Cut to the Bone (31 page)

CHAPTER 53

Decker

DECKER STEPPED THROUGH THE
doorway, the gun still raised, wondering what the hell had just happened; wondering what the hell was happening
still
. Brockton and Satterfield lay tangled together on the floor, thanks to Brockton spoiling his shot, knocking Satterfield down, the guy's head snapping downward just as Deck was squeezing off the shots. All five rounds had missed; all five had burrowed instead into—what the
fuck?
—an angel, a goddamned
angel,
which was holding someone, was
pinning
someone, against the back wall of the dining room. Someone who had tats on both of his raised forearms; someone who had the face of the suspect, Satterfield.
Christ,
Deck realized, nearly throwing up when it hit him,
I almost shot the wrong guy
.

He stepped to the far end of the table and pressed the muzzle of his weapon against Satterfield's forehead: the right guy's forehead this time, no doubt about it. As he did, he heard the keening of sirens, faint at first, their pitch and volume rising as they drew nearer. “This is for Kevin,” Deck said softly, his finger pressing the trigger once more. “My dead brother.”

“Wait,” urged a voice. Brockton's voice, from the floor. “Don't shoot him. That's not the way.”

“An eye for an eye,” said Decker. “A life for a life. He owes lots of lives.”

“It'll ruin you if you do it,” said Brockton. “It would make you a murderer, too. Just like him.”

“Not just like him,” said Decker, the gun still on the guy's forehead.

“He'll go to prison for life,” said Brockton. “Maybe get the death penalty. Let the court do that. It's too big a load for you to carry.”

“I'm willing to take that chance,” Decker answered, his finger tightening.

“Deck?” He heard another voice speaking now—the voice of the watch commander, Captain Hackworth, calling his name softly from the shattered glass door. “Hey, Deck, I'm coming in,” Hackworth said evenly. “How about you let me take your sidearm now, okay?” Decker felt a hand on his shoulder, then saw another hand reaching in, fingers encircling the barrel of the gun. “You got him, Deck,” the captain said as he gently raised the barrel and then freed the gun from Decker's grasp. “You got him. It's over.”

“It's not over till I say it's over,” Decker heard Satterfield hiss. “I'll be back to finish this.”

Decker felt his fingers clench, and wished the gun were still in his hand; still pressed to Satterfield's forehead.

PART 3

After the Fall

And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

—G
ENESIS 3:22–24

JANUARY 1993

CHAPTER 54

Brockton

“I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE IT,”
Jeff squawked, for the third time—or was it the fourth?—since we'd sat down in Calhoun's. “That guy really needs to fry.” He punctuated his opinion by licking a blob of barbecue sauce from his thumb.

“Jeff.” Kathleen's voice was soft, but it carried an unmistakable motherly reprimand—one she underscored by wagging a finger at him. It was her pinky finger—an eighth-inch shorter than before, its range of motion still limited, but on the mend, thank God. “We're here to celebrate,” she added,” not second-guess the jury.”

“I know. Sorry, Mom; sorry, Dad,” he said. Through the plate-glass window behind him, I watched a towboat bulling a raft of barges upriver, the wake angling out from the stern and rushing toward the pilings on which the restaurant rested. Jeff plucked a French fry from his plate and raised it toward his mouth, then began gesturing with the potato, like a symphony conductor with a baton. “But he killed six people—six people that we
know
of—including his own mother and stepfather. If a guy like that doesn't deserve to die, I don't know who does.
They
sure didn't deserve to die.”

“They didn't,” agreed Kittredge, “but it's not just about whether he deserved it.” The KPD detective had joined us for the post-sentencing lunch; so had Janelle Mayfield, who'd fought Satterfield for her life and had won. With Kittredge's support, Janelle had been hired by KPD as an advocate for victims of sex crimes—a brave move on the part of both KPD and Janelle, I thought. “If he'd gotten a death sentence, he might never be executed anyhow,” Kittredge went on. “There'd be appeals—years and years of appeals. Millions of dollars worth of appeals. Maybe it's just as good, and a lot cheaper, to lock him up and throw away the key.”

I checked my watch; it was twelve forty-five. “Roxanne, what time's your flight?”

“Not till three thirty,” she said. “If Tyler and I head for the airport by two thirty, we'll be fine.”

“Are you kidding?” I teased. “The way he creeps along in that truck? You should've left forty-five minutes ago. Be quicker to walk.”

“Ha ha,” said Tyler. “You're just jealous because I won't sell it to you.”

“What, that old thing?” I retorted. “No shoulder harnesses, no air bags—that thing's a death trap, man.” I grinned, but then I felt a pang. I was going to miss Tyler—miss his work, and miss his company. “You sure you don't want to rethink, now that your thesis is done? Maybe take the spring and summer off, then decide?”

“Bill.” Kathleen's voice was soft—even softer than it'd been with Jeff a moment before. I knew when to shut up, and the time was now.

“Another thing,” said Jeff, taking advantage of the momentary lull. “How come Satterfield gets a free lawyer? A really
mean
free lawyer? That guy DeVriess—‘Grease'—man, he was fierce. Made it sound like
Dad
was the scumbag on trial.”

“
Jeff
.” This time Kathleen's voice made no pretense at softness. This time even Jeff got the message. Across the table, Jenny's hand reached for Jeff's, her fingers giving his a squeeze. Chiding, or affectionate? Maybe both, I realized, when Jeff looked at her with a sheepish smile. Their communication—much of it conveyed by looks and touches—seemed surprisingly evolved for a pair of high-school kids. Was that because they'd had a brush with death? Or was it just because they were smart, good-hearted, and happy with one another? Whatever the reason, I was pleased for them.

“Show them,” Jeff said to her.

“Now?” Jenny blushed, suddenly looking shy.

“Sure, why not? Show 'em.”

“Show us what, sweetheart?” asked Kathleen.

“Oh, nothing, really,” she said. “Just . . . a couple of sketches I did in the courtroom today.” Jeff nudged her, and she reached down beside her chair and retrieved a small leather portfolio, setting it in her lap and opening the flap. She took out two pieces of drawing paper. “Janelle, one's for you.”

“For me?” Janelle looked nervous. “Why?”

Jenny smiled. “You remember the drawing I did that day at the police department?”

“How could I forget?” said the woman. “Scared the crap out of me when I saw that awful face staring up from the page.”

“Not the drawing of
him,
” said Jenny. “The drawing of
you
.”

“Honey, I am
talking
about the drawing of me,” Janelle replied, drawing a good laugh from all of us. Then her face turned serious. “Sure, I remember the drawing you did of me. I looked pretty bad, too.”

“Not bad,” said Jenny. “Scared. Hurt. Sad. Mad.”

Janelle nodded. “Sounds about right.”

“Today I drew you again.” Jenny handed her the top sketch. I couldn't have said which sprang to Janelle's face first, the smile or the tears. She tried to speak, but quickly gave up. Instead, she laid one hand on her heart; with the other, she held up the drawing so we could all see it. There were still traces of hurt—more lines around the mouth and eyes than a woman her age should have, and a zigzag scar across the cheekbone—but mostly, the face gazing out from the page radiated courage and confidence.

“That is
beautiful,
” said Kathleen. “A perfect likeness.”

Jenny beamed at Kathleen and Janelle, then looked at me. “Dr. B, the other one's for you.”

“Me? Why'd you waste a perfectly good piece of paper drawing me?”

“It's not
of
you,” she said. “It's
for
you.” She handed me the drawing, facedown. I hesitated, then turned it up.

It was like nothing I'd ever seen: A girl's face—the unidentified strip-mine girl's face—turned upward, toward the sky. Her features were serene, almost beatific; underneath them, the skull shone through, faintly but distinctly, in a way that somehow did not diminish or detract from the beauty of the face. She was shown in profile, one eye open wide, the other hidden by the bridge of the nose. But from that other, unseen eye grew a tree: a miniature but fully formed tree, its crown luxuriant with leaves and blossoms and songbirds. In the background, and on all sides, other trees grew, from ground that had once been scarred and barren, but had long since softened and gone to green. Beneath the ground, the trees were linked by a web of roots—roots that entwined delicately, seamlessly, with the girl's golden hair; roots that somehow
were
the girl's golden hair. Amid death, the image seemed to suggest—in spite of death, or perhaps even
because
of death, in some mysterious way I did not yet understand—there was life.

Even life abundant.

Author's Note: On Fact and Fiction

Those of you who are astute at arithmetic may have noted that Dr. Bill Brockton, our fictional hero, is slightly younger—by some thirty years—than Dr. Bill Bass, who turned a remarkably youthful eighty-five in August 2013. Making Brockton so much younger has much to recommend it, fictionally speaking, as it allows Brockton (and us!) to be still employed, rather than retired.

But all choices have consequences, and in this book's case—specifically, the case of the Body Farm's genesis—Brockton's relative youth has required us to fudge the birth year of the real-life research facility. In
Cut to the Bone
, we give that year as 1992. In real life, it's considerably earlier, as well as more complex. The sow barn described in the book is quite real, but it was back in 1971 that it became the location for the Body Farm's first incarnation: a distant, smelly place where decomposing bodies could be stashed before they were processed into clean skeletal remains.

The Body Farm's second incarnation—its metamorphosis, to borrow an entomological term from the realm of blowflies and maggots—didn't occur until a decade later. In the spring of 1981, the first research project began in a new sixteen-by-sixteen-foot chain-link cube at the facility's current location, behind the University of Tennessee Medical Center, on the south shore of the Tennessee River. That project, which commenced with donated body 1-81, was a pioneering study of insect activity in human corpses. Corpse 1-81 and its successors (2-81, 3-81, and 4-81) served as the research subjects for a master's degree thesis by Dr. Bass's student William Rodriguez. Rodriguez's pioneering research, documenting the relationship between the insects' activity and the cadavers' decay rates, remains a classic—one of the most frequently cited studies in both forensic anthropology and forensic entomology.

There are, of course, more stories behind those stories. Readers who are interested in the factual history of the Body Farm might enjoy our first book, the nonfiction memoir
Death's Acre
. That book also contains a chapter on the “Zoo Man” case, a series of murders that electrified and terrified Knoxville in the early 1990s. Our fictional story here borrows freely from the factual case, in which Knoxville prostitutes were taken into the woods off Cahaba Lane and then murdered. We feel entitled to borrow, as both Dr. Bill Bass and KPD fingerprint expert Art Bohanan played key roles in the prosecution of Thomas “Zoo Man” Huskey for the Cahaba Lane murders.

We've endeavored to be accurate in our depiction of KPD's SWAT team, which was relatively new at the time of our story. We have, however, taken one large liberty in our depiction of KPD's bomb squad, which did not yet have a bomb-sniffing dog in 1992.

The book's central premises were true then, and, sadly, remain true now: Women—especially young, poor women driven by desperation to prostitution—are among the most vulnerable members of our society; they're often preyed upon, largely scorned, and easily overlooked if they go missing. And sadistic sexual predators—embodiments of cunning and evil, created by a tangled, terrible confluence of nature and “nurture”—still coil unseen among and around us. As ever, there are serpents in the garden in which we dwell. Even so, it is a lush and lovely garden.

Acknowledgments

Solving crimes requires the intelligence and cooperation of many people. So does creating crime novels. Luckily, many smart people have been kind enough to help us with that latter task.

Art Bohanan—the real one, not the fictional one—was, as always, a good sport and a great source of insight into crime-scene and crime-lab work. So was forensic ace Amy George. Dawn Coppock and James Rochelle—smart, good-hearted people who love the mountains of east Tennessee—offered helpful information on strip mining and its environmental effects, especially the severe and lasting effects of mountaintop removal. Precision blaster John Koehler—a man who can topple a smokestack like a tree, or collapse a building into its own basement—provided a fascinating glimpse into the world of explosives.

Lt. Keith Debow, commander of the Knoxville Police Department's SWAT team, was remarkably informative, patient, and good-humored in answering a fusillade of questions about the book's SWAT-team scenario; so was Lt. Doug Stiles, the team's previous commander. We appreciate their gracious help; we also appreciate their willingness to put themselves in harm's way—in
serious
harm's way—to protect the lives of others. Thanks also to Ed Buice and Special Agent Mike Keleher, at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, who offered insights and suggestions about how a sailor who came unhinged might be investigated.

No book about a recent serial killer would be complete or credible without drawing on the work of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, whose “profilers” are justly renowned for their insights into the darkest of criminal minds. Supervisory Special Agent James J. McNamara (retired), who headed the BSU's serial-killer division for years, was generous with his time and helpful with his advice about what might motivate a sexual killer to add Dr. Bill Brockton to his list of potential victims. Sincere thanks to Jim McNamara, as well as to special agents Ann Todd and Angela Bell for making the connection with him possible. Tallahassee psychologist and researcher Thomas Joiner—author of
The Perversion of Virtue: Understanding Murder-Suicide
—also helped illuminate the dark corners and crevices of the soul.

To switch from serial murder to a
slightly
less frightening arena—the arena of publishing—we express our continuing gratitude to our agent, Giles Anderson, for keeping us gainfully and happily employed for the past decade (time
does
fly when you're having fun!). Editorial consultant Heather Whitaker read an early draft of this novel and offered suggestions that made the book far more coherent and far more suspenseful, and the eagle-eyed Casey Whitworth proofread the galley pages and made them far more corrct. Er,
correct
.

We're deeply grateful to a whole host of people at William Morrow and HarperCollins who make these books possible, especially our editor, Lyssa Keusch, and her associates, Amanda Bergeron and Rebecca Lucash; our publisher, Liate Stehlik, and deputy publisher, Lynn Grady; publicity wizard Danielle Bartlett; marketing director Kathy Gordon; online marketing guru Shawn Nicholls; the seldom-sung heroes in art and production, who turn computer files into actual books (and e-books)—production editor Julia Meltzer; designer Richard Aquan (
great
cover art for the dust jacket!); paperback art director Thomas Egner; and—of course—the sales staffers who actually persuade people to part with their hard-earned money to purchase our books, led by Doug Jones and Brian Grogan.

Last, to our wives, Carol Bass and Jane McPherson, for so many things that, if we listed them all, would make this book would be twice as long.