Infernal or heavenly, divinity itself is transitory.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin Same night
A shadow moved across the page she sat reading. Looking up, Jessica found Reynolds staring down at her in a kind of silent examination. “I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I was hoping we'd have come to some conclusions about what next.”
“What next?” He seemed awkward, his white shirt open, the linen contrasting sharply with his black chest. “Where do we go from here.”
“Enough with the arcane science lesson, huh?” she replied. All the wine was gone, but she tipped the bottle anyway, studying it as if to have some focal point. “I think to bed is where we go.”
“What?”
“I'm sorry. I meant to sleep, to sleep.”
“Oh, yeah. What time is it anyway?”
“Three, three-ten in the A.M. Not even conventioneers… not even God is awake at this hour,” she lamented.
“Let's just go over the Sarah Towne killing one more time.” “I can do it in my sleep, I promise you, Darwin.”
“They're still taking orders at room service. I can get us another round of drinks. Whiskey sour, right? Jack Daniel's with a lime, lemon, cherry and an orange slice.”
“You are a quick study, Detective. Know just how to tingle a girl's backbone all right, but no, no, and no.”
“I'll just order that right up.”
“Along with your gin and tonic.”
“Hold my seat.”
“Will do.”
With his return, again dropping into the chair opposite her on this cool night, Jessica again noted how tall and imposing a man Darwin was. She watched him grab his shirt for an invisible pack of cigarettes. “Trying to give it up,” he muttered.
Somewhere from another balcony, a piano player made beautiful music, reminding her of Billy Vaughn. Whoever this imposter was, he proved extremely good on the ivories, now playing “Danny Boy.” No doubt a music student.
Whoever he or she was, the pianist slipped unnoticed into an equally beautiful rendition of “I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You).” The melody made Jessica think of how far apart she was from Richard.
“I wonder why the hell I'm here in the beer capital of the world chasing yet another monster,” she confided in Darwin. “I'm not sure I have the stomach for it any longer, Darwin-the process necessary to locate, capture, and put an end to the career of a man bent on ripping out people's fucking spines. Maybe this is a job for younger-”
“What the fuck is this, why-me-whine-fest time?”
The fatigue and the booze conspired against her having any reply to this.
Darwin firmly added, “You are here, Dr. Coran, to teach me, remember? And because you're needed.”
“You have any idea how tired I am of chasing down these fucking freaks, these inhuman humans? And in the chasing, how often I've lost myself, my own soul, Darwin? And you keep at it this way, you'll join me in hell.”
“How can you say that with your record of-”
“The price is high, Darwin. No winning. You lose even when you win. You lose repeatedly. Repeatedly you lose a larger and larger portion of yourself-”
Darwin stared, momentarily stunned at her admission.
“Along with family, along with lovers, along with any chance at happiness, two point five children, a white picket fence, a lapdog, a home and roots?”
“Sure, I understand, Dr. Coran.”
“The hell you do.”
“You got so close to evil, close enough to touch it, and the closer in you get, the closer you are to… to accepting it as… as normal.”
“Then maybe you do know something, young Xavier Darwin Reynolds.”
“I know what I've read in your books.”
“As normal… the things you begin to accept as normal as Mom's apple pie-evil plunked down and hunkered like a gargoyle right in our faces, but it is all verboten for us to fathom why because it's all part of God's grand schematic plans. His unknowable design, and so the sickest most twisted things man can do are all in the human makeup, and so this is indeed normal. And then it gets scary.”
“Scary? You want scary go to the neighborhood I grew up in. Come on, Doc, maybe you've had a little too much to drink.”
“I see it in myself, you see it in yourself, in our species, Darwin, in our race, and in our self-of-selves, where we can't hide… And, yeah, we see it in our cells, our collective, unconscious DNA cells, and so I give you particularly scary.”
Room service arrived with additional drinks. Darwin saw to it, tipping the bellhop. When he returned with her drink extended, he said, “Perhaps, Dr. Coran, we both ought to call it quits on the alcohol after all and get some sleep. We have the follow-up postmortem scheduled for eight-thirty sharp.”
“Sharpe, how I miss Richard Sharpe.” Jessica was beyond exhaustion now. She only grunted and sipped at her whiskey sour. Darwin's eyes lingered over his glass, then at her as he sipped at the ice tinkling at the bottom of his glass. He next exchanged it for his new drink.
“Don't worry about my getting up in the morning,” she said, “especially since it would appear I am not going to sleep anyway. Don't worry. I'll be there on time,” she assured him.
He gave her an approving nod, hefted his glass, waited for her to do the same and toasted, “If you're sure, then, to a speedy end to this, and to saving a man in Oregon from state-sanctioned murder.”
“I don't know that we can save Robert Towne, Reynolds.”
“We can and we will.”
“Oh, yes… of course. All right, Darwin. I do like your enthusiasm.”
“I had hoped to find more fire in you for the case.”
“Fire… me… oh, sorry. Guess I'm fatigued from the flight, all that we saw today, and maybe, just perhaps a little.. just a little jaded.”
“That might explain the book in your hand, and you sitting working this case alone as if I'm not even here.”
“Just looking for answers.” She held up the book's back cover to show him Holcraft's photo. “One of the best men in forensics I ever had the pleasure of working with.”
“Really? I wouldn't've guessed it on my own since I'm only an FBI detective. From his picture, your man Asa, looks like Santa Claus incognito-donning a suit and tie but failing miserably to fool anyone.”
She glared at his irreverence toward her American idol.
He took the book from her and examined the write-up, the cover and then the marked page where she had left off.
He began to silently scan its pages, physically jolted by something he read. “Oh Christ.”
“What is it?”
“Listen to this,” he ordered and began reading. “ 'In Hindu esoteric physiology the spinal column has an astral counterpart in what is known as the brahmadanda.'“
“And that is?”
“According to your friend Holcraft, 'the Rod of Brahma, an invisible shaft, which starts from a place between the anus and the tailbone, and proceeds upward along the spine to the base of the skull'.”
“Yeah, I was reading that part when you interrupted me. So?”
“So, 'within this shaft is the sushumna,'“ he continued reading.
“Meaning what?”
“Something to do with the pleasure centers in the brain… means 'pleasing,' something about the largest of the subtle arteries of the body. But what the hell is a subtle artery?”
“A 'subtle artery' is a mythical medical belief in an invisible system of connecting arteries between major organs, the eyes, the phallus and the brain.”
“I think I see…”
“No, you don't. It's a fallacy. It does not exist except in the minds of some Hindu clerics who have never let go of the past, including medical misinformation.”
“Medical mis-in-for-ma-tion,” he slowly intoned.
“At one time, there was a generally held belief that the soul resided in the pancreas, too.”
“This guy Holcraft… He didn't believe all this shit, did he?”
She shook her head vehemently. “No-no-no, but there are people who do, and that's the point… that some still do.”
“You mean it was a kind of hobby of his to collect this kind of stuff even though much of it is a pack of lies?”
“Asa was fascinated with what people could make of something as simple as cartilage and bone, the human nose, the ears, the eyes, the skull cap, you name it.”
“Is that right?”
“From A to Z, he researched all this arcane information about scatological practices and beliefs from every culture, race, religion and time period.”
“Scat-o-logical? Does that mean it's logical to scat?” he joked, but she could hear the fatigue in his voice.
“Scatological refers to bodily functions, autonomous stuff, weird shit.”
“Got that right. This is some weird shit. Says here, 'According to the Chinese system an exceedingly fine tube starts at the sacral'-whatever that is-'extremity and goes up the spine and enters the skull, and is connected with a reservoir of marrow called t-t-t-t'ung te situated at the back of the head.'“
“From tailbone to skullcap,” she commented, nodding. “Pleasure points in body and mind.”
He read on, “ 'The Tibetans took over this notion and added a refinement by introducing a system of boo… ahhh… bu-gu-chan veins.' Sounds like moo goo gai pan.”
She frowned and took the book away from him. “ 'These veins,'“ she read, “ 'branch out of the spinal column and then loop back again forming a network of tiny channels filled with a vaporlike essence. This system of veins is responsible for vitalizing the blood, semen and other “wet” elements of the body.'“ She lifted her final dram of whiskey sour to toast these words. “And here's to wet elements.” She downed the whiskey. “And I do believe it is time for me to retire.”
“I appreciate all the time you've taken, Dr. Coran.”
“On the case or on your crusade?”
“I assure you they are one and the same.”
“Then we will make it so, one and the same.”
She staggered, dog tired and tipsy, back into the room. He followed. “Lock that window up for me, will you? And get outta here, will you, Xavier Darwin Reynolds? I'm off to see the wizard.” She set her alarm as she spoke. She laid across the bed as he made his way toward the door.
“Good night or rather morning, Dr. Coran.”
“You know, Darwin, you could be wrong every step of the way on this thing, and especially the part about an aging FBI M.E.'s having any sort of clout with authorities in Oregon to get a man off death row.” In her foggy mind, she once again rifled through the photos as she spoke. “Still, there are some damn striking similarities here, even to time of year. Another pattern. Always in the fall, mid-fall, right? Only a year apart…”
“Two years ago come November fourteenth in Millbrook, Minnesota.”
“Yeah, Millbrook… How big is this place, Millbrook?”
“Size of my left toe. One fire hydrant town. Farming community. More cows than people. I figure our guy may've just been raised there, and with too much time on his hands… who knows… maybe he read your friend Asa's book or he's read Evan Kingsbury's god-awful novels depicting Lovecraftian monsters feeding on human beings.”
“The possibility that Asa's book set him off… that would upset Asa, I can tell you.”
“Why the bastard needs a crocodile-sized bone God alone knows!”
She said, “Something to fuck, something to cuddle with in bed, something to take walks with, who knows what goes through the minds of these fucked freaks that can do this kind of thing to another human being.”
“More likely it's like you said. He's extracting the bone marrow and cannibalizing it.”
Propped on her elbow on the bedspread, she replied, “I said that? Oh, yeah… least that'd be my guess if I dared venture one. Possibly thinks it gives him some magical power or eternal life or some such nonsense.” She flashed on the crime-scene photo showing the charcoal sketch Louisa Childe clutched in a closed right hand fist. Another photo showed that the fingertips of her left hand had all been removed. Removed by the killer himself. These had been recovered, unlike the backbone.
“Tell me again what was in the picture Louisa Childe had clutched in her hand.”
He let go of the door and moved a few steps back into the darkened room. Darwin's skin glistened here in the room as if it came alive in the dark. “A charcoal drawing depicting the victim-”
“Right… feeding birds in a park.”
“Not just any park, but the one directly across from her apartment, one she frequented. Three other drawings of the park and the birds had also been left clumsily tacked to the walls.”
“That's some con to run… quite a segue way into a woman's apartment.”
“And Minnesota authorities believe the butcher did the artwork.”
“Was it a good likeness?”
“Good likeness?”
“Did he do his subject justice. Did it look like her, you know, a decent job?”
“From what I gather, it was quite good, along with the other prints found tacked to the walls-all determined to've been done by the same artist.”
“Strange… strange he would leave such a calling card. Especially in so rural an environment. People there could recognize the hand at work.”
“Unfortunately, that hasn't happened.”
“How much time does Robert Towne have before they drop the acid?”
“Forty-eight hours, and nothing I've been able to do has had the slightest effect on authorities and the governor there, including our field office in Oregon.”
“Do you know the governor? What kind of a guy is he? Can you get cooperation?”
“He's a cowboy and an asshole. He's made up his mind, and why not? He has the entire fucking state, along with all of Portland, behind him.”
“Tell me more about Towne and his wife.”
“They were estranged, had enjoyed a long separation. He had no motive to kill her. No insurance, no kid problems, no alimony, no motive. The brainless cowboys out there just want a show, and he's the main attraction. Apparently, she was some sort of sainted beauty queen and cheerleader once, so the media had no problem creating a beast out of him.”
“And now Joyce Olsen in your town.”
“Under my nose.”
“Is that your personal interest in this, why you're so passionate about it? That it happened on your watch?”
He hesitated a moment. “Damn straight it is.”
She thought for a moment she should read something into his hesitancy and his reply, but she was too foggy and fatigued now to try. “Get out. Tomorrow is another day. G'night…”
Millbrook, Minnesota 5:16 A.M.
All of Millbrook, Minnesota, slept. Her quaint tree-lined streets silent save for the Sunbeam bread truck, the milkman's van making its predawn rounds, a farmer going door to door with fresh eggs. A place out of time, Richard thought as the car he and Brannan rode in rushed past disinterested raccoons that'd gotten into garbage back of the Millbrook Diner. The animals simultaneously rummaged, fed and fended off a barking dog barring its teeth at the family of four. Noticing Richard's interest in the raccoons, Dan Brannan said, “Little ones are cute as hell.”
They followed two cars turning onto a back road out of town that took them trundling across a wooden covered bridge over a stream called Paintbrush Creek on a green sign. Ahead of them in the lead car, now wending its way toward their dubious destination, was the cemetery caretaker who doubled as the small city's undertaker for The French and Parker Arrangement Center-a euphemism for a euphemism-what Sharpe learned was the new term for funeral parlor. Mori French of French and Parker had slipped FBI Agent Richard Sharpe his advertisement which was called a Funeral Decision Guide, and in it Mori and partner Garrett Parker had summed up their service philosophy in a paragraph. The guide pointed out that French and Parker wanted only to help people make the single-most important decisions of their lives-decisions about death and “arrangements” for death in one's own absence. It made Sharpe think of Woody Allen's famous statement on the subject, which he shared with Dan beside him. “ 'I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.'“
Dan laughed in response. “Got that right.”
Sharpe returned to the brochure Mori French had whipped out from his inside coat pocket even at this hour, even though Sharpe would not be using his services. “These guys running the local funerary have this down to a science, selling their services.”
“Lotta money in it. If maybe I'd been smart,” muttered Brannan. “Hell, we see death all the time, too, but we don't make near the bucks off it Frenchy and Parker do.”
“Listen to this,” said Sharpe, reading now from the soft blue brochure with a cloud-filled sky, bright with beaming light, as backdrop to the bold lettering. “'French and Parker's Arrangement Center provides you with an array of choices: Ground Burial, Cremation, Mausoleum, Funeral Services, Local and Long Distance Shipping to Anywhere in the Continental U.S., Winter Storage (during permafrost season only) and Veteran's Special Arrangements. Free Arrangement Decision Guide.'“
“They've got the territory covered all right.”
Following Mori French, Dr. Herman Krueshach sleepily bounced along in a family station wagon. Sharpe imagined Krueshach blinking into his rearview mirror and cursing under his breath, disenchanted with the idea of digging up a two-year-old corpse on what he believed to be a wild goose chase.
They had driven through the chill damp fog that crept into the cab of the car and into Sharpe's bones. Despite the season, the predawn drive felt icy cold, its destination and outcome grim like any funeral motorcade, but worse yet since their purpose was at opposition to French and Parker's normal “arrangements.” Nothing on their guide about exhumations. In fact, no one in Millbrook's entire history had ever been raised from the dead.
They'd rolled out past the city limits sign, past silent tractors sitting in fields and patient cows lined up at barn doors. Now in the distance, Sharpe heard the backhoe-a result of his court order, going thrum-pump, thrum-pump, thrum-whosh just as the motorcade of three vehicles turned in under a black wrought-iron gate. The cemetery gate reminded Sharpe of old black-and-white American cowboy films when Gregory Peck or Gary Cooper, sitting astride a horse, staring at the big cattle ranch announced an intent to take a stand. The overhead arch was oddly draped with a banner flapping in the cold November early morning light. The new, temporary banner proclaimed the fog-laden cemetery as The Henry Knox Memorial Cemetery.
“Just had a rechristening ceremony out here a week ago,” explained Brannan as if apologizing for what appeared to have been a celebration. There were even a few dead balloons left hanging in a surreal fashion from the iron gates.
“I see,” Sharpe replied as they entered the narrow un-paved paths inside the gates. Ahead of them, the yellow monster backhoe that'd begun its journey here on a flatbed an hour before, coming from Alvin's A to Z Rental in town, materialized from the fog, its formless noise now taking on clearer meaning. Form and function and mechanical efficiency amid the weeping trees and fallen headstones of what appeared to be an ancient plot of ground. Sharpe wondered how old the cemetery might be, and he again wondered why Louisa Childe had not been buried in any one of the three cemeteries within the city limits, the Catholic cemetery, the Baptist cemetery, or the Episcopalian one. Brannan followed the succession of cars as each pulled up against the line created in the fog by Alvin's huge flatbed truck which had come to this point in roundabout fashion so as to disturb as few gravesites as possible. Their presence, the cars, and the flatbed absorbed some but not all of the enormous noise shattering the stillness of this place as the backhoe continued its work.
Sharpe saw a huge gash had been taken out of a lovely oak that, by day, must provide ample shade throughout this area for Louisa and her neighbors.
Everyone climbed from their cars and gathered about the large hole being dug. They looked like men who would go out of their way to watch a machine of this size do its job. The sun remained just offstage, its predawn light muted by the overcast morning, while ominous, dark, roiling clouds threatened to complicate the morning's work with a downpour. But there seemed already so much moisture in the air that it would be difficult for raindrops to pass through it. Sharpe sauntered up alongside Krueshach, Mori French, and Detective Brannan. Nothing was said. The sound of the backhoe was king.
The serene invaded by the chaotic needs of men with questions.
“It's Millbrook's second cemetery for its second-class citizenry, transients, homeless and uninsured,” Dan Brannan said in his ear. “I see.”
“Is that what they're going to put on your tombstone, Sharpe? 'I see'?”
“Quaint place,” he replied, surveying the nearby tombstones, thin as parchment some of them, some with dates going back to the 1830s. None of the more recent markers had names, only numbers.
AT the same time that Richard Sharpe exhumed Louisa Childe's body, Jessica awoke sprawled across her luxurious Wyndham Hotel bed, amid paperwork on Sarah Towne of Portland, Oregon. She recalled having reviewed the Towne case the night before. She didn't remember tossing the files on the huge bed or falling asleep for that matter, or saying good night to Darwin Reynolds.
Rolling over, her eyes growing accustomed to the notion of opening, she saw it was still dark outside-overcast with roiling thunderstorms off in the distance and a pitter-patter against the windows that gently rocked her back into numbness and sleep. So she closed her eyes again and contemplated what lay ahead of her, and wondering if she'd been too exhausted last night to set her alarm properly. Why hasn't it gone off by now… Must be seconds away from ringing… How can I sleep knowing that?
She wanted to see Joyce Olsen's body one last time, perhaps to verify that it had ever happened. Most certainly for a final, closer look, wishing to find the secret message in the dead woman that she ought to be able to discover. Joyce Olsen's wrong-side-up or upside-down autopsy had been a strange postmortem indeed. Cleaned of blood, the wound had been like a gash torn from the body of a battlefield victim hit by heavy mortar fire. All the parts disfigured, out of place, surreal.
Jessica wondered now if she was losing her touch, her edge, her instinct for the chase. She had learned nothing new in the autopsy. Perhaps it was to be so and to remain so with this particular victim, but it nagged at Jessica. In the past, she had often discovered something that had gone unnoticed by others, including other medical examiners. But not this time. Not now. Perhaps it was the attitude with which she approached the Olsen woman's body. Jaded, unfeeling, all the emotion knocked from her at the scene. Or perhaps she simply expected too much, expected that the very way in which the killer had carved Joyce Olsen up might lead to something, might tell them something, might grant them some small insight into the mind capable of such a monster's appetite. But neither the body, nor the enormous insult to it, nor the autopsy itself had revealed any great insights. And another go-round-the continuation of the autopsy with Sands this morning-she rather doubted would net anything new or useful, either. Still, Sands was going to “dig” deeper, and so, Jessica felt she'd best be present.
In his own subtle way, Ira Sands seemed to want to best Jessica, given this opportunity to work alongside the FBI's finest forensic detective. He'd turned it into a macabre competition she wanted no part of. No doubt he had the body prepped, ready and already waiting.
She pulled herself up against the headboard, and squinted at the clock: 6 A.M. She'd set the alarm for 6:30. She clicked it off so it would not ring in her ears. She next worked gummy sleep residue from her eyes. Then she looked across the room at the table where she and Reynolds had spent some time early in the evening yesterday working before they'd gone out to the terrace to work there.
Suddenly, the massive dark shadow at the table registered in her waking mind.
My god, it's Darwin. Here all night. He never left. She realized that Reynolds had fallen asleep there, too, sitting upright in a chair, the autopsy report of Louisa Childe lying in disarray on both the table and at his feet. He looked like one of those big Klingons in the Star Trek movies, his eyes closed, head back, slightly snoring.
Shit, how in the hell did this happen? she asked herself.
Pulling her robe on and tight around herself, Jessica rolled from bed and grabbed clothing from her unpacked bag. Reynolds blinked and yawned, coming around. “What time is it?” he asked matter-of-factly, as if no time had passed at all.
Jessica decided she had to cover any sign of embarrassment. “Six-oh-five. We both flaked out. Wake up, will you? Call down to room service for a pot of coffee while I freshen up and dress.”
She disappeared into the bathroom, and Reynolds staggered to the phone.
After showering, she rejoined Darwin, and while doing her makeup and hair at the mirror, she summed up what they had discussed the night before, ending with a solemn, “OK, then, I am convinced beyond doubt that the deaths are indeed, in some fashion or other, related.”
“I knew it! I knew you'd see it my way!”
“Curb your enthusiasm, Darwin. We've got a long way to go.”
“But you believe me? You believe me!” He stepped out on the balcony and yelled a hurrah to the sky and the morning traffic.
Once he had calmed and returned from outside, an enormous smile on his face, Jessica calmly said, “After seeing all this?” She pointed to the circumstantial but compelling evidence he had lain out before her. “Yes, I'm onboard with you, Darwin.”
Darwin's large black hands exploded, sending a thunderclap bounding off the walls. “Excellent. Think of it. Dr. Jessica Coran's backing. That'll cut the governor's cheese.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, but what the governor of Oregon knows about Jessica Coran is not likely to be much.” “Are you kidding? With your rep? With all the FBI cases you've solved? All that behind you?”
“Damn but you make me feel old, Darwin Reynolds.”
“I–I-I didn't mean it the way it came out, I swear.”
“I'll bet you didn't. Look, Darwin, seriously… Trust me, I don't pull a lot of weight.” She said this as she pulled a brush through her long, rich hair.
“Trust me, you do. You make a big difference.”
“I think there's another insult in there somewhere.”
“What?” He looked confused.
“Con yourself if you like, Darwin, if it helps, but I'm not so sure.” She paced the room, thinking aloud. “Now, as I see it, we need to put out an all-points bulletin on this creep's MO.”
“Sure, right.”
“Should be forwarded electronically to every law-enforcement agency in the country to alert them to anything smacking of these uniquely gross murders, and anything in the way of peculiar sketches being left at a crime scene.”
Darwin nodded, taking notes. “Yeah, we want to be notified immediately if a similar killing takes place anywhere in the country.”
“Right. We've got to proceed under the assumption of zero help coming out of Minnesota or Oregon, since we've no way of knowing if Richard will be successful or not.” Jessica returned to the mirror, sat and continued brushing out her wet hair as she spoke.
Reynolds watched the shining auburn hair pick up the morning light coming through the balcony windows. “The man who sketched the charcoal drawings did not sign his work, but his signature is all over the drawings.”
“Yeah, if someone pops out of the woodwork and happens to see them, and happens to know the artist, we have it made. But you're right, of course. We need an art expert to tell us what he can about our boy.” “I've already got a guy.”
“An expert who will back our contention that in each case, the artwork is the same hand at work.”
Darwin insisted, “I've got it covered, and I'm satisfied with-”
“Who's your expert?” she challenged.
“My wife's brother.”
She dropped her brush and her chin.
“Now wait a minute! Ronnie's an art major at Columbia. He knows this stuff.”
“No, Darwin, no! We gotta get art professors and dealers plural to cover our asses on this,” she argued. “Multiple opinions, understood? If it's to cut any ice with the governor in Oregon.”
“Yeah… you're right, sure. Important thing is you're with me now, one hundred percent!”
There was no curbing the man's enthusiasm now.