Cut to the Bone (Body Farm 8)

“He knew the roads. I could tell by the way he was driving. He knows his way around out here. Maybe he lives out here somewhere.”

“Could be,” Kittredge said. “I’ll check with the gas stations and quick-stops around here, see if anybody knows the car. You said it’s a Mustang, kinda old?”

“A ’67,” she said. “Third year of production.”

“He told you that?”

“Didn’t have to. I knew it.” He glanced a question at her. “I had one, once upon a time,” she said. “A long damn time ago.” Her words—“a long damn time ago”—were an echo of his. Is she making fun of me? he wondered. Couldn’t blame her. But maybe she’s deciding to trust me. “They widened the radiator grille on the ’67,” she went on. “That’s how you can tell it from the ’65 and the ’66. Made those fake air scoops on the sides bigger, too.” She took a long breath; blew it out. “It wasn’t really mine. It was my stepfather’s. I stole it when I ran away from home.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen.”

“Fourteen? Jesus. You must’ve wanted to get away from home mighty bad. How come?”

“Take a wild guess, Detective.” He winced, cursing himself for his stupidity, but didn’t say anything; didn’t want to risk interrupting her story again. “My mama worked nights,” she said. “He started in on my sister first. She was two years older than me, and she protected me. Took the bullet, so to speak. At the time, I didn’t realize what a sacrifice that was. ‘Greater love,’ and all that. But after a while she couldn’t take it anymore. She ran away at fifteen; tried to talk me into going with her. I should’ve. Would’ve, if I’d known what it would be like once she was gone. Once I was home alone with him.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Took some guts to steal his car. How far’d you get?”

“Not far.” She laughed, surprising Kittredge. “I wrapped that car around a telephone pole about five miles down the road. Wasn’t far, but it was far enough — I knew I couldn’t go back. Not after what I did to his precious Mustang. That damn car was the only thing he loved in this world, far as I could see.” Kittredge nodded. “I crawled out through the busted windshield — neither door would open — and looked at what I’d done. The radiator was spewing steam; the gas tank was dripping gas. I had a pack of matches in my pocket, and I struck a match and threw it under the car—whoomph—and walked away. Just kept going. I burnt my bridges but good that day.”

“I guess you showed him,” Kittredge said, and she laughed again.

“I guess so; don’t know, though. I hitchhiked to Miami, and never saw the bastard again.”

“Why Miami?”

“Why not? Warm all year. Pretty beaches. Men with money.”

“Why’d you come back, then?”

“My mom.” She looked out the window before turning back to him. “She got sick while I was in Miami. Ovarian cancer, fast and mean. By the time they tracked me down, she was just about dead. My asshole stepfather was long gone, of course — he split soon as she got sick. ”

They passed beneath I-40, where a pair of long concrete bridges spanned the Holston River and the road they were on. Just after they emerged from the underpass, they turned left. The small green street sign — CAHABA LANE — was dwarfed by a big white sign that announced SUNNYVIEW BAPTIST CHURCH and pointed down the road. “This look right?” She nodded grimly. “And you think you can find the spot in the woods where he took you?”

“Be hard to miss, won’t it? The spot with a pile of my clothes laying there. Can y’all get fingerprints off of fabric?”

“We’ll ask the crime-lab guys. If your stuff’s still there. Don’t you think he might’ve taken it, though?”

“What, a souvenir? To remind him of our special first date?”

“Some guys do. The really creepy ones. But I was just thinking he might’ve taken it to cover his tracks.”

She shook her head. “Not unless he came back for it later. That dude was haulin’ ass out of the woods, same as me. Chasin’ me, at first. Gaining fast. But then those truckers stopped to help, and he jumped in his car and got the hell out of Dodge.”

He eased the car to a stop at the end of the lane, the tires crunching shards of broken bottles. Overhead loomed a faded COMFORT INN billboard, supported by rusting I beams, their bases like trash magnets, fringed with coffee cups, beer cans, and other debris. Kittredge narrowly missed stepping on a used condom that lay crumpled on the ground. Nice, he thought. Her door swung open before he got there to open it for her. She stepped out, glancing down at the condom, an expression of weary disgust on her face.

As they started up the narrow path that led through the posts and up the wooded slope, Kittredge felt a chill. He touched the holster on his belt, making sure his weapon was still there.

CHAPTER 25

Janelle

Walking up the wooded slope, Janelle felt almost like two people; two Janelles. A TV ad from her childhood started playing in her mind—“It’s two, two, two mints in one!”—and it wouldn’t stop. Two Janelles in one!

Janelle Number One was scared shitless, remembering the feel of the path under her feet, remembering the pain of the bent wrist and the twisted arm; remembering the humiliation of what he’d made her do after that.

Janelle Number Two, though, was mad as hell. Was something else, too. Brave? Strong? Those weren’t words she felt entitled to use — not about herself, anyhow. But whatever the feeling was, she recognized and welcomed it; it was the same feeling she’d had the afternoon she’d run off in her stepfather’s Mustang, the same feeling she’d had when she’d tossed the match beneath the car, when she’d decided to keep going instead of slinking back home, tail between her legs, to shut up and lie down and just take it, the way her life and her sack-of-shit stepdaddy had tried to teach her to do.

It helped that the cop, Kittredge, was treating her like an actual human being, not like some piece of shit that deserved whatever was done to her. Helped, too, that he was nervous out here, same as her — not that he said anything, but she saw him reach back and touch his gun when he thought she wasn’t looking. See, she told herself, you’re not so pathetic. Big badass cop with a gun, and he’s scared, too.

She was walking in front, the way she had a few hours before. She found the view disorienting, so she bent down, looked down, the way she had earlier in the day, when her arm had been twisted behind her. Looking down helped her remember. She felt the trail level off briefly — that felt right — then turn upward again. A memory floated slowly up toward the surface of her consciousness, like a bubble in hot pancake batter on a griddle; just as the memory bubble popped and her eyes and her mouth were opening, she stumbled — again — on a fat root that snaked across the trail.

“Careful,” said Kittredge from behind her.

“There,” she said, pointing down. “I tripped on that same root before. Right after that, we went thataway.” She turned to her left and struck out sideways, across the slope, her head up now, her gaze ranging far and wide.

“You sure?”

Instead of answering, she stopped and gasped, raising both hands in front of her, as if to ward off something; as if to ward off the ghost of Janelle Number Three. A hundred yards ahead of them — fifty yards beyond the clothing Janelle had scattered on the ground a few hours before — lay a dead woman. She was sprawled faceup, but much of her face was gone, and her legs — splayed on either side of a tree — had no feet.

CHAPTER 26

Brockton

Det. Kittredge, I scrawled on the notepad beside the telephone, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising as Detective Kittredge described the death scene where he was standing.

“Excuse me,” I said, interrupting him. “The tree — it’s a sapling, isn’t it.” I was telling him, not asking him. “Three, four inches thick. Her crotch is pressed right up against the trunk.”

A silence, then: “What makes you think that?”

“What