The Angel Maker

by Ridley Pearson

  “I can’t,” he cautioned.

  What started as another of those laughs gave way to him and ended with the sharp sounding of satisfaction, loud and honest. Honest as anything she ever said to him. Honest in a way he lived to hear.

  For a long time her head hung limp, her chest rose and fell toward recovery. With some effort she managed to look up, holding onto him so he wouldn’t move. Wouldn’t leave her. Her face was a glorious red, her eyes filled with wonder, hope and promise.

  She took him by the hair and pulled him to her. She whispered in a husky voice, “We’ve gotta get a piano.”

  TUESDAY

  February 7

  27

  A homicide. Boldt had been to too many to count, but each was different, each sickened his stomach. It was something you never got used to, and if you did, then it was time to change departments. A human life. So precious when you saw it taken away. So ugly a sight, a murdered human; so different from a mere dead body. The first dead body he had ever seen had been his grandfather’s. He wasn’t supposed to see it. He had been told not to go upstairs, but he had sneaked up while his father poured his mother a drink from his grandfather’s bar. Dead on the bathroom floor, his pajamas down around his knees. Eyes open and squinting. Little Lou Boldt had dared to touch him, and when he did, the man’s entire body jumped as if he were hooked up to electricity. Boldt had run from that room blindly, screaming, “He’s alive! He’s alive!” Dead bodies still terrified him.

  He had to park out on the asphalt. They had taped off the sandy road hoping the Professor’s boys might lift some tire or shoe impressions. But with this rain, it was unlikely. Things washed away pretty quickly. Boldt crossed a spongy fairway. A weird place for a homicide, a golf course. The guys hadn’t touched the body. They were still doing photographs when Boldt reached them. The back of the station wagon was open. Connie Chi was wearing relatively new shoes by the look of the soles. Her underwear had snagged on the right shoe. Both ankles were tied to opposite ends of an umbrella, spreading her legs.

  Sadness washed through him, replaced a few seconds later by an intense and unforgiving anger.

  “Sexual assault for sure,” the Professor’s sidekick told him—Boldt had forgotten the man’s name, “though Dixie will have to confirm it.”

  “Where is Dixie?” Boldt asked.

  “On his way. Be here any minute.”

  Boldt looked in at her. Naked from the waist down. Hands tied with plastic grocery bags, spreading her arms open like Jesus on the cross. Tied to the back seat door handles. He glanced just once at the head. A car flare was thrust deeply into her mouth, sticking out like a cigar. The phosphorous had burned a white hole through her throat. No blood at all. Just an ugly two-inch hole.

  The other guy said, “Doing her Groucho imitation.” Trying to be funny. There was always a tendency toward humor around crime scenes.

  Boldt got away from there quickly, over to the bushes in case he puked. He’d been away for two years—his stomach had forgotten about this. Fifteen years earlier he would have been embarrassed to puke; now, he wished he would, just to make himself feel better.

  He wanted to think that some monster had done this to her all by himself. But the inescapable feeling was that he, too, was responsible. He and his crew had blown the surveillance. He and his crew had made their interest in Connie Chi apparent. They had marked her.

  “Over here,” one of the Professor’s boys hollered. Boldt and some others joined him. At the end of the man’s Bic pen was a spent condom and a blue wrapper. Looked pretty fresh. One of the others said, “A place like this, the bushes are probably full of one-finger gloves. You want it, Sarge?” he asked Boldt, inquiring if it should be collected and marked as evidence.

  “I want everything,” Boldt replied in a voice that cracked. I want her back alive, he felt like saying. I want a second chance at that gas station surveillance. He could picture himself running alongside the van, his hand on the door handle—he could feel it. He could see that finger lock the door before he got it open. He could see the van pull away into traffic. “We’re looking for animal hairs—white animal hairs. Carpet fibers. Fingerprints.”

  “Prints are out. The vehicle is wiped clean,” one of the technicians called out.

  In an authoritative voice that rang with anger Boldt ordered, “Don’t forget to check under the back seat. He may have folded the back seat down at some point. He may not have remembered to wipe it down.” Had this guy thought of everything? “And get someone from Sexual Assaults down here. I want the rape angle treated just as carefully as if she had survived. This is a hell of a lot more than …” He caught himself. The entire group of maybe ten guys, including the uniforms, were looking at him. Staring at him. Only then did he realize he was crying. Crying buckets.

  Only then did he wish he had never come back at all.

  28

  Donnie Maybeck entered the First Avenue storefront that advertised “Peep Show $1.” Inside, behind a black velvet curtain, a row of well-used nickelodeons showed endless-loop adult videos. Loners, who smelled bad and couldn’t keep their hands from shaking, pressed their faces to the viewing lens, squinting. Donnie thought that if someone had been running a camera in the back of his van when he had knocked those runaways or when he’d jumped Connie that he’d be a porno star by now. Donnie Does Debbie. Live Healthy: Eat A Vegetable. He could see the titles now. Worthless dirt bags, these guys. They should all be zoomed.

  The one behind the counter was called Bogs. He had a tattoo of a skull on his left cheek, and he chewed gum so fast he sounded like a dog eating. Bogs knew everything and everyone. When the word had reached Donnie that Bogs wanted to buzz, Donnie had made tracks to the shop.

  Donnie said, “Hey,” because that was how Bogs said hello. You had to know these things.

  Bogs said, “Hey,” though his mouth never stopped chewing. “I hear you got a C-note for me.”

  “The laptop?” Donnie shouted it. He couldn’t control himself.

  “What the fuck do you think?” The man winked slowly at him. His right eyelid was tattooed with the word “Fuck.” When he winked his left eye, Donnie read “You.” He repeated the sequence proudly—FUCK YOU—just in case Donnie had missed it. Donnie could see this guy doing this into a mirror, reading the words backwards, smiling, chewing his gum. Probably chewed gum in his sleep.

  “You got the scratch?” he asked Donnie.

  Donnie dug into his pocket and withdrew Tegg’s money. He hated to see it go.

  Bogs said, “I ain’t promising you it’s yours, you know. I got no way to know if it’s yours.”

  Donnie realized he should have split the reward into two payments. He hated it when he did stupid things like that. He said, “If it’s not mine, I’m coming back for the scratch.”

  “A Toshiba, right?”

  Donnie answered this with a nod.

  “Young kid, dark hair?”

  Another nod.

  “It’s yours.” Bogs pocketed the money. “North side of Pine between First and Second, just up from the market. You know the place?”

  “I’ll find it.”

  “You’re never going to get it without the stub. You know the way it works. But that’s your problem.”

  “You got a name for me? Someone I could grease?”

  “Grease someone at a hock shop? What kind of dumb shit are you?”

  Donnie was sick of taking insults from everyone. “Up yours!” he said, losing his temper. “I’ll get it back.”

  Bogs shook his head at him. That really pissed Donnie off. “You’ll see,” Donnie said childishly.

  Bogs offered only the same winking of the eyes, that same message flashing back from his darkened eye sockets: Fuck … you.

  29

  Boldt was folding laundry when the car pulled up out front. The image of Connie Chi’s murdered body still lingered in his mind’s eye. Liz was on the couch reading a novel. Miles had fallen asleep in the Jonny Jump-Up, effectiv
ely guarding the way into the kitchen and preventing anyone from attempting to clean up. Scott Hamilton played sensuous sax from the stereo. Boldt knew every note, every nuance. But tonight it all seemed so trivial. In his mind lingered another image as well: Sharon Shaffer, her chest cut open, her heart removed. Were they too late to stop it?

  The plates on the van had turned out to be stolen. No real surprise to Boldt but still a disappointment. They had alerted area pawn shops to notify them of any hocked laptop computers. It was pretty much wait-and-see at the moment. It was frustrating as hell.

  “That’s a brown and a black—just in case you care,” Liz said, pointing out the socks Boldt was in the process of rolling together. She was like that: She could split her attention among several things at once. Not Boldt—he tended toward obsessive. His mind, his emotions locked on and wouldn’t let go. Despite the present activity of his hands, his attention was not on the socks. He was on autopilot, stuck with the rookie cop dilemma of reliving his mistakes. He broke the pair apart, said “Thanks,” and started again. She cared—that was the point—about the socks, about him. She looked after him, and he was thankful for it. She didn’t nag, she observed. She didn’t force herself on him. She reminded him to shave when he forgot. She threw his shirts into the wash—even though he did the wash. Right now she was probably worried sick about his skipping dinner.

  They had a visitor.

  Boldt heard the feet trodding up the wooden steps of the front porch and announced, “It’s Dixie,” before the man even knocked. “I’ll get it.”

  “You amaze me,” she said. Boldt stopped at the door. He felt tempted to turn the lock rather than the door knob, tempted to crawl up her skirt and make some trouble, or another baby.

  “He’s going to want me to go with him somewhere,” Boldt informed her when he saw the glare of the headlights and realized Dixie had left the car running. He opened the door. “Be with you in a second,” he told Dixon before the man could utter a word.

  Dixon managed to ask, “But how—?”

  “He’s psychic,” Liz interrupted, helping Boldt to locate his gun and jacket. She asked Dixon, “How long will you be?”

  “A couple hours maybe,” the befuddled man replied.

  She asked Boldt if he had his keys because she would be asleep by eleven. She hated the way police-work robbed them of their private time. Tuesday was his night to put Miles down. Now she would have that chore as well. She whispered into his ear, “Wake me,” following it with a quick dart of the tongue. Boldt returned a kiss and heard the door close and lock behind them as he and Dixie descended the steps.

  “What’s up?” Boldt asked across the roof of the car, after reaching the passenger door.

  “They’ve found the remains,” Dixon told him. “Water level in the river is high, and rising. We excavate tonight, or we lose it. Monty’s on his way—our forensic archaeologist—and I’ve asked an entomologist from the U-Dub to join us as well. We would rather do this by daylight, of course, but not if we risk losing the remains by waiting.”

  Boldt’s depression vanished instantly, replaced by an elevated pulse and a tingling sense of curiosity. A dozen questions crowded his brain once again: When had the body been buried? Exactly what was the cause of death? What could it tell them about the harvester? Was this his first kill? They needed the rest of the remains and the identity of the victim before they could answer any of these questions.

  “You’re certainly talkative,” Dixon said, a few minutes into the ride. Another fifteen minutes later they were away from the lights and the traffic, the density of the darkness increasing around them. It rained lightly for a few minutes. Boldt felt hypnotized by the motion of the wipers. Dixon asked Boldt to pour him a cup of coffee from his thermos, knowing better than to offer any to Boldt.

  “The blood toxicology workup on Chapman came in today,” Dixon baited his friend.

  “Am I interested?”

  “Ever heard of a drug called Ketamine?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “You’re about to.”

  “Good.”

  “It’s a drug used by veterinarians.”

  For a moment, Boldt actually thought his heart had stopped. “Animal hairs,” he said, recalling that a variety of such hairs had been found on both Chapman’s clothing and Sharon Shaffer’s furniture.

  “What?” asked Dixon.

  Boldt recalled Dr. Light Horse’s comments about the closure appearing unusual. A veterinarian—when you looked at the evidence, it suddenly seemed so obvious. The road ahead of the car was clear, but there was plenty of traffic in his head to make up for it. “Talk to me.”

  “You ever watch 60 Minutes?” Dixon asked.

  “You know better than that.” Boldt hadn’t owned a television since Walter Cronkite went off the air.

  “It’s a drug used in surgery by vets. It paralyzes the patient from the neck down. The dog, cat, whatever, remains semi-awake—that is, doesn’t require ventilation or other life support during surgery—but can’t feel or move. It’s often used in conjunction with gas. It’s a very serious drug to use on adult humans because of its psychological effects. Oddly enough, some pediatricians are now using it on children. 60 Minutes did a thing on a guy who evaporated Ketamine down to a powder, slipped it into the drinks of women he met in bars, and then took them to motels and raped them.”

  “I read about it,” Boldt said. “I remember the case.”

  “Well, apparently you’re not the only one. The interesting thing about Ketamine, especially in large doses, is its devastating effect on short-term memory. None of the rapist’s victims ever remembered what happened to them. And I mean, they remembered nothing. It was only because one of them escaped before the drug fully took effect that he was ever caught. He was lucky he didn’t kill someone. In large doses it’s lethal: convulsion, asphyxiation, death.”

  “A vet?”

  “He’s using a knockout intravenous dosage of Ketamine combined with Valium. Throw in a dash of electroshock for good measure and there’s no one—no one—who’s ever going to identify him.” Dixon turned off the darkened road onto a muddy dirt road and slowed down to where the rear end of the vehicle wouldn’t fishtail.

  “A vet?” Boldt was stunned. Suddenly he was having to rethink his line of investigation—it was like starting all over. He couldn’t manage any other words.

  “There’s more. Once I discovered the Ketamine in the workup, I knew what to look for. I told you we saved some tissue samples from the ones we lost to hemorrhaging.”

  “Daffy told me.”

  “We save those things for a reason. Reasons like this.” The car was acting squirrely, having a hard time with traction. More than once Boldt was tempted to reach over and grab the wheel, but Dixon did a good, albeit disturbing, job of talking while driving. “Vicryl had been used in two of the three cases. It’s a woven suture made by a company called Ethicon—it’s used internally for closures. But the Vicryl used in both Peter Blumenthal and Glenda Sherman was a number two. That’s huge, way too big for human use. Horses, cows—gorillas, maybe; not humans. The point being that oversized woven suture will loosen up on you. Your knots fail. In the case of a kidney, let’s say you’ve tied off an artery with it. It comes loose and you have forty-five percent of the body’s blood flow pouring into the back side of your intestines. You’re dead real fast. Real fast. Like walking down the street and keeling over, which is how Sherman was found by 911. Do I have your interest yet?”

  There was a red flare burning like a Roman candle on the left side of the road up ahead. Dixon slowed and turned at the flare, following a good number of rutted tire tracks. They wouldn’t be the first on the scene.

  “A vet?” Boldt repeated. “May I use your phone?” he asked, taking the car phone from the cradle before Dixie consented. It took him three calls to find Daphne. She was staying at Sharon’s, looking after Agnes Rutherford in Sharon’s absence.

  “How do you feel about un
paid overtime?” he asked rhetorically, not waiting for her answer. “It’s not a surgeon, it’s a veterinarian. Dixie has the proof. Roust LaMoia. Make a list, just like the AMA list. All the local vets capable of this. Think of ways to narrow it down. Find out about the distribution of a drug called …” He looked at Dixie.

  “Ketamine.”

  Boldt repeated it. He added, “We’re closing in, Daffy. Search and Rescue found the bones.”

  “I’ll find LaMoia. We’ll be at the office.”

  “And I want a psych profile, ASAP,” Boldt reminded, though the phone had gone dead. “Out of range,” Boldt said. He hung up.

  “There’s more,” Dixie announced proudly. “The Ethilon—a suture used for the subcutaneous closure—followed what we call a continuous interlocking stitch. I’m talking about Chapman now, about those photos you took to Dr. Light Horse. I got your memo. She’s right about the technique used on the closures. And it all fits with a vet, incidentally: They use the interlocking because of its strength. The giveaway is the subcutaneous stitch, the continuous interlocking stitch. It is always done right to left by right-handers and left-to-right by left-handers. This one was left-to-right.”

  “A leftie?” Boldt asked excitedly. “That certainly narrows the field, although whether a person is right- or left-handed is not the kind of thing we have access to.” He realized that it would require a hell of a lot of manpower to chase down a lead like that.

  “I thought that would interest you.”

  Boldt nodded but was thinking how difficult it would be to verify or investigate. And if they sent out detectives asking questions, they would only serve to tip off the harvester, to give him time to clean house and shut down shop. They needed the cart before the ox: They needed the pair of snipping shears that Dixie believed connected at least two of the victims. They needed a witness. Even a dead one.