Cut to the Bone

by Shane Gericke

  “I know,” Emily said. The hateful looks she’d received two years ago from the widows of her murdered colleagues - blaming not the madman, but her, for their misery - still woke her in the little hours. “Anyway, you were saying . . .”

  “Your murder occurred Friday morning. Mine was Saturday night,” Mason said. “Our killer could have driven the 1,500 miles, theoretically, but more likely flew into Phoenix, Vegas, or Albuquerque and picked up a rental-”

  “Whoa, Gene!” Emily said. “What makes you believe we’re dealing with the same killer?”

  The room gabble hushed.

  “Wishful thinking,” Mason said.

  Emily shook her head, and it resumed.

  “I’m reduced to that because I’ve got no evidence,” Mason continued. “Not a fingerprint, shoe scuff, tire track, clothing fiber, or eyewitness. No suspicious cars, no prison breaks, all known dirtbags accounted for.”

  “What about hair?”

  “That we got,” Mason said dryly.

  Duh, she chastised herself. It’s a barbershop! “Are you doing a DNA analysis?”

  “Already shipped to the state lab. But that’ll take months. Besides, it’s clippings.”

  “You need roots to extract DNA,” Emily said.

  “Right,” Mason said, sounding as weary as she felt.

  “I wish I could help you, Gene,” Emily said. “But those matches are coincidence. I know we found them at murder scenes, and both noses were broken, but . . .”

  “It’s just too big a stretch to think our cases are connected,” Mason sighed. “Yeah, I know. But like I said, wishful thinking’s all I have left-”

  “Seattle PD on Line Three,” Marty grunted, pointing at the phone. “Urgent.”

  Emily considering flaming him for interrupting her interview. But that would be horribly unprofessional, and she wouldn’t sink to the level of that awful Alice. “Gene? Can I put you on hold a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  She punched Three as more phones jangled. The room got noisy with grabbing and answering.

  “Emily Thompson,” Emily said, shoving a finger into her other ear.

  “Mimi Sheridan, Seattle homicide. Are you the one who posted to NCIC about burnt matches?”

  Emily managed not to drop the receiver. “Yes. Why?”

  “I worked a case last October. Hit-and-run near Puget Sound, middle of the day. Victim was a twenty-year-old male Caucasian. A cabbie found him in the middle of the street with a piece of broken fender through his abdomen. Kid bled out before he hit the asphalt.”

  “You arrest the driver?”

  “Never found one,” Sheridan said. “It was pitch black from thunderstorms and nobody got a description. Technically a homicide since the driver didn’t stop, but everyone figured accident. Kid with an iPod, no crosswalk, poor visibility, you know how that goes.”

  “Sure do. So why call me?”

  “I found two kitchen matches at the scene. Couldn’t make them fit anything, so I moved on. I’m hoping they mean something to you.”

  Emily scribbled furiously. “I don’t know yet. Where exactly did you find them?”

  “Down his jeans.”

  “Whose jeans? The victim’s?”

  “Yup,” Sheridan said. “One dropped out of his waistband when I rolled him. I searched and found a second, lodged in his pubic hair. Both burnt, like your posting said.” She made a sound like slurping coffee. “That’s why I remember them so well. No man sticks matches down there. Good way to start a fire in a place you don’t want.”

  “Thompson,” a sheriff’s detective rumbled. “LAPD on Six. About your matches.”

  “Line Nine,” another hollered. “Baton Rouge homicide.”

  Branch stiffened. Alarms clanged in her head. “Mimi, can you hold a minute?”

  “No. I’m late for a stakeout.”

  “OK, I’ll call you back after I’ve talked to my boss. If I’m right, you’re going to want to reopen that investigation - oh, wait. Was the victim’s nose broken?”

  “Hmm. Now that you mention it . . .”

  She took the investigator’s number, told everyone to take detailed notes and callback information. Then reconnected with Mason.

  “We should have been careful what we wished for, Gene,” she said, staring at Marty’s broad back. “Can you fax everything on your dead barber?”

  12:12 p.m.

  “Everything works fine,” the state executioner protested. “The final three rehearsals went like clockwork. Why mess with success?”

  The electrician rubbed the copper electrodes with fine-grit garnet cloth. They gleamed like wet pumpkins.

  “I want perfection,” he said, blowing gently. Metal scattered like pixie dust.

  “Perfection means Covington’s happy,” the executioner said.

  “So think of this as insurance he stays that way.”

  Pause.

  “Hand me a cloth,” the executioner said.

  1:01 p.m.

  “Are you sure, Detective?” Cross asked, eyebrows arching.

  “No,” Emily said, desperately wanting to be wrong. What were the odds of two serial killers choosing ultra-low-crime Naperville - choosing me - to ply their hideous trade? A billion to one? Trillion? “I’m not sure at all, Chief. But I have this feeling.”

  “Feeling.”

  “Yes.” She patted her belly. “Here. Backed up by the physical evidence.”

  Branch passed out summaries of the phone calls. The NCIC reboot this morning had opened the floodgates.

  “Where were Sage Farri’s matchsticks?” a sergeant asked as he flipped pages.

  “In the roses that arrived the day he died,” Emily said, explaining the setup.

  “Hospital security tapes?”

  “Minimally useful,” she said. Thanks to bad lighting and the deliveryman’s constant shifting to avoid the rotating camera, LAPD’s best guess was Caucasian male with baseball cap and dark goatee. “If it helps, the receptionist said he had dreamy eyes.”

  When the chuckling died down, a CSI raised her hand. “How was Sage killed?”

  “Ice pick into the brain,” Branch said, tapping the soft part in back where neck met skull. “If not a pick, a similarly styled blade.”

  The CSI nodded.

  “Baton Rouge, Miami, Seattle, Dallas, Kansas City, Honolulu, Naperville, Holbrook, and Los Angeles,” Cross said, listing the nine in chronological order. “Starting twenty months ago. Each one had burnt matches and broken noses. Each was committed with a blade.”

  “Giving us a unique signature,” Marty said.

  “Ray’s nose was intact,” the sheriff objected. “He was shot, not cut, and there weren’t any matches. Burned or otherwise.”

  “He pulled over the killer by coincidence,” Cross said. “Killer shot him to escape, not because Ray was a target. Thus, no signature material.”

  The sheriff mulled that, nodded. “One serial’s bad enough for a community,” he said, rubbing his pulled-pork face. “But two? Gotta wonder what you did to irritate God so much.”

  What indeed? Emily thought as everyone glanced at her.

  “What else do we know about the victims?” Cross said.

  “All were young. None older than thirty,” Emily said. “Half were natives, the other half transplants from various states. One has an Illinois connection.”

  “The barber,” Branch said. “Frank Mahoney. His grandfather hailed from Springfield.”

  The sheriff snapped his fingers. “Didn’t Zee Reynolds have kin here, too?”

  That detail Emily didn’t remember. She leafed through her notes of the interview with the next-door neighbor, Donna Chen.

  “You’re right, Sheriff,” she said. “Zabrina’s from Milwaukee, and her family’s still there. But Zabrina’s maternal grandmother, Leila, was born and raised in Chicago.”

  “That’s two Illinois connections,” Marty said, looking at Emily with the doll eyes he used in breaking gang-bangers. It made her
enormously uncomfortable. “Every department is sending its complete case file. We’ll know soon if there’s others.”

  “Matchsticks, noses, cuts, and age,” Cross said. “Maybe Illinois. Based on that, and only that, you still believe it’s a serial?”

  “Yes,” Emily said, feeling her neck tighten like during her fight with Marty. “I do.”

  “Me, too,” Cross said. “Anyone think different?”

  Nothing but headshakes.

  4:15 p.m.

  The Executioner tilted his head, hooked the fishing line between his molars, and gentled the blade down his throat. Pretended it was raw oysters, so it’d go down easier.

  The tiny handle bumped the uvula. He didn’t mean to do that - it triggered his gag reflex. He hacked, whooped, and spit.

  He fished out the knife, blew his nose, swallowed some Robitussin.

  “You think this is easy,” he laughed, “you try it.” Bowie looked amused.

  4:29 p.m.

  Branch handed over the case faxes. “Each victim is the grandchild of an Illinois resident,” he said. Cross put on gold wire rims, read fast.

  “So Emily was right,” Cross said. “It’s a serial, and it’s here.”

  “Afraid so.”

  Cross flipped back a few pages. “None of the grandparents were neighbors,” he noted.

  “Scattered throughout the state,” Branch said, tapping his copy. “Rockford to Cairo, Chicago to Moline. Nothing in common other than being grandparents of our victims.”

  Cross swiveled out from behind his desk. “How did they earn a living?”

  “Teacher, barber, farm-equipment mechanic, and security guard,” Branch recited. “Short-haul trucker, auto dealer bookkeeper, graphic artist, two housewives, and an airline pilot.”

  “Social and economic circles,” Cross said, “that probably didn’t intersect.”

  “My assumption, too,” Branch said. “We’re checking at the friend and family level.”

  Both knew that would take forever.

  “What about the number of victims?” Cross tried. “Does that suggest anything?”

  “Baseball teams have nine players,” Branch said. “Can’t think of anything else. Of course, nine’s just the deaths we know about. Might be more.”

  Cross’s snort said he agreed. “Let’s try the matches, then,” he said. “Two in every murder.”

  “Always in pairs,” Branch said, holding index and middle fingers together. “Always burned.”

  “Hidden in the room where the victims were found.”

  “Which wasn’t apparent from a quick glance. You had to look to find them. OK, we’ve got pairs. Hidden. Burned. Not raw wood, but burned . . . burned . . . ah.”

  Cross waited as Branch worked out the gaps in his leap of logic.

  “This is about the electrocution,” he said, thumping the cane.

  “Explain,” Cross said, leaning back.

  “‘Burn’ is the key,” Branch said. “The killer burns matches. We burn prisoners. The electric chair burns flesh. The chair’s made of wood. So are the matches.” He rose, limped the room. “I think our killer’s leaving this string of bodies as a message to us.”

  “Or to the governor?” Cross said. “Since it’s his show?”

  “Or even to Emily,” Branch said, “given her fame from two years ago.”

  “Whole lot of conclusions to draw from two tiny matches,” Cross pointed out.

  “I know,” Branch said. “But everything that happened in the rest of the country is being duplicated here. The same exact week we’re burning a killer.”

  “Too much coincidence to be one,” Cross said, tapping the faxes. “We’ll proceed with the assumption the serial spree is tied to this execution.”

  Branch shook his head. “Covington’s gonna have a stroke if this screws up Friday.”

  “Wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen,” Cross said.

  6:14 p.m.

  Swallow.

  Again.

  Swallow.

  Again.

  Swallow.

  Again.

  “Ahhhh,” the Executioner said, kissing the handle.

  He could gulp at will now. Open his mouth, snap in the fishing line, and let the plastic hang down his throat like a pendulum.

  He’d much rather have crafted the knife from steel, like all the others. But the tiniest scrap would trip the metal detectors, so he started grinding plastic. Not that flimsy milk-bottle stuff, but the expensive polymers used in aircraft wings and pistol frames.

  Eight months of trial and error gave him exactly what he needed - an unbreakable polymer blade with a handle just big enough to grip. It wasn’t pretty like his mirror-polished creations, but for this job, pretty was as pretty does.

  He secured the swallow knife in the floor safe next to his workbench and removed the dagger he’d use tomorrow morning. Held it to the light. The double-edge blade was perfectly symmetric. The tip drew blood with the lightest tap. The S-30V stainless steel was mated seamlessly to the high-gloss walnut handles. It balanced perfectly, fit him like a handshake.

  Tingling with satisfaction, he scraped the arm patch he’d left unshaved to gauge knife sharpness. Black hair peeled away, leaving the skin underneath as smooth as glass. Not unlike Frank Mahoney’s hot shave. He tested the opposite edge.

  Hairs prickled and snapped.

  “You shave your legs with this?” he kidded, giving Bowie a back-rattling slap. “Wait, don’t answer. I don’t want to know!”

  He sat in the Aeron chair that kept his back from aching during his long hours at the machines. Retrieved an Arkansas sharpening stone and a bottle of oil from the middle drawer. Diamonds cut faster, but he liked the gritty smell and sound of the traditional method. He laid three fat drops on the stone, spread them with his finger. Tilted the edge to the most efficient cutting angle – twenty-two 22 degrees - and firmly pushed blade against stone.

  Skriiiiiich.

  Some people likened it to fingernails on chalkboards. He found it soothing. The cows didn’t, of course. Then again, he never gave them long to think about it.

  Skriiiiiich.

  The hair peeled perfectly.

  He wiped off the slurry, huffed breath on the blade, and burnished it on his leather strop. Put it back in the safe, dialed right, left, right, glanced at the clock. Time to call it a night. He needed to eat, shower, review the plan, and get to bed.

  He had to be in place before sunup.

  10:56 p.m.

  “Oof!” Corey Trent blatted as a knee flattened his belly against his spinal cord.

  Own damn fault, he realized as he rolled off his bunk, going fetal to protect himself from the sand-filled socks thundering in from everywhere.

  Every con swore Death Row was free of the gang beat-downs you suffered in general population. After several years of seeing it was true, he started falling asleep without his third eye watching.

  Big mistake.

  “C’mon, jerkoff,” he heard somebody hiss. “Make another wisecrack about her.”

  Not gangs, he realized. New CO from breakfast.

  Knowing that didn’t make it hurt less.

  Rockets exploded in Trent’s brain. Something heavy smashed his balls into his shoulder blades. The disgusting nutrition loaf left his body the same way it went in. Belly blows kept him from screaming. The blanket wrapping his head would have muffled it anyway.

  “Think seriously about drowning yourself in the toilet,” his tormenter hissed, mashing the semi-digested glop in his face. “Better than what’s gonna happen to you Friday.”

  The rockets skidded sideways, and Trent passed out.

  MAY 23, 1968

  “How ‘bout a cigarette?” Earl Monroe asked the passing guard. “Come on, I haven’t caused you a single bit of trouble since I got here, right?”

  The guard considered that. Nodded. Lit a Marlboro, poked it through the bars.

  Snatched it back when Earl reached.

  “Only smoke
a cop-killer gets,” the guard said, handing it instead to the nun-strangler across the aisle, “is what curls up from the chair.”

  “He wants me to run for state’s attorney,” Wayne said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “He’s retiring after Earl’s execution, wants to give me my shot. Arranging it with the powers-that-be so I’m a shoo-in. Isn’t that great, honey?”

  His wife nodded.

  “What’s wrong, Kit?” Wayne said. He was exquisitely attuned to his wife’s moods, but couldn’t figure this one.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  “Come on, doll,” Wayne said, padding across the white shag carpet and perching next to her on the bed. “It’s me. I can tell something’s wrong. What?”

  Kit sighed. “I’m proud of you, Wayne. Being elected state’s attorney is a dream come true. You deserve it, and you’ll be great. The best.”

  “But?”

  She interlaced her fingers, squeezed them pink. “We hardly ever see you anymore. Me and the kids. All this Earl Monroe stuff. Even your parents have noticed - you’re gone the whole day, and most evenings. Weekends included. You won’t be here at all if you get this job.”

  “Yes, I will,” Wayne assured. “I know it’s been tough, my being away so much on this case.”

  She nodded. “I know your brother needs you, honey,” she said. “But we do, too. We miss you, and we want you home with us.”

  Covington kissed her hand, put it against his cheek. “I’m done the minute Earl’s dead and buried,” he said. “Andy will rest in peace, and I’ll have all the time in the world for you and the kids. I’ll make it up to you then. I promise.”

  “I hope so,” Kit said. “They need you, Wayne. So do I.”

  “I know,” Wayne said. “Because I need you, too.”

  She nestled her head against his chest.

  “Kids won’t be home from school for an hour,” he said, eyeing the freshly laundered sheets. “Want to begin making up right now?”

  She nodded, eyes shining.

  Wednesday

  5:45 a.m.

  Emily passed the Dandelion Fountain. The mist cooled her. Today’s easier pace allowed her to hear the cicadas in the Riverwalk treetops, smell the moss-laden fog spooling up from the river. She loved both, but usually missed them rushing by too fast, ears pounding and lungs bursting.