Cut to the Bone (29 page)

CHAPTER 46

Decker

DECKER KNEW THAT THE
detective and the forensic techs didn't want him there—he was lurking and watching, radiating anguish and rage—but nobody wanted to get in his face about it; nobody wanted to be the jerk that told a guy whose brother had just died to get the hell out of the way. The detective, Kittredge, was squatting beside Bohanan, the senior forensic tech, who was kneeling near the feet of the headless corpse, using tweezers to pluck filaments of wire from the floor.

“Detective?” The voice came from behind Decker—from the direction of the kitchen, where one of the junior forensic techs was taking photos—and floated past him, into the living room, to Kittredge.

“Yeah?” Kittredge looked up, past Decker, toward the kitchen doorway.

“You just want pictures of the garbage? Or do you want me to bag it up and bring it back to the lab?”

“What's in it?”

“A bunch of pizza, mostly.”

“How much pizza?”

“A lot. Looks like a whole pie.”

“Uneaten?” Decker saw Kittredge frown, furrow his brow, reach up and rub the stubble on his chin. Bohanan glanced up, too, his tweezers poised in midair.

“If it were eaten, it wouldn't be here. You hungry, detective?”

“Hang on. I'm coming to take a look.” Kittredge didn't head straight to the kitchen, though; Decker watched as the detective detoured to the near side of the den and squatted beside a battered Domino's box. Using the tip of a pen, Kittredge lifted the lid. Decker leaned in far enough to see what Kittredge saw: that the box contained three ragged pieces of pizza crust. Kittredge picked up one with a gloved hand. On his way into the kitchen, the detective edged passed Decker, avoiding eye contact.

The tech was right, Decker saw when he followed Kittredge into the kitchen—there
was
a lot of pizza in the trash. Enough to feed everybody working the scene, and then some. The detective plucked one of the slices from the can—a slice that had no crust—and held the fragment from the box alongside it. The edges fit together perfectly, like pieces of a puzzle. “What the hell?” he heard Kittredge mutter, and then: “Oh shit. No, no, no.
Please
no.” Drawn by the stir of activity, Bohanan joined Decker in the doorway.

As Decker and the two techs watched, Kittredge reached into the trash can and fished out a navy-blue magic marker, along with a thin piece of cardboard stained with ink. The cardboard had been delicately and precisely incised with two stencil patterns. One was a bird—an eagle—its wings spread, its talons clutching an anchor and a three-pronged spear. The other stencil was a snake with a broad triangular head.

“We've got a problem here,” said Kittredge.

“A big problem,” said Bohanan.

Decker didn't say anything. He was already gone, sprinting for the front door.

“LIEUTENANT!” DECKER HEARD CODY'S
voice from the direction of the SWAT truck. “Hey, Lieutenant! Everything okay? What's going on in there?” Decker didn't stop to talk; he didn't even turn to look; he just lifted a hand and kept running.

As he'd hoped, the keys were still in the ignition of Kittredge's unmarked Crown Vic. You'd think a detective, a guy who'd probably spent years investigating robberies and auto thefts, would be careful with his keys.
Or maybe,
Decker thought as he slid across the ripped upholstery and cranked the balky engine,
he's hoping somebody will actually steal this piece of shit.
Jerking the gearshift into reverse, he smoked down the driveway, nearly backing over a startled uniformed officer, who was half sitting on the hood of the patrol unit parked in the street. Decker gave a brief wave of apology and roared away, his right hand reaching for the radio as soon as he was traveling straight. “Dispatch, this is Lieutenant Decker. Can you give me a physical address for Dr. Brockton? Bill Brockton—William, maybe? The UT bone doc?”

“Stand by, Lieutenant.”

Decker was hurtling north, which was the only way it was possible to head from the dead end where Satterfield lived. In less than a mile, though—thirty seconds, at the rate he was going—he'd reach an intersection and have to choose: west, toward downtown and UT and most of the Knoxville suburbs, or east, toward Holston Hills and Seymour and Strawberry Plains. “Come on, come
on,
” he muttered as the stop sign loomed a hundred yards ahead. He considered stopping at the intersection and waiting for the answer, but if he was right—if Satterfield was alive and gunning for Brockton—there wasn't time. Guessing, Decker took the left turn in a power slide, aiming the car west, envisioning its eight cylinders firing like the barrels of a Gatling gun.

“Dispatch to Decker.”
Finally.

“Decker. Go ahead.”

“That address is 3791 Clifton Drive. That's in Sequoyah Hills.”

“Can you give me directions from Kingston Pike and Neyland?”

“Stand by.”

Decker was less impatient this time; it would take five minutes to reach downtown, and another five from there to Sequoyah. By the time the dispatcher radioed back with directions, the Crown Vic was wailing along the river on Neyland, past the stadium and the basketball arena and the sewage plant. He killed the siren and the blue lights when he turned off Kingston Pike on to Cherokee—not out of respect for the fancy neighborhood's peace and quiet, but to avoid announcing his arrival. He was swooping down the curving boulevard toward the riverfront when the dispatcher called him. “Lieutenant Decker, do you need backup? Is there a situation at Dr. Brockton's residence?”

“Negative,” he replied at once. Backup and bureaucracy were the last things he needed. “I just need to drop something off. Hey, is there a patrol unit posted there?”

“Not anymore. Was, anyhow, till a few minutes ago. The watch commander pulled the plug once they got the ID on the suspect's body.”

“Makes sense.”

A moment later, the radio intruded on him. “Deck, this is Hackworth. Where the hell are you, and why? Am I to understand that you're no longer at the Satterfield house? That you're en route to the Brockton house?”

This was trickier. Being evasive with the dispatcher was one thing; lying to the captain was another, far bigger thing. “Yes sir, I am en route there.”

“You? The whole team? What the hell are you doing, Deck? You're supposed to be guarding the perimeter of the Satterfield house.”

“Yes, sir. My men are still on that. All over it.” He kept talking, improvising, not wanting to give the captain an opening. “It's a personal errand, sir. Kevin took a class from Dr. Brockton a couple years ago.” That much was true. “The Doc was one of Boomer's idols.” Also true. “I'm taking something over there, to the Doc. A memento, sort of. Something I think Kevin would've wanted me to do.” It was lame, but even that had some truth to it: safety; protection; justice—Kevin would certainly have wanted his big brother to deliver those things.

“Stand by, Deck.”

Shit,
thought Decker.
He's calling Kittredge
.
If Kittredge tells him the ID's no good, he'll figure it out. He'll know what I'm doing, and he'll tell me to stand down.
“Shit.” He said it aloud this time. He didn't want to stand down; didn't want to wait for backup.
Wouldn't
stand down;
wouldn't
wait.

Careening down the final curve, he saw the river glittering through the trees on his left, separated from the road by a ribbon of shoreline park. He slung the car around the traffic circle; around the big, lighted fountain with its geyser of glowing water. Then he reached out and switched off the radio, so he would not hear the order that he was about to violate.

CHAPTER 47

Tyler

SLUMPING BACK AGAINST THE
streetlight, Tyler pressed two fingertips to his neck and checked his watch: 30 heartbeats in 10 seconds; 180 beats per minute. Not his max, but damn good. So why didn't he feel better? Normally a run this hard—five fast miles, pounding up Cherokee Boulevard to Kingston Pike and then back along the riverfront—would clear his mind completely, put him into a zenlike state of blissful exhaustion. Tonight, though, all he had was the exhaustion, not the zenlike bliss. Zenlike bliss? What the hell was that? He couldn't even remember it, let alone feel it.

Shit,
he thought,
I have to do it
. He'd been fighting it, resisting it for three days, even though he knew it was the right thing. He pushed off from the lamppost and found himself jogging—slogging, more like—up a side street, away from the gravel lot at the end of the boulevard where his truck was parked. Away from his truck; toward Dr. B's house. Sweaty and sticky though he was, he couldn't put it off any longer; he had to tell Brockton he was quitting. There was no guarantee that quitting the program would make it possible to fix what had gone wrong between him and Roxanne; what was going wrong within himself. But staying in the program—walking through the valley of the shadow of death, again and again—would almost certainly wreck things forever. “You might think it's hypocritical of me,” Rox had written to him in her last note. “After all, as a doctor, I'll spend decades keeping company with death. But I'll be pushing against it—opposing it, not embracing it.”

Tyler had tried to figure out how Dr. B did it: The guy was up to his elbows in death and dismemberment, yet he had one of the sunniest dispositions Tyler had ever seen. How did he do it? How did he keep from being dragged down by the cases, by the oppressive weight of evil?
Damned if I know,
he thought.

The Brocktons' house was two blocks off the boulevard, in a pocket of houses that were much smaller and less showy than the mansions along Cherokee. The house was tucked deep in the lot, surrounded by maples and hemlocks. From the curb Tyler wasn't sure anyone was home—the front windows were dark—so he jogged down the driveway and toward the back, to check for lights in the kitchen, dining room, den, or master bedroom. Tyler had fond memories of the master bedroom—of the seven Edenic days and nights he and Roxanne had spent there, ostensibly keeping an eye on the place, but in reality having eyes only for one another.
Lotta water under the bridge since then,
he thought—most of it muddy and malevolent, or so it seemed at the moment.

Parked halfway down the darkened driveway was an old Corolla; was that what Dr. B had ended up buying for Jeff, after Tyler refused to sell the truck? Tyler stopped and peered through the driver's window.
A five-speed; good,
he thought
.

Now that he'd stopped moving again, his legs turned leaden, and a sharp pain began gnawing at the meniscus cartilage on the inside of his left knee. He thought about turning tail, waiting until tomorrow, catching Dr. B in his office first thing. But the prospect of leaving things hanging for another night—another sleepless night—was unbearable, so he turned toward the house again, limping past the garage and up the stairs to the backyard and the patio off the kitchen.
Pitiful,
he thought. Not just the limp, but the whole sorry mess he'd made of things, first with Roxanne and now with Dr. B.

Golden light poured through the windows of the kitchen and back door, pooling on the flagstones of the patio, and Tyler suddenly felt himself drowning in that pool of light and warmth, drowning with longing and loneliness. A figure—Jeff?—emerged from the stairwell and turned toward the kitchen. He listened for voices, but the sounds inside the house were drowned by the noise of the heat pump, its compressor whooshing in the shrubbery beside him.

A picnic table flanked the near side of the patio, and Tyler sat on one of the benches to compose his thoughts, compose his verbal resignation. He considered and rejected half a dozen different opening lines.

Quit stalling,
he berated himself.
Just knock, and get it over with.

CHAPTER 48

Satterfield

SATTERFIELD GLANCED FROM FACE
to face, reveling in how well things were going—better, even, than he'd imagined they would. The three Brocktons and the girl were seated around the kitchen table in a bizarre variation on family dinner: four half-finished plates of pasta and salad in front of them, duct tape over their mouths, zip ties cinching their ankles and wrists to the frames of the ladderback chairs.

The girl had been a surprise. “She has nothing to do with this,” Brockton had tried arguing. “Neither does Kathleen or Jeff. This is just between you and me. Let them go.” Satterfield had cocked his head, pretending to consider the stupid request; then he'd smiled, shaken his head, and yanked the tape tight across Brockton's mouth. The girl was a juicy little bonus; a windfall apple.
Manna from heaven,
he thought.

Brockton would be the last to die, of course. A big part of his suffering—though far, far from all of his suffering—would be to witness the agonies of the others, knowing that he himself was to blame. Utterly and solely to blame.

Laying the gun on the end of the table, Satterfield reached into his back pocket for the gardening shears. He held them toward the light, squeezing the spring-loaded handles, admiring the tight precision with which the blades closed and opened. Their curved edges—the upper blade convex, the lower one concave—reminded him of a cartoon fish, grinning with its oversized mouth. The coiled spring that pushed the handles apart made a soft, musical squeak each time the cartoon-fish mouth opened or closed. Pointing the tool toward each of them in turn, he recited, “Eeny meeny miny mo . . .” He paused and looked at Brockton again. “Or do
you
want to choose? Tell me—shall I start with the girl?” He smiled as Brockton grunted and shook his head frantically. “No? With your son, then?” He leaned across the table, the shears opening in his hand as he dropped the jaws below the table and toward the boy's crotch.

“
Nnnnhhh,
” shrilled Brockton, struggling and thrashing so hard that his chair threatened to tip.

“No? Not him? Okay, whatever you say.” Satterfield stepped to Kathleen's side and snipped the zip tie binding her right wrist to the chair. “I don't know who I'll send this one to,” he said, taking hold of her hand, lifting it by the little finger. “But I'll think of someone.” He squeezed, and the handles of the shears came together, and the grinning fish closed its jaws on her finger.