“They were killed separately,” Alton Banner remarked when the hikers had gone.
Spencer blinked. “What?”
“The bodies. There’s a difference in body temperature that suggests one has been dead an hour longer than the other. The male victim went first. He was off in the weeds. The killer probably took him there for-what? Privacy? To get him out of the way without letting the girl know what had happened to him?” The doctor shrugged. “Figuring that out is your job, I guess.” He turned the flashlight toward the second body, letting the beam play on the ropes that still bound her wrists. “The girl was tied to the tree at that point.”
“Cause of death for the male?”
“Exsanguination, suffocation. His throat is cut.” He shined the light on the male victim’s head and neck. “Windpipe is severed. Watch how you move the body when the time comes. There isn’t much holding the head on.”
“And the other one?”
“I’m coming to that. I don’t think the first victim, the male, was the primary target. The killer got him out of the way first, but that killing was fairly perfunctory. Bludgeon-ings. Defense wounds. Then the quick slash that puts an end to it. Like swatting a fly.” He pointed to the body of Emily Stanton and sighed wearily. “He took his time with her.”
Spencer nodded. He wondered how much of it she had been conscious for. At some point in unbearable pain, he’d heard, the mind simply drifts off to somewhere else. He hoped she went there quick and never came back. The blood looked black in the moonlight. “I think I’ll wait for the TBI guy,” he told the doctor. “He’ll have to take samples.”
“That’s what I’d do,” Banner agreed. “My investigation was perfunctory, but he’ll do the evidence collecting. You might as well photograph the scene while you wait. I’ll hold the light.”
Spencer willed himself not to register what he was seeing as he photographed the area-roll after roll of black-and-white 35-millimeter film, backed up by a dozen Polaroid shots. The recording of a crime scene is a methodical process closely akin to archaeology in the precision of the measurements and the use of grid markings to measure off the area. The body was “twelve o’clock” on the site map. He began photographing the body, shooting clockwise around the scene, taking every angle, every degree of rotation, until he returned again to the starting point. When he had finished photographing the scene, Spencer went back to his notebook and began to sketch the scene-pinpointing the position of the bodies, the objects nearby, and so on. Investigators were taught to be thorough. He wasn’t much of an artist, but he was diligent.
It was just past three when the officer from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation showed up. Spencer knew that he was a veteran investigator not so much by his age as by the way he approached the area. He introduced himself to Spencer and the doctor.
“Guess I’ll head on home,” said Alton Banner. “Office hours come mighty early. You know where to find me if you need anything. I’ll get a report typed up for you in the morning.”
Spencer thanked him. When he turned to explain the situation to the TBI man, he found the investigator already bending over the body of the young woman. “Oh my,” he said in a calm, conversational tone as he trained the beam of his flashlight across her upper body. “Whathave you got loose in your neck of the woods, Deputy?”
Spencer was startled by the question. Surely a bear couldn’t have done this? “We’re pretty sure they were killed by a human being, sir,” he said.
The investigator laughed. “Oh, it was a person, all right. I might be willing to debate you over howhuman he was, though, considering his handiwork. I hate to claim him as part of our species, but, yeah, he’s one of us, all right.”
He had brought a thermos of coffee, and he didn’t even turn away from the bodies while he poured it out and gulped down his first cupful. Then he set down the coffee and surveyed the scene again. “A hard day’s night,” he said with a sigh.
He signed in on the site log and glanced at Spencer’s sketches of the area. “It’ll do,” he remarked to no one in particular. Then he stood up and stretched. “Drink your coffee. Take your time. I’ll have to collect some samples, and then we’ll do the grid work together, okay?”
“Sure. Fine.”
“Have you identified the victims yet?”
“No. I was waiting for you.”
“Maybe we’ll turn up something on the grid work. They’re not local, are they? Look like trail bunnies to me.”
“Hikers. I think so, too,” said Spencer. “I don’t think they were killed because of who they were. I mean, not by anyone they knew.”
“Oh Lord, no,” said the TBI man. “Of course, we’re pissing in the wind at this early stage of the investigation, but in my far-from-humble opinion, this wasn’t a crime. It was a sport. To whoever did this, I mean.”
The crime scene photos were spread across Joe LeDonne’s desk, in the spotlight of his reading lamp, but he barely glanced at them. At the moment, a hamburger in greasy waxed paper was occupying the one spot on the wooden surface not covered with photographs.
“I’ve stared at those pictures until I can see them in my sleep,” he said. “If I got any these days, that is.”
“I thought we’d have solved it by now,” said Martha, setting a cup of cold coffee down untasted. “We’ve put out the word to the informers and talked to everybody within a mile of that field.”
“The lab work will help.”
“Only if we have someone’s blood type and DNA to compare it to.”
“It’s a start.”
“I was so tempted to tell Spencer about it when I took him the mail today, but he still looks awful. The Harkryder case is really getting to him. I don’t think he’s sleeping much.”
“You took him the mail? What about the newspaper?”
Martha smiled. “I took him theKnoxville Journal. I told him I’d forgotten to bring theRecord, and I’d try to remember it next time. He doesn’t need anything else to worry about. Besides, there’s nothing he can do about it now. The site investigation is done, the lab work isn’t back, and he’s in no shape to do the legwork of a criminal investigation.”
LeDonne leafed through another folder on his desk: the photocopied files of the Fate Harkryder case. Martha had made a copy before taking the originals to Spencer Arrowood. “I wish we had a murder weapon,” he said, for perhaps the tenth time.
“Well, it isn’t a twenty-year-old knife,” said Martha. “The TBI investigator agrees with Dr. McNeilclass="underline" the wounds are similar to those in the Trail Murders case, but not identical. He thinks it may be a copycat crime, based on the fact that Fate Harkryder’s case is back in the news.”
“We have Fate Harkryder’s blood type on file somewhere, don’t we?”
“I think so.”
“When the lab work comes back, let’s compare them.”
“It isn’t him,” said Martha. “Riverbend is the best alibi there is.”
LeDonne nodded. “Besides, he’s too old. We’re looking for someone under thirty-five. This kind of violence is a young man’s sickness.”
“I think I’ll drop by the high school tomorrow,” said Martha. “See if anybody wants to talk about the murders.”