Carving Knife

by Christian, Claudia Hall

  Seth nodded.

  “That’s what he said in his notes,” Bob said. “Six or seven months later, he got a fax. You remember how excited we all were when faxes came around.”

  “I do,” Seth said.

  “He received this sheet of paper with a name on it. Uh . . .” Bob dug around in his pockets until he came up with a notepad and reading glasses. “I made some notes this morning.”

  Seth nodded.

  “The fax said . . .” Bob read from the paper: “Please deliver to Detective Sergeant Seamus O’Shaughnessy: Jahnine O’Leary.”

  “Please?” Seth asked.

  “Please.” Bob looked up and pulled off his reading glasses. “Detective O’Shaughnessy’s neighbor.”

  “The cat owner?” Seth raised his eyebrows.

  “The very same one,” Bob said. “O’Shaughnessy telephoned his neighbor, but couldn’t raise her. He called his wife and asked her to check. She found . . .”

  Bob gestured to the photographs of livestock mutilations. Seth grimaced.

  “Right,” Bob said. “Just horrible. Like those beasts, Ms. O’Leary was alive when the mutilations happened. O’Shaughnessy’s wife wasn’t ever very strong. She had a mental breakdown and had to be institutionalized.”

  Bob nodded. Seth opened his mouth to say something.

  “It gets worse,” Bob said. “I’m just taking a break to . . . gather my strength, I guess.”

  “Why didn’t they call the bureau then?” Seth asked.

  “Why, indeed?” Bob nodded. “Arrogance, maybe. That’s what it was ruled in the review. I always thought it was fear. This killer reached into O’Shaughnessy’s home, attacked his neighbor, and destroyed his wife. They didn’t want it to get in the papers, too. You never saw anything about it, did you?”

  Seth shook his head.

  “They kept it completely out of the media,” Bob said. “Of course, they didn’t have to contend with cell phones, YouTube, and blogs, but, still, it was an achievement.”

  “I doubt I’ve ever had that kind of pull here in Denver,” Seth said.

  “Right,” Bob said. “Anyway, the killer threw down the gauntlet, and, for whatever reason—revenge, anger, arrogance—O’Shaughnessy picked it up.”

  Seth grimaced and sucked in air across his teeth.

  “Right,” Bob said. “It was cat and mouse after that. The killer would fax a name to the detective’s attention. O’Shaughnessy would have to figure out who it was and get to them before . . .”

  Bob gestured with his thumb to the photos.

  “That was before the Internet,” Bob said. “Finding people was a bitch. And, every once in a while, the name was of someone who was already dead or a baby or something completely useless. O’Shaughnessy was a mess. Last name he received was his own.”

  “Did he . . .?” Seth started to ask.

  Bob nodded. A heavy silence fell over the room while they digested the information

  “The bureau has kept a close eye on this type of thing ever since then,” Bob said.

  “You think . . .,” Seth started.

  “Same thing happened in Arizona,” Bob said. “They found the bodies in the desert, mostly Mexican nationals.”

  “Rick Lopez,” Seth said.

  “Ate his gun,” Bob nodded.

  “Same thing?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Cats?” Seth asked.

  “No,” Bob said. “That was different. This time, he practiced on wild rabbits. In Montana, a year or so after O’Shaughnessy, there was a rash of deer mutilations.”

  “No people?”

  “Not yet,” Bob said.

  “Did he go after Martha Jessep?” Seth asked. “She was a cop in Montana.”

  Bob nodded.

  “She retired . . .”

  “Instead of playing with him,” Bob said. “That’s correct.”

  “Huh,” Seth said. “You think he’s going after police detectives?”

  “Famous ones,” Bob said.

  “What about Griffin in LA?” Seth asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Eliot in Maine? He retired early.”

  “He called the bureau with a few mutilations about a year apart,” Bob said. “We shared the case files, and he retired.”

  “So you’re thinking it’s my turn?”

  “Maybe,” Bob said.

  “These animal mutilations cases go back . . . forever.” Seth shrugged.

  “I know,” Bob said.

  “But?”

  “He has a specific signature,” Bob said. “I found it on your calf and in a couple of these photos.”

  Surprised, Seth couldn’t think of anything to say. He blinked at Bob.

  “You think he’s practicing on cattle to warm up to murdering people?” Seth asked. “Here? In Denver?”

  “With the great Seth O’Malley as his foil,” Bob nodded. “My advice?”

  “Okay.”

  “Get out now,” Bob said. “You have a young wife, money, and another career. Have some kids. Move to the Bahamas. Write symphonies. Play concerts. Hang out with the Queen of England. Don’t trade what you have for this and the end of your gun or worse.”

  “He mutilated a cop?”

  “O’Shaughnessy,” Bob nodded. “And . . .”

  “Who?”

  “Cavetti.”

  “Jen?” Seth swallowed hard.

  Bob nodded. Seth felt a wave of sorrow at the loss of one of the best detectives in the world, and his friend.

  “How . . . I mean . . .” Seth started but couldn’t come up with words.

  “About a year after Lopez,” Bob said.

  “How many murders are we looking at in total?” Seth asked.

  “Not as many as you’d think,” Bob said. “Five in Providence, one in Montana, three plus Agent Cavetti in New York.”

  “Nine,” Seth said.

  “Hundreds, maybe thousands, of animals,” Bob nodded. “We’re still trying to figure out how many in the Arizona desert. The number will go up.”

  “Going back how many years?” Seth asked.

  “That’s a question for your friend Ferguson,” Bob said. “I don’t think we ever put the whole thing together at the FBI. Of course, cat mutilations are a dime a dozen, so it’s hard to track those.”

  “Maybe,” Seth said. “These mutilations sound so specific. I bet if we tapped into the animal-shelter network, they’d have information for us.”

  “Go for it,” Bob said. “But remember, his end game seems to be to destroy the great detectives.”

  “Sounds like I should be flattered.”

  “This isn’t funny,” Bob said. “Amazing law-enforcement officers have ended up with the choice of killing themselves or getting mutilated. You want that?”

  “Just cops,” Seth said.

  “Cavetti was FBI,” Bob said.

  “She was a cop before she joined the bureau,” Seth said. “Twenty years in Philly, five of those as head detective.”

  “This was her case.”

  “Explains the secrecy,” Seth said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jen was always tight with details,” Seth said. “If it were me, I’d put this entire thing on the wire. Let every beat cop, every bureau chief, every detective in small rural towns and big cities know that this was going on.”

  “What would that give you?” Bob asked.

  “It would help put eyes on the street,” Seth said. “Cops watch other cops. Might save a life or two. Hell, there might be a guy or gal who’s dealing with this type of case right now.”

  “Too much risk of it getting out,” Bob said.

  “You didn’t say how many people were killed in Arizona,” Seth said.

  “We don’t know,” Bob said. “That’s the serial killer we’re checking on.”

  “The case Ava’s been dying to do? The border case with so much money behind it?”

  “We’re looking for specific markings on human remains—
mostly bones—found in the Arizona desert. Pima County has identified about seventy percent of the remains. For those they’ve been able to send home to their families, we have files, photos, and the coroner’s paperwork.”

  “You’re working on this case?” Seth asked. “I thought it was to track a serial . . .”

  Bob nodded.

  “And the calf has the same markings?” Seth asked.

  “It’s a circular core, hide deep, in between the eyes,” Bob pointed to the spot between his eyebrows.

  “This is no coincidence,” Seth said.

  “Can’t be.”

  Trying to get a grip on his rage and sorrow, Seth looked down at the ground for a few minutes. Seth hated nothing more than coincidences and serial killers. He’d already lost a wife and two children to a serial killer. He swallowed hard.

  “The circle between the eyes?” Seth asked when he looked up.

  “We thought it was a trophy,” Bob nodded. “You should know that he took a cutting from Lopez.”

  “After Rick shot himself?”

  “Eliot died a few years ago,” Bob said. “Pancreatic cancer. The family had a showing and . . .”

  “He took a core from the funeral home?”

  Bob nodded.

  “Wow,” Seth said.

  “‘Wow’ is right,” Bob said.

  “Did you have any theories on why he went after police detectives?” Seth asked.

  “Famous police detectives,” Bob said. “He’s never lowered himself to run-of-the-mill detectives. Everyone he’s taken an interest in has been in the press for solving a big murder or two.”

  “Why go after them?”

  “For the sport of it,” Bob said. “Why go after the drunken detective just working his nine to five? It’s the big fish that make the biggest splash.”

  “He hasn’t gotten his big splash.” Seth scowled. “This has never made the nationals. There’s no quaint name for him yet.”

  “True,” Bob said. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to send the information out,” Seth said. “O’Shaughnessy didn’t have the Internet. And Jen always played close to the vest. Where did that get her? Every cop in the country should know this maniac is coming after them.”

  “You’re not going to get out?”

  “Imagine that conversation with Ava?” Seth gave Bob a hard look, and Bob nodded. “No, I’ll find him.”

  “O’Shaughnessy thought he was smarter than him, too,” Bob said.

  “I’m not smarter,” Seth said. “No. I’ll find him because I’ll get every cop in every state looking under every rock for him. He won’t be able to move.”

  “Could work,” Bob said.

  “What would you do?” Seth asked.

  “I’d like to say that I’d get out,” Bob said. “But I’m not out now.”

  “By bringing this to me, you’ve put yourself in the ring,” Seth said.

  Bob nodded.

  “Thanks,” Seth said. He turned to his computer and wrote a quick email sketching out the details of Bob’s case and warning other cops that there was a vicious cop killer on the loose. Bob read over his shoulder and corrected a few details. With a nod, Seth sent the email out to every detective he knew in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and a few in Europe.

  “I’m s’posed to tell ‘the masters’ that your rellenos are ready,” Dale said.

  “Is she . . .?” Seth started to ask.

  “She’s fine,” Dale said. “Singing. But you’d better come fast. Sandy’s coming to go over budgets for the front yard.”

  “Shall we?” Seth stood up.

  Bob gave him a nod and followed him out of the room.

  “Oh, she said nothing disgusting at the table,” Dale said at the top of the stairs.

  Bob looked at Seth. In a few days, Seth would remember this moment as the last chance he had to save a good man’s life.

  But at this moment, he grinned at Bob. They followed Dale to the kitchen. Maresol had laid out a feast of chili rellenos, enchiladas, and tacos for the spice-sensitive Dale. As if to pay for his meal, Bob turned up the charm. Seth’s eldest daughter, Sandy, arrived just as they started eating. Bob entertained them with tall tales of the inner workings of the FBI. He kept them laughing for the better part of two hours.

  Around two o’clock, Ava called to tell Bob to bring them lunch. Maresol packed up the meal she’d made for the lab and sent Bob on his way. Because Seth was a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, Sandy managed the bulk of the money he made making music. Dale and Maresol went over their plans for the front yard with Sandy.

  Seth started a pot of decaf coffee and went for a swim in the lap pool in his carriage house. He’d originally installed the pool to help his father rehabilitate a broken hip. When Seth couldn’t run last year, Maresol filled the pool and bullied him into swimming. He enjoyed the rhythmic motion of a refreshing swim. Plus, something Bob had said was nagging at his mind. While he swam, he let the thoughts roll around his head in the hopes that whatever was bothering him would come to the fore.

  He felt the thought nearing his consciousness when there was a giant splash in the pool. He looked up to see that Mitch’s teenaged son, Charlie, had jumped in. Charlie’s splash was closely followed by another created by Sandy’s stepson and their friend. Great kids, they would have let him swim if he’d insisted. But Seth never missed a chance to hang out with the kids. He stopped swimming laps to join them in a game of water volleyball.

  The thought disappeared.

  They played in the pool until Maresol came to get him. He ran the grill while the kids played. At some point, Ava came home from work, and the evening slipped away. The case and the mysterious mutilations slipped out of Seth’s mind. He went from laughing at lunch to swimming laps to playing with the boys to enjoying a family barbeque to making love to Ava to deep sleep.

  He was sound asleep when the thought appeared, in living color.

  He sat up in bed.

  “What is it?” Ava asked.

  “Everest.”

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  ELEVEN

  Seth sat on the front steps of Everest’s hillside home. A stream of police officers moved past him on their way in and out of the door. Seth did his best to stay out of the way. He watched Ava, Bob, and a forensics team from the Colorado Bureau of Investigations unload their gear, get dressed in clean suits, and take over the scene. Ava touched his shoulder as she walked by, and he squeezed her hand.

  He had been the first person at the scene. The person who’d called in the murder. He had a key to the house and a long and complicated history with the jovial Scot.

  He was both a suspect and a victim, rolled into one Seth O’Malley. He dropped his head to his knees and longed for a cigarette or maybe a bottle of Jack Daniels with a cocaine and marijuana chaser. He looked up when someone said his name. He waved and dropped his head to review the last few hours.

  He’d tried to call Everest from home. When he couldn’t reach him, Seth dressed and drove to Everest’s home in Golden. He’d known Everest was dead the moment he stepped through the front door. While he’d promised Ava he wouldn’t look, he couldn’t bear the images flashing through his own mind.

  He wished he had kept his promise.

  Seth had followed the smell of blood. He found Everest’s naked body laid out on top of the grand piano in the living room. His friend was lying on his side, facing the window. His head was turned back so it was visible from the entrance of the room, visible to Seth when he came to check on his friend. Everest was missing an eye. A flap of his jaw was peeled away, showing his clenched teeth. Seth knew those teeth guarded a severed tongue. The wounds were dry. His body seemed drained of blood. A circular patch of skin was missing from the center of his forehead.

  Seth had closed his eyes in the hopes he was having a nightmare.

  When he opened them, Everest was still dead, still mutilated, and still lying on top
of the piano Seth had bought the young family when they had moved to Colorado.

  He had called 911 emergency and gone out to the driveway to wait for the Golden Police Department to show up. He let them in, gave them his key, and sat down on the steps.

  The responding uniformed police officers threw up after seeing Everest. In a matter of minutes, the neighborhood was filled with official vehicles. Flashing lights from every direction made Seth slightly dizzy each time he looked up. The Chief of Police arrived fifteen minutes after Seth’s 911 call. He went into the home and popped right back out.

  “CBI?” the Chief said to Seth.

  “I would,” Seth said.

  The Chief nodded and pulled his team out. The uniformed officers set up a perimeter around the house and waited. The CBI had just arrived.

  “O’Malley.” A uniformed police officer appeared in front of him. “There’s someone to see you.”

  Seth looked up and squinted at the young man.

  “End of the driveway, sir,” he said.

  Seth gave a quick nod and got up.

  “And don’t go nowhere,” the uniformed officer said. “I’m s’posed to tell you that the agent in charge wants to talk to you.”

  Seth raised his eyebrows in understanding.

  “Any idea who’s waiting for me?” Seth asked.

  “Some woman,” the uniformed officer said. “Middle-aged. We frisked her. She’s carrying one of those USB drives, that’s all.”

  “Reporter?”

  “Not unless they’re hiring ex-cops as reporters,” the uniformed officer said.

  “Ex-cop? From where?”

  “She didn’t say,” the uniformed officer said. “I can tell. I’m Irish, grew up in Boston, so you know I grew up cop. Can see them a mile away.”

  Seth walked down to the end of the long driveway. The Golden Police had set up a row of plastic sawhorses to barricade the driveway. As he walked, Everest’s voice echoed in his ears.

  “What do I care if something happens to me?” Less than two days ago, Everest had waved off Seth’s concerns. Seth worried that something could happen to Everest in the cold, dark Colorado nights. Everest would hear nothing of it. “Joanne’s been gone some five years now. The kids are settled, with bairn of their own. I’m retired from NREL. They have me come in only every once in a while when they want to show off the relics. No, O’Malley, if it happens, it’s my time, and about time, I’d say.”