Cut to the Bone (Body Farm 8)

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 has. 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.

CHAPTER 29

Janelle

Janelle felt the air whoosh out of her hopes when the girl walked into the room. She was just a kid, sixteen or seventeen. “You’re the one? You did the picture of that dead girl?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the girl.

Janelle snorted. “Nobody’s ever called me ‘ma’am’ before,” she said, then adde

d, “not unless they were mocking me.” She eyed the girl warily. “Are you mocking me?”

“No, ma’am,” said the girl. “No. No. Why would I mock you?”

“Why wouldn’t you, darlin’,” she said, her voice soft and sad. “Why the hell wouldn’t you.”

The girl laid a hand on Janelle’s arm. “I’m sorry about what happened to you,” she said. “Really, really sorry.”

Janelle moved her arm, reached for a tissue. “Story of my life,” she said. “This damned thing’s just one more chapter.” She blew her nose, then turned away and folded into herself, collecting herself. When she turned back, she saw that the girl had picked up her pencil and pad and started drawing. Janelle frowned. “I haven’t told you what he looks like yet.”

The girl turned the pad to show her the drawing. It was a sketch of Janelle herself, nothing but a few quick lines, but somehow it captured everything that mattered; somehow it revealed Janelle to herself: a worn and wary beauty, her cheek stitched together, her soul pulling apart. “Damn,” Janelle breathed. “You are an artist, girl. What’d they say your name was, hon? Jenny?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m Janelle, and I’m not quite as old and broken-down as I look. So stop calling me ‘ma’am’, or I might have to turn you across my knee. Got it?”

Jenny grinned. “Yes’m,” she said slyly, the m audible enough to be heard but faint enough to deny. Janelle felt the skin of her face moving, tugging at the stitches in her cheek. After a moment, she recognized the movement as a smile.

* * *

“Okay, take a look, see if this is anywhere close.” Jenny laid the tablet on the table and slid it across to Janelle.

Janelle hesitated, looking in the girl’s eyes. The girl smiled shyly, shrugged slightly, in a no-promises sort of way. For some reason, Janelle found the gesture reassuring — its combination of helpfulness and humility. She picked up the sketch and looked down, then drew a quick gasp as a wave of panic swept over her, tumbling her in its grip. “Son of a bitch,” she breathed.