Jess took another look at the corpse tied to the tree. “There’s one more detail we need to make the re-creation authentic.” I looked puzzled. “I didn’t tell you about this,” she said. “You were already skittish about the trauma to the head and face, so I figured this would send you clear over the edge.” Reaching down to her belt, she unsheathed a long, fixed-blade knife from her waist. She stepped up to the body, yanked down the black satin pan ties and stockings we’d tugged onto him, and severed his penis at the base.
“Good God,” Miranda gasped.
“Not hardly,” said Jess. “I’d say this was more the devil’s handiwork.” She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Bill, you sure this guy is clean?”
I struggled to speak. “Well, I can tell you he didn’t have HIV and he didn’t have hepatitis. That’s all we screen for, though. I can’t promise he didn’t have syphilis or a case of the clap.”
She eyed the penis. “I don’t see any obvious symptoms,” she said. With that, she peeled off her left glove, dabbed her bare thumb on the severed end of the organ, then carefully rolled a print onto the shaft. As Miranda and I stared in disbelief and horror, she pried open the corpse’s jaw and stuffed the penis into the mouth.
“There,” she said. “Now it’s authentic.”
CHAPTER 2
“KNOXVILLE POLICE.”
I pulled the telephone receiver away from my ear and stared at it dumbly, as if KPD were the last place on earth I’d have expected to reach when dialing criminalist Art Bohanan. Art and I had collaborated on dozens of cases over the past twenty years. Besides being remarkably eagle-eyed at murder scenes, Art had shown himself to be a whiz in the crime lab as well, teasing out clues from minuscule bits of carpet fibers, upholstery, bullet trajectories, and random (to me, though not to him) spatters of blood. He had also become one of the nation’s leading fingerprint experts, devising equipment and techniques that even the FBI’s crime lab had adopted to reveal latent prints-including seemingly invisible ones on the skin of a body.
“Knoxville Police Department. Can I help you?” The guy on the other end of the line-I pictured an aging, overweight sergeant easing toward his pension-sounded annoyed, despite his offer of help.
“Oh, sorry,” I stammered. “I was trying to reach Art Bohanan. I expected either him or his voice mail.”
“Sir, he’s not available. Can I take a message?”
“Do you know when he’ll be in?”
“No, sir, I do not. All I know is that he’s unavailable. Do you wish to leave a message or not?”
“Uh, yes. Please. Tell him-ask him-to call Dr. Brockton when he gets a chance, if you would.”
“Dr. Brockton? Hey there, Doc.” Suddenly the guy was all warmth and cheer. “This is Sergeant Gunderson. I was the one found that guy under the Magnolia Avenue viaduct about ten years ago. You ’member that case?”
“I sure do,” I said, smiling at both the memory and my deductive powers. Gunderson was indeed a fat sergeant coasting toward retirement. One reason the case had been memorable was that it featured Gunderson in the unlikely act of running. “You were chasing a burglar that night, if I remember right?”
He chuckled. “Was, till I tripped over that damn body and went ass-over-teakettle. Scared the hell out of me. I ’bout messed my britches. Fellow I was chasing let out a yell just before I went sprawling, so he musta seed it, too.”
“Pretty scary thing to stumble across in the moonlight,” I agreed. The body turned out to be one of the local winos. Judging by the advanced state of decomp-his skull was nearly bare, though a fair amount of soft tissue remained on his torso and limbs-he’d been ripening beneath the viaduct for about a week of midsummer nights and days. His outline was traced with greasy precision on the concrete by the dark fatty acids that had leached from his corpse, marking the splay of his arms and legs, even the spread of his fingers. There was heated speculation among the officers on the scene about who might have wanted him dead, and what sort of bludgeon had shattered his skull with such devastating force. Then I pointed to an uncapped empty bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 perched on the rail of the viaduct above us-a bottle Art later found to be covered with prints from the dead man’s hands and lips. I often used my slides from that case in police trainings, to underscore the importance of looking all around, and up and down, at death scenes.
“Art’s on special assignment right now, Doc,” Gunderson said, “but I’ll page him and have him call you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Good to talk to you, Sergeant. Watch your step. You never know where the bodies are.”
He chuckled again. “I’ve got a pretty good fix on where most of ’em are buried here at KPD, though. See you, Doc. Don’t be a stranger.”
Two minutes later my phone rang. “Bill? It’s Art.”
“Art Bohanan, Man of Mystery?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Who wants to know?”
“Nobody, now that I think about it,” I said. “You available for a quick fingerprint consult?”
“I’ve gotten sorta sidetracked, but I could spare a few minutes. You got something really gross, as usual?”
“I wouldn’t dream of bringing you anything less.”
“Got a pen?” I surveyed my cluttered desktop, finally found a nub of a pencil. “Close enough. Why?”
“2035 Broadway. Come inside.”
“Why? Where are you, anyhow? What are you doing?”
“Can’t talk right now. Oh, you got a boom box there in your office?”
I wouldn’t have called it a boom box-I kept it tuned to the UT public radio station, which played classical music, and the volume was cranked down so low it was almost subliminal-but I said yes.
“Bring it.”
“What for?”
Art didn’t explain; he’d already hung up.
For the second time in two phone calls, I found myself staring stupidly at the receiver in my hand. Then I hung up, too. My boom box was sitting atop a file cabinet just inside the door of my office. The cord, shrouded in cobwebs and dust, disappeared behind the cabinet, which was snugged tight against the wall, or tight against the plug, at any rate. Curling both hands behind the back of the filing cabinet, I gave a tug. It did not budge; many years and many pounds’ worth of papers had accumulated in it since I had plugged in the radio and shoved the cabinet back in place.
I shifted my grip, crossing my wrists, which somehow seemed to equalize the force I could apply with each arm. Then I hoisted my left foot up onto the doorframe, nearly waist-high, where my hands clutched the cabinet, and strained to straighten my leg. With a rasping sound that set my teeth on edge, the cabinet scraped forward by six inches. Triumphantly I reached into the gap I had created, wiggled the plug free, and extricated the cord and my arm, both covered with cobwebs and grime. “This had better be good, Art,” I muttered.
CHAPTER 3
A CENTURY AGO, BROADWAY had been one of Knoxville’s grand avenues, lined with elegant Victorian mansions on big, shady lots. The street had long since gone to seed, though, especially in the vicinity of the address Art had given me. Heading north from downtown, I passed two of the city’s homeless missions. The missions didn’t open their doors for the night until five o’clock, so for most of the day their clientele roamed Broadway; some hung out, or passed out, in nearby cemeteries. A few neighboring streets, buffered from Broadway’s blight by a block or so of rental houses, had made a comeback over the past couple of de cades. Those pockets of gentrification, sporting pastel houses with gleaming gingerbread, were poignant reminders of how lovely Old North Knoxville had once been, before I-40 had cut a swath through its heart and Broadway itself had become a commuter artery lined with liquor stores and pawnshops.