Cut to the Bone (20 page)

“No.”

“Well, sleep on it.”

“How am I supposed to sleep, with this hanging over my head?”

“You might want to try to engage him,” he mused. “Draw him out. Engage him.
Goad
him.”

“How would I do that? Put up a billboard by I-40? ‘Hey, serial-killer guy, you stink'?”

“Something like that. Guys like this tend to be very narcissistic. He's almost certainly reading the newspaper and watching TV, looking for coverage of the killings. He gets off on it—it gives him a sense of power. If the police, or especially you, disparage him to the media—talk about his carelessness, his stupidity—he'll probably be very agitated. He might respond, maybe get in touch with the paper or a TV station. If he does, that gives us another thread to follow.”

I heard a rap on the doorframe. Tyler stuck his head in, gave me a
Let's roll
look. “I gotta go pick up a dead woman,” I told Brubaker. “Another thread to follow. I'm hoping the thread doesn't end up leading to my door.”

LATE THAT NIGHT—AFTER
Tyler and I had gathered up the woman's body from the base of the sweet gum sapling at Cahaba Lane; after I'd talked to a newspaper reporter and a WBIR reporter; after we'd taken the corpse to the Annex; after we'd plucked and pickled the five biggest maggots; after we'd put the remains in to simmer, so we could render them to bare bone; after I'd showered at the stadium and dragged my weary self home and wolfed down a leftover turkey sandwich and crawled into bed beside Kathleen, who'd given up on me for the evening—I finally fell into a fitful sleep.

In my dream, I found myself once more in my backyard, approaching the opening where the gigantic snake lurked. In one hand I held a half-sized garden hoe, a pitifully undersized weapon with which to do battle. Leaning down, I peered into the hole, switching on the flashlight I held in my other hand. The beam of light disappeared into unfathomable darkness.

Straightening, I turned to go, but a movement at the edge of the yard caught my eye. A track of flattened grass led from where I stood to the edge of the woods—the sort of track an immense serpent would create as it slithered across the lawn. Just inside the tree line, where the grass ended and the track disappeared, I saw the body of a woman—a headless and footless woman—her legs twitching and bucking on either side of a tree trunk. In the shadows beyond, I saw more women lying in the woods. All of them splayed against tree trunks; all of them dead; none of them lying peacefully.

I bolted awake, drenched in sweat, my heart racing. The digital clock on the nightstand read 3:47. Slipping out from beneath the covers, I tiptoed from the bedroom and through the living room, my footsteps keeping time with the hollow ticking of the regulator clock on the mantel. The kitchen was lit by the blue-green numerals of the microwave and—once I lifted the telephone from its cradle on the wall—by the faint glow of the keypad. “Nine-one-one,” the dispatcher answered. “What's your emergency?”

“It's not an emergency,” I said. “But it's important. This is Dr. Bill Brockton, at UT. I need to leave a message for a KPD homicide detective. Detective Kittredge.”

“Sir, this is 911 emergency dispatch. We don't take messages.”

“It's about the Cahaba Lane murder,” I went on. “Tell Detective Kittredge he needs to search that whole hillside.”

“Sir—”

“Tell Detective Kittredge there are more bodies—more dead women—out there in the woods.”

CHAPTER 27

Satterfield

SATTERFIELD SMOOTHED THE NEWSPAPER
on the kitchen table, taking care not to smudge the ink. The story was briefer than he'd have liked, but it was prominently displayed—at the top of the front page—and it was accompanied by a large photo. He reread the text:

KPD, TBI SEEK SERIAL KILLER

The body of a Knoxville prostitute was discovered in a wooded area in eastern Knox County near Interstate 40 yesterday, and the murder is the work of a serial killer, say two law-enforcement sources. The Knoxville Police Department, Knox County Sheriff's Office, Campbell County Sheriff's Office, and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation are seeking the killer, who is considered responsible for the deaths of at least two women, both believed to be prostitutes—one from Knoxville and one from Campbell County. The murders are “definitely the work of the same killer,” according to one investigator, speaking off the record. Neither victim's name has been released, pending notification of family members.

Officially, both the KPD and the TBI remain tight-lipped, refusing to confirm or deny that the murders are the work of a serial killer. “We investigate every possible lead in every murder,” said KPD spokesman Warren Fountain. “Any time we have multiple unsolved homicides, we consider the possibility that they might be linked. That's standard procedure for every law-enforcement agency.” But a second source told the
News Sentinel
that an FBI “profiler”—an agent specializing in serial killers—is consulting with Tennessee authorities to help catch the murderer. The FBI would not comment on its role in the investigations.

My, my,
Satterfield thought.
Calling in the cavalry
. He took it as a compliment. He stopped reading long enough to look at the photo. It showed four uniformed policemen carrying a stretcher out of the Cahaba Lane woods, threading between the I beams that supported the C
OMFORT
I
NN
billboard. On the stretcher was a misshapen lump, which the photo caption identified as “a body bag containing the mutilated corpse of a murdered Knoxville prostitute.” He was disappointed that the body was covered, though of course he'd seen the woman—he'd had sex with the woman—before she died. Afterward, too.

Satterfield resumed reading the story.

Also consulting with KPD and TBI investigators is Dr. Bill Brockton, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Tennessee. “My role is to try to figure out how and when she was killed,” said Brockton. Brockton voiced confidence that the killer would be caught soon. “Luckily, most criminals aren't very smart. In fact, most of them are just plain dumb. This guy has already made some careless, foolish mistakes. I feel sure he'll be caught soon.”

Satterfield stared at the page, wishing the heat of his focused fury could cause the paper to burst into flames. He stared again at the photo. In the background, trailing the policemen with the stretcher, was a now-familiar, very loathsome face: Brockton's.

An X-Acto knife rested on the kitchen table, to one side of the newspaper, and Satterfield reached for it. Gripping its precisely knurled aluminum handle with the tips of his left thumb and first two fingers, he jabbed the needle-sharp tip of the blade into the newspaper photograph twice—first into Brockton's left eye, then into the right eye. Then, and only then, did he slit the article from the page and slide it into a clear plastic sleeve, the kind with the reinforced strip along one edge and three holes punched in it, so it could be clipped into a three-ring binder. Clipped into Satterfield's binder.

He walked into the den, to the big shelving unit that held the television, VCR, and stereo. Just above the wire-mesh terrarium where the snake lay—the thick body draped heavily over a piece of driftwood and a couple of the sandstone slabs—was a bookshelf. As Satterfield reached across the top of the enclosure, the ribbon of tongue slid from the snake's mouth and flicked, licking molecules of Satterfield from the air—exhalations from his lungs; skin cells sloughing from his scalp and his arms, perhaps even from the scab in his palm; perhaps the snake was tasting the tattoo of its own head and tongue. Satterfield rubbed his palms together, to send a shower of cells wafting down upon the snake, then reached for two volumes from the bookshelf.

Back at the table, he opened the first volume—
The University of Tennessee Faculty and Staff Directory
—and turned to the dog-eared page where Brockton's name was highlighted in yellow. Uncapping a pink marker, Satterfield now highlighted another name, the name directly above Brockton's:
Brockton, Kathleen; Nutrition Science
. Next, he opened the second volume—the Knoxville telephone directory—and located the family's phone number and address.

From his scrapbook, Satterfield removed a Knoxville street map, which was tucked into a pocket at the back, and unfolded and smoothed it on the tabletop. Then, scrolling down the street index, he located the Brocktons' street coordinates and marked their address with a pair of small, neat
X
s in red ink. Finally, he sliced the pink and yellow names from the faculty directory and taped them to the map beside the
X
s.

Before folding the map and putting it back in its pocket, Satterfield looked at a spot ten miles northeast of the Brocktons' street: a small, roadless parcel at the end of Cahaba Lane. The parcel was bounded on the north by Interstate 40 and on the south by John Sevier Highway. Within the blank parcel, three small red
X
s had been added in Satterfield's precise calligraphy.

CHAPTER 28

Kittredge

KITTREDGE WATCHED IN SILENCE.
Skeptical, discouraged silence. He and Janelle—the prostitute lucky enough to be alive—were huddled in an interview room with a crime-lab tech, who was using an Identi-Kit to piece together a face from Janelle's description of her attacker.

Janelle peered at the latest assemblage of features, the tech's third try, and shook her head. “Nothing personal,” she said. “I know you're trying to help, and I appreciate it. But none of these looks like a real person.” The tech frowned. “They all look like cartoons,” she added. “Of retards.”

Kittredge coughed to cover a laugh, and Janelle and the tech looked up. Kittredge feigned another cough while slipping Janelle a conspiratorial wink, then he shrugged at the tech. It wasn't the tech Kittredge blamed; it was the Identi-Kit. In theory, it seemed like a good idea: Offer a smorgasbord of predrawn facial features to choose from, so a victim's verbal description of a suspect—wide eyes or squinty eyes? blue eyes or brown? broad nose or thin, a beak or a ski jump? thin lips or full?—could be translated into an actual face assembled out of transparent overlays, each overlay printed with one specific feature.

That was the persuasive theory behind the Identi-Kit. In flawed practice, though, Janelle's dubious dismissal was dead-on. Few police departments had the money to hire professional artists—KPD certainly didn't—and the Identi-Kit didn't require much in the way of training or artistic talent. Unfortunately, it didn't deliver much, either, in Kittredge's experience. The Identi-Kit was made by Smith & Wesson, he'd been surprised to learn a while back.
Should've stuck to handguns,
he'd thought. Still, even though it was a long shot, the Identi-Kit seemed a shot worth taking, given that the stakes had just gone sky-high. Janelle had seen the face of a sick, sadistic killer and had lived to tell about it; that made her description their best hope of finding him before he killed again.
But maybe he already has
. And what if the anthropologist, Dr. Brockton, was right—what if there were already more bodies out there in the woods around Cahaba Lane?
We'll know soon enough,
he thought grimly, checking his watch. He'd be rendezvousing at Cahaba Lane in an hour with a team of cadets from the Police Academy, leading them in a line search. Meanwhile, he desperately needed a suspect sketch.

“Hang in there—don't give up on it yet,” Kittredge said. He wasn't sure who needed the encouragement more, Janelle, the tech, or himself.

“Who did that other one?” Janelle asked him.

“That other
what
?”

“That other drawing. That good one.” Kittredge and the tech looked at each other, puzzled. “A week or two ago,” she said. “Or maybe a month. I saw it on TV. It was a girl, a drawing of a dead girl. They found her in the woods, too—just bones—and one of y'all's artists drew what she looked like. It was good. It looked like a real person.”

“Oh, gotcha,” Kittredge said to Janelle, then—to the tech—“A cold case up in Morgan County. Skeletal remains from an old strip mine outside Wartburg. The UT bone expert, Dr. Brockton—he's working on that one, too.” To Janelle: “I think that girl's sketch came from the bone expert.”

“Well, he's an art expert, too, then,” she said. “Could we get him in here to work with me?”

“He didn't actually draw it himself,” the detective clarified. “I think he found an artist to do it. Based on what the skull looked like.”

“Well,” she persisted, “who was that artist he got? Can we get him for me, too?”

Kittredge felt exasperation at her pain-in-the-assedness, admiration for her doggedness.

Kittredge excused himself for a moment, to go call Brockton: to ask for the name of an artist who could do a good drawing. One that didn't look like a cartoon of a retard.

CHAPTER 29

Janelle

JANELLE FELT THE AIR
whoosh out of her hopes when the girl walked into the room. She was just a kid, sixteen or seventeen. “
You're
the one? You did the picture of that dead girl?”

“Yes, ma'am,” said the girl.

Janelle snorted. “Nobody's ever called me ‘ma'am' before,” she said, then added, “not unless they were mocking me.” She eyed the girl warily. “Are you mocking me?”

“No, ma'am,” said the girl. “No.
No.
Why would I mock you?”

“Why wouldn't you, darlin',” she said, her voice soft and sad. “Why the hell wouldn't you.”

The girl laid a hand on Janelle's arm. “I'm sorry about what happened to you,” she said. “Really, really sorry.”

Janelle moved her arm, reached for a tissue. “Story of my life,” she said. “This damned thing's just one more chapter.” She blew her nose, then turned away and folded into herself, collecting herself. When she turned back, she saw that the girl had picked up her pencil and pad and started drawing. Janelle frowned. “I haven't told you what he looks like yet.”

The girl turned the pad to show her the drawing. It was a sketch of Janelle herself, nothing but a few quick lines, but somehow it captured everything that mattered; somehow it revealed Janelle to herself: a worn and wary beauty, her cheek stitched together, her soul pulling apart. “Damn,” Janelle breathed. “You
are
an artist, girl. What'd they say your name was, hon? Jenny?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“I'm Janelle, and I'm not quite as old and broken-down as I look. So stop calling me ‘ma'am', or I might have to turn you across my knee. Got it?”

Jenny grinned. “Yes'm,” she said slyly, the
m
audible enough to be heard but faint enough to deny. Janelle felt the skin of her face moving, tugging at the stitches in her cheek. After a moment, she recognized the movement as a smile.

“OKAY, TAKE A LOOK,
see if this is anywhere close.” Jenny laid the tablet on the table and slid it across to Janelle.

Janelle hesitated, looking in the girl's eyes. The girl smiled shyly, shrugged slightly, in a no-promises sort of way. For some reason, Janelle found the gesture reassuring—its combination of helpfulness and humility. She picked up the sketch and looked down, then drew a quick gasp as a wave of panic swept over her, tumbling her in its grip. “Son of a
bitch,
” she breathed.