Cut to the Bone (19 page)

CHAPTER 26

Brockton

DET. KITTREDGE,
I SCRAWLED
on the notepad beside the telephone, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising as Detective Kittredge described the death scene where he was standing.

“Excuse me,” I said, interrupting him. “The tree—it's a sapling, isn't it.” I was telling him, not asking him. “Three, four inches thick. Her crotch is pressed right up against the trunk.”

A silence, then: “What makes you think that?”

“What makes me think that is the fact that I'm looking at a photograph of it right now, Detective.” As I said it, I slid the picture the rest of the way out of the envelope. It was the manila envelope that had arrived in the mail a week or so before, traumatizing Peggy her first day on the job.

“Could you please say that again, sir?”

“I said I'm looking at a photograph of the death scene right now. The dead woman in the woods. The tree she's pressed up against.”

“I'm not sure I'm following you here, Dr. Brockton. How could you possibly be looking at a crime-scene photo? The photographer isn't even here yet.”

“Somebody mailed it to me a week or so ago,” I said. “Probably right after he killed her.” A thought struck me, and I added, “Killed her and cut off her feet.” I was still embarrassed that I'd failed to recognize that the photo hadn't come from the case files of Sheriff Cotterell or Bubba Hardknot; that the image was fresh, taken no more than a few days before it had arrived in my office.

“This picture you say somebody mailed you.” The detective's wording was careful and conditional—almost accusatory—as if he were cross-examining me in court. “Did you contact the police when you received this, sir?”

“No. Well, sort of.” I felt flustered suddenly. Stupid suddenly. “But I mentioned it to a TBI agent a day or two later.”

“
Mentioned
it? You see that a woman has been murdered and dismembered, and all you do is
mention
it?”

“I thought he'd sent me an old crime-scene photo,” I tried explaining. “From a case he and I worked a couple years ago, up in Morgan County. It looks exactly like it. Well,
almost
exactly like it. As close as a killer could get, I guess, without waiting a month or two.”

The detective was silent for several long seconds. “Doctor, I don't mean to sound dense,” he said, “and I don't mean to sound disrespectful—my colleagues at KPD speak very highly of you—but what you're saying isn't making much sense to me.”

“It's not making a lot of sense to me, either, Detective, but bear with me for half a minute, and I'll try to help us both make better sense of it.” Stretching the phone cord as far as it would go, I rolled my chair across the office to a battered filing cabinet and opened the drawer that held my slides. Thumbing back through the tabs of the file folders, I stopped at 90-11—my eleventh forensic case of 1990—and tugged the fat folder free. I opened the file, which contained clear plastic sleeves of 35-millimeter slides, along with a few eight-by-ten enlargements. “Back in December of 1990,” I said, pulling out one of the enlargements, “Sheriff Jim Cotterell, up in Morgan County, called me out to a death scene. A TBI agent, Wellington Meffert, was there, too. You know either of those guys?”

“No, sir, I don't. I'm still not quite—“

“Hang on,” I said. “I'm getting there. A woman's body was found there in the woods. She was naked, and her feet had been chewed off by dogs or coyotes, and her crotch was jammed up against a tree. I'm looking now at one of the photos from
that
case—the December 1990 case—and the trees are all bare. In the picture somebody sent me last week—the picture of the woman I think you've just found—all the trees still have leaves, and they're just starting to turn. I didn't look closely at this picture last week—I thought it was just an extra print from that 1990 case—but I'm sure looking now.” I took a magnifying glass from the center drawer of my desk and inspected the woman in the photo. “Hard to say for sure, but it doesn't look like this woman's feet were chewed off. Looks more like they've been severed.” He didn't respond, so I went on, talking about what I saw, now that I was finally looking. “The tree she's up against—looks like a maple.” I moved the lens to focus on the nearest cluster of leaves; they were shaped like five-pointed stars, but with no other serrations. “No, not a maple,” I amended. “A sweet gum, I think, now that I look closer.” Detective Kittredge still wasn't saying anything, and I wondered if I should just shut up. Instead, I plowed ahead. “Looks like the bottom branch is snapped, but in this picture, the leaves aren't dead yet. So I'm guessing it got broken just before the picture was taken.”

A pause. Finally, as if he'd made up his mind about something—as if he'd made up his mind that I wasn't crazy, or a killer—he said, “Yes, sir, she's up against a sweet gum. And the leaves on the bottom branch are withered now. All the other leaves are turning, and some have already fallen, but these withered on the branch.” Another pause. “Could you tell me a little more about that other case? Morgan County, you said?”

“Sure,” I said, glad that he seemed to be coming around. “This was about two years ago—twenty-two months, actually—outside Petros, the little town where Brushy Mountain State Prison is. A man kills his unfaithful wife and dumps her body in the woods. A couple weeks later, a hunter finds it and calls the sheriff, and the sheriff calls me. The body's lying against a tree, one leg on each side, with the woman's crotch pressed against the trunk. At first we think the killer has posed her that way—some kind of sexual display—but then I notice a dark, greasy spot about ten feet up the hill, and I realize that
that's
where he dumped her; that's where her body started to decompose. Then I saw the tooth marks on her feet—what little was left of her feet—and I realized what had happened. After she got nice and ripe up there on higher ground, she was found by wild dogs, or coyotes, and dragged downhill a ways, until she snagged on the tree and the coyotes couldn't drag her any farther.”

“Hmm.” Another pause. “I'm still playing catch-up with you here, Dr. Brockton. Are you suggesting that this woman I'm looking at right now was killed by the same guy as the woman in Morgan County two years ago?”

“No, that's not what I'm saying at all. That's not possible—at least, I don't
think
it's possible. That guy confessed. He's two years into a ten-year sentence.”

“So . . . let me try this again,” the detective said. “You're saying I'm looking at some kind of copycat killing here?”

“Copycat killing?” As I repeated his words, something about them sounded slightly wrong. I laid one of my Morgan County crime-scene enlargements alongside the photo I'd received in the mail. They were strikingly similar; chillingly similar. “I don't know if it's a copycat
killing,
” I said slowly, “but it's for damn sure a copycat death scene.” My eyes locked on to the broken branch, and I noticed that it had been pulled toward the far side of the sapling. “Jesus,” I said. “That branch was blocking the shot. Whoever took this picture broke the branch to get it out of the way. So
his
picture would look just like
my
picture.”

“Come again?”

“Detective, whoever killed this woman staged her body to look just like the crime scene I worked two years ago. And he photographed her from the same angle. It's almost like he had a copy of my picture with him, out there in the woods.” A realization struck me, swift and forceful as a fist. “Dear God. This is the same guy.”

“But . . . you just said the guy's in
prison
.”

“No,” I said, my heart a cold stone in my chest. “Not that guy. Not the guy in prison. The other guy. It's the same guy.”

“What
same guy?”

“The same guy who killed and dismembered a woman up in Campbell County about a month ago. With a tool that left cut marks he knew I'd recognize.”

I PAGED TYLER, ADDING
the prefix 999 to my phone number—code for “We've got a case; get your butt over here ASAP!” I figured it would take him at least ten minutes to lock the research cage and get back across the river to the stadium. Plenty of time for me to make a phone call. As I dialed the number, I prayed I wouldn't be routed to a voice-mail box or a secretary. What was the chance that a senior-level FBI profiler was still at his desk at four on a Friday afternoon?

“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?”