The Angel Maker - 2 (24 page)

You know the place?"

"I'll find it."

"You're never going to get it without the stub. You know the way it works. But that's your problem."

"You got a name for me? Someone I could grease?"

"Grease someone at a hock shop? What kind of dumb shit are you?"

Donnie was sick of taking insults from everyone. "Up yours!" he said ' losing his temper. "I'll get it back."

Bogs shook his head at him. That really pissed Donnie off.

"You'll see," Donnie said childishly.

Bogs offered only the same winking of the eyes, that same message flashing back from his darkened eye sockets: Fuck ...

you.

Boldt was folding laundry when the car pulled up out front. The image of Connie Chi's murdered body still lingered in his mind's eye. Liz was on the couch reading a novel. Miles had fallen asleep in the Jonny JUMP-Up, effectively guarding the way into the kitchen and preventing anyone from attempting to clean up. Scott Hamilton played sensuous sax from the stereo.

Boldt knew every note, every nuance. But tonight it all seemed so trivial. In his mind lingered another image as well: Sharon Shaffer, her chest cut open, her heart removed. Were they too late to stop it?

The plates on the van had turned out to be stolen. No real surprise to Boldt but still a disappointment. They had alerted area pawn shops to notify them of any hocked laptop computers.

It was pretty much wait-and-see at the moment. it was frustrating as hell, "That's a brown and a black-just in case you care," Liz said, pointing out the socks Boldt was in the process of rolling together. She was like that: She could split her attention among several things at once. Not Boldt-he tended toward obsessive. His mind, his emotions locked on and wouldn't let go. Despite the present activity of his hands, his attention was not on the socks. He was on autopilot, stuck with the rookie cop dilemma of reliving his mistakes. He broke the pair apart, said

"Thanks," and started again. She cared-that was the point about the socks, about him. She looked after him, and he was thankful for it. She didn't nag, she observed. She didn't force herself on him. She re THE

minded him to shave when he forgot. She threw his shirts into the wash--even though he did the wash. Right now she was probably worried sick about his skipping dinner.

They had a visitor. Boldt heard the feet trodding up the wooden steps of the front porch and announced, "It's Dixie," before the man even knocked. "I'll get it."

"You amaze me," she said.

Boldt stopped at the door. He felt tempted to turn the lock rather than the door knob, tempted to crawl up her skirt and make some trouble, or another baby. "He's going to want me to go with him somewhere," Boldt informed her when he saw the glare of the headlights and realized Dixie had left the car running. He opened the door. "Be with you in a second," he told Dixon before the man could utter a word.

Dixon managed to ask, "But how-?"

"He's psychic," Liz interrupted, helping Boldt to locate his gun and jacket. She asked Dixon, "How long will you be?"

"A couple hours maybe," the befuddled man replied.

She asked Boldt if he had his keys because she would be asleep by eleven. She hated the way policework robbed them of their private time. Tuesday was his night to put Miles down. Now she would have that chore as well. She whispered into his car,

"Wake me," following it with a quick dart of the tongue. Boldt returned a kiss and heard the door close and lock behind them as he and Dixie descended the steps. "What's up?" Boldt asked across the roof of the car, after reaching the passenger door.

"They've found the remains," Dixon told him. "Water level in the river is high, and rising. We excavate tonight, or we lose it. Monty's on his way-our forensic archaeologist-and I've asked an entomologist from the U-Dub to join us as well. We would rather do this by daylight, of course, but not if we risk losing the remains by waiting."

Boldt's depression vanished instantly, replaced by an elevated pulse and a tingling sense of curiosity. A dozen questions crowded his brain once again: When had the body been buried?

Exactly what was the cause of death? What could it tell them about the harvester? Was this his first kill? They needed the rest of the remains and the identity of the victim before they could answer any of these questions. "You're certainly talkative," Dixon said, a few minutes into the ride. Another fifteen minutes later they were away from the lights and the traffic, the density of the darkness increasing around them. It rained lightly for a few minutes. Boldt felt hypnotized by the motion of the wipers. Dixon asked Boldt to pour him a cup of coffee from his thermos, knowing better than to offer any to Boldt. "The blood toxicology workup on Chapman c me in today,"

Dixon baited his friend. a "Am I interested?""Ever heard of a drug called Ketarnine? "No. Should I have?" ',You're about to."

Good."

"It's a drug used by veterinarians." For a moment, Boldt actually thought his heart had stopped. "Animal hairs," he said, recalling that a variety of such hairs had been found on both Chapman's clothing and Sharon Shaffer's furniture. "What?"

asked Dixon.

I recalled Dr. Light Horse's comments about Bo the closure appearing unusual. A veterinarian when you looked at the evidence, it suddenly seemed so obvious. The road ahead of the car was clear, but there was plenty of traffic in his head to make up for it. "Talk to me."

"You ever watch 60 Minutes?" Dixon asked. "You know better than that." Boldt hadn't owned a television since Walter Cronkite went off the air. "It's a drug used in surgery by vets. It paralyzes the patient from the neck down. The dog, cat, whatever, remains semi-awake-that is, doesn't require ventilation or other life support during surgery-but can't feel or move. It's often used in conjunction with gas. It's a very serious drug to use on adult humans because of its psychological effects. Oddly enough, some pediatricians are now using it on children 60 Minutes did a thing on a guy who evaporated Ketamine down to a powder, slipped it into the drinks of women he met in bars, and then took them to motels and raped them." "I read about it," Boldt said. "I remember the case."

"Well, apparently you're not the only one.

The interesting thing about Ketamine, especially in large doses, is its devastating effect on short-term memory. None of the rapist's victims ever remembered what happened to them. And I mean, they remembered nothing. it was only because one of them escaped before the drug fully took effect that he was ever caught. He was lucky he didn't kill someone. In large doses it's lethal: convulsion, asphyxiation, death."

"A vet?"

"He's using a knockout intravenous dosage of Ketamine combined with Valium. Throw in a dash of electroshock for good measure and there's no one-no one-who's ever going to identify him."

Dixon turned off the darkened road onto a muddy dirt road and slowed down to where the rear end of the vehicle wouldn't fishtail. "A vet?" Boldt was stunned. Suddenly he was having to rethink his line of investigation-it was like starting all over. He couldn't manage any other words. "There's more. Once I discovered the Ketamine in the workup, I knew what to look for.

I told you we saved some tissue samples from the ones we lost to hemorrhaging."

"Daffy told me."

"We save those things for a reason. Reasons like this." The car was acting squirrely, having a hard time with traction. More than once Boldt was tempted to reach over and grab the wheel, but Dixon did a good, albeit disturbing, job of talking while driving. "Vicryl had been used in two of the three cases. It's a woven suture made by a company called Ethicon-it's used internally for closures. But the Vicryl used in both Peter Blumenthal and Glenda Sherman was a number two. That's huge, way too big for human use. Horses, cows-gorillas, maybe; not humans. The point being that oversized woven suture will loosen up on you. Your knots fail. In the case of a kidney, let's say you've tied off an artery with it. It comes loose and you have forty-five percent of the body's blood flow pouring into the back side of your intestines. You're dead real fast. Real fast.

Like walking down the street and keeling over, which is how Sherman was found by 911. Do I have your interest yet?"

There was a red flare burning like a Roman candle on the left side of the road up ahead. Dixon slowed and turned at the flare, following a good number of rutted tire tracks. They wouldn't be the first on the scene. "A vet?" Boldt repeated.

"May I use your phone?" he asked, taking the car phone from the cradle before Dixie consented. It took him three calls to find Daphne. She was staying at Sharon's, looking after Agnes Rutherford in Sharon's absence. "How do you feel about unpaid overtime?" he asked rhetorically, not waiting for her answer.

"It's not a surgeon, it's a veterinarian. Dixie has the proof.

Roust Lamoia. Make a list, just like the AMA list. All the local vets capable of this. Think of ways to narrow it down.

Find out about the distribution of a drug called ..." He looked at Dixie. "Ketamine."

Boldt repeated it. He added, "We're closing in, Daffy. Search and Rescue found the bones."

"I'll find Lamoia. We'll be at the office."

"And I want a psych profile, ASAP," Boldt reminded, though the phone had gone dead. "Out of range," Boldt said. He hung up.

"There's more," Dixie announced proudly. "The Ethilon-a suture used for the subcutaneous closure-followed what we call a continuous interlocking stitch. I'm talking about Chapman now, about those photos you took to Dr. Light Horse. I got your memo. She's right about the technique used on the closures. And it all fits with a vet, incidentally: They use the interlocking because of its strength. The giveaway is the subcutaneous stitch, the continuous interlocking stitch. it is always done right to left by right-handers and left-to-right by left-handers. This one was left-to-right."

"A leftie?" Boldt asked excitedly. "That certainly narrows the field, although whether a person is right- or left-handed is not the kind of thing we have access to." He realized that it would require a hell of a lot of manpower to chase down a lead like that. "I thought that would interest you."

Boldt nodded but was thinking how difficult it would be to verify or investigate. And if they sent out detectives asking questions, they would only serve to tip off the harvester, to give him time to clean house and shut down shop. They needed the cart before the ox: They needed the pair of snipping shears that Dixie believed connected at least two of the victims. They needed a witness. Even a dead one. "We're here," said Dixie, pulling over.

The air smelled impossibly good, and the sound of the raging river, growling from below them in the darkness, brought back memories of twenty years earlier when Boldt and Liz had found time to explore the peninsula. The four-wheel drive vehicles were parked below, their headlights and search lights revealing a dug-up area that looked like the surface of the moon. The entire landscape was riddled with deep test holes, the work of a yellow backhoe that now sat off to one side. As Boldt's eyes adjusted, he saw that they had worked their way up this bank of the river-some sixty yards worth of excavations. Those lights were now aimed onto the grave, an angry black hole that looked like a huge mouth locked open in mid-scream. There were maybe ten people-all men---crowded around the hole, some leaning on shovels, some in sheriff uniforms, most drinking coffee from plastic thermos cups. Their attention fixed on this hole in the ground and its contents, which remained out of sight for Dixon and Boldt as they slid down a small incline, the sound of the river growing even louder. It no longer sounded peaceful. The closer they drew to this hole, this grave, the more menacing that sound. Two of the four-wheel drives were running. The light was a blue sterile wash, out of keeping with the natural surroundings, like the illumination at a photo shoot or movie set.

They avoided the other holes as they approached. one of the uniforms from the sheriff's office introduced himself. This site was well outside of the city limits, outside of Boldt's jurisdiction, but still in King County and therefore within the professional domain of Dr. Ronald Dixon. jurisdictional differences could create tremendous headaches for all concerned if ego and territory became issues. Boldt kept this in mind and let Dixie do all the talking. The deputy sheriff was nice enough. He asked to be brought up-to-date. Dixie managed to tell him as little as required, without reference to Sharon Shaffer's abduction or the harvesting linkage, for which Boldt was grateful. To date, they had managed to keep this out of the press. The press could be a nightmare.

A light mist began to fall. Boldt turned up his collar. one of the Search and Rescue guys offered him rain gear but he declined. They had hand dug a series of terraced shelves descending from surface grade to the partially exposed bones below. Boldt felt impatient: This site could be the harvester's first kill, perhaps his first harvest, and as such might hold clues to both his character and methods. Criminals made mistakes the first time around that they often eliminated as time wore on and the number of their crimes rose. As the depth of the hole increased, different strata of soils could be seen.

"Remember," one of the men warned from overhead, "this sucker is undercut something fierce! There's not enough floor in the very bottom to support you. Stick to the shelves. That last step is as low as you dare go." It looked as if a shovel had pierced the tender layer of soil that still supported the skeletal remains, causing a hole through which the fevered gray foam of a dark angry river could be seen threatening. Some water splashed up and into it. Over the roar of the white water another of the crew shouted, "It's dangerous down there. That hole you're looking at was caused by my foot!"

Dixie stepped onto the first terraced landing, standing about knee deep in the wide mouth of the excavated hole. Boldt followed, the two of them standing side by side. Dixie reached up and was handed a powerful flashlight, the size of a small biefcase. He turned it on, illuminating the haunting mask of a hollow-eyed skeleton that stared back at them. Boldt could clearly make out an arm and part of a leg. Dixie said, "She's beautiful."