In the Belly of Jonah (16 page)

SHE WAS STANDING SO
close to him, Jack Linwood could feel Dr. Berta Johnson’s breath on the back of his right arm. He had been working up the prototype for the last three hours. Ever since she had arrived an hour earlier, Dr. Johnson had been on him like flies on honey, waiting for the demonstration. He had told her he wouldn’t be done until after lunch, but that hadn’t deterred her from watching his every move.

So, he had put her to work.

Yes, he knew she was the chief coroner for the state of Colorado. Yes, he understood that by telling her to pick up the crescent wrench and hook up the canister to the frame he had built he might have been making a fatal move in his career. The delicate hands of a learned woman at the highest attainable surgical position in the state holding a wrench rather than a scalpel? Calvin Lemley was surely going to fire him.

It probably
was
a sacrilege, but no sense wasting a perfectly capable pair of hands, strong back, and quick mind.

Rarely had he seen the coroner grace the halls of the Bureau offices, let alone come down to Investigative Control Operations on the seventeenth floor. He had seen her picture in the newspaper numerous times throughout the past year since he had arrived at the FBI’s Denver office, and although she was probably close to his age, she looked closer to retirement, the demands and controversies of her job having aged her by twenty years. Some would say she was a handsome woman, but he found her attractive because of her drive and dedication.

She hadn’t shirked her duties one bit in the past hour. And after all that work, they were about to make their first trial with this contraption. She hadn’t hesitated or indicated any resentment about following his orders. She stayed right with him and assisted in every way possible. And here she was, leaning over his right side to see the information he was studying.

He reviewed the diagram on the computer screen one last time to make sure everything was in its proper place. It had taken him no more than twenty minutes searching the Internet to locate a source for the water tool and to place the call to the engineers who constructed it for Boeing. Within half an hour, the blueprint was alive on his computer screen and soon thereafter he was assembling the parts that he had sent a runner to pick up. Twice, actually, and both times the businesses were open even though it was Saturday.

Linwood scanned top to bottom, right to left, glancing at every major component of his prototype and comparing it to the blueprints and notes. When he was confident they had followed the diagram to the letter, he said, “Ready, Dr. Johnson?”

“Ready,” she said. “And call me Berta or I’ll have to clock you with this wrench, Jack.”

Linwood offered a rare grin. Boy did he admire this woman.

He stepped away from the computer and into the padded room reserved for ballistic testing, snapping off the pads from the back wall. He handed the pads to Dr. Johnson, who scuttled them out of the room. He yanked a frozen dog carcass into the room and hung it on clips from the ceiling.

“How much does that thing weigh?” Dr. Johnson asked as she stepped in behind him, studying the large dog.

“About a hundred ten pounds. It was the largest carcass in our freezer. I could probably find a cow somewhere if you think it’s important, since Jill Brannigan probably weighed more than this dog did.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Jill was solid muscle. It’s just a guess since we didn’t have all of her, of course, but we’re estimating about a hundred and seventy pounds. So the dog is close in size.”

“Shall we try this?” he asked, attempting to change the subject before Dr. Johnson pressed further.

He didn’t wait to get her answer before retreating from the room and hauling the frame into the ballistics room. Then he waved, signaling her to follow.

“Are you okay with lifting this thing with me?” Linwood asked.

“I’ll try,” Dr. Johnson said.

It must have weighed at least two hundred pounds, Linwood thought, as he and Dr. Johnson struggled with the awkward contraption. They had to set it down three times in the short distance to the ballistics room. Hearing Dr. Johnson’s heavy breathing, Linwood decided to leave it where they had set it down for the last time, just outside the door.

“The hose will reach,” he said, handing Dr. Johnson the rubber hose and wand as he hooked up the hose from the lab sink to the contraption.

“You want to try it?”

Dr. Johnson’s answer was to hand the wand back to the FBI agent.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s see what it can do.”

Linwood cranked the release two full rotations on the air compressor and the hose stiffened and hissed. As if he were watering his lawn, he pointed the wand toward the dog carcass at the other end of the room and squeezed the trigger. Water shot from the nozzle in a constant stream, knocking the dog toward the ceiling. The wand broke from his grip and tumbled to the ground with a clatter, the flow of water stopping abruptly as he released the lever. The dog swung back and forth at the other end of the room. Linwood rubbed his wrist.

“Why do you think I made you try it first?” Dr. Johnson grinned as Linwood continued to massage his wrist. “Haven’t you ever heard of the axiom that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction?”

Linwood regarded her. A challenge might be in order, but he decided to make things interesting. “Full throttle, Doc,” he said with a nod toward the compressor release.

“Lean into it this time,” Dr. Johnson offered.

He pulled the wand with him as he closed the distance between himself and the dog carcass. He came to within six feet.

“Wait!”

Linwood turned to see Dr. Johnson approach him with a pair of safety goggles.

“If you’re going to stand that close, at least put something over those brown peepers of yours,” she said with a wink.

She tiptoed back across the wet floor to the doorway and gave Linwood a thumbs-up.

He braced himself by angling his tall, lean body forward, one leg bent in front of him, the other anchoring him from behind. He gripped the wand securely with both hands, pointed it at the center of the large dog, and pulled the trigger. This time the water went straight through the dog’s side, leaving a hole the size of a dime.

Linwood released the trigger, pulled off the safety goggles, and stared at the hole in the swinging carcass.

Dr. Johnson whistled. “That’s amazing.”She moved past him and tackled the dog until she had brought it to a standstill. She studied the hole from both sides. “Ready for the cadaver?”

Her partner nodded.

Snapping open her cell phone before she was even out of the room, Dr. Johnson told someone with the Denver city morgue to bring the cadaver downtown to the Federal Building.

Within an hour, Jack Linwood was helping Dr. Berta Johnson position the cadaver against the back wall of the ballistics room in a seated position, arms hoisted overhead and tethered to the ceiling hooks. When they were ready, Linwood instructed Dr. Johnson to release the compressor to wide open. He moved to within six feet of the cadaver, positioned himself, and pulled the trigger, making a circle in the cadaver’s torso. Water, tissue, and bone fragments sprayed in all directions, the cadaver jerking from the initial pressure. He didn’t remember dropping the wand once again or hearing the clatter as it hit the floor.

He had performed dozens of tests before in this lab, but never one like this. The destruction he had caused was staggering, and he would not soon forget the sight, the sound, and the smell that had resulted. Unfortunately. He stood staring at the cadaver for several seconds, shocked by what he had just done.

Dr. Johnson was crouched by the cadaver, poking and prodding and studying this creation. She was kneeling in the carnage. The room was designed for ballistics, not for water tests, and they would have to mop up the room when they were done. Water, bones, tissues, and all.

The absurdity of seeing the petite woman in her navy blue suit and matching pumps kneeling in the mess next to the naked cadaver with a hole through his chest was almost too much for Linwood to comprehend. Then she looked at him and smiled.

“Jack, you did it! This is it! The Venus de Milo killer is using
water
to butcher his victims,” she concluded. He would have sworn ten years fell away from her face with that single statement. “You’re a genius.”

He didn’t feel like a genius. After all, he’d been so busy trying to build the contraption, he hadn’t thought about the real objective of matching up water slices with cadaver tissue or correlating how that must have played out with the teenagers at Platteville or the college basketball star in Fort Collins. What that monster de Milo must do, see, smell, and touch when he’s butchering his victims. Horrid.

“You okay, Jack? You’re looking a little green.”

He nodded, warding off the bile that rose in his throat. Dr. Johnson was used to this. He was used to seeing presliced tissue, bone, and matter samples neatly placed between slides or growing in petri dishes. He wondered how Dr. Johnson managed to disconnect from all this and how he could learn to do the same in time. And he better be quick about it.

One good thing about Bureau work was that he could always find someone who could teach him more than he thought he was capable of doing.

“Look at the bone fragments. Same as the ones collected at the crime scene in the shallow waters at Horsetooth?”

He nodded.

Dr. Johnson added excitedly, “Well then, let’s call the photographer in on this and cut off the arm and leg. We’re going to need the comparison as evidence in court when we catch this guy.”

I HADN’T BEEN OUT
in the plant all morning.

Knowing that Jill’s coworkers would be here until their shift ended at six tonight, I had plenty of time to catch up on paperwork and still see them later in the day. I hadn’t even seen Joe because, like me, he often used Saturday mornings to catch up on all the paperwork.

It was nearly noon, and I’d finished my variance report on the quarry and plant for the first six months of the year, comparing the budget to actual financials and relating my findings to my predictions for the balance of the year. It felt good to get something accomplished with no interruptions for a change.

As I walked over to Joe’s office, I enjoyed the fresh air, heat, and sunshine on this glorious June day. The trailer was empty. Joe was not in the office. He’s probably making his rounds through the quarry or talking with the plant guys on their lunch break, I thought. I walked back to the scale, through the warehouse, and out to the plant, climbing the metal stairs up to the control room. Joe was reading the operational reports near the control panel while Allan, Greg, Oliver, and Kyle ate their lunches at the small lunch table.

“Hi, guys.”

The door closed behind me with a soft bump, shutting out the noise of the plant behind me. I pulled my earplugs out and stuffed them in my pocket.

“Hey, Liv,” Joe answered. The others grunted their hellos. Still down about Jill’s murder.

“Mind if I chew the fat with you while you eat?” I asked the four men at the table.

Joe looked over at me and I gestured to him to come have a seat with us. He did.

“How are you guys? I mean,
really
?”

Mumbles and groans—all noncommittal.

“Oliver?”

He lowered his sandwich and raised his eyes. “Not worth shit.”

The others got a kick out of that. So did I.

“Me neither,” I added. “Greg?”

“I think Oliver said it all.”

“Allan?”

He was the team leader for a reason. I needed him to set the pace before I asked Kyle, knowing he had been the closest of all of them to Jill.

“It’s kind of like a bad dream for me. Sometimes I can just go about my day, get my work done, and think about what I’m going to have for dinner or do with my kids on my days off. Then I start feeling guilty, and it’s like I’m being selfish or something, all wrapped up in my world and not really giving Jill the credit she’s due by mourning and stuff.”

The others nodded, eyes cast down in the direction of their sandwiches.

“I feel the same way. I just finished my budget review this morning and was feeling pretty proud of myself until I thought of you guys and Jill. I was embarrassed that I took a moment to celebrate and feel happy about something so petty in the big scheme of things. But then on my way over here, I was thinking that if I were Jill and I’d been the one who was murdered, I wouldn’t want you guys wasting a whole lot of time mourning over me. In fact, if you did anything but enjoy life all the more, squeeze those kids harder, and kiss your wives more often, I’d have to come back and kick your asses.”