Stone Maidens (3 page)

Prusik took a deep breath. “You can tell Mr. Thorne—”

Their eyes met, calculating the possibilities and silently rejecting most of them. Calmer now, Prusik said, “Thank you, Margaret. Tell him I’m on the way.”

Christine watched as her secretary’s face relaxed and she left the room, carefully avoiding focusing on any of the gruesome photographs pinned to the corkboard behind the desk. The blowups of Betsy Ryan, the first victim, looked more like color abstractions than the barely recognizable remains of a young human. Ryan was a fifteen-year-old runaway who’d been living with an aunt in Cleveland. The girl’s trail had gone cold shortly after she had hitched a ride on March 30 with an Allied Van Lines mover. The driver had let her off at a Portage, Indiana, truck stop. His fuel receipt checked out. So did the absence of any incriminating forensic evidence in the cab of his truck. Three weeks later, on April 21, her body had been recovered off the boat anchor, cruelly hooked through the man-made pocket along the victim’s left side, not far from the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, where the killer would have been able to savage her with plenty of cover. Cellular analysis disclosed that the remains had likely been underwater several weeks, which Prusik figured meant her
attacker had probably spotted her shortly after the driver—the last known eyewitness—had dropped the girl off at the truck stop.

She fingered another slide from the Blackie crime scene. This one showed a man’s boot print, approximately size nine. The local police had found it in the mud beside the creek and made a quick-dry plaster kit impression. The killer liked to do his cutting by water. She swallowed hard. Time was ticking.

Damp weather had inundated the Midwest for most of the spring and early summer—conditions appalling for the preservation of evidence, accelerating the decomposition of flesh. Prusik knew that it was unlikely she’d find anything worthwhile on the latest victim’s body or in the area surrounding the crime scene. The Blackie woods, a great stomach of damp forest, had surely already digested her case, eating with it whatever evidence the killer might have left behind.

Tucking the slides into her lab-coat pocket, she stepped quickly around the desk, resolving not to let the case get away from her. She hustled past her secretary’s partition and walked briskly down the hall. “Back soon,” she called over her shoulder as an afterthought.

Outside the lecture room, Prusik’s hand froze on the doorknob at the unmistakable sound of Roger Thorne clearing his throat a few feet behind her.

She turned and met Managing Director Thorne’s piercing gaze over his tortoiseshell glasses. His fine navy-blue suit made Prusik feel frumpy in her so-so stretch knit, which had more than a few tired sags and stains from stooping and studying remains in situ. Its last excursion had been to another field agent’s crime scene, where a local deputy had done a miserable job fending off the weather with an umbrella, letting the small of her back become a nice rain catch.

“Christine, may I speak to you for a moment?” Thorne’s tone was studied, formal. He bent his forearm, purposely displaying the gleaming new chronograph watch he was so proud of—a
Montblanc, the same brand as the smart-looking fountain pen clipped to his shirt breast pocket. He tapped the watch crystal.

“It’s getting late.” Thorne straightened his cuff back over the shiny chronometer, then arranged the jacket he frequently wore for his Washington trips, the chosen type of garment of all men who sat behind desks behind doors with brass name placards at the FBI. “I just got off the phone with headquarters. Told them about the
second
one, we think.”

She nodded. “I’m on my way to update the team. There are important forensic similarities between both cases. The forensics
will
yield us results, I am confident.”

Thorne smiled into her eyes. “Good, good. I’m confident you will succeed, Christine. It’s why I assigned you these cases in the first place. Stick-to-itiveness is one of your finer qualities.” He squeezed her shoulder. She stiffened at his touch, and he dropped his hand. “You are an astute scientist, one of our best. You know how much I respect your able observational skills. I doubt there’s another managing director in the agency whose forensic unit is superior.”

She returned his smile, pleased by the compliment yet expecting to hear a “but” coming next. “Thank you for saying so, Roger.” Christine always appreciated hearing his praise. Thorne’s sincerity in acknowledging her accomplishments as a forensic scientist was unquestionable. That, his good looks, and sharp dressing style were all it had taken for her to fall in love with him.

His straw-colored eyebrows rose a notch higher over the tops of his glasses. “So, now that you’re in charge, I can speak frankly.” His eyebrows lifted again. “I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you that they’re a bit concerned I let you take the lead on such a high-profile case.” He put up his palm before she could respond. “Hear me out. You’ve been a prominent head of the forensic lab, doing a damn fine job for ten years—until now, that is. It’s your first lead, and their concerns are understandable given that you have no demonstrated experience managing all aspects of a case: the
logistics, directing personnel from different offices, interfacing with local police and political officials. You know what I’m talking about, Christine.”

Let
me take the lead? She bit her lip, trying to remind herself that Thorne was only doing his job. Still, she knit her brow and spoke defensively. “You know I’ve put together the best team. They’re working around the clock on this. No one has slipped up unless you count the local and state police foul-ups.”

“So is that it then—police foul-ups?” Thorne clearly wanted some significant news. “I need progress to report, Christine. Progress is what gets noticed. I know your team is diligently processing fragmentary information, looking for clues. Give me something to prove to Washington I made the right decision putting you in charge of this case. Management needs to be kept informed of a case’s progress and be assured that appropriate assets are being committed to bring about an effective resolution. Believe it or not, Christine, a cost-benefit analysis figures into everything we do.”

“I believe it.” Budgetary cutbacks in 2010 meant Prusik’s lab had had to take on more responsibility in 2011 while receiving no increase in resources. It seemed that Management 101 for the FBI mirrored the strategy that private enterprise, stymied by the severe economic downturn, was employing: make your people do more with less, then expect miracles.

“Roger,” she fought to keep the frustration out of her voice, “let me put it this way. The body found in Blackie bears the killer’s trademark. It’s most definitely the same perpetrator, most certainly a man, given the sheer physicality of the crime, the strength involved in the nature of the killing. Unfortunately, judging from the slides, the body’s state of decomposition suggests exposure to the elements for at least a month.”

Thorne nodded once, almost imperceptibly. “What do you make of this profile so far?”

She found it easier to focus on Thorne’s perfectly knotted tie than on those mustard-brown eyes that still disarmed her. His undeniable good looks and the memory of the intimacy they had shared caused her face to flush. She hoped he didn’t notice.

“He travels. Picks his victims carefully. The first was a runaway. This Jane Doe we think may be a local, a young woman who went missing from an amusement park a couple of miles away over the Fourth of July. We’ll be taking dental impressions and an X-ray set of her jaw tomorrow, of course. Tell headquarters the suspect is very likely in his early twenties, fit, living alone or staying by himself most of the time, perhaps odd-jobbing. He’s private, a good site planner. Doesn’t tolerate the prospect of interference, which explains why the victims aren’t found soon after. Both bodies were located well away from any neighborhoods where someone might accidentally intrude. He needs time for what he does to them.”

“And what exactly is that?” Thorne cupped an elbow, listening intently to what she was saying.

“You’ve already read my detailed report on the condition of Betsy Ryan’s corpse. The Blackie victim was strangled, similarly cut open—a single slash wound longitudinal and ventral. The internal organs were completely removed, and there was no recovery of them, according to the local coroner’s report.”

Their eyes met. His mouth cinched shut. The tendons on either side of his neck tightened. She whiffed Thorne’s cologne, and her breathing momentarily stopped. After a couple of months of lunchtime rendezvous, their affair had abruptly ended, nearly six months earlier. Prusik had grown uneasy; she couldn’t take the intimacy and had broken it off with him. Thorne had wasted no time in retreating to a marriage that he had intimated to her was at most a comfortable truce. All these months later she was mostly over it, but sometimes she still missed their charged encounters, the feel of his gaze on her body. And he had a discerning mind, even if he did sometimes buy into the Washington bullshit. She
missed talking over the puzzling details of a case in the lazy aftermath of lovemaking.

In a softer voice, Prusik said, “My team is doing everything humanly possible to identify this perpetrator. They’re waiting for me right now.” She glanced back at the door.

“One more thing,” Thorne said, clearing his throat. “Check with Bruce Howard on these profile particulars you’ve developed. I assume Howard will be leading the field technicians to the Blackie site? Frankly, he’s got excellent leadership qualities with a team, Christine. Knows how things should be handled. Hits the ground running, you know what I mean. You’re going to need his help. This is a much larger area of focus now.” Thorne peered over his tortoiseshell rims. “Cooperation and teamwork are the keys to success in this organization—in any soundly run organization.”

Christine felt the sharp slap of his words on her face. “I have Mr. Howard and the field unit well in hand, sir,” she said tightly.

Thorne glanced at his watch, then looked back at her, making no move to leave. “There’s nothing more you can tell me, Christine?”

She blushed under his intent gaze and was irritated with herself for doing so. “The killer is quite sophisticated with a knife, sir. What he does to his victims is highly invasive. He’s a repeater, suggesting a ritualistic pattern of some kind. The predilection for gutting is quite extraordinary, unlike that of any felon we’ve so far checked on any of the interstate violent persons’ data banks. The blood around the incisions appears minimal, not coagulated. Meaning he cleans them shortly after death. I’ll know better tomorrow.” Almost subconsciously, Prusik picked polite code for the unspeakable truth, in deference to Thorne’s vulnerability. He detested gory forensic details.

“Ritualistic, did you say?”

“Neither victim appears to have been sexually assaulted,” she explained. “He does not tamper with their faces. The victim’s cranium in each case is intact. I’d say that catching them is an
intensely personal experience for him.” Prusik looked directly into Thorne’s eyes.

He blinked twice. “I suppose that
is
something significant to report.”

He made as if to leave. Held out his hand to shake hers, hesitated, and gave her shoulder another light squeeze. It was their gesture, the one they used to use at work to acknowledge their relationship, and something about using it now seemed cheap to Christine. It hadn’t been her fears alone that had ended the relationship. After a few months, she couldn’t ignore Thorne’s hesitation and her growing sense that they wouldn’t be going any further than their noontime trysts because he’d never leave his wife. The shoulder squeeze somehow belied all that.

“Very good work, Christine.” He hurried down the hall, his leather soles slapping against the marble floor. “And good work by your team. Tell them for me, will you?” He waved, without turning, and made his way toward the flight that would take him to Washington.

Prusik stood quietly at the lecture-room door, regaining her composure. She wasn’t sure whether it was the physical contact with Thorne or his intimations about Bruce Howard’s role in the case that had flustered her more.

What had gotten her this far was not her ability to manage a case but her aptitude for science and her combination of uncannily accurate hunches and careful deciphering of wounds. Her PhD was in physical anthropology, the evolution and science of man, with a subspecialty in the darker, dirtier deeds: murders involving aberrant mutilations of the body, committed either pre- or postmortem. The shapes and types of marks told her of the instruments used to turn the perfect-working processes of life into rotting flesh. To Prusik, what turned a criminal to violence was as interesting as the mortal wounds.

Her forensic skills were legendary at the FBI. In the decade she’d worked in the Midwest office, she’d made her mark with a combination of imaginative intuition and determination. Brian Eisen and Leeds Hughes, who were working with her on this case and who were two of her most astute technicians, had also worked with her on the high-profile Roman Mantowski case, which she had cracked by profiling the killer’s family in astonishingly accurate detail from a pitiful few forensic details.

Mantowski had bludgeoned his victims and smashed the backs of their hands, always breaking every bone of every digit.
With the tip of each victim’s broken forefinger dipped in his or her own blood, he had drawn a cross and beneath it spelled out
CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS
.

Reading the chilling message for the first time, Prusik had started to piece together the theory of the killer’s family structure around a painful cleanliness and a strict religious practice. Extreme cleanliness was a well-known Eastern European custom among many immigrant families, Prusik’s own included. Noting the distinctive odor of polishing wax that had adhered to several of Mantowski’s victims, Prusik had profiled him as the only child of an elderly couple, perhaps newly immigrated, who had raised him in a very orderly house. Nothing would be out of place in that house without serious consequences, she theorized.