. I’m pretty sure it is Christine… same hair color and facial features, and seems to be about the same age.”

  As we walked toward the pond I thought about having to tell the Sawyers their daughter was dead. I could not imagine what it would feel like to have one of my kids disappear without any word, without any trace. I wondered if they had been sitting up night after night unable to go to sleep, feeling guilty and somehow responsible for Christine’s disappearance. Now, I would have to bring them the information they feared the most.

  Whatever hell they had been living in since her disappearance, it would intensify one hundred fold when they learned that their beautiful daughter was dead…and at the hands of some psycho who had mutilated her and who knows what else. Until now, they had lived with the hope that Christine was alive.

  The embankment at the pond’s edge was about four to five feet high over the frozen ice of the pond. The snow right above the body was disturbed where the boys came out of the brush and fell onto the ice. The young woman’s right arm was sticking straight out towards the ice as if she was beckoning someone to come and find her. Her head was tilted back so that the fullness of her face looked right into my eyes. She was frozen and looked like a mannequin left on the floor in the back storage room of some retail clothing store. Kneeling down, the first thing I noticed was the reddened, bruised circle around her wrist. She was obviously tied up when she was abducted, and my intuition told me she was most likely murdered somewhere else and brought out here to be buried. I surmised the killer buried her here in the early fall not too long after her disappearance. The body was buried too deep into the embankment to have been put there after the ground froze.

  Her eyes were torn out of their sockets and her lips cut away, though not surgically. Whoever committed this act of depravity used some sort of knife or instrument that tore the flesh rather than cut the flesh like the precise incision of a scalpel. I did not see the eyes or lips anywhere near the exposed part of the body, and at this point believed the killer probably took them as trophies.

  “Chief” I heard Doc’s voice through the brush. “How the hell do you expect a guy my size to wander around out here in this maze of scrubs and shrubs. Help me out here will you. If I fall onto the ice it’ll break under my weight and you’ll be picking me out of the water with a crane!” I helped him down the embankment onto the ice and showed him where the body was located.

  “It’s difficult to tell how long she has been dead because the cold has preserved her tissues and prevented decomposition. We’ll have to wait until we do the autopsy back at the morgue to determine the cause and time of death.”

  Doc and Kim continued to examine the girl when Kim noticed a discoloration about the size of a quarter on the left side of the girl’s neck. The bruise looked odd because of its size and perfectly round shape. Examining the mark closer, she could see some sort of design pattern on the surface of the bruise. Because of the body’s position, it was impossible to tell what the design was. We would have to wait until we removed the body from the dirt and brought it out into the light to better see what the design was and if it had any significance related to the murder.

  Earlier, on my way to the Johnson’s home, I placed a call to Derek at the station to have the medical examiner’s van sent to the pond. They were just arriving and were bringing the gurney down to the site as Doc was completing his initial examination.

  “Doc, I’ll let you and the medical examiner’s team finish here. Call me when you get set up at the morgue and I’ll stop over to see what you’ve come up with.”

  Cavanaugh looked straight into my eyes and said, “Ron. I can tell you right now, I will do whatever is required to get answers from this body. No one should suffer this way. I know I’m just a small town doc, but I will call in every favor from every pathologist I know to help us find the son-of-bitch who did this to Christine.”

  I patted Doc on the shoulder. He knew I appreciated his commitment. I also knew there would be many long days and frustrating hours spent before we would walk away from this case. I didn’t care. All that mattered was finding the killer before he killed again.

  5

  He held the iPod up and advanced the first picture onto the small electronic screen. “Modern technology,” he thought as the first picture materialized. Having already looked at the pictures many times this morning, he sat sipping hot coffee brewed with his Keuerig coffee maker. He liked the idea of brewing one cup at a time - always to perfection.

  “Just the way I do the things that I do – TO PERFECTION,” he thought as he relaxed, lounging in sweat pants and a Grateful Dead T shirt, in the peace of the early morning. There were no sounds to interrupt him while he sipped his hot coffee relishing his work. He and Christine could be alone, undisturbed to enjoy each other’s company every morning for the rest of their lives. She was his favorite. He spent more energy and time studying her than the other adoptees, while silently stalking her, hidden in the darkness and shadows. Weeks of precise preparation went into his plans. “Eight weeks since her adoption? God, how time flies when you’re having fun,” he thought, watching the next picture move onto the small screen while inhaling the vanilla aroma of his hot java, reliving the moments and seconds just before she died.

  He liked the next picture best of all. Christine’s hair seemed to shine more, and her new look fit her perfectly. The keep sakes in the jar next to him on the end table were a constant reminder of the last person she saw and the last words she uttered just before they consummated her adoption. He took another sip of coffee, closed his eyes and smiled, looking away from the iPod as her picture faded from his mind.

  This was the way it was. This was the way it had to be - an unavoidable end and a new beginning. Soon, a new child would be part of his family, just like Christine and the other adoptees. And, just like Christine and the other children, this child would never have to worry about ever being sent away. The child chosen did not know that the leg work was completed. The planning was done down to the last minute detail, and the adoption process would begin very shortly. A small, almost unnoticeable smile began forming on his lips.

  “CONTROL, CONTROL, and CONTROL – everything done to PERFECTION,” he thought, the smile on his lips vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.

  6

  Driving back to the police station from Meadow Pond, I made a quick call to Peggy. She was on her break after escorting the kids in from play time in the school yard. Peggy was the director of a pre-school program and loved every one of her fifty-one kids just like they were her own. Every night she told me a story about what one of the kids had said or done during the day which usually made us both laugh out loud. Kids were unpredictable, but at four and five years old, their unpredictability was most often humorous.

  I told her about David being brought to the hospital and probably needing some long term care after finding the body. I could sense the mother in her wanting to reach out and hug him to make him feel better. I told her I would probably be late getting home because I needed to catch up with Doc Cavanaugh later in the day to find out the results of Christine’s examination.

  “Ron. You need to be careful on this one.” she said. “My intuition is telling me whoever killed Christine is not your ordinary killer. There is something unnerving about the fact that there was no evidence at all found in the car, and not one person saw or heard anything when she was abducted. Promise me you will watch your back and don’t try to go after this killer on your own.”

  I assured her I would exercise extreme caution during this investigation and that I also felt vibes sending warning signals and raising large, red flags. It wasn’t just the lack of evidence that was surprising me, but that whoever abducted and killed Christine, meticulously detailed the car so thoroughly that even the usual dirt, papers, coins and crumbs found in the little nooks and crannies under the seats were gone. It was the wo
rk of a perfectionist who paid great attention to detail. The killer: pre-planned the time and place of the abduction; pre-selected the place to take Christine once she was under his control; the car had been meticulously cleaned and driven out to Purgatory State Park and not one person had seen or heard anything. This entire event was done without any sense of fear or concern on the killer’s part. Time was slowly and methodically taken in a cold and calculated manner. This meant the killer was highly intelligent, analytical and organized, and therefore, extremely unpredictable and dangerous, as well as extremely confident.

  I finished my call with Peggy as I arrived at the police station. She told me she saved the bacon and eggs. She also informed me I was having them for supper. I love her sense of humor… although, I was not sure she was kidding.

  As I started up the front steps of the station, I looked over at the visitor’s parking lot and was stunned to see Bev and Wayne Sawyer getting out of their car.

  “Chief, is it true? Have you found Christine?” Wayne hesitantly asked not really wanting to hear the answer. “A friend called us a little while ago telling us the Johnson boy found a body out at Meadow Pond this morning. Is it Christine?”

  I surmised that someone from the medical examiner’s staff, the ER, or a friend of the Johnson’s or McKinna’s must have called the Sawyers after David was brought in by Ambulance. I was hoping this informant had not heard too much about the condition of Christine’s body or how she was found disfigured and half buried in the embankment.