Blood and Bone

by V. M. Giambanco

  Kitty examined the forensic artist’s sketches spread out on the table. Her nails were a work of wonder—red and immaculate and glossy enough to see your face in. She ran her fingers over the pages and shook her head.

  “I don’t know who this is, but I can tell you who sold Henry the weed that night and all the other nights.” Her eyes glittered. “My son, Roy. And I wish you could ask him about it; I wish I could call him out for you to take him down to the station and put some fear into him, but he died four years ago in a car accident.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” Madison said.

  “Me too,” Kitty said. “He ran a light when he was under the influence and a truck caught him on the side. It was instant.”

  Brown and Madison let her come back to them in her own time.

  “Roy was not alone in the car—his best buddy, Travis, was with him.”

  “Is he . . . ?” Madison said.

  “Yes, he’s still alive, lives on a small farm outside of town. Back then he was with Roy all the time and he worked here too.”

  “We’re going to need his address, if you have it.”

  Kitty gazed at Madison with her watery eyes. “Travis isn’t very good with strangers, you know, since the accident.”

  “We’ll have to take our chances,” Madison said.

  Kate Duncan felt an abrupt pang of homesickness. Not for the home in southwest Seattle, no. An unexpected recollection of her father’s favorite armchair in her childhood home in Nashville had given her a stabbing pain in the chest and she longed to be back there, to be back there as a child among those things that had made up her life.

  She wanted her old room, the wallpaper she had chosen with her mother, and the dog who used to sleep at the end of her bed. She wanted all those things in the way someone needs air to keep going.

  Every breath she took only confirmed that she was far away from that world and completely alone.

  “Are we wasting our time?” Madison said as they left Kitty’s Tavern. “Is this a wild goose chase?”

  “What do you mean?” Brown said.

  “Jeez, Sarge, you know exactly what I mean,” Madison snapped.

  “Do I?”

  Madison felt the tension and the frustration of the past days coming in and flowing out like a tide. She did her best to keep her tone level and the courtesy filter switched on.

  “I’m sorry. I mean about this Travis guy. Is it worth our while to go all the way out to God-knows-wheresville to speak with him when there are other friends of Karasick right here in Seattle we could talk to? I have this . . . this infernal stopwatch running in my head that keeps telling me that every phone call is going to be another dead body, another victim, another—”

  They had arrived at their car, but Madison needed to spend some of that pent-up energy and didn’t want to get in and sit down—at least for a few minutes. The anger and the dread that had been quietly building up for days were edging to the surface, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  Brown watched her.

  “I need you to tell me that we’re doing the right thing,” she said.

  “No,” Brown said.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “No, we’re not doing the right thing? Or no, you’re not going to tell me?”

  “If I told you that we were doing the right thing, how much would it be worth to you?”

  “Sarge—”

  “The only way this is going to work is if you believe in every step of what you’re doing. Because when you turn around and you discover you were wrong about it, you need to know you did it for the right reasons.”

  “Sarge, I—”

  “Why is it important to talk to Travis?”

  This was one of the times when Madison would gladly have done without the lesson. But what Brown was trying to tell her was about far more than Travis.

  She sighed. “Because he was close to Roy, and he might remember Karasick that night—and whoever else might have been there.”

  “And yes, it could very well be a waste of time. But I don’t have anywhere else to be, do you?”

  Madison rested her elbows on the roof of the car. She thought about Dr. Fellman working on the two latest victims’ postmortems. After he was done, the bodies would await their final destination in a morgue bunk next to Matthew Duncan’s.

  So much destruction.

  “Let’s go,” Madison said.

  Brown nodded.

  He was carrying so much, she thought, so many burdens—eleven, no, fourteen of them. And there she was, having a tantrum like a two-year-old. Madison eyed the sky over the east and it was nothing but black clouds.

  Even the sun had given up on Thanksgiving.

  Chapter 40

  Jerry Lindquist ate his turkey sandwich and wondered how badly he would have to hurt himself to end up in the prison hospital and whether he would be safer there than in his cell.

  He could always attack one of the guards, which would definitely land him in AdSeg—Administrative Segregation—also known as solitary confinement. However, that held its own perils as, in his experience, an assault on a guard could result in a very serious injury for the inmate and the kind of black mark on his record that would make it difficult to continue his sentence unnoticed. After all, it was what he was striving for—being completely unnoticed—as if he just happened to wake up and go to sleep in that cell but really he had nothing to do with the rest of the prison population. The corrections officers had always been very decent to him and, in truth, he couldn’t even begin to think about attacking one of them.

  Jerry Lindquist opened and closed his left hand, watching the ligaments and the tendons move under the skin. What would it take to send him to the hospital? More than a paper cut and less than an amputation.

  His turkey sandwich tasted of plastic with a hint of cranberry. The Thursday bookkeeping class had been canceled, probably because the volunteer wanted to stay home and cook and celebrate with his family.

  Jerry looked at the smudge of red between the thick slices of bread. He knew exactly how it felt.

  Travis’s farm was past Issaquah on I-90 and close to Tiger Mountain State Forest. It was not the best day to be going visiting. But Madison knew it was a pretty valley and, if nothing else, it was a good thing to be out of the city for a couple of hours. Brown and Madison hadn’t even considered doing their interviewing on the phone or asking a local deputy for help. This needed a face-to-face meeting. The closer they got, the more Madison wondered how much Travis had been injured in the accident. And how he felt about Roy, who had driven him straight into a close and personal encounter with a truck.

  There was a whole lot of sky opening up above them as soon as they were past Bellevue, and as they drove toward the mountains Madison’s mood lifted a little.

  Brown took a narrow turn off the main road and, after a couple of hundred yards, they saw the sign for Ridge Farm. The building, when they pulled into the uneven driveway, was neither pretty nor well kept. What the farm produced—if anything—was not clear. It was a wide wooden bungalow with a porch, attached to a garage. The dark red paint had turned to brown and was peeling off the siding. If nothing changed the course of things, in a couple of years it would be comfortably described as a shack.

  “At least we don’t have the No Trespassing signs,” Madison commented.

  “Sometimes it’s just a state of mind,” Brown replied.

  They got out of the car and looked around. There were no lights on in the main building. An orange pickup was parked by the front steps. Madison placed the flat of her hand on the hood. It was freezing cold. The inside of the pickup was a mess of fast-food wrappers and empty paper cups.

  The wind picked up and roused the odor of mulch and old garbage around the clearing. Brown and Madison climbed the steps to the porch and he knocked twice on the door. The curtains had been pulled tight across the windows and it was impossible to see whether anybody was moving in the house. Although,
Madison reflected, if they were moving they were doing so in the dark.

  Nobody came to the door and after a minute Brown knocked again. Madison’s hackles were up and she couldn’t quite explain why: there was something ragged about the place, but that wasn’t it. A stir of wind brought a subtle scent.

  “Sarge . . .”

  “I got that too,” Brown said.

  Something or someone had died there recently.

  “Back door,” Brown said.

  They went along the side opposite the garage and saw the two windows there were as shut as the ones in the front. The back of the farm had a small clearing with an old-fashioned water pump, a shed, and a clothesline with nothing pegged to it. There was a faint light coming through the dirty glass of the kitchen door and Brown knocked lightly. Madison’s hand went to the security strip of her sidearm and unlatched it.

  “Hello?” Brown said.

  Madison wondered how Travis felt about the police, in general—and those who visited him at home, in particular.

  There was a clatter inside—maybe a saucepan falling—and steps coming toward them.

  The door opened, a narrow gap that showed the face of a man blinking at them as if he had just woken up.

  Madison assessed him. Thirty years old or so, medium height, unshaven, wearing layers of T-shirts under a thick gray flannel shirt. Hands in his pockets.

  “Hello,” the man said and waited.

  “Hello,” Brown replied. “We’re looking for Travis. Can you help us?”

  “I’m Travis,” the man said and Madison could hear it in his voice—a slight catch, something off in his speech.

  “We’re from Seattle PD,” Brown continued and took out his badge. “We’d like to ask you a couple of questions about your friend Roy Ward.”

  Travis blinked again.

  “Do you remember Roy?” Brown said.

  Travis opened the door a little bit more and Brown and Madison received a full blast of the awful smell.

  “Of course I remember Roy,” Travis replied.

  “Can we come in and talk about him for a minute?”

  Why doesn’t Travis come out instead? Madison thought. But they did have to go in, one way or the other, and so when Travis opened the door wide to let them pass she stepped inside and took a deep breath.

  The kitchen was large enough to have a round table in the middle, and the walls were covered in cabinets that would have been new in the ’70s. Every surface was covered in dirty dishes, pans, and piles of clothing. Travis had dark hair and Madison could see the furrowed end of a deep scar poking out from above his sideburns and running into his hairline.

  “What about Roy?” Travis said.

  “Shall we go sit somewhere?” Brown asked him.

  “No, thanks,” Travis replied. “Here is fine.”

  “Okay, Travis, do you remember when you worked at Kitty’s?”

  “You do know Roy’s dead, right?”

  “Yes, we know. Do you remember Kitty’s?”

  “Sure. I liked working there.”

  “Good, and Roy worked there too.”

  Madison’s eyes scanned the room. Leftovers, laundry, and more fast-food wrappers.

  “Sure, it was his mom’s place.”

  “There was a guy who came in sometimes and talked to Roy, his name was Henry Karasick, do you remember him?” Brown brought out a picture of Karasick, but Travis was quicker.

  “Sure, I remember Henry . . . went to prison for murder.”

  “Yes,” Brown said. “He did.”

  “What’s that got to do with Roy?”

  There was something touching about the sudden defensive note in his voice.

  “Nothing, really, except that sometimes Henry bought weed from Roy. He bought some the night Henry killed that man.”

  “That doesn’t make it Roy’s fault.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “And there was a big fuss about Henry—because of the murder—and the thing is, he didn’t even buy the weed that night.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “No, he didn’t buy it. He got it for free.”

  “Roy gave it to him?”

  Travis giggled. “No, Roy didn’t give it to him. Why would he give it to him? Another guy bought it from Roy and gave some to Henry. They made a bet, he lost, and Henry went home with a bag of pot this big.”

  Brown and Madison exchanged a look. “Do you remember the man’s name?”

  Madison wondered briefly about the legal trail they were creating and how much Sarah Klein would love a witness with a brain injury and a history of substance abuse.

  Travis gazed from one to the other. “What do you need that for? Is it going to get Roy into trouble?”

  Brown hesitated.

  Travis giggled and raised a hand in apology. “Yes, I know, Roy’s dead. I forgot for a minute there.”

  “Do you remember the man’s name, Travis?” Brown said.

  “Yeah, never saw him again after that night. His name was Joe. He was a friend of Henry’s, met him in the tavern a few times.”

  Joe. Madison brought out the sketches and turned around, looking for a switch. In the harsh fluorescent lighting the room was even worse.

  Travis looked at the pictures. “This one,” he said and pointed at a sketch of the fake engineer that had been adapted for age.

  “This one?” Brown said.

  “Yeah, looks like him.”

  “Joe, like Joseph? Did he have a last name?”

  “No, just Joe. Never knew any other name.”

  “You remember him after all this time?” Brown said.

  Travis scratched absentmindedly where Madison had seen the scar.

  “There was a lot of talk about Henry after the murder. About Joe and the weed.” Travis leaned back against a kitchen cabinet. “I have problems with my memory after the accident but everything that happened before, that’s like, crystal clear.” He tapped his temple.

  In the harsh lighting Madison’s eyes traveled to the pile of clothing Travis was leaning against. Poking out, not a foot away from his hand, was the butt of a gun.

  “Travis,” she said pleasantly, “would you have a picture of Roy?”

  “What?”

  “Would you have a picture of Roy to show us?”

  If Brown was confused by the question, he showed no sign of it. Travis seemed to mull over the issue. Madison just wanted him away from that gun.

  “Sure, I think I do.” He didn’t move.

  “Would you show it to us?”

  “Why?”

  Madison knew what to say and felt like a thief about it. “We met Kitty earlier, she told us so much about Roy, but we’ve never seen his picture.”

  “Oh, okay,” Travis said and he ambled out of the kitchen.

  Madison reached for the gun, pulled it out from under the laundry. It was a revolver—a .38—and it hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. Madison checked the chamber and saw three shells. There were sounds coming from deeper into the house, drawers being opened and shut. Brown and Madison followed the corridor to the living room.

  Travis turned as they walked in. “Here,” he said and held a photograph toward Madison.

  “Thank you,” she said without taking it. “Travis, do you have a permit for the firearm in the kitchen?”

  His eyes widened for a moment and his mouth opened and closed. “No,” he said.

  “How come you have a firearm without a permit?” Madison kept it light.

  She didn’t expect Travis’s eyes to fill with tears. “Because I had to shoot my dog.”

  “You killed your dog?”

  Travis nodded.

  “Why did you kill it?”

  “’Cause he got really old and sick and he was in a lot of pain.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “I . . . I think about three weeks ago.”

  “And where is the dog now?”

  “In his bedroom.” Travis nodded toward the front of the
house.

  “How did you get the gun?”

  “I asked a guy I know.”

  “Did you tell him what it was for?”

  “I did. He’s going to come pick it up sometime soon.”

  They drove back toward Seattle.

  “There’s got to be somebody who can help him with that place,” Madison said after a few miles.

  They had left Travis with a couple of deputies; Brown had taken them to one side when they’d arrived and explained the situation. He needed a social worker, not a cell.

  More than anything, Madison thought, he probably needed a new dog. But she doubted he’d ever be allowed to keep one again. They had found the body of the decomposing German shepherd in one of the two bedrooms, under a sheet, surrounded by chew toys and air fresheners.

  Brown drove fast, as usual. “We have a name,” he said.

  Chapter 41

  Dr. Fellman looked drained and Madison was yet again pleased that they had found him writing in his office with his door open, rather than at work in his lab. It was slightly unusual to seek out the pathologist to talk about a homicide case that belonged to another detective. But as it was the same killer, Brown and Madison wanted to speak with the doctor and have the chance to ask questions about the double homicide—instead of reading his report via Chris Kelly.

  The lab was winding down for the day and the only sounds were the tinkling of instruments being sterilized nearby. After Travis’s farm the morgue felt chemically hygienic.

  “I’ve done about a quarter of the autopsies of all the cases involved in this,” Fellman said. “And I’ve asked for the other counties’ medical examiners to send me theirs. Actually, I just got off the phone with the Thurston County ME, and I’m getting a good idea of how the killer has developed.”

  “Is there an arc?” Brown said.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Fellman replied. “The killer has always used a weapon found at the crime scene or directly connected to the person he wanted to frame. That much we know. But it was quite interesting to stand back and look at how the violence against the victims has developed over seven years.”

  Quite interesting. Madison thought briefly about the people gathered at Rachel’s house for Thanksgiving dinner—Aaron among them—and what kind of conversations they were having at that precise time.