Bone Deep jb-5

by David Wiltse

  "Maybe he didn't know we'd be here so soon. Maybe it happened last night and he didn't know what kind of mess he left behind. I don't think he even knew we were coming here this morning, Metzger didn't say what it was on the radio. But he tries to obstruct me every step I take. I have the strongest sense he wants to keep me out of it. And you.

  He particularly wants to keep you out of it."

  "And just what do you think it is? Are you still after him for the Johnny Appleseed business?"

  "Well… yes."

  "All I see so far is a stolen car and some blood. Maybe somebody cut himself, maybe he had a bloody nose."

  "Maybe. Maybe it's all my imagination because I dislike the guy so much. But I'm not imagining that he knows about Mrs. Leigh. He's even singing it."

  Becker chuckled.:'That's not funny either." 'Sorry. I guess it depends how far removed you are from it whether or not you see the humor. It does look kind of silly, at your age."

  "Don't preach to me. Not you, of all people. Just because you're happy now."

  "Are you that unhappy, Tee?" Becker asked softly.

  "No." Tee shook his head. "No, that's the crazy thing.

  I'm not unhappy."

  "So, quit it. You wanted something different, you wanted to get laid and now you have. Enough already. Stop seeing her and how can McNeil hurt you?" Tee leaned his back against a tree trunk, arched his neck so that his face pointed toward the sky.

  "I can't," he said mournfully.

  "Why can't you?"

  "I don't think I can stop seeing her. I need her."

  "Is she that dependent on you?"

  "No, no, you don't understand. I don't think she has any particular use for me. I'm just a diversion from a shitty marriage to an irresponsible jerk. I don't think she'd care if I never showed up again. Maybe not even notice."

  Becker was silent for a moment, watching his friend's torture. When he spoke it was with compassion.

  "Then why, Tee?" Tee stared a moment longer at the patchy blue showing through the leaf canopy. At first Becker thought he would not answer.

  "I want to be in love with somebody," he said, his voice thick. "I need to be in love with somebody. I need to feel all that again."

  "Yeah," Becker said, inaudibly.

  "I don't expect you to understand," Tee said, still not looking at his friend. "Most men would think I'm crazy."

  "I understand, Tee. I am in love."

  "I know. Now. But what happens when you're not?" he asked, with a finality that suggested that the death of love was inevitable.

  Becker could think only of platitudes and rejected them all, not wanting to insult his friend's pain with the easy thoughtlessness of a clichd.

  After an uneasy silence, Metzger arrived with the dog.

  "Well, shit," said Tee, coming to himself as he heard the car pull up the incline and stop by the treeline. "Let's be cops. With Metzger struggling to restrain the dog on a short leash, the men tracked Kiwasee's bloody trek to the water. McNeil, released from the car without explanation by Tee, followed them sullenly. Some signs of the struggle in the water remained in the prints and gouges on the bank, but it was the dog that led them to the island. And the grave.

  When they uncovered Kiwasee's face, Tee gasped in recognition.

  "You know him?" Becker asked.

  "I think so. It's kind of hard to tell with the shape he's in. Looks like someone worked him over with an ax handle. That's Kiwasee, isn't it, McNeil?"

  "Why you asking me?"

  "For a fucking second opinion. Isn't that Tyrone Kiwasee? You brought him from Bridgeport."

  "You're the one sat with him face-to-face for an hour. I _just had him in the back of the cruiser. I wasn't studying him. It could be Kiwasee. Or not."

  "What would Kiwasee be doing here? Is he stupid enough to come back to Clamden and burgle some more?" Becker asked.

  "Old Skids is pretty stupid. If that's him," McNeil said.

  "Pretty unlucky, too," Becker said.

  "How so? Other than being dead."

  "He ran into somebody in these woods in the middle of the night who decided to kill him. That's pretty unlucky."

  "How do you figure?" McNeil asked. "He was probably killed in Bridgeport and driven here by one of his buddies."

  "If he was killed in Bridgeport, why did he start bleeding fifty yards away from here? Not only did he run into this guy, but one of them had a shovel with him."

  "Why a shovel, why not a tree limb, an ax handle? A tire iron? You could beat a man like this with just about anything."

  "Because it's hard to dig a hole this big with a tree limb or a tire iron. "

  Becker and the others gently extricated Kiwasee's body from the grave and Becker felt through the dead man's pockets with one finger. When he found the car keys, he fished them out with his own keys. Behind the stolen car, Becker turned his pocket inside out and used the cloth to grasp the key as he tried it in the trunk. When the trunk opened, the dog went crazy. Metzger had to pull it away forcibly from the plastic trash bag that lay next to a flashlight and a muddy shovel flecked with blood.

  Metzger locked the dog in his car while they opened the trash bag, and they could hear it going wild, trying to claw through the window.

  15

  Becker resorted to chicken breasts for dinner, a quick and handy solution when pressed for time. He pounded them thin, coated them in flour, dipped them in egg white-he had dispensed with whole eggs several years ago-and then in bread crumbs. With the addition of lemon juice or olives or tomatoes or capers he could create a number of different dishes, all of them acceptable to Jack, the true test of Becker's culinary efforts.

  He had worked later than usual, helping with the minute examination of the car and woods where the bodies were found, and Karen had taken Jack shopping for new sneakers as soon as she arrived from New York. They came in as Becker was wilting greens on which to place the saut6ed chicken breasts. With the addition of rice, which Jack could eat by the bowlful, it made a decent meal, quick, attractive, and most important, devoured.

  "We avoided the ones with flashing lights," Karen said, brandishing a sneaker box. "But just barely. We got the ones you can inject with helium, instead."

  "so now you're able to leap tall buildings, Jack?"

  "I don't know until she lets me try them on," Jack said, making an unsuccessful grab for the box. Karen lifted it out of his reach.

  "ItIsjust that they're so expensive," Karen said. "I don't think they're actually intended to be worn."

  "Drinks," Becker said, and pointed Jack to his chore of filling his own glass with milk, putting wineglasses at the places of the adults. "When I was a boy, we couldn't afford fancy sneakers. We just tied old rocks to our feet. And happy to have them too."

  "He was a boy before my time," Karen said. "When I was a boy we had advanced to wooden shoes. We saved the rocks for socks."

  "These are the kind Hakeem wears," said Jack. "They're really cool."

  "I demand a fashion show-after dinner," said Becker. As they ate, Karen said, "Anything interesting at work'?"

  "I'll tell you about it," Becker said. By tacit agreement they never discussed work in front of Jack except in the most general terms, but Karen could tell by his tone that he had a great deal to tell her.

  After the meal, with Jack in his room, he told her of the discovery of the two bodies. "What's your take on it?" she asked, when he had given her the straightforward report.

  "Tee thinks McNeil did it. It's close to McNeil's house. The little mutt is obstructive, there's no question about that. He acts stupid or sullen or misleading by turns, but everything he does seems calculated to keep us from getting to an answer. I don't think he is stupid at all. I just don't see him doing it that close to his own backyard."

  "How close is it?"

  "I haven't walked it, but Tee says it's only a quarter of a mile through the woods. I'm going to humor Tee; we're going to check on McNeil's alibi for last night. But I don
't think we'll come up with anything there. McNeil thinks Kiwasee was Johnny Appleseed. He was in Clamden a lot at night, we know that much. We found the body in his car. McNeil's theor,y is that Kiwasee came to bury his latest, ran into someone who killed him and dumped him in the grave that Kiwasee had dug for the girl. Just who that someone was and why he killed Kiwasee he doesn't say."

  "Obviously someone else was in the woods."

  "I think it was Johnny himself. My guess is that Kiwasee was where he was because he was on his way to McNeil's. If it was Kiwasee on the phone giving tips to Tee about McNeil's garage, then we can assume he was after McNeil for some reason. Maybe he and McNeil were in on the burglary business together. A local cop knows who's out of town, who is regularly away on certain days, just the kind of information Kiwasee would need. Maybe they were working it together and McNeil turned on him. I don't know. Anyway, my guess is that Kiwasee was sneaking up on McNeil's house, or just leaving it, and he blundered onto Johnny, who was trying to get rid of the girl's body."

  "Just bad luck?"

  "it makes more sense than either of the other two seenarios."

  "Or than a fourth," Karen said. "That Kiwasee went there deliberately to meet his killer."

  "Meaning that Kiwasee and Johnny were in on the killings of the girls together in some way?"

  "It has happened. There have been serial killers who worked in teams."

  "Twice, that we know of," said Becker. "The cousins in L.A. and Lutz and Ash."

  Karen was silent for a moment. Lutz and Ash had come perilously close to their own lives. Karen had killed them both. Becker put his arm around her for a moment, then stepped away again.

  "So, a falling out among thieves, you think," he said.

  "Not really. It doesn't make much sense. Kiwasee has jumped bail for crimes committed in Clamden. He and his partner drive to the spot in the woods, in two separate cars, presumably-"

  "We have found signs that another car was parked in the woods within walking distance."

  "So they do this just to bury a five-day-old corpse. Together? Then they quarrel, the other one kills Kiwaseemaybe, but it's not very convincing, is it?"

  "Not very. I can see coming back to Clamden for some reason of the blood, love, hate, revenge-even money. But for a burial? Why here? The only reason to do it here is because it's convenient, because you know the territory, because you feel reasonably safe, maybe you know where the police go at night and where they don't…

  "Another plus for Tee's theory that McNeil did it."

  "I know. But you don't drive to Clamden from Bridgeport in a stolen car with a corpse in the trunk just to bury it. And why risk two of you for a burial? In separate cars. I don't see it."

  "Maybe the burial was part of the excitement."

  Becker shook his head. "The excitement is the killing," he said categorically. "The killing and the anticipation. Maybe in Johnny's case there's some pleasure in the dissection as well. But disposing of the body is just an inconvenience.

  "You're sure?"

  Becker sighed wearily. It was the certainty of his knowledge that drained him. Born not of research or years of pursuing serial killers, but of bone-deep understanding. "I'm sure," he said flatly.

  Karen did not argue. There were areas of Becker's expertise where he was not to be questioned. She understood and avoided them when she could, aware of an incipient empathy within herself that she feared to encourage by associating too closely with Becker's own.

  Jack bounded into, the room with his own fanfare. "Ta da!" He leapt high, landed with his arms spread wide, one foot perched on its heel.

  The new sneakers gleamed.

  "What do you think?":'Fantastic," said Becker.

  'You ought to feel them. It's like you can fly."

  "I remember the feeling well. I used to get that feeling with a new pair of Keds."

  "Keds, " Jack said, horrified.

  "That's all we had then, we were deprived." 'I thought you wore rocks."

  "That was for dress-up," said Becker. To Karen, he said, "He looks the very epitome of inner-city youth, doesn't he?"

  "Makes a mother proud. I tried to interest him in a pair of oxblood wing tips, but he was having none of itJack! "

  Jack was rubbing the sole of one sneaker vigorously atop the instep of the other. "I can't go to school with them all shiny," he said, continuing to grind off the sheen.

  "Do you know how much those cost?"

  "You told me often enough."

  "Now your mother will have to arrest someone extra just to pay for those shoes."

  "It's not funny, John. How is he going to learn respect for his belongings."

  "It's called 'distressing,' " said Becker. "If he did it to furniture, you'd think it was very fashionable."

  "He does do it to the furniture. Look at the sofa."

  "Here's where you tactfully withdraw," Becker said to Jack. The boy slipped quickly out of the living room.

  "A boy has to be free to loll around," Becker continued.

  "He can loll on the floor."

  "On the floor it's just rolling, not lolling."

  "I don't care what it is, he's got to learn more responsibility toward property. I know how that sounds, by the way, so don't remind me that I'm turning into my mother… What is it?"

  Becker had disengaged from the conversation abruptly, staring into space.

  "Distressing," he said. "Those marks on the bones of the girls that Johnny killed. The ones we thought might be a signature or a talisman of some kind?"

  "You couldn't figure out how they got on the bone during the dissection."

  "What if Johnny put them there deliberately like distress marks on furniture?"

  "To make the bones look older?"

  "No. Not older. To make his work look clumsier."

  "I don't follow you."

  "It worked-halfway anyway. Kom thought the job was sloppy. But that's when we just showed him the one bone. Grone thought it was very skillfully done, seeing those marks so uniformly applied."

  "Take me through it," Karen said.

  "He cuts the girl into pieces; then, probably as an afterthought, he decides to confuse the issue just in case the bones are ever found-an event he didn't really anticipate-so he takes a couple of swipes at the exposed joint to make it look like sloppy work. We know he had to do it after the job was done, there was no other way to get the marks where they were during the boning process. It's not anything he takes too seriously, he doesn't think it will ever matter, but he's a careful man, a methodical man, so he does it on a couple of more bones. Same way, slash, slash. It looks good enough, he keeps doing it, it becomes part of his pattern and after a while he doesn't even think about it, he just does it with each bone when he's cut it free."

  "Like somebody on an assembly line. A pieceworker if that isn't too horrible to say."

  "Yes, something like that. Debone, slash, slash, toss it aside into the trash bag. He thinks he's making his work look awkward, but he doesn't realize that by doing it all the time, every time, he's creating just the opposite impression. Those are the only marks on the bones. It's never a slip of the knife, it's always the slash in the same place. If you saw just one body, maybe you'd think it was the work of a butcher.

  But if you found all seven bodies..

  "And the new girl?"

  "Grone will have a report for us tomorrow. We might know who she is by then too."

  "Will you ask Stanley to come into the city for a look too? Grone won't mind."

  "Sure he will."

  "Tell him it's my idea."

  "He'll still mind."

  "But he'll have sense enough to keep it to himself. Take Stanley, will you?" Becker groaned. "Do I have to take Tovah, too?"

  "Tovah is not an expert in that kind of bones."

  "What if he wants to have a little heart-to-heart talk again afterwards?"

  "You listened to Tee, didn't you?"

  "Tee was desperate. He's got his neck in a
noose."

  "Stanley's desperate too. You were able to help Tee, weren't you?"

  "Did I give you that impression? I don't think I helped him at all. How can I help hiw.? He wants to be thirty again. He wants to fall in love and rescue women and feel something again. There's no way I can help him with any of that. All I can do is try to keep him under control when it comes to dealing with McNeil, who might well try to blackmail him, and that's all he wants me to do for him. I don't know what the hell Stanley wants from me."

  "He wants some emotional intimacy, if that's not too trite."

  "Do I have to be emotionally intimate with everybody who comes along, whether I like it or not? Do I have some kind of obligation there?"

  "Do you have that many coming along? If so, you're not telling me about it."

  "I'd just like to have something to say about whether I'm on the other end of intimate exchanges or not, that's all. I don't like to have it dumped in my lap like a spilled drink. Stanley's like having a cup of cocoa poured on you, all warm and sweet and sticky."

  "Maybe what Stanley needs is not a male friend," Karen offered. "Maybe he needs a woman."

  "What is the appeal of the guy?"

  "What makes you afraid of him?"

  Becker threw his hands in the air. "I'll take him, I'll take him."

  "You don't have to." Becker laughed and took Karen in his arms. The embrace turned serious and after a few minutes they sat together on the sofa and made love to each other in a gentle, prefatory way, touching through their clothes. Sweetly, teasingly, they drove each other wild with desire until Jack came in to say good night. They looked at him in parental innocence, beaming with smiles.

  Becker rose from bed at t, o a.m., moving silently as he gathered his clothes in his hand and eased toward the bedroom door. Karen lay on her side, facing away from him. She had not moved but he could tell by her breathing that she had awakened. "Be careful," she said, her voice still hoarse with sleep. "Yes. Go back to sleep."

  "You're sure you have to go?" Becker stood for a long moment in the dark, his shirt and pants in his hand. "I have to," he said finally.

  She rolled over to face him. Her face was a pale shape without features in the darkness. "I knew you would tonight," she said.