The Absence of Mercy (25 page)

When she returned, they made their way through the snow and climbed aboard. Cynthia straddled the seat behind him, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist. “You sure this thing is safe?” she asked once more.

“No, I am not,” he told her, starting the engine. “But that's why I'm bringing you along. If we crash, I want something soft to land on.”

“Oh, yeah?” she said. “Well, here's something soft to land on!” She scooped up a large handful of snow and jammed it into his face.

“Oh, that was
not
cool,” he advised her, wiping the slush from his eyes. He could feel some of it already winding its way down the front of his neck. “You'd better hold on, girl! You're in for a wild ride!”

“No. Drive slowly.”

“Right,” he said, and gunned the engine. The vehicle lurched forward, nearly throwing her off the back.

“
Whoa! Take it easy!
” she yelled into his ear above the din of the motor, the ground already becoming a blur as it sped by beneath them.

The snowmobile whooshed along, cresting small hills with enough velocity to propel the craft into the air for brief moments of time. On the last rise, they took leave of the earth for a full second and a half before setting down with a soft jolt in a spray of dove-white powder. The vehicle scampered down the decline, then hooked a right as Bret directed the handlebars toward a stretch of trees.

“
No! Not the woods!
” Cynthia yelled into his ear, but her voice was no match for the volume of the engine.

They shot through the trees, which stood a sufficient distance apart for Bret to negotiate a wild, careening slalom around their broad trunks. Cynthia dared to look over his shoulder once, and immediately regretting it, buried her face between his shoulder blades for the remainder of the journey. The motorized vessel yawed to the left and right with each turn. Seventy yards ahead of them, the woods gave way to another vast, open field of untouched snow. At the edge of the woods, Bret could see that the ground fell away slightly, and his plan was to accelerate to a speed that would enable them to enter the field in midair. He pressed down on the accelerator with his right thumb, gunning the vehicle in that direction.

“
Whoooo-hoooooo!!!!
” he bellowed to no one in particular other than the silent trees whizzing by.

The vehicle never quite made it. Five yards from the point where the woods met the field, they struck something large buried beneath the snow. The nose of the snowmobile dipped sharply, and in an instant both occupants were tossed over the handlebars and into the air. Cynthia's arms remained clasped tightly around Bret's waist, and as a result the two of them flew through the air in perfect unison. It took less than two seconds for them to reconnect with the earth, but during that span of time each had an opportunity to wonder just how badly they were about to be injured. Their bodies made a three-quarter turn, head over heels, as if performing a somersault for a gymnastics competition. Both of them were athletes—Bret wrestled and ran cross-country, Cynthia had played soccer since she was five—and neither of them made the mistake of sticking out an arm or a leg to try to break their fall. They stayed tucked—chin down, body loose—and went with the roll. When they struck the earth, they met with a cushion of soft snow in an open field. They rolled twice, the snow crunching quietly beneath them, then came to rest.

The snowmobile sat idling at the outskirts of the woods, nose pitched forward and partly buried in the snow. For ten seconds neither of them spoke.

Taking stock of his physical condition and finding nothing alarmingly out of place, Bret was the first to break the silence. “Cynthia,” he said, rolling over to get a better look at her. “Are you okay?”

“Ugh,” she responded, her face buried in the snow.

He rolled her onto her side. “Is anything broken? Are you able to move your arms and legs?”

“I think . . . I can move everything but my right arm,” she replied slowly.

“Does it feel broken?” he asked, the guilt already flooding through him in great, rolling waves. “I'm sorry,” he added. “That was really stupid of me.”

“I think . . . I might be able . . . to move it a little.” She winced.

“Wait! Don't try to move it! It's probably broken.”

“No, hold on a second,” she said. “It was just sort of numb for a second there. I think I can move it. Let me see . . . if I can . . .”

Her right hand shot up and smashed an ice-cold fistful of snow into his face for the second time that day. At least half of it found its way into his gaping mouth. Bret sputtered in shock and surprise, falling backward.

“There's a little present for you!” she squealed. “
Bon appétit!
”

“
Wha—?
” Brett spit out a mouthful of snow. “I . . . I can't believe you just did that!”

“Believe it, sucker!” she taunted him. “You deserved it. You could've gotten us
both
killed.” She looked back at their downed craft. “What in the hell did we hit, anyway?”

“Hell if I know,” he said. The rear end of the snowmobile was pointing at a 45-degree angle toward the sky. “Hey,” he said, giving her a serious look. “Thanks for not being mad. Most girls would—”

“First of all,” she said, interrupting him, “who says I'm not mad? You're going to have to make it up to me, you know.”

“And second?”

“Second of all, I'm not ‘most girls.' Just keep that in mind.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he replied smartly. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” she said, leaning over and giving him a kiss on the cheek. “Let's get the hell out of here . . . that is, if that death-mobile of yours isn't destroyed.” She was already making her way in the direction of their maimed vehicle.

Bret pushed himself up into a standing position. His legs held. Nothing seemed to be broken. They'd made it through unscathed. That was good. Still, he felt guilty. He shouldn't have been going that fast. If she'd been injured, he didn't know wha—

That was when Cynthia screamed. The stark sound of her cry pierced the silent midday air. It leapt into the woods and came scampering out again like a spooked creature trying to escape. He was so stunned that for a moment he could only stand there, gaping at her. Then his feet were moving, seemingly of their own volition, and he was running toward her as fast as he could through snow cresting his knees.

“
What is it?!
” he called to her, closing the distance. She neither answered nor screamed again—only stood there, body rigid, looking down at the wounded snowmobile. Making his way through the deep drifts was maddeningly slow, and Bret had time to think that he wished she would scream again, just so he would know that she was mentally still with him. A single scream and silence: somehow, that was worse.

“What is it?” he asked again, but by the time he'd completed the sentence he was standing beside her, and he was able to see quite clearly for himself. His girlfriend stared at the snow, at the spot where the nose of the vehicle disappeared beneath the powder, at the thing they had struck that had sent them hurtling through the air in the first place. Thankfully, most of it was still hidden below the surface. The part that was sticking out was enough, though—enough to know what they had found. From beneath the snow, as if awoken suddenly from a deep slumber, a single forearm jutted accusingly toward the sky. The skin was bluish white, only a few shades darker than the surrounding snow, and the appendage ended abruptly at the wrist in a macerated curl of muscle and bone.

They had discovered the third victim.

Part 5

Discoveries

The young body—as yet unidentified—lay on the metal autopsy table and attempted to tell its story. There was no doubt the boy had been murdered. A long incision began just above the right clavicle and followed a slightly diagonal course across the anterior neck, ending just inferior to the left angle of the mandible. The incision had been deep, severing the internal jugular veins bilaterally, as well as the right carotid artery. Mercifully, the boy would have bled out in less than a minute, and had undoubtedly lost consciousness within the first thirty seconds. Hemorrhaging had been massive, as demonstrated in striking detail in the color photographs of the crime scene police had taken of the uncovered body lying crumpled in the snow amid a shredded carpet of scarlet contrasted on the dove-white backdrop.

Judging from the nature of the wounds and the zealous dismemberment of the body, there was also little doubt that the perpetrator of this crime was the same individual who had attacked the two previous victims. There were several human bite wounds that appeared to have occurred postmortem, and Ben was fairly certain the dental patterns from these wounds would match those sustained by the others. Mutilation of the body seemed to be a strong motivational component for the assailant. In this case, the victim's facial features had been stripped away using an abrasive surface—
something akin to a cheese grater
was the first thing that had come to mind. As before, several of the victim's digits had been amputated. They had either been cast within throwing distance of the body or had been stuffed into various orifices for Ben to discover during autopsy. The left hand, of course, was already accounted for.

The facial mutilation would make it difficult for family, once they were located, to ID the body. Confirmation of the child's identity would most likely rely on fingerprints and dental records. Based on the anatomy, Ben estimated the victim to be about ten, maybe eleven—
not too much older than Joel,
he realized with a dull sort of horror.

So far, no one locally had been reported missing over the past few weeks. It was possible the boy was a runaway. According to Detective Schroeder, twenty-three runaways fitting the victim's general age and gender had been reported missing from a 250-mile radius over the past six months. To Ben, that number seemed high, but when he'd asked Schroeder about it the detective had been nonplussed.

“Lot of kids decide to leave home and strike out on their own. The family environment in many of these cases is”—he shrugged—”less than ideal. Sometimes remaining at home is the more dangerous of their limited options.”

Ben looked through his open office door at the body lying on the table. Detective Hunt stood over it snapping off a few additional photos. “Not in this case,” Ben said.

“No,” Schroeder agreed from where he sat on the other side of the desk. His hair had grayed significantly over the past nine months, Ben noticed, and his eyes appeared to sag a bit more around the edges. The detective tapped his pen lightly on the corner of his notepad, then flipped to a fresh page. “Any idea about the time of death?” he asked.

Ben folded his hands in front of him on the desk. “It's hard to pinpoint,” he began. “The body was buried in the snow, which causes some minor moisture damage to the superficial tissues but retards the decomposition process.”

Schroeder nodded. “Except for tracks left by the snowmobile and its occupants, the snow cover in the vicinity where the body was located was untouched. There were no surface tracks leading either toward or away from the scene. Which means,” he continued, “the victim wasn't brought there from someplace else. He was murdered at the spot, presumably before or during the last snowfall, and was simply left there to be buried by the gathering accumulation.”

“From a timing perspective, that coincides with the delivery of the package I received on the front steps of the CO,” Ben said. “That was on the first day of the storm. The hand was cold and virtually bloodless, but no significant decomposition had occurred.”

“Which means that once again,” Carl noted, “he killed this one in broad daylight.” He shook his head. “It's gutsy of him, I'll give him that.”

“Maybe there's a part of him that wants to be caught,” Detective Hunt suggested, entering the office and, with no other chairs available, selecting a spot against the wall behind Ben's desk on which to lean his thin frame.

Ben turned to him. He had to look back over his left shoulder slightly. “Sorry about the cramped quarters, Detective,” he apologized. “There're a few stools in the autopsy room, if you'd like to grab one of those.”

Danny waved away the offer. “Don't worry about it, doc.” He smiled. “Once I make senior detective, the department's going to give me my own chair to sit on. Chief Garston promised. Until then, I've learned to do some of my best thinking standing up.”

“It's because the blood's rushing away from your brain,” his partner observed, giving him a flat look. Carl was growing weary of this case. He'd more or less been in a bad mood since it had begun.

“Is that a picture of your family, Dr. Stevenson?” Danny asked, ignoring the insult. He gestured toward a framed photo Ben had sitting on his desk. It had been taken two years ago during a white-water rafting trip in West Virginia. In the posed shot, they stood shoulder to shoulder on a huge rock along the banks of the river, oars hoisted triumphantly over their heads as the water churned and sprayed in the background.

“Yeah,” Ben said, handing him the picture. “We're a good-lookin' group, ain't we?”

Danny smiled. “What river is that?”

“Lower Gauley.”

“Ever try the Upper?”

Ben shook his head. “That's quite a bit beyond our experience level,” he said. “People die on the Upper Gauley, Detective.”

Carl was glaring at his colleague. The anger had been building inside him during most of this inane conversation. Over the past few months he'd gradually come to the conclusion that having Danny Hunt as a partner was like trying to run a marathon with your shoelaces tied together. The kid slowed him down, often seemed not to appreciate the seriousness of their work, and showed more interest in chitchat than in examining the facts of the case in front of them.
I really ought to have a word with Sam Garston about the kid's overall conduct,
Carl thought. Danny was a nice enough guy, he supposed—but he sure as hell wasn't cut out for detective work.