The FDLE crime-scene truck lumbered into view, a boxy black vehicle that looked like a cross between an ambulance on steroids and a Winnebago on Weight Watchers. Driving it was Rodriguez, the forensic tech Angie’s boss had promised to send. Compact and muscular, Rodriguez had a shaved head, olive brown and glossy in the dappled light beneath the pines. Along with Rodriguez was a second tech, a young woman with long blond hair — Whitney, though I couldn’t tell if that was her first name or her last — whose arrival was a pleasant surprise to Angie.
Rodriguez set to work on the tire track behind the Suburban. Pouring water into a large Ziploc plastic bag that contained powder, he kneaded the bag until the mixture inside was the consistency of pancake batter — a thick liquid that I recognized as dental casting stone: the same stuff, I realized, that FDLE had used to cast Ted Bundy’s teeth. Watching him from ten feet away, I said, “Those aren’t the Suburban’s tracks, are they?”
Rodriguez didn’t look up. “Not unless the Suburban’s wearing a worn-out set of off-road tires,” he answered. “With a big chunk out of one of the tread lugs.” I smiled; clearly he knew what he was doing, and if he ever ran across that same tread on a vehicle, I felt sure he’d be able to show a jury that it matched. The tire-tread impression might not be quite as chilling — or as damning — as the cast of Ted Bundy’s teeth had been, but it might, just possibly, serve as a small evidentiary nail in the coffin of whoever had killed Pettis and Jasper.
As Rodriguez was lifting the hardened cast from the ground, a silver Lexus SUV arrived, looking badly out of place despite the blue lights flashing through its grille. The driver looked out of place, too — a hawkish, fortysomething guy with a thirty-dollar haircut and a crisp Brooks Brothers shirt, cinched with a yellow silk tie. Heads turned; the crime-scene techs and even several of the agents stared with a mixture of curiosity and disdain at his fanciness, but Vickery smiled slightly. “The shit storm just escalated,” he said. He headed for the Lexus, shook hands with the new arrival, and after conferring briefly, brought him over to me. “Clay Riordan, chief deputy state attorney,” the man said.
“Bill Brockton. Pleased to meet you.”
“Agent Vickery speaks highly of you.”
“That’s kind of him.”
“Let me see if I’ve understood Agent Vickery correctly, Dr. Brockton. He says you don’t think the two skulls that the victim’s dog brought home came from the burial ground at the North Florida Boys’ Reformatory.”
“No, I don’t think they did. I know this is Florida, and things grow fast down here, but the vegetation at that cemetery looked like it hadn’t been disturbed in years. I just don’t see any way the dog got those skulls from that burial ground.”
“So where did he get them?”
I shrugged, and Vickery said, “That’s what we were hoping to learn from the GPS collar we put on the dog.” Riordan nodded, then excused himself to take a look inside.
Another unmarked car appeared, but this one didn’t stop at the house; instead, it continued farther down Pettis’s dead-end road. Thirty minutes later the car returned and stopped, and a pale young man with short, dark hair and wire-rim glasses got out. He held out a hand to me. “You must be Dr. Brockton, the anthropologist.” I nodded. “I’m Nathaniel James — Nat — from the Forensic Computing Section. Nice to meet you.”
“You, too, Nat. I’m a little surprised to see you out here. I wouldn’t have pegged Mr. Pettis as particularly wired.”
“No, he wasn’t what I’d call wired,” said Nat. “But we are. I just retrieved the GPS receiver and the flash drive I set up in the fire tower. We don’t have the collar that was on the dog, but I’m pretty sure we do have the data it transmitted.”
If he was right, would that mean we’d find the source of the bones? And would it mean that Pettis and the dog had not died in vain?
* * *
Darkness had fallen by the time we left the cabin and headed back toward the lavish comforts of the Twilight Motor Court and the Waffle Iron diner. Angie and Whitney had bagged Pettis’s body, and it was loaded onto a panel-truck van from a local funeral home, which would transport it to the small hospital where Dr. Bradford would autopsy the body. After much arguing and a series of phone calls, the dog’s body had been added to the van, for delivery to a McNary animal hospital. I had hoped that Jasper would be buried beside Pettis, but I suspected that he’d be unceremoniously dumped in a ditch somewhere beside Highway 90.
The forensic techs had finished their work in the house, but Vickery had asked the sheriff’s office not to release the scene until after we’d seen what Nat James was able to learn from the GPS data captured by the receiver and stored on the flash drive. Deputy Sutton’s penance — for he continued to feel guilty about failing to prevent Pettis’s death, and possibly even contributing to it — was to keep vigil at the property until we returned the next day.
As Angie and I bumped along the dirt road back to the highway, her phone rang. She glanced at the display. “Oh my God,” she said, “it’s Maddox, from the GBI.” She flipped open the phone. “Mr. Maddox, it’s good to hear from you. Did you get my messages?… I understand. It’s been busy down this way, too… So how’s the investigation going?… Well, have y’all questioned Don?… Okay, that’s a good start. Have you charged him?” Angie was silent, and as far as I could tell, Maddox was silent, too. Finally she said, “Mr. Maddox? Did I lose you?” She took her foot off the gas, and the Suburban slowed to an idle. “I don’t understand, Mr. Maddox.” She put the transmission in park, and the Suburban lurched and slithered to a stop. “You mean not yet, right? You mean you aren’t charging him yet. But you will, won’t you?” Panic and despair were rising in her voice, and as they did, I felt sorrow welling up in me. “But why? Why not? He killed her, Mr. Maddox. That man put a shotgun in my sister’s mouth and blew her head off. You know that. You saw her body. You saw the trajectory. You saw that she didn’t do that to herself, Mr. Maddox.” Pleading now. “But you saw it. You saw it, you saw it, you saw it.” She was choking on the words now; they came out as a guttural, ragged whisper that I suspected was not even audible at the other end of the line. “You saw it.” I heard a beep as she disconnected the call and let the phone fall beside her. She turned and stared at me, hollow-eyed in the dim light from the instrument panel. “He says he doesn’t think they’ll charge him. So far they don’t have enough evidence to make a case. They’re sending Kate’s body back to be reburied.”
I stared at her, feeling helpless. “I’m sorry, Angie. So very sorry.” I struggled to find some words of comfort. “Maybe it’s not over yet. Maybe they’ll reconsider. Maybe we can come up with something else.”
“What else? There is nothing else. It’s done.” She shook her head. “She’s like one of those dead boys whose graves we just saw. Nobody gives a damn.”
“You give a damn,” I reminded her.
“A lot of good that’s done her. I’ve let her down. And it’s killing me.”
“Don’t let it. Don’t give up — on her or on yourself. That would be letting her down.”
She drew a deep, shuddering breath, put the Suburban in gear, and drove us to the Twilight in sad silence. Vickery’s car was parked outside his bungalow, and a light showed through the threadbare curtains. “I don’t feel like going to dinner,” Angie said. “You and Stu go on without me.” I started to protest, but she waved me off. “Really. I’m exhausted,” she said as we got out. “I’d be lousy company, and I can’t eat. I just want to sleep.”
“You sure you’ll be okay?” She nodded. “I’m sorry,” I said again, acutely conscious of the inadequacy of the words. “Sleep well. I’ll see you in the morning.” She headed for her door, and lifted a weary hand by way of a good-night.
I showered as quickly as the anemic water pressure would allow, then headed for Vickery’s bungalow. Angie’s light was still on, so I decided to check on her before collecting Vickery. I tapped lightly on her door. She didn’t answer, an
d I realized that her air conditioner was even noisier than mine, so I knocked again, harder this time. The door was unlatched, apparently; it swung open from the force of the knock, and as it did, my blood froze.
Angie St. Claire was lying on her bed. In her mouth was the muzzle of a shotgun.
Chapter 18
“Angie, don’t,” I shouted from the doorway.
She jerked convulsively, wild-eyed, and the shotgun fell from her hands and tumbled to the floor. Instinctively I ducked and covered my head with my arms, but there was no blast from the gun. The only blast was a piercing shriek from Angie.
“Son of a bitch,” she yelled, scrambling to a sitting position against the headboard as I dove for the gun. “You scared the living shit out of me.” She pounded the mattress a few times with her fist. “Thank God that thing’s not loaded. You’d be picking my brains off the floor for sure.” She took a deep breath and whooshed it out, then took in another and let it out more slowly. “Wow,” she said, and then she looked at me and laughed — actually laughed. I was still kneeling on the floor, clutching the gun and staring at her, as confused as I’d ever been in my life. “Bless your heart, how awful,” she said. “You must have thought I was about to pull the trigger.”
“Well, yeah. Weren’t you?”
“No. I’m not suicidal. I’m just… obsessed, I guess. Still trying to figure this thing out. Still trying to understand how in the world my sister ended up with a Mossberg twelve-gauge in her mouth.”
“I thought we already figured that part out.” I got to my feet, my heart still pounding, and took a few deep breaths of my own. “Learn anything new?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Always make sure the door’s locked when you’re doing something questionable in a low-rent motel.”
I tried to smile, but it felt more like a grimace. I laid the gun on the bed, after making sure the safety was on.