by Rose Beecham
Oddly, she couldn’t tell if the awareness was sexual or if she just made Hill nervous. She wondered if the SAC saw her as a threat, perhaps even unconsciously. There weren’t a lot of female agents, less than twenty percent last time she checked, and instead of being natural allies, they were often competitive, struggling for approval in an organization that still couldn’t shake off Hoover’s legacy.
Jude suspected that, in her, Hill saw a woman who had let down the side. She’d left the Bureau, proving the conventional wisdom that women couldn’t take the heat. Agents like her had questionable loyalties. They were not worthy. True believers like Hill made all kinds of sacrifices to prove themselves capable of the positions they held. To become an SAC, Hill had no life, that went without saying.
Jude toyed with the idea of coming clean with her, just to make her feel better. If Hill knew she was an undercover agent and not a slacker who’d jumped ship, maybe she would chill. Or maybe she would get even more competitive. Jude got a headache thinking about it. Besides, there was nothing to think about. Her cover was intact and had to stay that way. Already, Hill was suspicious of her. She needed to convince the agent that she had nothing to hide.
“I’ll tell you something that isn’t in the file,” Jude said.
Hill was instantly alert, no doubt congratulating herself that she’d broken through and they were now talking honestly. “Yes?”
“After I shot that predator, I knew I’d do it again. I started stalking a subject we were investigating, planning on how I was going to take him out.” She paused. “I’m not a vigilante, but if I’d stayed in DC that’s how it would have played out. And I’d probably be serving time now.”
Hill nodded. She seemed genuinely sorrowful. “Are you seeing anyone?”
Jude knew she wasn’t talking about a lover. “For a while I did.”
It was the truth. She had discreetly seen shrinks about her nightmares, not that therapy made any difference.
Hill stepped in a little closer, until her physical heat warmed the air around Jude’s body. She touched Jude’s arm. “I appreciate your honesty, and you did the right thing. It looks pretty bad when an agent goes postal.”
Yep, that’s what it was all about—protecting the Bureau’s reputation. Jude nodded with appropriate shame. She could the relief flooding Hill’s body. The agent was happy now that she knew they were on the same page where it really counted. FBI interests came first.
Jude met Hill’s eyes and told her what she wanted to hear. “The job I have now is a cakewalk. I catch some decent homicides, but the beat is strictly small town. It’s not the Bureau.”
“I’m sure it must have its compensations.” Hill sought a silver lining. “I got the impression that you’re looked up to.”
A feeling the SAC would not be familiar with. Females in her position at the FBI were tolerated, not respected.
Jude smiled. “Actually, you’re right about that.” Disingenuously, she rubbed it in. “Most of my colleagues assume I’ll make the calls. They appreciate good leadership. It doesn’t seem to matter who provides it, a man or a woman.”
“That’s good to hear.” Hill had probably tried for a patronizing note, but her voice was wistful.
Jude wasn’t quite done. “If you get any shit from the locals, come and talk to me. I’ll sort it.”
Just for the hell of it, she looked Hill up and down appreciatively, before focusing on her mouth. Hill’s lips parted. Okay, so fifty percent of the awareness between them was sexual. She still couldn’t tell which team Hill batted for, but it didn’t really matter. Jude had always been able to make straight women blush, too.
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Hill said. “I can handle myself.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re used to that,” Jude replied with soft irony.
She watched Hill’s eyes flicker as she registered the innuendo, then discounted it as a figment of her imagination. “Thank you for your time, Detective.”
“It was a pleasure.”
They walked to the door. Hill fumbled with the handle. Jude thought, I could have you right now. She took over from her, briefly tempted. The brush of their fingers made her catch her breath and she knew Hill had done the same.
“See you tomorrow,” Hill said. Her voice was thin.
Jude said a nonchalant good night. She was a long way down the hotel corridor before she heard the door close behind her.
Chapter Twelve
“How long would it normally take for someone with these wounds to bleed out?” Jude asked. Her guess was no more than five minutes. In fatal stabbings, hypovolemic shock could kill within sixty seconds.
Norwood Carver’s gimlet eyes lifted momentarily from the pale inertia of Fabian Maulle’s body. He’d been inspecting the mottled skin surface for several minutes. “Exsanguination was not as rapid as these injuries might suggest at first blush. Of course, two of the wounds are perpendicular to Langer’s lines so there’s more gaping, and this one is diagonal.” He directed their attention to a wound near the center of Maulle’s torso. “Note the semilunar curve.”
Jude imagined a knife entering across the lines of cleavage. Maulle could have been bending to one side when that one was inflicted. “Single-edged blade?” she asked.
“Yes, very good, Detective. The blunted margin and opposing V-margin are most apparent on the central wound because it’s parallel.”
“Could it be a kitchen knife?”
“Highly likely. Note the bruising on either side of each incision.” Carver gestured with the skull chisel he liked to tap against his thigh during the external examination. “They’re not guard imprints. These were inflicted pre-mortem and the configuration is identical for each.”
Both Jude and Koertig bent low to squint at the linear discoloration. Each mark was slightly more than an inch in length. Jude had never seen anything like them.
“Possibly an attempt to clamp off the wounds,” Carver said. “My guess is bulldog clips. Exsanguination would continue, of course, but death may have been delayed.”
“So there was no fatal wound as such?”
“Well, the fellow is dead, so the wounds were fatal. However, I suspect his life could have been saved if he’d received immediate treatment.”
Jude would avoid telling Pippa that. “What about hesitation marks or defensive wounds?”
“We took some skin from beneath the nails, or should I say foreign epithelials.” He snickered. “Better sound like I know what I’m talking about.” Carver routinely mocked the jargon embraced by TV CSIs. “And by the way, Mr. Maulle received regular manicures. He was particular. Take a look.”
Jude and Koertig inspected the hands.
“Clear nail varnish,” Jude noted. “Trimmed cuticles. Yes, very particular.”
“Gay,” Koertig said.
“Wealthy,” Carver added dispassionately. “Men of a certain status are more likely to be manicured. That’s a statistic. Add the homosexual component and we have a formula. Cash plus queer equals kempt.”
Koertig haw-hawed. Jude didn’t waste her breath pointing out that stereotyping had never solved a crime yet. She noticed something else as she lowered Maulle’s hand back onto the stainless steel table.
“Is that a ligature mark on the wrist?” The faint pink discoloration formed a distinctive band.
Carver said, “Fritz, you photographed the wrists, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It would appear the victim was bound before death, but not with excessive pressure. I’ll confirm that in the autopsy report.” Carver measured the width and depth of each knife wound and said, “The murder weapon is probably five inches in length. Only one of the wounds indicates any use of force and it’s an upward thrust.”
“He took that one standing.”
“Classic face-to-face. There was some momentum, so the assailant was probably coming toward the victim.” Carver probed a wound in the ribs area. “Left side of the body, so your kill
er is right-handed. The other three wounds are relatively shallow downward thrusts.”
“Maulle was sitting or lying down,” Jude concluded.
“Sitting for two and probably lying down for the incision parallel with Langer’s lines.”
“Looks like someone kicked his face in while he was down there?” Koertig said gingerly.
“Multiple blunt force injuries consistent with blows from a fist.” Carver took a moment out of the layman’s discussion to dictate into his voice recorder. “Abrasion on left lower forehead above eyebrow. Nose fracture. Multiple contusions on left cheek, left upper forehead, back of head.” He peered inside the victim’s mouth. “Multiple contusions, lacerations, and hemorrhage on mucosal surfaces.”
“The killer has to have cuts and abrasions on his hands,” Jude murmured to Koertig.
“Any strangulation?” Koertig asked.
“No petechial or posterior neck hemorrhaging,” Carver said. “I can’t confirm fractures to hyoid bone and thyroid cartilages until dissection. But it would appear your killer had plenty to keep him busy without throttling the victim as well.”
He signaled Fritz, who scuttled up and placed a rubber body block under Maulle’s back in preparation for the Y incision. Overqualified for the role of diener, Fritz was apparently indispensable to his master and pathetically grateful for his own exploitation.
“Sir?” he asked with the breathless reverence of a dullard in the presence of genius.
“Unzip him,” Carver said.
Jude took a few steps back while Fritz wielded a large scalpel. Maulle had been dead for thirty-six hours, so the decomposition process had begun, but refrigeration had slowed it. As his flesh was drawn back it gave off the scent of raw lamb. Jude glanced at Koertig, who was pale but stoic. He had only attended a handful of postmortems and had already taken a whiff of the smelling salts Jude carried.
“Do you think he was stabbed by someone familiar with anatomy?” she asked, steering Koertig’s concentration away from the more gruesome stage of the procedure.
“Was this the work of a know-nothing amateur or a student of human anatomy?” Some forensic pathologists kept their opinions to themselves, but Carver enjoyed bathing in his own glory. He pitied mortals not blessed with his dizzying intellect, and was always willing to share his godlike wisdom. “One could form that impression, bringing simplistic reason to bear. However, the depth of penetration, the careful placement…suggest control, not stupidity. He didn’t slash, or hack.”
“Are you saying there was no anger?”
“A flawed deduction.” He extended his hand toward Fritz to receive the pruning shears that doubled as rib cutters. “The wounds were ultimately fatal, but the process of death was slow and painful. Whoever killed Maulle wanted him to feel his life ebbing away. That suggests a good deal of anger, wouldn’t you say?”
“Very nasty,” Jude agreed.
A possibility took shape in her mind, but she kept it to herself since Carver didn’t welcome competition. The bulldog clips intrigued her. Would Maulle have had the presence of mind to pinch each wound closed? Nothing in his background suggested he would behave any differently from most victims. Wounded people panicked. They staggered around, clutching themselves. Their first instinct was to grab a towel or garment and hold it to the wound while they called 911. No emergency call had been made until Pippa arrived. Why?
Assuming the killer had already departed by that time, why didn’t Maulle save his own life? He had a cell phone in his pocket. Even lying on the floor dying, he could have made the call. He had fought to stay alive with bulldog clips keeping each wound closed, but then gave up while he was still breathing. It made no sense.
She felt Koertig sway at the sound of the ribs being separated from the sternum. Leaning toward him, she whispered, “Did anyone bag bulldog clips?”
As he turned his pallid face toward her, she waved the salts under his nose. “I don’t think so,” he said.
Fritz took a phone call and interrupted the proceedings. “Sir, the combine harvester casualty arrived. Shall I tell Freddie to weigh the pieces and check if he’s all there?”
Carver glanced at the second autopsy table in the room. “No, stick him in the cadaver keep. We’ll do him this afternoon. Speaking of harvest.” He finished cutting cartilage and lifted the heart-lung tree aloft for inspection. “Premium quality if he was a donor and if this wasn’t a homicide. Damn waste.”
“The knife didn’t penetrate that deep?” Jude asked.
“Remarkably, it did not.” He set the organs down and carefully examined the heart. “Very clean. Your man was not an endurance athlete like myself, but he worked out and he ate lean.”
“He appreciated living,” Jude noted.
“Who wouldn’t with his advantages?”
“And yet he didn’t call 911,” she said softly. Blood loss clouded the mind pretty quickly. Perhaps shock could account for Maulle’s behavior after his killer left the house. “After he was stabbed, for how long would he have been lucid?”
“Mr. Maulle was in peak fitness for a man of his age. He could have moved, spoken, and thought clearly enough to act until very close to the end.”
Jude walked Koertig to the wall farthest from the autopsy table. As Carver continued his dissection, she said, “Something was going on at the scene that we don’t know about. The killer kept him alive for a reason.”
“Sadism?” Koertig suggested.
Jude shook her head. “We know the guy was looking for something. Maybe he thought Maulle would tell him where it was. Maybe he was playing chicken. ‘If you tell me, I’ll call 911, otherwise you’ll just die slowly while I sit here.’”
“I checked the plans,” Koertig said. “No safe.”
“We need to take the place apart. There has to be somewhere a man like Maulle would have kept his most important items.”
“His sister’s got to know something about him.”
“They weren’t exactly close. Not according to Pippa, anyway.” Jude watched Carver pick up the Stryker saw and go to work on Maulle’s skull. When he lifted the top section away, the sucking sound made her wince.
Koertig dry retched and stuck his hand out for the salts.
“I’m ravenous,” Carver announced as he cut the spinal cord and removed the brain. Suspending it tenderly in a jar of formalin, he asked, “Anyone want to join me for a steak after this?”
*
“You did great.” Jude gulped some lukewarm coffee. She was due at the MCSO for show and tell in a half hour, then Pratt wanted her to take Aidan Hill to dinner again afterward, since it went so well last time. “So, are you meeting her?”
“Yes.” Debbie sounded pleased with herself. “At her place. I didn’t think she was going to phone after last night, but she must have realized I meant what I said.”
Sandy had caved. Elated and relieved that her gamble had paid off, Jude set her coffee aside. “How far away is she?”
“In Rico.”
“That’s quite a drive from Paradox Valley.” Almost two hours, in fact. No wonder Sandy stayed overnight whenever she visited.
“I didn’t realize she was coming so far to see me.” Debbie sounded contrite.
“It’s beautiful there,” Jude said. “You’ll love it.”
“That’s if I can find it. She gave me instructions but it sounds pretty convoluted.”
“I know the area,” Jude said. “What’s the address?”
“There isn’t one exactly. You know that old mining road north of the town? The one that’s closed?”
“Daisy Creek?” Jude had never hiked in the dense forest up that way. She’d heard there was nothing to see, just a few abandoned miners’ shacks. What was left of the steep, treacherous dirt road had washed out a few years ago.
“She says you go as far as the Beware sign, then there’s an arrow to Pariah. That was a ghost town. It doesn’t even exist anymore. She says I can leave my car in a turnoff and walk on up. She�
�ll meet me on the trail at four this afternoon.”
Pariah? Jude had never heard of it. She wondered where Sandy got her mail sent. Did she have a false identity and a mailbox somewhere? These days it wasn’t easy to live completely under the radar. She was working pretty hard not to be found.
Jude checked her wristwatch. 12:15 p.m. “I’ll send Tulley to pick you up.”
“Don’t worry,” Debbie said. “I’ve got it all under control. Bobby Lee’s bringing my car over, and Tulley’s following. He has to go down to Cortez for dog training.”
“Okay, so you’ll all drive to Rico from my place, then they’ll continue on to Cortez?”
“That’s the plan.”
“How do you feel about seeing her?”
“A bit nervous. I hope she won’t be angry at me.”
“Well, this is a pretty big step for her,” Jude said.
“For both of us.”
“Just on that.” Jude kept her tone even. “It’s probably better if Sandy doesn’t know I’ve played a role in this. She’s reaching out to you now, so she’ll need to feel she can trust you completely.”
“I see what you mean.”
“I want things to work out for the two of you, Debbie. She’ll need to feel safe about opening up to you.”
“I’ll be careful,” Debbie said. “And maybe you shouldn’t say anything about knowing where she lives.”
“That’s probably wise.”
“Thanks for the advice. Oh, I nearly forgot. Mercy Westmoreland stopped by your place last night. She said to tell you she’s sorry she missed you.”
“Yeah, me, too. Debbie, will you hold a second?”
Jude couldn’t think about Mercy now. She rapidly worked up a course of action. Her first priority was a black bag job, searching and bugging Sandy’s home. Under the Patriot Act, the FBI could search a residence without the owner’s knowledge. They also had the right to obtain personal and financial records without appearing before a judge. All it took was a national security letter, and they had already issued a few NSLs on Sandy Lane. She was up for grabs.