Lord, she hoped not. It was going to be hard enough resetting them to basic friendship. Especially since Abel had taken such delight in their moving past it.
And yet... Why hadn't Grant mentioned running into Liz? He might have five years on them and been in college at the time, but he'd known they were all close from the moment Dan had become the third sword in their naive version of the Musketeers. Confusion fed her growing unease. While Liz and Grant both worked for the VA, their respective facilities—not to mention specialties—were miles apart. Which would've accounted for them not running into each other until...just how recently?
Suspicion multiplied as she watched Liz settle into her chair to unwrap her sandwich.
"When did you two reconnect? Where?"
Liz took a bite. Chewed. The years fell away again beneath the damning certainty—within Kate. Liz wasn't hungry; she was stalling.
There was only one thing that would make Liz clam up regarding Grant. He might work across town, but he was also a patient—right here at Fort Leaves. Though she doubted Grant was crawling onto Liz's professional couch, he was definitely sprawling out on someone's.
Was that why he'd been hounding her lately? Did he hope to nudge her up onto a matching cushion? If so, he was seriously mistaken.
This was also a discussion best saved for later—and Grant.
Kate pushed her untouched sandwich aside and retrieved her phone, intent on broaching the subject of another potential patient. Tapping through the photos she'd taken at the trailer, she stopped at the one of Kusić in his Blues.
"I need you to look at someone. He may be a patient. But it's possible he's simply a friend of one. Either way, I think he lifted something from one of your fellow psychiatrists."
Liz set her sandwich down. "Is this why you're here? Are you trying to locate a missing vet?"
Kate shook her head, but held her tongue as she slid her phone across the table.
"Oh, my gosh. That's Ian Kusić."
"You're treating him?"
Liz shook her head. "As far as I know, no one is. He is a vet, but he works here. In the lab. I can't believe Ian would steal. He's been nothing but professional when I've dealt with him. A stellar tech. And the patients love him."
"He's dead."
Eyes wide, Liz slumped in her chair. "What happened?"
"All I can say for now is the cause was not natural." A doozy of an understatement. But given Liz's profession, she had to understand the need for discretion.
"Are you saying he was murdered? Oh, Lord. Is Bill okay? I called his office earlier, but he wasn't in."
"Bill?"
"Dr. Manning. You mentioned a possible theft from a fellow psychiatrist and you were standing outside Bill's office when I noticed you."
Kate nodded. "I'm sure he's fine." She hoped. "According to the doc's receptionist, he's dealing with a patient emergency. I'm simply tracing the final moments of Kusić's life. Speaking to the people he spoke to. Trying to determine what happened."
Liz shook her head. "I doubt I can help. As I said, everyone liked him. Ian—" Her gaze shifted. Narrowed.
"What is it?"
"It's probably nothing."
"Liz, I'm so low on leads, anything will help."
"Well, I did see him arguing with someone. Sergeant Fremont, as a matter of fact. But that was a week ago."
"Fremont? Is he a patient?"
"Of course. You know him. You two were talking outside Dr. Manning's office."
"Just to be clear. The vet I spoke with—the one in the wheelchair—that's Sergeant Fremont? Do you have his number?"
"Yes. I mean, no. Yes, that was Fremont. But he's currently homeless. He doesn't have a cellphone. He can't afford one and he definitely won't accept 'charity', as he terms it. His contact number rings at a local shelter. Their staff takes messages."
"About that argument with Kusić. Do you know what it was about?"
"No. But Fremont was livid. And he's one of the most easygoing men I've met. I mean, the man was Special Forces, you know? He can hold his temper. But not that day."
Kate brought up the next photo. The one she'd taken of the picture Seth had found tucked around the side of Kusić's fridge. She slid her phone back across the table. "Do you know her?"
Liz nodded. "Abby Carson. She works—worked—with Ian. I've seen them in the cafeteria. I think they dated awhile, but it was over by last week." She shrugged beneath Kate's questioning brow. "Body language. Occupational hazard."
Kate knew the feeling. She was about to say so when her phone rang. It was Lou. Hopefully, he had good news.
Namely, a suspect.
"Hey, boss. What've you got?"
"You don't want to know. Hell, I don't want to know."
Shit. What they had was another body. It was in the sheriff's voice. Kate glanced at Liz. Her friend was finishing her sandwich...and listening intently. Discreetly.
Deciphering body language wasn't the woman's only professional skill.
Kate stood and turned to walk several paces from the table before lowering her voice. "How bad?"
"Same as before. Gravel road leadin' to nowhere. This one runs by that patch of land Beulah Winters donated to the county a few years back. I'm lookin' at another fifteen paper sacks strung out in line, one hacked-up body part per. At least that's the prevailin' assumption. The woman who stumbled across 'em only opened one. The rest are waitin' on Tonga and you."
Kate glanced at her watch. It was just past four. The sun would be setting in under two hours. "I'm at Fort Leaves, following a lead on Kusić. I'm leaving now." Kate cut the call and pocketed her phone as she returned to the table where Liz was scribbling out a number on the back of a business card.
"I have to go."
"No worries." Liz held the card out as she stood. "My private number's on the reverse. Call me when things quiet down. Please. I'd love to reconnect."
"Me, too." But with two carved-up bodies in six hours? There was something she wanted to do more.
And it didn't stop with just catching this bastard.
4
Kate brought her SUV to a halt behind nearly every vehicle in the Braxton PD and scanned the distinctive trio of towering loblolly pines to her right.
Lou was wrong. This wasn't another gravel road leading to nowhere. Not to her.
This was almost the precise location of her first knock-down-drag-out with her dad. They'd driven this way to inter her rabbit at the county's only pet cemetery, and ended up stopped in the middle of the road after she'd threatened to jump out while the car was still moving. The fight had started over her mother's death—that and the fact that, ever since, her dad had refused to so much as mention the woman's name. It'd ended when one of her dad's fellow deputies had heard the commotion while chatting with the cemetery's caretaker and driven back to see what the shouting was about.
The present returned with the abrupt knock on her SUV's window, causing Kate to flinch and drop her keys. Concern etched her boss' craggy features as he peered in.
"Sorry, Kato. Didn't mean to startle you."
She scooped the keys from the floorboard and tossed them on the driver's seat as she climbed out. "I was just thinking."
"'Bout the first vic? I'm hopin' that means you got somethin' useful from the VA."
"Possibly." Though in light of this second body, she wasn't as sure. "Ian Kusić worked in the lab at Fort Leaves. The doc who owns the prescription pad I found had an emergency. His receptionist called back just before I pulled in here. The doc can see me tomorrow at noon. I plan to get there early to question any of Kusić's fellow workers who may be around." Both of Little Rock's VA hospitals admitted patients. That meant their labs were staffed twenty-four/seven.
Lou accompanied her up the line of cop cars toward the yellow tape barrier that had already been strung. Liberal use of the portable flashing cherry she'd attached to the top of the Durango had cleared her path all the way to Braxton, affording her desperately needed t
ime. They now had ninety minutes before the sun set and the evidence-obscuring dark settled in. Nothing like a ticking clock.
"Thanks for holding the scene."
Lou shrugged. "No one was anxious to take your place, not even the gas bag the governor's office sent over from the state police. By the way, he'll be liaising with you directly and providing whatever you request by way of manpower and equipment—or I want to know about it."
Kate tipped her head toward the uniform chatting with Tonga near the meat wagon. "That him?"
Lou nodded.
"Okay. I'll take it from here." Kate accepted fresh gloves and paper booties from Lou, along with a MorphoIDent. Pocketing the latter, she left him beside his sheriff's sedan and headed toward the ME. The uniformed trooper took one look at her face and stepped aside to give her room to speak to Tonga privately.
Ironic, really. Her twisted mishmash of scars might freak the bejeezus out of kids and civilian adults alike, but to vets like the one she'd met at Fort Leaves and her fellow deputies and cops? Her face was the silver bullet of credentials. She might be relatively young and female, but she'd already confronted more than this or any other state trooper likely would in his entire career—and had survived to tell the tale.
Well, she'd survived. Despite what those in Liz's profession preached, it was enough.
It had to be.
Kate snapped on her gloves and donned the booties that matched Tonga's. "Ready?"
The ME shook his head, but he followed her beneath the tape, reluctance slowing his steps as they closed in on another line of jumbo-sized, brown paper sacks. Kate understood his hesitation. She was supposed to have left scenes like this behind when she left the Army. In fact, she'd counted on it.
Though after retrieving and cataloguing the contents of that first set of bags, she no longer knew why. The hate and ugliness in the world never seemed to cease. If not hers, this latest installment would've landed in someone else's lap, forever weighing on that detective's heart and soul.
Steeling herself as best she could, Kate retrieved her flashlight as she and Tonga reached the first sack. Lou must have admonished the trooper, because he'd remained behind the crime tape with everyone else.
Excellent. The fewer boots contaminating the scene, the better.
Kate swept the beam of her light through the late-day shadows that had begun to cloak and shade the gravel around the bag. The rocks closest to them were disturbed.
Tonga pointed to the shoe-sized dips. "You think he's getting lazy?"
She shook her head. "Too shallow. Probably from the woman who stumbled across the scene." Someone strong enough to take down two victims and carve them up might not be tall, but he—or, yes, possibly she—had one hell of a solid set of working muscles. Kate retrieved her smartphone and snapped an exterior photo before shining her flashlight inside the already opened sack. "We've got another right hand, severed cleanly at the wrist and sealed in what appears to be food-grade plastic."
Unfortunately, the textured side was fused to the victim's palm. If the left hand had been sealed in the same fashion, they might not be getting an ID until they got the parts to the lab for detailed processing.
Tonga withdrew the hand, leaving Kate to flatten the sack. He laid the hand on the bag while she withdrew the MorphoIDent from her pocket. As she'd feared, she couldn't get a decent capture. She pocketed the device as Tonga traced his fingers over the thin cuts encircling the base.
"More flex cuffs?"
Kate nodded as she absorbed the evidence of a second terrified and futile struggle.
She and Tonga shared a sigh as they stood and headed for the next crisp, oversized bag. As with the remaining sacks, the top was still folded over and neatly stapled. Kate snapped another exterior shot and reclaimed the MorphoIDent as the ME unbagged the victim's left hand.
Damn. The killer had fused the textured side of the plastic to this palm too. By accident? Or in an attempt to delay identification? Since the latter meant the asshole was learning, Kate hoped for the former as she flipped the hand palm down to note the absence of indentation on the ring finger.
Based on the size of the hands and the coarse, blond hairs sprouting from the skin, their victim was most likely male and possibly unmarried. And that was all they had, because, once again, the MorphoIDent failed to grab a decent capture.
Kate shoved the device in her pocket and snapped a close-up before helping Tonga to his feet. She used her flashlight to examine the road as they worked their way to the next sack, and the next. Four bags in, they'd fallen into a sullen, symbiotic routine, with her snapping an exterior, Tonga breaking the seal and retrieving the part, then waiting for her to flatten the sack and take the close-up.
By the time they had the torso laid out, they'd confirmed that the victim was male, but little else. At least, nothing they hadn't already discovered that morning. As with Ian Kusić, this man's vital organs were missing, along with his penis, scrotum and windpipe.
That had to be significant...but how?
Tonga traced the grisly slice that ran the length of the victim's chest. It gaped slightly to reveal the emptiness within. This too was identical to Kusić's.
"Does this mean—" The knot in the ME's neck bobbed as he swallowed. When he couldn't seem to finish it, she did.
"Yes. We're dealing with a serial killer." Just saying it out loud, much less trying to comprehend how so much calculated evil could exist inside one person, caused gooseflesh to ripple across the back of Kate's neck.
Her mood fouled further as the location of that gooseflesh served to underscore the contents of that final, waiting sack: another severed head. Given how unprofessionally she'd handled the first head's unbagging, how was she going to get through this one without losing what little lunch she'd managed to consume?
"Ready?"
This time the cue had come from Tonga, and this time it was her boots that trudged behind his. Tactical breathing supported her through the short journey to the final sack. She quickly snapped the requisite exterior shot. In an attempt to stave off the coming reaction—at least until she was alone in her SUV, or better yet, smothering her face in Ruger's fur—she shifted the flashlight and phone to her left hand to clamp the fingers of her right around Max's watch. The slow, soothing twist began as Tonga reached inside the bag.
It helped.
She continued to twist Max's watch as the shrink-wrapped head surfaced, again utterly and inexplicably transfixed by that line of raw flesh at the base.
"You know him?
Surprised, she glanced at Tonga. "No. Why?"
He pointed to her fingers. They were still twisting. "You seem...unusually upset."
The pronouncement thrummed between them. Thankfully, it generated enough embarrassment to wrench her brain back from wherever it had desperately wanted to go. Kate released the watch and knelt to flatten the final sack. Tonga still held the head. The moment he laid it on the bag, she snapped the photo and clambered to her feet.
"I need to brief Lou, then confer with the crime unit about where to place the flood lamps."
They were losing light, damn it.
Tonga, bless him, didn't argue. He simply nodded, his ebony features blending with the coming dusk. "I'll be fine."
She wished she could say the same. Kate gave the severed head wide berth as she made her escape. She forced herself to slow her pace as she headed toward the crime barrier, using her flashlight to combat the shadows infesting the nooks and crannies of the gravel, searching for a miracle in the form of solid, case-breaking evidence with every step.
She came up empty.
Lou met her at the tape, his own resignation stamped amid the exhaustion carved in his face. "It's him, isn't it? The same bastard as this mornin'."
"Yes."
"Please tell me you got somethin' that'll let us nail this son-of-a-bitch."
"Wish I could, boss. He's just too good, and he's getting better. The victim's male. The textured side of the plasti
c is fused to his palms. I couldn't get an ID. As for the rest of the parts, the vital organs, windpipe and genitalia are missing like before. Also, we may be dealing with another vet, or he could've been active duty. I didn't see any tattoos, but this guy's got an impressive collection of shrapnel scars on his torso and arms, and his hair's regulation short with a standard military taper up the back. The rest of his body is—was—in excellent physical condition too."
"It's official, then. We've got a goddamned serial murderer on our hands."
"Worse. Obviously Tonga can't nail down time of death here. But as with Ian Kusić's, these parts are fresh, meaning we've got a killer with hellishly short cooling down period...as in none. In fact—" She stopped. The rest was supposition.
"Spit it out, Kato."
Still, she hesitated. “It's more guesswork than anything at this stage."
"That's more than I got to go on." Lou swept his hand behind them, encompassing half their department. "Hell, it's more than any of us got. At least your guesses are educated."
She dragged in a breath and crawled all the way out onto the professional limb. "Okay. I think he killed both men and packaged their parts at the same time, then dumped the bodies during the same trip."
Lou nodded slowly. But she could see the doubt creeping in.
"I know. It sounds crystal ballish. But consider this: the day never warmed up. That means the ground out here's been equal to the temperature inside a refrigerator since the middle of last night, but no earlier, since yesterday was unseasonably warm. That being the case—if both victims were killed, packaged and dumped at roughly the same time—there shouldn't be a difference in the condition of the flesh. To use your analogy from this morning, think meat counter. The longer the dark cuts of pork and beef are displayed, the more blood leaks into the package and the darker the meat gets. The lighter portions get slimy. And heat exacerbates the effects. I've seen both sets of parts up close, and there isn't a noticeable difference."
Which begged the horrific question: how many more of these grisly displays had been left in and around the deserted outskirts of Braxton for them to find?
The Garbage Man Page 6