The sun rose and set twice. Temperatures warmed slightly.
My neighbor, Alasdair, treated me to two more turtle tirades. And a crudely painted sign on a stake in my yard. A Child Abuser Lives Here.
I received no text or call from Ryan. CNN reported on a tropical storm in the Caribbean, so I figured it had hit Saint Martin. Or he was somewhere at sea on a boat.
Except for her sole cryptic message, Katy also remained “incommunicado.” I tried keeping my mind on other things, but now and then thoughts of my daughter jabbed me like needles. Where was she? The Appalachian Trail? Cape Lookout? A Hilton Head spa? What was she doing? Slidell had his hounds out, but so far no sightings.
Wednesday morning, I kept the dreaded dental appointment. Learned my gums were healthy, my teeth structurally sound. Finally, some good news. I departed the office with the same sense of euphoria I’d felt as a kid leaving the confessional. Free!
The elation was short lived.
Arriving home, I saw Alasdair planted in the spot where his sign had been. His movements suggested rage fueled by an abundance of caffeine. And mental issues.
I turned off the car’s engine, got out, and crossed the yard, circling my neighbor as widely as possible. He followed me to my door, snapping and flapping his arms.
Even inside, I could hear his harangue.
Jesus. How to deal with this nut job? His insults were getting meaner and his threats were escalating.
Sure, I could continue refusing to engage. But he’d keep coming at me. Was a trifling garden sculpture worth it?
No. I’d be the grown-up.
“You win, asshole.” To the empty kitchen. “The turtle comes in.”
I made myself a smoothie for lunch. Yogurt, almond milk, peaches and blueberries, with a pinch of protein powder tossed in for health. It wasn’t bad.
While drinking my wholesome concoction, I retrieved the turtle from the garden and set it in the sink. Then, smug with proper nutrition and sparkling dentition, I headed out to find a replacement.
Blackhawk Hardware offered a variety of choices. Rejecting all gnomes, St. Francis, Buddha, and an angel supporting birds on her outstretched arms, I chose a snail with an exceedingly friendly smile. What could be scary about that?
From the garden center, I swung by Katy’s home. The house was as quiet and undisturbed as on my first visit. More mail piled in the foyer.
I was now seriously worried. And convinced that the call luring me to SWI hadn’t come from my daughter. Despite Skinny’s reluctance, I considered filing an MP report.
And where the hell was my phone? Did my attacker have it? Had he cracked the password and accessed my personal information? Before I’d deactivated the old device, I’d dialed my number repeatedly, never gotten an answer.
Little comforted by the smiling snail, I went to the MCME, hoping for a call from Slidell. Mostly, to stay busy.
Also, I had an idea.
Thankfully, no new request forms had landed in my in-box. I checked a contact on my spiffy new phone and dialed, hoping the number was good.
Two rings, then a male voice answered, familiar as my Midwest childhood. “Dr. Dobzhansky.”
“J.S. It’s been so long I wasn’t sure if you still used this line.”
“Tempe?”
“The one and only.”
“Oh. My. God.”
John Samuel Dobzhansky was my first love. We met as counselors at Camp Northwoods, maintained the romance that summer and the next. Then J.S. went north to school, and I went to the U of I, then to Northwestern. He majored in psychology; I trained in anthropology. I married Pete, J.S married twice, divorced twice. Years later, after Pete and I split, we reconnected at an American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting, considered a fling, decided the old spark wasn’t there.
I specialize in the compromised dead. J.S. specializes in sexual predators. Happy stuff. Better colleagues than lovers.
“Are you still with the lab in Illinois?” I asked.
“Nope. I’m in DC now. Profiling for the F B of I. What’s happening in the world of bones?”
“Funny you should ask. I’d like your take on something.”
“Of course, you would.” Faux hurt. “The only reason you ever call is to pick my brain.”
I ignored that. “I’ve had some puzzling cases crop up. There’s no common MO, but I think they’re related.”
“MO isn’t fixed, at least not with sexual predators. I once profiled a guy who used a different kind of weapon at every scene.”
“I don’t see a sexual component in these deaths.”
“Fair enough. But no serial offender remains static. For one thing, there’s a learning curve. These guys figure out what works and what doesn’t, and they improve with practice. Also, there are all kinds of random variables that can impact the best-laid plans. A knife blade breaks. A dog starts barking. A neighbor shows up. The perp must improvise. Some are better at that than others.”
“I don’t think it’s that, either.”
“Is there a signature?”
“A signature?”
“A unique pattern. Most repeat criminals develop one because, once a plan works, they stick with it, thinking it will lower their risk of getting caught. But with violent, repetitive offenders there’s something else operating. In a word, anger. Their anger leads them to fantasize about violence, and eventually they act out their fantasies.”
“They evolve rituals for expressing the rage.”
“Exactly. Maybe to control or humiliate the victim. But the victim isn’t really the point. Their age, gender, appearance may be irrelevant. It’s the need to express the anger. I profiled one guy whose victims were both male and female and ranged from thirteen to eighty-four.”
I didn’t interrupt.
“Important questions: How does the perp encounter his victims? Does he know them? Is his approach verbal? Physical? Does he torture them? Sexually assault them? Mutilate them? If so, does he do it before or after he kills them? Does he leave items at the scene? Take items away? You still there?”
“I’m listening.”
“And?”
“I think there is a ritual. And I agree that the victims don’t seem to be the point.”
“Go on.”
“I don’t think sexual sadism is operating here.”
“What is?”
“Who knows? Jealousy? Revenge? Resentment? Hatred? Good old anger?”
“Directed toward whom?”
“Me.”
“What?!”
I laid it all out. Kwalwasser’s eyeball and head. Sanchez’s gutted torso. Boldonado, garroted and hung from a tree. The Burke County bucket. Charlie Hunt, dead of peanuts and CO. Then I explained the parallels to my previous cases.
I waited out a long pause. A slow expulsion of breath.
“I hope you’ve reported all this to the cops.”
“I have.”
“Please keep your head up. Sometimes serial offenders get bored and try to up the ante.”
“Listen, my daughter was discharged from the army recently. I think she may be suffering from PTSD.” I swallowed. “I haven’t heard from her in a week. Should I be worried?”
“Is that normal for her?”
“I’m not sure what’s normal lately.”
“I’d try very hard to find her,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said, trying not to show the anxiety that at that moment had me vowing to do just that, Katy’s possible annoyance be damned.
“Keep me updated.”
“I will.”
I sat gripping the phone so hard my metacarpals bulged white. I jumped when my mobile rang in my hand.
“Dr. Brennan. I’m so sorry to keep interrupting you like this.” Nguyen’s somber tone raked my already frayed nerves. “I am performing an autopsy, and, sadly, I think you must view this young woman.”
Dear God. Not Katy!
“What happened to her?” Barely masking my fear.
“When you get here.” Brisk and clipped, but with a terrifying note of compassion.
I bolted.
Racing across the lobby, I ran into none other than Slidell, his scowl as deep as the Mariana Trench. I wondered if he, too, had been summoned to the autopsy.
Oh, God. Why?
When I pushed open the door, Nguyen’s back was toward us. She was staring down at what lay on the stainless steel. Two feet splayed outward at the far end of the table, the skin cinnamon brown, the toenails a fiery red.
Relief flooded through me. It wasn’t Katy. Guilt followed swiftly. I was spared, but this girl was someone’s daughter or sister or wife. Some family would be changed forever.
I couldn’t tell if Nguyen had yet cut her Y. She was standing motionless, regarding the body.
Shielding it from me? From Slidell? From the many who’d poke and probe and photograph and dissect?
Odd thought. But true. The cold process had begun. Slidell and I had been asked to take part.
I scanned the room. X-rays glowed on a computer screen. Cranials. I knew the tech would also have taken a full-body series.
A pair of boots sat on one counter, black suede with fringe and faux gems rimming the top. Caked with mud.
And small. Maybe size five. Tiny feet striding in big cowgirl boots.
Clothing hung from a drying rack. A denim dress. A brown corduroy jacket. A pink cotton bra. Pink cotton panties with little red dots. A locket in the shape of a sunflower.
Looking closer, I noted that the sunflower split down the center. The words Tú eres mi sol were inscribed on a disc below the petals.
Slidell walked to the rack, spread his feet, interlaced his fingers, and dropped his hands low over his genitals. A quick nod to Nguyen, then he assessed the clothes and the body, his frown neither softening nor deepening.
I stepped to the table. And felt my heart shrivel. Sweet Jesus. Who could be capable of such cruelty? Why?
Squelching such reactions, I kicked into scientist mode.
First rule: No emotion. Leave sorrow, pity, and outrage for later. Anger or grief can lead to error and misjudgment. Mistakes do your victim no good.
Second rule: No preconceptions. Don’t suspect, don’t fear, don’t hope for any outcome. Observe, weigh, measure, and record.
Nevertheless.
I looked at the bruised and distorted young face and, for a moment, pictured the girl alive, connecting the clasp of her locket behind her neck. Walking along a bleak stretch of road.
Running across a dark parking lot.
Heart hammering.
Headlights blinding.
“It appears to be a hit-and-run.” Nguyen’s voice snapped me back. “The victim appears to be in her late teens, perhaps Hispanic. She hasn’t yet been identified.”
Nguyen crossed to the monitor, her expression somber.
I joined her. Using a gloved finger, she pointed at a defect located approximately mid-shaft in the left collarbone.
At two ribs inferior to it.
Shifting to the next film, she ran the finger down the arm, over the humerus, the radius, the ulna. The hand.
“Yes,” I said to her unspoken question.
She brought up the pelvis. No need to point.
“Yes,” I repeated.
A frontal view of the skull. A side view.
Wordlessly, I returned to the body.
The girl lay on her back. Nguyen hadn’t yet opened her torso and, except for the bruises, abrasions, and odd angles of the limbs due to fractures, she might have been sleeping. The hair haloing her head was long and dark.
Sudden flashback.
Focus, Brennan.
I gloved, masked, and examined the ravaged flesh, ghostly pale and cold to the touch. I palpated the arm, the shoulder, the hand, the abdomen, felt the underlying damage evident on the X-rays in glowing black-and-white.
“Can we turn her over, please?” My voice broke the stillness.
Nguyen stepped to my side. Together we tucked the slender arms tight to the girl’s body and rolled her by the shoulders and hips.
My eyes traveled the delicate spine and the double mounds of the buttocks. Took in the tread marks imprinted on the flesh of the painfully thin thighs.
“This is a patterned injury,” I said, indicating a discoloration on the girl’s right shoulder. Maybe five inches long, the hematoma appeared as a series of dashes. “Any idea what may have made it?”
Nguyen shook her head.
I looked at Slidell. He glanced at the bruise but said nothing.
“May I see the CSU photos?” I asked, stripping off and tossing, not so gently, my latex gloves and mask.
Nguyen collected a bound collection of five-by-sevens from the counter and handed it to me. Frame by frame I viewed the desolate spot where the girl’s body had been found.
The photos told the same story as the corpse.
This was no accident.