Without Mercy (16 page)

O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!

—Sir Walter Scott, “Marmion”

The dark net: a place without limits, a place to push boundaries, a place to . . . sate our curiosities and desires, whatever they may be. All dangerous, magnificent, and uniquely human qualities.

—Jamie Bartlett,
The Dark Net

I BUZZED PEGGY, AT THE FAR END OF THE STADIUM.
“Hey,” I said, “would you hold my calls?”

“Napping again?” she teased.

“Not yet, but I probably will be soon,” I admitted. “I'm taking another run at Miranda's dissertation. Last time I nodded off at page six.”

“In that case, I'll buzz you every five minutes.”

“You're
such
a help.” I hung up, smiling. I still wasn't quite sure what was happening with Peggy—if, in fact,
anything
was happening: neither of us had spoken about our unexpected evening of movie-watching hand-holding—but the air around us did seem different, charged with electricity, low though the voltage might be, and full of unspoken possibilities. But was I ready for possibilities?

I had just propped my feet on the desk and opened the dissertation to page six when my intercom beeped. “Heavens, I'm not even sleepy yet,” I answered.

“You have a call on line two,” Peggy said.

“A call? You mean one of those things you're holding?”

“I know. But this is Captain Decker, from the Knoxville Police. He says it's urgent.”

“Well, then, I reckon I'd better take it. Thanks.” I pressed the blinking button. “Deck, is that you? Long time, no see. How you been?”

“Hanging in there, Doc. Keeping busy.”

“Me, too. I like it that way. Keeps the ghosts at bay, you know?”

“Yessir, I do. Fact is, that's why I'm calling. One of the ghosts. Our old pal Nick Satterfield. Bad news, Doc.”

“Well then, he must not be dead,” I said. “That would be great news. To you and me both.”

“It sure would. No, sir, it's bad. Real bad.”

“He's gotten another appeal? He's getting a new trial?”

“Worse, Doc. The very worst.”

I felt an icy claw clutch at my heart, and then Decker and I spoke the dreadful words in grim unison: “He's escaped.”

THE WOMAN'S FACE WAS GRAVE, HER BROWN EYES
brimming with concern and compassion, as she looked directly at us—at me and my son, Jeff; at Jeff's wife, Jenny; at their teenaged boys, Tyler and Walker—and began to speak. “A massive manhunt is under way for an escaped serial killer,” she told us, her gaze unwavering despite the dire news.

Dire, indeed, and news, literally: The woman was Beth Haynes, a coanchor of WBIR-TV's five
P
.
M
. newscast, and one of my favorite television journalists. I had watched her for years—and admired her for years, not just for her poise and charisma, but also the intellect and heart she brought to stories on complex issues such as domestic violence, homelessness, and racial tensions. When Beth talked, I listened. Always.

“Authorities say convicted killer Nick Satterfield, serving a life sentence for the murders of four prostitutes in 1992, escaped today from South Central Correctional Facility in Clifton, Tennessee,” she went on, still looking directly at me, and
only
at me, or so it seemed. “Details of the escape are
sketchy”—now Beth's earnest face was replaced by a fullscreen shot of an ambulance parked at the emergency entrance of a hospital, the vehicle and entrance cordoned off with yellow-and-black crime-scene tape—“but early reports indicate that Satterfield overpowered and killed two emergency medical technicians, while en route to a local hospital for medical treatment.”

Suddenly the screen filled with the face of Satterfield himself—a courtroom photo from his trial, an image that captured a venomous look in my direction. After more than twenty years, the malevolence of his stare still sent a spike of primal fear through me. “Satterfield was caught in 1992, during the attempted murder of University of Tennessee forensic anthropologist Bill Brockton and his family,” Beth reported. “Asked today about Satterfield's escape, Dr. Brockton had this to say.”

Now I had the odd sensation of looking directly into my own eyes, of being on the receiving end of a comment from myself. “He's a really bad guy,” I said. “I just hope they catch him before he kills anybody else.”

Jeff, standing behind me—the “me” sitting tensely in my living-room recliner—gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Jenny, seated on the sofa, reached out and laid her hand on mine.

Then the camera angle widened abruptly, so that the shot included the young female reporter who had ambushed me outside my office two hours earlier. “Dr. Brockton, do you feel personally in danger?” she asked. “Nick Satterfield came after you once before. Will he come after you again?”

The me on the TV screen—looking grayer, older, and tenser than I would have liked—shook his head. “He'd have to be pretty dumb to come after me,” I told the reporter—or
was I telling myself? “If he comes within a mile of me, he'll be nabbed by the FBI or the TBI or the Knoxville Police Department. I'm what the fishermen call ‘live bait,' and he's way too smart to take it.” With that, I gave the reporter a smile—a strained, plastic smile, clearly—and walked out of the shot, hoping that what I'd said was true.

Beth Haynes's face filled the screen once more, looking even more somber than before—more somber than I'd ever seen her. “Breaking news, and a shocking update, just in. Authorities now say that family members of two prison officials from South Central Correctional Facility—the prison from which Nick Satterfield escaped—were brutally murdered today. It's not yet known whether or how these murders are connected with Satterfield's escape, but WBIR News will continue to monitor this developing story and keep you posted.” In what seemed to be a return to her earlier script, she added, “Needless to say, escaped killer Nick Satterfield is considered armed and extremely dangerous. Anyone with information on his whereabouts should call the FBI or the TBI. Authorities have announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to his capture.” Satterfield's photo appeared on-screen over one of Beth's shoulders, and a toll-free number materialized at the bottom of the screen, along with the caption “$50,000 Reward.”

The story over, I switched off the television so we could talk.

“Fifty thousand dollars!” exclaimed Walker, who—at fifteen—still retained a boyish enthusiasm. “I wish I knew where he was! I could buy a Corvette with that!”

“Yeah, right,” said Tyler, already world-weary at age seventeen. “A Corvette. Just what you need. Because you're
such
a great driver already, the way you keep one foot on the brake at all times.”

“Hey,
I'm
not the one who ran over our mailbox.”

“Shut up,” said Tyler.

“
And
the neighbors' mailbox,” Walker persisted.

In the blink of an eye, Tyler pounced, hurling his brother to the floor. “Boys!
Boys!
” Jenny yelled, to no avail, as they grappled and thrashed. “Boys!” Jeff came from behind my chair, preparing to pull them apart, but before he could enter the fray, a denim-clad leg—impossible to say whose—kicked upward, the foot careening against a ceramic lamp and sending it flying. The lamp hit the wall in a duet of destruction: the soprano notes of shattering lightbulbs accompanied by the lower, rounder clanking of fired pottery splintering into shards.

The room fell silent, except for the panting of the boys and the slow, furious breathing of their dad. “Get up,” he ordered. “Get up, clean up that mess, and apologize for your stupid,
stupid
behavior.” The boys lay there, looking stricken. “Dammit, I mean
now
!” he bellowed, grabbing each boy by an upper arm, and yanking with a force and a fury I had never seen in him before. Jenny stared at him, shocked, as the boys—flushed and frightened-looking—scrambled to their feet and hurried to the kitchen for the broom and the Dustbuster.

“Jeff?” She said it slowly; carefully; as if unsure whether the man in front of her was her accountant husband or a psychotic mental patient.

Jeff squeezed his eyes tightly closed, and drew a deep breath, then let it out slowly before opening his eyes. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I just . . . I'm sorry.”

“It's a lot to process,” I said. I looked at Jenny, who still seemed shaken. “Why don't y'all go on home. I'll clean this
up. To be honest, I could use the distraction. Ever since I heard the news, I've been about to jump out of my skin. I expect we're all feeling edgy. Even them.” I nodded toward the kitchen, just as the boys emerged, cleaning implements in hand.

“Grandpa Bill, I'm so sorry,” said Tyler. “I didn't mean to break your lamp, and I . . . I'll buy you . . .” He stopped, and I saw tears coursing down his face.

“Oh, honey, it's okay,” I said, gathering him in my arms, feeling him begin to sob. “I know you didn't mean to.” A moment later, I felt Walker burrowing against us, and I widened my arms to take him in, too. They were quite an armful—hardly boys anymore—yet at this moment, they seemed small and vulnerable. “Everything will be okay,” I said. “Nothing's going to happen to any of us. I promise.” They squeezed more tightly against me. “And you know what else, guys? For forty years, I have secretly hated that damn lamp.”

THAT NIGHT I HAD A DREAM, AND IN MY DREAM, I
could hear Satterfield's voice inside my head, taunting me. “You should have let Decker kill me,” he said. “He had the chance, and he wanted to, but you said no. You chose mercy over justice. A foolish choice. Now all your family will die. Everything you ever loved will die.”

I called Decker, still in my dream, to ask him to save my family once more. Decker had reasons of his own to consider the job, for Decker hated Satterfield even more than I did. Deck's younger brother, a bomb-squad technician, had died back in 1992 in a search of Satterfield's booby-trapped house.
Years later, Decker himself had nearly died, when Satterfield managed to cut his throat. It happened in a fight at the prison where Decker had gone to interview him.

Decker agreed to help, but on one condition: Only under a black flag. No arrest. No trial. Only summary execution.

“A black flag,” I agreed.

In my dream. But it was only a dream. Wasn't it?

WAS IT THE EFFECT THE ARCHITECT INTENDED, OR
was it just my paranoid or guilty imagination? Every time I passed between the severe, three-story concrete columns flanking the entrance to the FBI building, I felt as if I'd been zapped with a shrink-ray, as if I were some Lilliputian prisoner, stepping into a mammoth, marble-floored prison cell.

The building's lobby was equally disorienting, as ornate as the exterior was austere. Floored and walled in marble and gilding, the space looked as if it had been teleported from a fancy hotel or investment bank. Did the concrete-and-brick exterior and the opulent lobby really belong to the same building? If so, the building was suffering from bipolar disorder or maybe multiple personalities.

My architectural overanalyzing was cut short by the opening of a door and the emergence of Angela Price, wearing a no-nonsense suit and no-nonsense face—exactly the face I had pictured during my uncomfortable call with her, a few days and a lifetime earlier, when all I'd had to worry about was a simple hate crime—hate that wasn't directed at me or my family.

“Dr. Brockton,” she greeted me, extending a hand and shaking mine with a grip that was coolly consistent with the rest of her.

I had once made the mistake of addressing her as “Angela,” and her swift, acerbic correction—“it's Special Agent Price”—ensured that I never made that particular mistake with her again.

“Special Agent Price,” I replied, nodding gravely.

“Actually, it's Special Agent
in Charge
Price,” she said. “I'm running the field office now.” She turned and headed off, talking over her shoulder. “We're in the main conference room. Right this way.” She headed briskly through the doorway and down a hall—a beige, drywalled, fluorescent-lighted corridor that seemed to have no connection to the lavish lobby—and I hurried to keep up.

She slowed but did not stop at a wide, walnut door labeled
CONFI
, twisting a brushed nickel handle and pushing the door inward. It opened to reveal a massive table, five feet wide by a dozen feet long, surrounded by an assortment of law enforcement officers, many of whom I'd known for years. Several were in uniform—the dark blue of the Knoxville Police Department and the Knox County Sheriff's Office—but most wore crisp dress shirts and tightly cinched ties: the unofficial but regulation uniform donned daily by detectives and agents of the FBI, TBI, and KPD.

“All right, gentlemen, let's get to it,” she said, taking the chair at the head of the table. “We've got a bad guy—a really,
really
bad guy—on the loose. It's the mission of this task force to find him and put him where he belongs. In prison—or in the ground.” Her bluntness surprised me, and as I glanced around the table, I saw a few other faces that appeared startled . . . and several that looked grim and gratified.
“You didn't hear that from me,” she added. “But no kidding, this guy's a menace, and we've got to nail him. And fast.” With no further ado, she had each person around the table introduce himself—she was the only woman in the room—and talk about his agency's contribution to the manhunt. One of the group was present only acoustically: my old pal Pete Brubaker, the retired FBI profiler, linked to the meeting by speakerphone.

I knew and liked and respected all these people. For decades, after all, I had worked with the best homicide investigators that local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies had to offer, and if ever there were a case that called for pulling out all the stops, this was it: a sadistic serial killer on the loose again, a bloody trail of new bodies already in his wake.

First to talk was Wellington Meffert, a TBI agent generally known by the deceptively deprecating nickname “Bubba.” I was surprised to see him here, as Steve Morgan had said Meffert was seriously ill with cancer. But I was grateful, too, for multiple reasons. Bubba and I had worked the first Satterfield case—Satterfield 1, perhaps we should call it—more than twenty years before. Now gray at the temples and gaunt to the point of looking skeletal—from the cancer, or from the chemotherapy that would kill either the cancer or himself—Meffert was one of the TBI's senior agents. “As you've probably heard,” he began, “Satterfield didn't just kill the two EMTs in the ambulance. He also killed—or had accomplices kill—the families of a prison guard and the prison doctor.”

Price interrupted him. “Any leads on those killings yet?”

Meffert shook his head. “Not yet. Both in isolated homes. We're interviewing neighbors, but none of 'em are close, so we might not get much. We know the doctor's wife was alive at the time of the escape, because he talked to her. And we know
she was dead an hour after the escape, because that's when a sheriff's deputy found the body. Could Satterfield have gotten to her in that period, or was she killed by an accomplice right after she got off the phone? Don't know.”

“And what about the prison guard's wife and son?” Price asked. “Any telephone contact with them around the time of the escape?”

“None,” said Meffert. “We're also interviewing inmates, but as you know, that poses challenges of its own. The bad news is, this was a well-coordinated plan. The good news is, it was complex, which could work to our advantage.” I glanced around the table, and judging by the expressions on other people's faces, I wasn't the only one puzzled by the advantage Meffert claimed we had. “This thing had lots of moving parts,” Meffert explained. “Somebody got him those pig guts. Somebody fed him information about the guard's family and the doctor's family. There were lots of links in this chain of events. At least one of those links is weak, and when we pull hard enough . . .” He hooked together his thumbs and index fingers, then yanked them apart. “
Snap
.”

Price nodded. “Let's hear from Pete Brubaker next. Pete, thanks for agreeing to dust off your file and jump in on this.”

“Glad to help, if I can,” he said. “This guy's bad news. Sooner we get him back in prison, the better off the world is.”

“Pete,” said Price, “do you have an opinion on whether Satterfield himself killed the doctor's wife and the guard's family?”

“I doubt it,” he said. “He killed the EMTs because he had to—they were between him and freedom. But he had no particular reason to kill the others himself. More likely, his accomplices did that. Maybe on Satterfield's orders, maybe on their own initiative, to cover their tracks. A guy like Satterfield
gets off on two kinds of murders—sadistic sexual murders, like the prostitutes he murdered years ago—and revenge killings.”

“Pete, this is Bill Brockton,” I interrupted. “By revenge, you mean like the way he came after me all those years ago? Because he thought I'd ruined his life?”

“Exactly,” said Brubaker. “The way he came after you then. The way he's almost certainly coming after you now. You and probably your family, too. The way he sees it, he's got unfinished business. With all of you.”

His words hung in the air for what seemed like several minutes, and I was acutely conscious of every pair of eyes in the room focusing intently on my face. But beyond that—after that—I was conscious of very little. I vaguely heard discussion and delegation of security details, round-the-clock surveillance of my home, my office, Jeff's home, Jeff's office, the boys' school. I heard myself, my voice sounding muffled and far away, reciting phone numbers, addresses, and other information in a robotic monotone.

After the meeting, I sleepwalked out the door of the building, dwarfed once more by the massive concrete columns, feeling quite small, extremely exposed, and—despite the agent assigned to follow and protect me—very, very alone.