Cut to the Bone

by Ellison Cooper

  Kate was drifting in a fitful nightmare about zombies when someone hissed that he was coming.

  A shudder rocked her whole body at the sight of Walter shambling across the sand. His movement felt jerky, unpredictable. For the first time, she questioned their plan.

  He had a gun. What if he just pulled it out and shot them all? Were these her last few moments on earth?

  She let herself ride the wave of tension that rolled through the bus as adrenaline flooded her system. It would give her the burst of speed she needed to get away while the rest of the girls brought Walter down.

  As he slid the metal bar from the door, Kate wiped her sweaty hands on her jeans and tried to look as bored as possible. She didn’t want her anticipatory tension to give away their plan.

  Walter stepped up next to Kate who sat alone in the front seat.

  His eyes began to rove as he sought his next victim. The girls all looked down and away just like they’d practiced. They wanted Walter to get to the back of the bus before they attacked. They wanted him to think they were afraid.

  Kate felt like she didn’t take a single breath as he moved slowly down the aisle, head swiveling back and forth. The rotting stench wafted off him in waves and she fought the involuntary gag that welled up her throat.

  He got to the last seat and it felt like time stood still with an impossible moment of absolute silence.

  Then Nell let out her guttural warrior’s shout and Kate exploded from the seat like she’d been shot from a cannon. As she dove for the open door, she couldn’t resist looking back to see what was happening.

  In the shadowy darkness, she caught a glance of the pack of wild-eyed girls, teeth bared, as they descended upon Walter, metal bars falling with bloodthirsty cries of rage.

  By the time she was flying down the stairs, the horrific sounds of the attack filled the chamber. Even though every instinct told her to stay and help fight, she knew this might be the only chance for someone to get away. As the best runner in the group, she had a job to do.

  And so Kate flew over the sand, retracing Walter’s shallow footprints.

  Behind her, the bus rocked under the weight of bodies colliding with heavy thudding impact. The girls’ shrill cries of animal fury echoed through the chamber, punctuated by howls of pain from Walter.

  The sound of his pain brought a fierce smile to Kate’s lips as she raced toward freedom.

  SAYER’S OFFICE, QUANTICO, VA

  Sayer and Ezra stared at the old file box on Sayer’s desk.

  A gritty layer of dust clung to Sayer’s fingers as she lifted the lid. “It’s basically memorabilia the mom kept for her two boys.”

  Ezra pulled out the stack of photos and flipped through them. “Want me to send this to the analysts?”

  “We’ve got a few minutes before the morning task force meeting,” Sayer said. “Let’s take a quick look before we send it their way.”

  The first thing she pulled out was a child’s book. This Is Me the cover read. The first page said, “My name is Miles,” in a rainbow of crayons.

  The next stack was a dozen booklets made of stapled-together construction paper. “These look like old elementary school projects.” She turned over the crude drawing of a boy, yarn glued to the page as hair. At the top of all the booklets, “Miles Windsor” appeared in a child’s blocky handwriting.

  Under the booklets were a series of soccer team photographs that were all of Miles.

  “I’m noticing a theme so far. Miles’s book. Miles’s projects. Miles playing soccer,” Ezra said.

  “Yeah, hang on.” Sayer pulled out a thick green folder tucked along the side of the box. A manila folder stuck to the back. “This says Luke Windsor on the tab.”

  “School records?”

  Sayer flipped through page after page. “Nope, these are medical records. Looks like Luke Windsor was in and out of the doctor’s office an awful lot. Broken finger. Broken shoulder. Broken nose. Says here that he got into a fight at school and had some serious dizziness afterward. Oh, they were worried enough about the dizziness that they did an MRI. Let’s see if Mama Windsor kept a copy.” She hurriedly opened the manila folder and slid out a series of X-rays. At the bottom was a brain scan. “Yes!” Sayer grinned triumphantly.

  She held the MRI up to the light.

  “What do you see?” Ezra asked.

  Sayer didn’t answer for a long moment as she squinted at the scan. “Well,” she eventually answered, “if I wasn’t convinced before, this does it.”

  “Convinced that Luke Windsor is our unsub?” Ezra asked.

  Sayer looked at Ezra with excitement. “Exactly. Because his ventromedial prefrontal cortex looks like Swiss cheese. And his amygdalae are half the size I would expect. This is most certainly the brain of a psychopath.”

  FBI COMMAND CENTER, QUANTICO, VA

  “We’ve got a lot going on.” Sayer stood at the front of the command center. “We’ve got another murder victim, a new theory about what our unsub is up to, a fake FBI agent who attacked one of our people, and a prime suspect. Meet Luke Windsor.”

  The entire task force, more than fifty agents and analysts, stared at the image of Windsor sitting alone on a porch swing. Up on the big screen, he looked even more frightening. His intense stare felt aggressive, dangerous.

  Al Valentine glared at the photo with an equally dangerous look in his eyes.

  “Al, is this the man who attacked you at the museum?” Sayer asked.

  “Yeah, it is.” His voice was tight with anger. “I mean, he looks much worse now. More ragged. But that’s definitely him.”

  “Okay.” Sayer paced as she spoke. “We’re still gathering general background on Windsor, but he’s looking good as our unsub. Before we get into Windsor, let’s review everything else.”

  Ezra brought up the photo of Becky’s body.

  “Rebecca ‘Becky’ Blane was found dead last night on the Mall. Becky was a senior in high school and was supposed to be heading to Virginia Tech in the fall. Her time of death was approximately 8:00 P.M. and she drowned, just like Rowena Chang.” Sayer gestured for Ezra to go on to the photo of Becky’s body. “She was posed at the foot of the Washington Monument with no props, but as you can see here”—Ezra zeroed in on the close-up of Becky’s face—“she did have the same blood smear on her lips and she also had a single line drawn down the center of her face with marker. According to the ME, she was briefly bound at the wrists. Otherwise, Becky was in good health and there was no sign of sexual assault. Which brings us to our possible motive.”

  Sayer lifted a well-worn book to show the room. “Late last night Dr. Al Valentine briefed us on an ancient Egyptian book called the Amduat, which is basically a guidebook for the recently dead.” Sayer looked over at Al. “Correct me if I get something wrong.”

  Al nodded sharply, body still rigid.

  Sayer summarized the Amduat, the twelve chambers of the afterlife, the twelve goddesses, and how they all fit into the murders. “I know this Amduat stuff is pretty esoteric,” she continued, “but it gives us two things. First, this helps us understand our unsub’s psychopathology. Even though we don’t know exactly why he’s trying to re-create the Egyptian afterlife, it gives us a place to start understanding what’s driving him. Second, this gives us a chance to catch the unsub tonight.” Sayer looked around and recognized the hungry look in everyone’s eyes. “He’s deposited both bodies in places that symbolically represent each chamber. According to Dr. Valentine, the third chamber is a watery place, so we need to find watery spots in D.C. with Egyptian or celestial symbolism.”

  Sayer looked at the analysts as she paced. “I don’t care how far-fetched it feels, by six tonight I want a list of possible locations so we can get agents to every single one of them. While some of you work on that, the rest of you should focus on Luke Windsor. Here’s what we know so far.

  “His father was an Egyptologist for the Smithsonian. Windsor was raised partially in Egypt and spent his childhood a
round Egyptian mythology, which would explain how he knows about the Amduat.”

  She stopped pacing in front of the old file box. “Windsor’s sister-in-law gave us some of Windsor’s old records. Based on what his sister-in-law told me, he was a troubled child involved in animal abuse and we all know what that suggests.” Sayer let that sink in. “From what we’ve pieced together, he had major discipline problems in school. He joined the army out of high school and was dishonorably discharged four years later. He’s apparently into drugs and sought help from his brother a few years ago, but was kicked out when he began stealing from the sister-in-law. And there was an old MRI scan that strongly suggests that Luke Windsor is a psychopath.”

  A murmur swept the room. Everyone felt the same current of excitement.

  “Ezra, have we been able to locate him?”

  “No. The last place I’ve been able to find any record of him is up in Baltimore more than a year ago. I’ve got no rental record or utilities in his name. No arrests. Nothing.”

  “Damn,” Sayer muttered. “What about his army record. Did you get a chance to find out why he was discharged?”

  “They haven’t gotten back to me yet, but they did confirm on the phone that it was a dishonorable discharge. So, whatever the reason, it was something serious.”

  Sayer nodded. “All right. Let’s keep digging. Did he have any friends? Army buddies that might be able to help us locate him? Let’s find out everything we can about Windsor’s background and movement.”

  “On it,” Ezra said.

  “So that’s where we are right now. I want our primary focus to be on finding Windsor any way we can because he still has ten girls. But I also don’t want to forget our fake witness and fake FBI agent.”

  Ezra put up photos of the two men.

  “We still need to figure out why these men are interfering with this investigation,” Sayer continued.

  Ezra clicked on the image Sayer took of the footprints outside her window.

  “To add one last thing to keep in mind, on the same day this case began, someone started following me home from work. Last night, someone cased my apartment. I’m not entirely sure these events are connected to our case, but the timing is suspicious so I want us to include them in our conversation.”

  Sayer took a second to stare at the large footprints. Seeing them on the big screen made them seem even starker than they had looked in real life. “Did we get a hit off the DNA or fingerprints lifted off my front door?”

  “No hits, and no match to any of the other DNA associated with this case so far,” Ezra said.

  “All right. I have no clue what, if anything, these three things have to do with our case. I might be willing to buy that the fake bus witness was just some kind of hoaxer. But the fake FBI agent physically assaulted our victim’s advocate, which makes me think he was there for something much more nefarious than some kind of hoax. And both of them had very convincing fake identities, which might mean that they are working together. I have no idea how they tie into someone following me or skulking around my apartment. All evidence we have so far suggests that Windsor is working alone, but maybe these two are accomplices? To sum up, the bad news is that our unsub still has ten girls. The good news is that we finally have multiple leads. So let’s follow them out and bring those girls home.”

  Sayer wrapped up the meeting and made her way slowly down the hall toward her office, thinking as she walked. This case was as sprawling and complex as any she’d worked and she felt adrift. Even though she and Ezra made an amazing team, he wasn’t in the field with her and she had no mentor watching over her shoulder. In fact, Sayer realized that she hadn’t heard a peep from anyone higher up at the FBI since this case began. Obviously Director Anderson was hands-off, but this felt ridiculous. The old assistant director, Janice Holt, would’ve been living up her ass, but Anderson didn’t even seem to want an update, let alone work with Sayer on strategies.

  Shaking her head, Sayer stopped at the analysts’ open office and looked around. Agents were hunched over their desks tracking Windsor, faces pressed to computer screens, fingers clacking away on keyboards. For a moment, Sayer almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of their intense concentration. Once upon a time, tracking down Luke Windsor would’ve meant dozens of agents out pounding the pavement, making calls and visiting his old haunts. But now, almost everything could be done online.

  Sayer hurried to her office and spent a few hours writing reports and helping with the digital manhunt for Luke Windsor. She was just hanging up another fruitless call when she heard shouting in the hallway.

  “Ma’am, please!” a man’s voice called out. “You’re not allowed back here!”

  The door to Sayer’s office slammed open and Becky Blane’s mother stormed in shrieking, “You let her die!” The woman’s red-rimmed eyes rolled with wild fury as she launched herself at Sayer with a banshee scream. The woman clawed at Sayer. “She was all I had!”

  Sayer managed to grab the woman’s arms as she scrabbled at Sayer’s face. A cluster of security guards ran in after her, but Sayer shook her head, telling them not to intervene.

  The woman’s shouts quickly devolved into gibbering cries of anguish.

  Sayer held her arms firmly until she stopped fighting and finally collapsed to the floor, body slack.

  “I’ve got this,” Sayer said, waving everyone out.

  She slid down onto the floor next to Becky’s mom and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I am so, so sorry about Becky,” Sayer said softly.

  “They said you made a big mistake, followed some fake lead.” The woman’s mouth trembled as she spoke. Sayer wondered who the hell had shared sensitive information with this poor woman.

  “While you were chasing the wrong thing, my Becky was being murdered.” Tears fell freely down Ms. Blane’s face. “They showed pictures of her on the news. Dead. Her body … she looked so…” She shuddered a few more times and then looked up at Sayer, eyes raw. “You let her die.”

  Sayer opened and closed her mouth a few times, not entirely sure what to say. What could she possibly say to this woman since she was exactly right; they had wasted time on a false lead.

  The family liaison pushed in through the doorway, breathing hard. “Ms. Blane, I’m afraid you can’t be here. Agent Altair is in the middle of an investigation to find whoever hurt your Becky. Will you please come back downstairs with me? We need to let these agents do their job.”

  “Why? So she can save those other girls while mine is gone?” she spat harshly. Becky’s mom looked away, as if not even willing to look at Sayer again, but she did let Agent Robbins pull her to her feet. Robbins ushered the woman out and mouthed, Sorry, over her shoulder as they left.

  Sayer could hear Robbins murmuring comfort to the woman as they made their way down the hall.

  Once they were gone, Sayer remained on the floor, letting the impact of the woman’s grief wash over her. It crystalized her own emotions into a finely honed anger. She got up, deciding that she didn’t want to sit there any longer. She needed to get out in the field and do something, anything. Phone calls and internet research might work for other investigators, but she needed to go bang on some doors. Maybe wander around Windsor’s old neighborhood to see if she could find someone who remembered him.

  She was pulling on her jacket when a young agent tentatively peeked his head into her office.

  “Agent Altair?” He wrung his hands together as he spoke.

  She looked at him expectantly.

  “Um. I’m working the hotline downstairs. We sent out a call for people to report any encounters with men ranting about ancient Egypt and we got a hit. A psychologist that runs some place called the Hearing Voices Institute says he thinks he might have briefly treated our unsub. He’s willing to talk to you since you’re a fellow doctor.”

  “Did you get a chance to check him out?”

  “He seems legit. Dr. Lilenhammer has degrees from Oxford and the University of London. He
moved here for a position at Harvard in the psychiatry department. He’s won a bunch of academic awards and has a number of very high prestige publications. A few years ago he quit his job at Harvard and opened the Hearing Voices Institute for the Alternative Treatment of Psychosis, which is out in Great Falls, Virginia.”

  Sayer recognized the institute’s name. “Did he say how he met Luke Windsor? Why didn’t you take a full statement when you had him on the phone?”

  “He didn’t say how he knew Luke Windsor. But he did send this to us via email to explain why he thought he might have treated the unsub.” The analyst handed Sayer a photograph. “He wants to talk to you in person. Something about patient confidentiality. He wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  Sayer squinted at the image of an almost childlike drawing. At first it just looked like chaos, but she realized that the central figure was a girl holding an axe. Around her, a circle of nine baboons lifted their arms up toward the sun.

  ROAD TO THE HEARING VOICES INSTITUTE, GREAT FALLS, VA

  Sayer leaned her bike into the narrow driveway toward the Hearing Voices Institute. She glanced back a few times. Someone was following her at a distance, but she didn’t see the old Porsche anywhere.

  No one turned off behind her onto the smooth asphalt that wound among rolling hills toward the Potomac River.

  She let out a harsh breath, trying to release the bands of tension running across her back and down her arms. The late afternoon sun shone through bare oak branches, warming her shoulders, but Sayer couldn’t turn off the internal clock counting down until another girl’s head would be held underwater while her life drained away.

  The road gave way to a flat field on the banks of the river. The two-story pueblo-style institute rose in the distance like something straight from New Mexico. Made of rounded adobe, with arched windows and a dark wood-beam roof, the only concession to the local landscape was a series of spindly dogwood trees planted along the front walkway.

  A small, carved wooden sign announced that Sayer was in the right place.