Cut to the Bone

by Jefferson Bass

  “Behavioral Sciences, Brubaker.” Even over the phone, the FBI agent’s confidence and air of authority were unmistakable.

  “Thank God you’re there,” I said. “This is Bill Brockton, at UT—the University of Tennessee.”

  “Hello, Doc. What’s up? You sound stressed.” Apparently his psychological insight wasn’t limited to psychotic killers.

  “Things have just gotten really strange here,” I said. “Remember the meeting in Nashville, when I said that dismemberment case up near Kentucky looked like one of my Kansas cases?”

  “I remember. The cut marks. Curved cut marks. What about it?”

  “There’s just been another killing here. Another woman. And it mirrors another one of my cases.”

  There was a brief silence before he spoke. “With all due respect, Doc, there are only so many ways to kill a person. Law of averages—sometimes killings resemble other killings. Coincidence is not the same as causality.”

  “Damn it,” I snapped, “this is not resemblance, and it’s not coincidence. This death scene is an exact replica. I got a photo of this latest victim in the mail a week ago—a week before her body was found. I thought it was one of my photos, from two years ago. Even the damn camera angle was the same.” The line went silent. Did he just hang up on me? “Are you still there?” I was reaching for the switchhook and the redial button when he spoke.

  “Yeah, I’m here. I’m thinking.” More silence. “So let’s say you’re right. Who would do this, and why?” Now I was the one struck silent. “Doc? Are you still there?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m just confused. Aren’t you the one who figures out the who and the why?”

  “I try. But if you’re right—if these killings have some connection to you—then you’re the key. What’s the message he’s sending you?”

  The call wasn’t going the way I’d hoped it would. “Well,” I floundered. “Could he be trying to impress me?”

  Even from five hundred miles away, the derision in his voice was clear. “Impress you? You’ve been watching too many Hollywood movies, Doc. He’s messing with you, more like. Or threatening you.”

  “Threatening me? Why would he be threatening me?” Up to now, I’d felt puzzled and disturbed. Suddenly I felt something much worse.

  “I don’t blame you for sounding nervous,” he said. “If any of the creeps I’ve profiled ever hatched a vendetta against me, and were out in the world instead of locked up? Trust me, I’d be nervous as hell. Luckily, I’ve got no prior relationship to any of ’em. No reason for them to come after me.”

  Somewhere in a far, dark corner of my mind, I began to hear a low humming sound. “Wait. Wait. Are you saying that this could be someone I know?”

  “Possibly. I’m just thinking out loud here, Doc. Maybe somebody you had a connection with; somebody who felt like you betrayed him somehow, did him a grievous wrong.”

  “But if that’s the case, why’s he killing these women? If he’s got a grudge, why doesn’t he just come shoot me? Why these murders that echo cases of mine?”

  “Dunno. He might be trying to make some sort of grand philosophical statement. Something about the hydra-headed nature of evil.”

  “The which-headed?”

  “Hydra-headed. Hydra, the mythological monster with all the heads—nine? twelve? A bunch. Hercules was sent to kill the Hydra. Which was supposedly impossible, because any time one of the heads got cut off, a new one grew back.”

  “Got it,” I said. “I do remember that myth, now that you mention it. So you’re saying this guy might be trying to make the point that it doesn’t matter if I solve one murder? That another one, just like it, will take its place? But what does that have to do with me?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” he said. “More personal. He’s not broadcasting the message. He’s narrowcasting it.”

  “Narrowcasting?”

  “Whatever he’s saying, he’s saying it to you, about you. It’s between him and you. We don’t know why.” He paused. “Not yet. But I’m afraid we will.”

  His words chilled me. “So I need to conjure up the name of everybody I ever cut off in traffic? Every student I ever flunked?”

  “No, it would go deeper than that. Somebody you had some sort of strong connection with. Somebody who feels like you betrayed him somehow. Ruined his life.”

  I felt baffled. Angry, too. So this unfolding nightmare—this set of gruesome murders—was somehow my fault? I felt myself flush. “I’m not exactly a treacherous kind of guy,” I said testily. “I’ve never cheated on my wife. I’ve never lied on a job application. I’ve never stabbed anyone in the back, literally or figuratively. Hell, I’ve never even gotten a speeding ticket.”

  “Easy, Doc. Easy. Let me be clearer. I’m not saying you did betray this guy—this hypothetical guy. I’m just playing What if: What if you had some connection to somebody who ended up coming unhinged? What if he decided, rightly or wrongly—completely, one-hundred-percent wrongly—that you’d let him down, betrayed him, wrecked his life? That sort of scenario, that kind of guy, might fit the facts. Anybody like that come to mind?”

  “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 nu
merals 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 COMFORT INN 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 Xs in red ink. Finally, he sliced the pink and yellow names from the faculty directory and taped them to the map beside the Xs.

  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 Xs 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 h
as. 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.