“Both victims were drugged with a short-acting benzodiazepine called midazolam, which is similar in effect to Rohypnol. In addition, there was a good amount of a drug called Pavulon. We have someone looking into the street availability of Pavulon now.”
“What does this Pavulon do?” Park asked.
Byrne scanned the ME’s report. “Pavulon is a paralytic. It produces skeletal muscle paralysis. Unfortunately, according to the report, for the victim, it has no effect at all on pain threshold.”
“So our boy stabbed and plunged with this midazolam, then injected the Pavulon after the victims were sedated,” John Shepherd said.
“That’s probably how it happened.”
“How available are these drugs?” Jessica asked.
“It seems that this Pavulon’s been around for a while,” Byrne said. “The background report says that it was used in a whole series of animal experiments. In the experiments, researchers thought that because the animal couldn’t move, it wasn’t in pain. They didn’t give them any analgesic or hypnotic. Turns out the animals were in agony. It seems the role of drugs like Pavulon in torture are well known by the NSA/CIA. The amount of psychic horror you could introduce is about as extreme as it gets.”
The implications of what Byrne was saying began to sink in, and it was chilling. Tessa Wells felt everything her killer was doing to her, but could not move.
“There is some street availability of Pavulon, but I think we need to look inside the medical community for a connection,” Byrne said. “Hospital workers, doctors, nurses, pharmacists.”
Byrne taped a pair of photos on the board.
“Our doer is also leaving an object on each victim,” he continued. “In the case of the first victim we found a small piece of bone. In the case of Tessa Wells, a small reproduction of a painting by William Blake.”
Byrne pointed to the two photos on the board, the images of the rosaries.
“The rosary found on the first victim had one set of ten beads— called a decade—missing. The typical rosary has five decades. Tessa Wells’s rosary had two decades missing. As much as we don’t want to do the math here, I think it’s obvious what’s happening. We have to shut this bad actor down, people.”
Byrne leaned against the wall, turned to Eric Chavez. Chavez was the primary on the Bartram Gardens homicide.
Chavez stood, flipped open his notebook, began. “The Bartram victim’s name was Nicole Taylor, seventeen, late of Callowhill Street in the Fairmount section. She was a student at Regina High School on Broad and CB Moore Avenue.
“The preliminary report from the ME’s office is that the cause of death was identical to Tessa Wells, that being a broken neck. As to the other signatures, which were identical as well, we’re running them through VICAP now. We’ll know about the blue chalky material on Tessa Wells’s forehead today. There were only trace amounts on Nicole’s forehead, due to exposure.
“The only recent bruising to the body was on Nicole’s left palm.” Chavez pointed to a photo taped to the white board, a close-up of Nicole’s left hand. “These cuts were made by pressure from her fingernails. Traces of her nail polish were found in the grooves.” Jessica looked at the photo, subconsciously digging her short fingernails into the fleshy part of her hand. There appeared to be half a dozen crescent-shaped indentations on Nicole’s palm, in no discernible pattern.
Jessica imagined the girl clenching her fist in fear. She banished the image. It was not the time for rage.
Eric Chavez proceeded to rebuild Nicole Taylor’s last day.
Nicole left her apartment building on Callowhill at approximately seven twenty on Thursday morning. She walked alone down Broad Street to Regina High School. She attended all her classes, then had lunch with her friend, Domini Dawson, in the cafeteria. At two twenty she left the school, walking south on Broad. She stopped in at the Hole World bodypiercing salon. There, she looked at some jewelry. According to the owner, Irina Kaminsky, Nicole seemed happy, even chattier than usual. Ms. Kaminsky had done all of Nicole’s piercings and said that Nicole had her eye on a ruby nose stud, and was saving for it.
From the salon, Nicole continued up Broad Street to Girard Avenue, then over to Eighteenth Street, entering St. Joseph’s Hospital, where her mother worked as a housekeeping supervisor. Sharon Taylor told the detectives that her daughter was in particularly good spirits because one of her favorite musical groups, Sisters of Mercy, was playing the Trocadero Theatre on Friday night, and she had tickets to see them.
Mother and daughter shared a fruit cup in the cafeteria. They talked about the wedding of one of Nicole’s cousins, which was coming up in June, and the necessity of Nicole to “look like a lady.” It was an ongoing battle between the two, due to Nicole’s penchant for a Goth appearance.
Nicole kissed her mother, then left the hospital at approximately four o’clock, via the Girard Avenue exit.
At that point, Nicole Theresa Taylor simply vanished.
The next time anyone saw her, as far as the investigation could determine, was when the security guard at Bartram Gardens found her in the field of daffodils nearly four days later. Canvassing the area near the hospital was ongoing.
“Did her mother report her missing?” Jessica asked.
Chavez flipped through his notes. “The call came in at one twenty on Friday morning.”
“No one saw her after she walked out of the hospital?”
“No one,” Chavez said. “But there are surveillance cameras on the entrances and parking lot. The tapes are on the way here.”
“Boyfriends?” Shepherd asked.
“According to Sharon Taylor, her daughter had no current boyfriend,” Chavez said.
“What about her father?”
“Mr. Donald P. Taylor is a long-haul trucker, currently somewhere between Taos and Santa Fe.
“As soon as we’re done here, we’re going to visit the school and see if we can get a list of her circle of friends,” Chavez added.
There were no more immediate questions. Byrne walked forward.
“Most of you know Charlotte Summers,” Byrne said. “To those of you who don’t, Dr. Summers is a professor of criminal psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. From time to time she consults with the department in the area of profiling.”
Jessica knew Charlotte Summers by reputation only. Her most celebrated case had been the dead-on profiling of Floyd Lee Castle, a psychopath who had preyed upon prostitutes in and around Camden during the summer of 2001.
The fact that Charlotte Summers was already front and center told Jessica that this investigation had greatly broadened in the past few hours, and it might only be a matter of time until the FBI was called in to either assist with manpower or provide assistance in the forensic investigation. Everyone in the room wanted to get a solid lead before the suits showed up and took credit for everything.