The Angel Maker Page 7

  It started to sprinkle. Rain would put a quick end to the dog show.

  Maybeck said, “One phone call from you to this girl, Doc, and she’s not only going to let us into her home, but she’s going to make sure no one else is there. You want me to tell you about it?”

  Tomorrow? Tegg was still thinking. “I’ll call you,” he said, turning and walking away. Then he changed his mind and headed toward his Trooper parked alongside the Pro Shop. He could use the cellular to call Wong Kei.

  He could put this in motion immediately.

  11

  Dr. Ronald Dixon had something to tell him, and it pertained to Daphne’s investigation—Boldt knew that much from the way Dixie had phrased the unexpected invitation to this dinner show.

  The entrance to Dimiti’s Jazz Alley is, appropriately enough, down an alley, opposite a parking garage. Boldt parked his seven-year-old Toyota and crossed the alley, feeling out of place. He was accustomed to The Big Joke’s sticky floors and chairs with uneven legs. This place was aimed more at the BMW crowd.

  Dixie’s wife had allegedly been called to an emergency session of the local Girl Scout chapter, freeing the ticket he now handed to Boldt as the two met at the front door. Boldt didn’t believe the story for a minute. Nancy Dixon didn’t like clubs. That was just Dixie’s way of sparing Boldt the fifteen-dollar ticket. Dixie confirmed his status as a regular when the two men were greeted warmly by the host and shown immediately to one of the best tables. Dixon placed a flight bag on the floor but kept it within reach. He could have checked it upstairs along with their coats. Why hadn’t he?

  Boldt ordered a glass of milk from the waiter who delivered a Scotch for Dixie—they knew his drink. The house began to fill. Good-looking women with good-looking guys. Computer whiz kids and aerospace experts. Older couples who remembered 78s and Big Noise From Winnetka—false teeth, false hair, but real lives. A couple of smokers relegated to the distant seats under the air vents. Bread roll baskets passing by in a blur. Nylons. Even a few spike heels. God, it was good to get out now and then, good to be out with Dixie again.

  “I bet it’s been a year since I’ve been here,” Boldt said.

  “Kids do that. It’ll change.”

  “I hope not. I like things the way they are.” Some part of Boldt, in spite of his rampant curiosity, wanted Dixon to leave that bag on the floor, wanted to keep the conversation personal, and off whatever that bag contained.

  “I want to tell you a story,” Dixie announced. Boldt’s skin prickled with anticipation.

  “What happens in my line of work as in yours is that cases come and go. Some are solved, some are filed. Some go dormant, though they never quite leave your mind.” He sampled the Scotch and clearly approved. “Every now and then something triggers you, something goes off in your brain, and you think: ‘I’ve seen this before,’ or ‘Didn’t I hear somebody talking about something like this?,’ or ‘I know this is familiar to me.’ You know what I’m talking about. It happens to all of us.”

  Boldt nodded. He felt impatient and restless.

  “Cases overlap,” he went on. Boldt fidgeted with his spoon, barely containing himself. “It happens all the time—more often than seems possible. There are reasons for such overlaps: There are only a limited number of murderers in King County at any one time—at least we hope so—more often than not, a relatively small number given the population base. We average less than ten in any given month. Sometimes zero. Right? From my viewpoint, it means there’s a good possibility—even a probability—that any two bodies discovered around the same time, or in the same area, or relating to a similar cause of unnatural death may in fact be the work of the same person. It takes a certain jump in logic, however, to immediately reach that conclusion in this particular case, but that’s my job, isn’t it? Damn right it is. That’s exactly what I’m here for. And my job is to pass along my concerns to the police if and when such suspicions bear investigation. In this instance, you, my friend, are the police, and I’ll explain why.

  “Nearly six months ago now,” he continued, “a man carrying a brown paper bag arrived unannounced at our offices requesting to see ‘whoever’s in charge.’ That’s me, of course. He was of average height, in his early forties, with graying curly hair. He was of a slight build—a hundred and forty-five pounds maybe—the kind of guy who stays thin from an excess of nervous energy. You’ve met a dozen just like him. He was wearing a suit—a nice suit. This was his lunch hour. He was a corporate attorney by trade, name of Carsman.

  “Mr. Carsman was a hunter. A bird hunter. Talked about not liking to kill. Talked about no one understanding hunting except other hunters. Said he liked to listen to the wind blow, the rain fall. ‘The rain?’ I asked. ‘Is that why you’re here?’ He said no, it was on account of his dog. His dog? I verified that, then he lifted this paper bag, this grocery bag, the top of which was choked down tight so it looks like an old man’s neck. He’d been sitting there holding it between his knees. I’m starting to think this guy is over the top and I’m part of his plan somehow. I’m starting to wish I carry some kind of revolver in my desk. I’m about to come out of my chair when he hoists this bag onto my desk. Thump, it goes. That thump worried me because I knew that sound: bone. I’m thinking it’s a head maybe. He says he wasn’t sure what to do with something like this. He said Stu Coleman’s a neighbor of his. I know Stu from the state lab. Stu’s all right. Stu told him to bring it to me. I asked him if I could see the bone. That threw him, but like I said: I knew that sound. There’s no mistaking the sound of a bone on your desk.”

  “Whatever you say,” Boldt said. His palms were moist. He wanted to order his dinner. He wanted Dixie to stop with his storytelling and get to the point, but Dixie spent a lot of hours with the dead, and he appreciated someone alive to talk to when he got the chance.

  “He was hunting in a very remote location, timberland northeast of the city. He shoots a bird—a blue grouse, I think it was—and he sends his dog after it. Dog disappears a long time. When he comes back—the dog, that is—he has …” Dixie leaned over with some effort. Boldt heard the sound of a zipper. The bag. Dixie righted himself saying “… this in his mouth.”

  Dixon let the large bone down gently onto the table. To him, it was perfectly normal to show someone a bone—a human femur. Big and unmistakable. To the people passing by their table, it proved a source of great curiosity—and for some, disgust.

  Boldt studied it, turning it over repeatedly, and said, “You could have waited until I ordered my dinner.”

  “After a little bit of searching the stream, he found this as well,” Dixon informed him, placing another, much smaller bone on the table. “This is the one that interests you—it’s a rib.”

  “What if I was planning on ordering barbecue?”

  “I thought Liz had you eating vegetarian.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Word gets around.”

  “Yeah, well … What if I am?”

  “Then you’re not ordering barbecue,” Dixon said.

  The second Scotch arrived. This was followed by a dinner waiter whose attention kept drifting to the two bones. Boldt ordered the Greek salad. Dixon—just to be spiteful—ordered a rich pasta with smoked turkey and prosciutto.

  When the waiter left, Boldt handled the rib. “I’m supposed to be interested in this?”

  “Yes, you are. It’s human. Just like the femur. Just like you.” Dixie stared him down. “I took a personal interest in locating the rest of the corpse. Human bones discovered in such an isolated area suggest a buried body—and buried bodies seem to be epidemic these days. The discovery of any human remains has to be investigated if for no other reason than that it is illegal to bury a corpse in the watershed area where Carsman’s dog discovered the bone. Maybe you remember Monty, my assistant, Lewis Montgomery? He’s our forensic anthropologist—and he’s very good. Monty coordinated a search team using Boy Scout troops because at the time Search and Rescue wouldn’t
touch it.”

  Boldt interrupted, “Boy Scouts?”

  Dixie ignored him. “Nothing turned up and the case was filed under Unsolveds. I haven’t spoken to Monty about the bones since. He and I ran some tests on them back when Carsman turned them over to us. Measurement and calcification tests indicated this femur had once belonged to a woman between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight. The pelvis, if it can be found, will not only confirm this but will also tell us whether or not this woman had children.”

  Dixon continued “To formally identify a person from his or her bones, one needs more bones than this, and a lot of luck. A young woman in her mid-twenties, buried fifty miles from nowhere suggests the obvious to me …”

  “Homicide,” Boldt finished for him.

  He toyed with the partial bone on the table. “Look at the rib, would you?”

  Boldt studied the rib more closely, taking it into his hands and spinning it around. The waiter arrived with their meals. Boldt moved his arms to accommodate the man, who remained fascinated by the bones. He bumped a water glass, nearly spilling it. The waiter offered ground pepper, which both men declined, and he left, backing away, still fascinated.

  Boldt ran his index finger along the square end of the bone. “Some kind of surgical technique?”

  “Interesting, isn’t it?”

  Boldt waited him out.

  “We use gardening shears. They work the best.”

  “We?” Boldt asked.

  “My office,” Dixon replied. “For the autopsies,” he clarified. “You’ve seen me use them; you just don’t remember.”

  “But this was no autopsy,” Boldt said.

  “I have some serious hunches about that rib, about this skeleton, and the young woman it once danced inside. Once slept inside. The woman inside whom it grew and developed. My office closed the case. Another department could reopen it.” He stabbed some of the salad.” You’re the investigator.”

  “Boy Scouts. What did you expect?”

  “We had some good people leading them. Nothing wrong with young eyes, young legs. That’s rough country out there.”

  Boldt asked, “Did they look up river for the rest of her?”

  “Of course. And found nothing. But there must be some way to find her.”

  “You want my advice?”

  “I want more than your advice. I want your participation. How would you go about it?”

  “I’d talk to the experts. Water Resources or Army Corps of Engineers. Someone responsible for flood predictions, for the way water would move a bone like that. We had some heavy rains last fall. Was that six months ago? I think it was. Those rains let up right after Miles was born. That’s how I measure the world now, you know? In terms of when my boy was born.”

  Dixie said, “People bury bodies along rivers for two reasons. The wet soil speeds decay—”

  Boldt interrupted, “And it’s easier to dig in.”

  “Matthews showed you the autopsy files on those three runaways. I’ve put in a request for the tissue samples from those cases. But this … I had forgotten all about this case.” He touched the long femur that remained between them on the table just as a young man in his twenties passed, noticed the bone and nudged his girlfriend.

  “Oh, look. They have leg-o-man tonight.” She giggled.

  Boldt did not laugh. He was staring intently at Dixon.

  “Patterns, my friend. We’re in the patterns business—cops and interior decorators. This bone,” he said, shifting his attention to the rib, “never healed. Never had time to heal. See the different color here? That means it was buried within a few days of the operation. Oh, yes: operation. This woman was cut open, either to heal her or to steal from her. But not at a hospital, not as part of the system. Quite possibly it killed her, if she wasn’t dead already. Cut open by a surgeon—someone who has done enough rib work to use snippers instead of the medical school tools we’re told to use. Snippers work better. Those runaways, the files I gave Matthews—Walker, Sherman, Blumenthal—they were also cut open by a surgeon. The same guy? The same reason? He wasn’t after a kidney, I can tell you that. Lung or liver, those are your choices, the way he cut that rib. Are all these the work of the same doctor? Patterns. We both know that it’s patterns that hang these guys. We’re all—every one of us—victims of our own inescapable patterns.”

  Inescapable patterns? Boldt thought. He examined the bones once again. “An organ harvest?”

  “It’s a strong possibility. We have a lot of questions to answer: How long ago was she buried? Who was she? What procedure was done? We need the rest of her, Lou, or a good portion thereof. Why did he bury this one and not the others? She’s been in the ground a long time. Those bones are picked clean. What sets her apart?”

  Boldt sensed something in the man, as only friends can. “You’re jumping ahead of yourself. You’re linking her to the others with only supposition. Or are you? You wouldn’t get this excited over hunches,” Boldt realized, thinking aloud. “There’s something else in that bag of yours, isn’t there? Something even more convincing?”

  “You were born a detective. Did you know that?” He seemed a little disappointed that Boldt had second-guessed him. Boldt’s heart rate increased. Now, more than ever, he wanted the rest of the evidence. Dixie dug out a pair of black-and-white photographs which, because of their magnification, Boldt immediately recognized as lab work.

  “Peter Blumenthal—one of the runaways who died as a result of surgery—also had several ribs snipped. He was a lung harvest. We saved one of his ribs, as is our custom with possible evidence. Yesterday, when those files reminded me of Mr. Carsman’s visit, I ran both ribs—Blumenthal’s and this mystery woman’s—by the lab for comparison tool markings. Here’s what they came up with.” He handed Boldt the photos. He had studied hundreds of such photographs. When any tool—a knife, pliers, a wrench, wire cutters—interacts with a material—wood, wire, metal, in this case, bone—it leaves a distinct “fingerprint.” A cutting tool leaves grooves that under magnification resemble scratch marks. These scratch marks form distinct patterns, like a comb with some of the teeth missing. In the photo, the two sets of scratch marks had been perfectly aligned, indicating the work of the same tool.

  Boldt caught himself holding his breath. Whoever was responsible for the death of Peter Blumenthal and the two other runaways had also performed surgery on the woman who had once lived inside these bones. The cases were inexorably linked by this evidence.

  Reading his thoughts, Dixie said, “The harvester buried this one, Lou. Why? Why when he turned the other three, and Chapman, back into the streets? Why treat this mystery woman any different?”

  “Because she died on him.”

  “Maybe. But the way these bones were picked clean, this woman predates these other harvests by several years. These recent ones may have died by accident. He may not even know they’re dead yet. But with her,” he said, pointing to the bones, “he certainly knew.”

  “His first? Is that what you’re saying?” Boldt knew the importance of such a find. The first incident in any criminal pattern typically told the investigator more than did any of the subsequent crimes or victims. It established method, motivation and a key look into the demographics of future victims. These bones suddenly took on an additional importance. This woman—whoever she was—just might tell them who the harvester was.

  Dixon had reached the same conclusion. “If we locate the rest of her remains, she can tell us more.”

  Toying with the bones again, Boldt asked, “May I keep these?”

  Dixon grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  12

  Tegg boarded the ten-fifteen ferry for Bainbridge Island at Pier 52 and waited until the ship was under steam. The wind blew out of the west, bitter cold upon his face. Gunmetal clouds moved overhead like a giant door shutting. When the ferry whistle reverberated out across the water, Tegg shuddered. As ordered—he hated taking orders!—he worked his way down a series of
steep metal ladders into the car hold.

  It was dark down here, despite the occasional bare bulb and the wide openings at either end. Empty cars parked in long, tight rows. The smell of car exhaust and sea salt, kelp and fish. He wandered the aisles, as instructed, twisting and turning to worm his way through the cars. Sea spray kicked up by the wind blew through the open bow and misted across him, blurring the windshields. Many of the cars showed excessive body rot—even a few of the newer ones; these were the regular commuters. When Tegg turned around at the stern and started up the next aisle, he spotted a hulk of a figure some yards away. As he drew closer, he recognized the ape as one of Wong Kei’s bodyguards. This was Wong Kei’s world, not his. Wong Kei’s rules. The ape stood alongside a black Chrysler New Yorker with mirrored windows. He opened the car door and signaled Tegg inside.

  Tegg found himself alone with Wong Kei in the back seat. The emaciated man was drinking a diet Coke, holding the can with fingers as long and thin as chopsticks. “You are able to help me?” he said in an old man’s voice. “You wouldn’t have called otherwise, would you?”

  “We have a possibility. What’s your wife’s present condition?”

  “She’s being flown north tomorrow, Saturday. I am told that surgery could follow immediately providing there are no setbacks. That will leave us in your hands, Dr. Tegg. We will be awaiting your call that the heart is on its way. She is running out of time. You understand this, I hope.”

  “I understand.”

  “You have found someone, I assume. Brain-dead? Dying? How long do we have?”

  “You know as much as you need to.” He didn’t like the change in the man’s eyes. Had he angered him? The Chinese are so inscrutable, he thought. “It’s for your own good as well as mine,” he added.

  “I have a down payment for you. Call it good faith,” he said. He pointed to the front seat where the ape belonged. The money was evidently up there.

  “No money. Not yet. We can do that when it’s over.”