Digger - The Doctor Will See You Now by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 30

"Jesus Christ."

The detective stood dumbfounded amongst the dead, and with two uniformed officers at his side, his eyes swept the gruesome scene in the basement, absorbing everything in all its horrific detail.

"Don't touch anything. I don't want anything moved, got it?"

The officers acknowledged the detective's orders as they covered their mouths. All of them had seen death before -- shootouts with hostage takers, the occasional recovery of an elderly person's body, or someone who had jumped from the parking garage at Maine Medical Center. Those were the worst. But something like this had never been seen anywhere in the state.

One might ask what it was that led authorities to the basement of Ryan's cabin. Portland police received a missing person’s report after Theresa's disappearance. Her parents hadn't heard from her in days and were prompted by their concern to file a report. In questioning her coworkers, it was discovered which clubs she frequented on the weekends. News of her disappearance had been picked up by both local news stations and the Portland Press. The police were starting to believe that Theresa had either left the state of her own accord or had been abducted by one of the country's many forced prostitution rings. Either way, it was looking like one of those missing person’s cases that would likely never be solved. But after appealing to the public for help, the police received a phone call placing Theresa in the 'old port' somewhere around the time she was last seen. By accessing Portland's downtown security cameras, authorities were able to establish a date, time and location where they believed she had last been seen before her disappearance. They had also been able to see who she'd been with and recovered the plate number of Ryan's car. The rest had been done through a search of the department of motor vehicle's database. When police arrived, Ryan's car was parked behind the cabin. The plate was a match. But then the smear of blood was discovered. It had soaked into the ground, but it was enough to provide the police with probable cause, hence, the legal authority to enter the cabin. Once inside, the smell of decay led them straight to the basement. The property was sealed off within a two-mile search radius, and evidence technicians were brought in while the medical examiner's office was called. Upon his arrival, even the medical examiner was shocked. But in finding Theresa’s body, police also found Ryan, the person often referred to by the media as 'Digger'.

When the bodies were discovered, the detective in charge of the case accessed a file on his tablet. This was the case file on the bodies that had been stolen from several cemeteries in the Portland area. Essentially, a list of names, pictures and the dates they were thought to have been stolen. All of them had been accounted for, except for two. What was stranger than the sight that lay in front of the officers was that Ryan's body was also hanging from one of the basement rafters as well. Not from one of the screw hooks, but two long nails pounded through both of his ankles. His eye still penetrated by the steak knife he'd previously planted in the ground. The other was still outside, torn from his chest upon being dragged across the ground.

"It looks like all the bodies are here except two," the detective said.

He looked over at the officer nearest him. "Get a cadaver dog down here."

He examined the bodies again and noticed that Ryan's was the only one not wrapped in plastic. "Now, how did you get up there?" He hypothesized that Ryan had help and that this second individual had, at some point, turned against him. The problem was there was no evidence to suggest the presence of a second individual, and the only other fingerprints in the cabin belonged to Theresa. And her body hung next to Ryan's.

While the contents of the cabin were being cataloged and photographed, the cadaver dog was brought in. The property was thoroughly searched, and the dismembered body from Ryan's first 'project' was found. The parts were meticulously dug up and placed in red biohazard bags. The second body had not yet been recovered, leading to the search area being extended by another two miles. But by this time, any footprints were gone, and the cadaver dog failed to sniff out a second scent. This led officers back to the case files of the stolen bodies. The only information they had on the remaining body was a picture. "Alright," the detective began.

Using his tablet, he paged through the file. "Let's see if we can find out who you are." As he studied the picture, he was approached by the officer in charge of the search.

"Anything yet?" he asked the officer. They needed to know who they were looking for, and the picture would be an enormous help. His family needed to be contacted as well.

"Well," the detective began. "He probably checked into Maine Med as an unidentified and was buried by the state in a numbered grave. So, we got nothin".

The medical examiner arrived from Augusta later that afternoon and was shown to the basement, where pictures were being taken. Every specimen jar was being cataloged and carefully collected by evidence technicians. "Holy shit," he began "Looks like someone was playing doctor."

Hearing his voice, the detective turned towards him and greeted him in a casual tone.

"John, how are you? Christmas came early, huh?" The medical examiner carefully walked across the basement floor, watching the evidence technicians as they put the glass jars into white buckets. After their lids were sealed, they were moved outside to await transport to Augusta. Dr. Bryson has been the state medical examiner for the last twenty years. He thought he'd seen everything until he walked into the basement of Ryan's cabin. "Well, the next time you see Santa, tell him to take me off his list."

He looked down the row of hanging bodies. "Shit,” he said.

He walked over to Ryan's body, knelt and examined his face.

"Do we know who this is?"

The detective continued paging through the file as he spoke to the medical examiner.

"We got a name," the detective answered. "Ryan Archer, a.k.a. 'Digger'. This is the guy who's been digging up all those graves. We don't have much more than that."

The officer in charge of the search left as the medical examiner continued looking around the basement. "Holy shit," he began. "How long do you think this has been going on?"

The detective had replaced his tablet with a small notepad. "Probably since the first body came up missing." The medical examiner scrutinized each body. All but Ryan's had been wrapped in plastic, just as he had left them. "And which one was that?" he asked, pointing to the place where one of Ryan’s ‘medical projects’ had one hung. "It's not here," the detective answered. The medical examiner looked up at him with a puzzled expression.

"We found it in pieces about a mile away."

"So other than that, they're all here?" the medical examiner asked.

He was in a hurry to get the bodies back to Augusta, knowing how much work lay ahead. "Not exactly," the detective answered. He took his tablet back out and brought up the picture. The medical examiner briefly studied the picture of the deceased elderly man.

"Looks like a mountain man, doesn't he? Well, if I see him, I'll be sure to send him your way." The detective continued writing his notes. "Oh, that's a joke, right?"

The bodies were removed by nightfall, but the investigation continued for weeks. And by the time authorities had completed Ryan's profile, a police psychiatrist had posthumously diagnosed him as a sociopath, someone with no moral boundaries. The police delivered the sad news of Ryan's death to his mother, who told them that something seemed amiss about her son. He had become distant and no longer visited her as much as he had in the past. She was completely unaware that he had been expelled from UNE. Her initial reaction was, of course, shock. At the funeral, she was inconsolable. She thought Ryan would be there to take care of her as her life advanced into old age. Now, she was alone. And although she blamed herself for the acts Ryan had committed, she would never be able to understand why he had carried them out.

The police continued to search for the elderly man's body, even going so far as to release a sketch of the man's face in an attempt to appeal to the public for help, mainly the residents of Lake Sebago. There were no leads and with no family to contact, the investigation was brought to a close. But with all the attention created by the media, the cabin and surrounding area became the target of frequent exploration by teenagers and other curiosity seekers and eventually, rumors began to spread through the Sebago area that it was haunted. Some people claimed to see lights in the woods, or hear footsteps at night. Others claimed they felt as though they were being watched but upon turning around, found nothing. Everyone knew the police never found the body of the elderly man and between the stories in the media and their own paranoia, the people of Lake Sebago began referring to him as the ‘Lake Walker’. The story changed slightly almost every time it was told and everyone in the Sebago area knew it by heart as it gained the status of local legend, told to children, campers and those new to the lake. In a strange way, Ryan had achieved a degree of unintentional immortality, an accidental star of the local legendary landscape, in spite of its coming about through what he had so often thought of as work, a purpose twisted into something wholly unrecognizable by an irreparably damaged mind, consigned in death, to the darkness that had consumed him in life.