“Here, you oughta put this on.” She handed him a hair net from her bag.
As Jessica searched her valise for a pair of gloves for him, she added, “I've read about the bizarre proceedings at the death inquiries in the cases of Jack the Ripper.”
Accepting the hair net and a surgical mask and a set of gloves, Reynolds replied, “Ol' Jacko's got nothing on our Milwaukee, Wisconsin, boy… least not in the butchery department.”
“Agreed, but why the spine?”
“That's why you're here, Dr. Coran, to tell us exactly that. You're the profiling expert.”
“Thanks, but this… this defies any profile on record.”
“Not quite. There're two other cases that we know of in which women have literally lost a backbone.”
“Yes, Oregon… the guy on death row. And the other? Some Minnesota woman?”
“Yes, and this very same pattern emerges in each case. Also, Millbrook, Minnesota, is only three hundred miles from Milwaukee.”
“But Portland… That's over half a continent away, and you think this guy in Oregon innocent, wrongly convicted-”
“Towne, Robert Towne.”
“You believe him innocent. That it's all a mistake. His arrest, trial, conviction?”
“Larger mistakes have happened in the judicial system of Portland, Oregon, especially where black men are concerned.”
“Then Towne is black?”
“Yes, he is as black as… as me.”
“But suppose Towne did it to copycat the Minnesota killing? And by extension, suppose someone here did it to copycat Towne for some sick, perverted reason?”
“Three separate guys tearing out backbones? I don't buy it.”
“Stick to your guns, Agent. I like that in a man,” Jessica said.
“There's more than happenstance and coincidence at work here. I feel it in my bones. No pun intended.”
“Trust me, none taken.”
Two photographers were snapping pictures now, one centered on the body and everything in relation to it, every stationary point of reference. The other cameraman fired off shots of the bloody mop propped against the wall beside the door where presumably the killer exited, leaving his wake of blood. Photographic shots from all angles exploded one after another, the photographers having latched on to competition as a way to get past the horror of their subject.
From somewhere down the hall, the sad melody of a Hank Williams tune droned on, the words a surreal fit: “the mooooon just went be-hind a cloud to hiiiiide its face and cry… I'm so lonesome I-ah could die…”
More shots of the body from all angles. The second photographer now took shots of the swirls of blood on the carpet. She looked from the busy photographers and back to Reynolds, but he had stepped away. Special Agent X. Darwin Reynolds now stood alongside Dr. Ira Sands, the Milwaukee M.E., and together they studied several cellophane-wrapped charcoal sketches.
At first, Jessica assumed the sketches were created by a police artist, but Darwin informed her, “We believe her killer drew them and left them behind.”
Now everything about the case felt surreal, even her thumbing through these lovely charcoal sketches. Sketches left by the Spine Thief himself. “Why'd he do it? Take the time to do all these?”
“And when did he do them?” asked Reynolds.
“Are they telling us something? Are they his con? How he wormed his way past the threshold?” Jessica mused aloud.
“Dr. Coran… like to introduce you to Dr. Ira Sands.” Reynolds stood between them, the obvious message being that she and Sands should work together.
Sands instantly shot out his hand and took hers, pumping it in a vise grip, his smile wide and welcoming. “We are so lucky to have you, Dr. Coran, so very fortunate indeed. I've read all your abstracts and bulletins.”
“Thank you, Dr. Sands. I've heard only good things about your crime lab.” Jessica knew that paying him this compliment was the highest praise he sought, as it was with any M.E.
“My lab is at your disposal, of course.”
“That's wonderful to hear. Thank you, Dr. Sands.” Like every FBI field lab boss, Sands thought the government-issue lab was his and his alone. She prayed he was being genuine and not simply politically correct.
The short, stocky Dr. Sands said, “Beginning with these”-Sands pointed at the sketches of a dog and the dead woman in Jessica's hand- “we are covering every base.”
Nodding, Jessica again examined the finely drawn, beautifully wrought charcoal drawings of the victim, three in all, one of a frolicking golden retriever chasing birds and two depicting the same dog with the victim in different poses, kissing and hugging one another.
“Where's the dog?” she asked.
“Animal control took him out,” said the heavyset Wyatt Abrams, the Milwaukee police chief, who'd introduced himself downstairs where he'd been taking a smoke break. “Poor dog had matted blood all over him from sleeping up against her for a week. 'Fraid he… ahhh… gnawed on some of the flesh cutaway from the woman, too, but you can't blame the animal.”
“Animal instinct,” she muttered.
“No, the SOB of a landlord let the dog howl for days before he decided to check on things, and even then only after the stench caught his attention.”
Darwin Reynolds took the sketches from Jessica and handed her another set, but these additional six were faxes. “From the other two cases, and I'd bet my pension it's the same artist leaving his calling card.”
“Two other cases not here in Milwaukee?” commented Sands, rolling his aged eyes.
Chief Abrams exploded with, “I think Reynolds is reaching.”
“Never discount gut instincts,” Jessica countered, coming to Reynolds's defense. “My own have served me well over the years.”
Smiles all around except for the stodgy chief, his forehead a road map of confusion. “Unfortunately, the law doesn't work that way, and neither does it put a man away for no good reason. We gotta trust the authorities in Oregon are every bit as competent as we are.”
“And just how competent is that?” joked Sands, laughing lightly to himself.
Reynolds's eyes showed rage, but he spoke with cool reserve. “Competent? Like the Smollen case, and the Byrd case before that? Competent? Try incompetent nincompoops. I tell you, Wyatt, they've got the wrong man on death row for this, and now it's a certainty. Given this murderer's robbing his victim of her spine.”
Reynolds had peaked Jessica's curiosity, but Dr. Sands said, “Look, Darwin, for the moment, we have our hands full with this fucking mess”-he indicated the horrid mangled body a few feet from them-”and we're losing light, and I haven't eaten anything since my morning coffee roll, so if you don't mind. Dr. Coran, let's get down to business, shall we?” Sands swept his arm out in a gesture that said, You first.
Jessica went to the body and knelt beside it. Dr. Ira Sands did likewise across from her. She saw that the hefty local coroner wanted to get nearer. “Darwin,” he near whispered to Jessica, “is on a tear to prove this is the third such death in a series, but I've seen nothing to convince me of it. Regardless, we have enough in hand for the moment, wouldn't you agree?”
“I do indeed.” Jessica steeled her own spine as she viewed the enormous gash in the dead woman's back. She'd seen disemboweled victims, dismembered victims, victims with eyes removed, god-awful drowning and burn victims, but this went beyond the pale, beyond any hope of speculation. With disembowelments came necrophilia and even cannibalism, which served as motivation, albeit a sick one, something in the human experience and collective psyche hanging on from cave-dwelling days. And even with mutilations brought about by lust murder, there resided some modicum of explanation a profiler might work with to assuage her own guilt at being human. With dismemberments, there usually followed facts uncovering a perpetrator's pure hatred of the victim, or an attempt to reduce the very real problem of body disposal-a hatchet job borne of fear of discovery. Even a butcher who butchered for the sake of butchering at least had a “reason”-even if it was as despicable as “I just love the feel of a cleaver going through bone.”