Lucas made another notation to check the national crime files for any information on professional hits or hit men who used a crossbow or bow and arrow. It seemed as far-fetched as finding an alien hit man or a Geronimo out of time, but it could sound off some bleeps and alarms, so he'd give it a try. But then, perhaps Dr. Sanger had already done as much. He didn't want to ask her, however. Instead, he wanted to dig a little deeper before committing himself to her little covert operation.
Just as in the hit movie Pulp Fiction, hit men did come in all sizes, shapes, colors, sexes, and brainpan sizes these days; perhaps there was one out there with a Robin Hood fetish? Maybe he or she even wore tights? If it was a she, that might explain how she had gotten so close to two men-at their bedsides-with a deadly weapon the size of a shotgun.
Lucas needed a break. The information was coming in too fast for him, and his legs needed stretching, and his back was beginning to trouble him again. If he was going to be behind a desk for as many hours as this a day, he would have to get a contoured, expensive-as-hell chair like the one Johnnie Cochran and the rest of the O. J. dream team had had for the duration of what had become the longest trial in the history of jurisprudence in America and the world.
On a notepad, he jotted down the name of Palmer's fiancee-Alisha Reynolds-along with a note about her parents, Dick and Mildred Reynolds of 1224 Cherry Lane Drive, Marietta, Georgia. By now they could have moved out of the country, or out of life, he reminded himself even as he wrote. Still, he'd have to find out what he could about the would-be in-laws. Most crime started in the home, in one fashion or another.
Lucas pondered further what he'd learned about the similarities in the Mootry and Palmer cases. Why were these supposed good men, pillars of the community, targeted for murder in such heinous fashion? What did both men have in common? What clubs did they belong to? Did Mootry know something about the Palmer case? Had he known Dr. Palmer? Had he known of Palmer's murder? What did he know about the earlier problem in Georgia, when Palmer's fiancee was killed? Was Mootry dispatched for what he knew about Palmer? Had the judge ever been to Georgia? Did the judge know Alisha Reynolds's parents, perhaps? Perhaps.
While the cleanly efficient method of dispatching both men seemed wholly practiced and professional, why decapitate and remove hands and feet and private parts? That was not the sort of work your usual hit man bought into. He didn't want to leave the scene covered in blood; he didn't want to make a mess. So why the mutilation of the two bodies? It certainly didn't seem to be for reasons a hit man would enjoy. Hit men and women worked on one principle and it was called lucrative payment. They were mercenaries, pure and simple. Lucas had a hard time imagining a pro who would have anything to do with gratuitous bloodletting, unless… unless he was paid a great deal more for the extra show?
Whether a hired killer or just a nutcase, was the after-death mutilation an effort on the part of the murderer to shock authorities, confuse or slow the process of identification? If so, why leave the torso in the dead man's home? And how did the killer gain entrance? And did his victim know him, even trust him?
“Damn that Meredyth Sanger,” he muttered to himself. Without knowing it, she had hooked him like a marlin.
He wondered if he ought to simply call her and tell her that he knew she was withholding information about Palmer's fiancee and facts surrounding that case just to keep him on her damned string.
Instead, Lucas stood now, stretched, and decided that since it couldn't be Miller time yet, he'd locate the coffee station upstairs, take a break and come back at this thing fresh. It hadn't surprised him that neither Captain Phillip Lawrence, Duty Sergeant Stanley Kelton, nor anyone else for that matter, had interrupted him all afternoon. This place was not inviting; in fact, it was ignored, the pretense being that it didn't exist, and by extension, neither did he.
He went for that coffee.
The coffee station stood alongside the active homicide board, on which the names of victims were placed in red ink alongside the name of the detective in charge of the case. Cases in red ink meant they were open; cases placed on the left-hand side of the board, scripted in black ink, meant they were closed. There was no pen color or place on the board for the cases that went unsolved. They merely disappeared from the board when Lawrence decided it was time to call a halt to the “waste of taxpayers' money” on a case that wasn't ever going to be solved, usually when it was two or three years old. Many cases came in with the name of the perpetrator all but emblazoned on them, but what cops termed a stone-hard mystery was that rare case in which whodunit is unclear and sometimes completely invisible. Sometimes, many times, even the stone-hard mystery could be solved, but often it took years to do so. More and more, departments were unwilling or unable to apportion manpower and man hours of that duration to a single case, so that rooms like Lucas's had begun to swell at the seams.
Every city in America had such cases; every precinct in the city had such cases. For the Thirty-first Precinct, such homicides wound up as dust collectors in what was now Lucas Stonecoat's necromancy collection. It had always been referred to as the Dungeon, the Graveyard and the Cold Room, but already the cops upstairs were referring to it in various cute ways for Lucas's benefit, names such as Lucas's Lodge and, Stonecoat's X-Files. They were also calling Lucas “Spooky” just to further annoy him.
NINE
A LONELY STRETCH OP INTERSTATE 5 OUTSIDE ROGUE RIVER, OREGON
Timothy Kenneth Little felt a dull, pounding throb tolling with the rhythmic back-and-forth of a bell against his temple. It'd been a trying day, and the long trip to the Rogue River plant had required a two-junket flight that got him only as far as Medford's little municipal airport. Eugene, Oregon, was just too bloody far from the plant to be of any damned use whatsoever, and he cursed himself these days for not having had the foresight to've leased a similar parcel of property in Eugene in the early days rather than taking the cheaper route and building in Rogue River. But back then every dollar had to be accounted for. End result? A plant full of people in Rogue River had jobs, thanks to him, and there was no taking those jobs elsewhere now. Bottom line? He now had one helluva long, difficult drive ahead of him, and his back was acting up, and his neck was killing him. Turning fifty was a bitch, and that, too, was preying on his mind.
At least he'd done something with his life. Not like his brother, Thorn, who was still cutting other people's lawns and frying eggs, bacon and ham as a short-order cook in San Francisco, where when he wasn't working he was catching the latest wave, a ridiculous, aging surfer.
Timothy Little had never stood a surfboard, had never been athletic at anything in his life, but he had been a careful investor, and now he owned sixteen plants around the nation, plants that made aircraft parts which were always in demand-the convenient little kitchen apparatuses needed aboard every jet airliner. He'd tried to get Thom interested in the business, but Thom declared he'd go homeless before he'd take charity from his little brother.
He wasn't by any stretch the wealthiest man on the continent, but if this were France, maybe… Still, his loved ones didn't want for a thing. All the boys were grown up, following careers of their own, each with a family of his own, nice houses and cars, and they all owed it to their pop, a man who'd been as a pre-teen and teen what all the other kids in school called a pencil-carrying nerd. Thank God his interest in science and gadgetry never waned, paying off handsomely in the long run. Where were the jocks who'd bullied him throughout high school now? He curiously wondered as yet another discourteous driver the other side of the highway blinded him with high beams.