At The Stroke Of Madness Part 6

"It's sort of a technical term." It was Bonzado who jumped in with an explanation. "It's when a thin blade jumps slightly from side to side while you're using it. You know, like a hacksaw, especially when you're just starting to cut." Ever the professor, Henry thought, though the kid had a genuine desire to provide information. There was no intention to upstage anyone or condescend to anyone, not like Stolz might do.

"From what I can see," O'Dell continued, "I think the skull is empty."

"A Stryker saw? Empty? What the h.e.l.l are you talking about? Are you saying the brain is missing?" Stolz shot up, stepping over the corpse to get to O'Dell's side.

Ordinarily, Henry would have laughed at the little man who rarely became animated or allowed an outburst of emotion. He usually confined his emotions to those famous facial expressions. He shouldn't be focused on Stolz. But focusing on Stolz's incompetence and his rising panic was a h.e.l.l of a lot better than dealing with his own. This c.r.a.p only got stranger by the minute.

"If you've got enough pictures, let's try to flip him and get all of him on the body bag," Stolz instructed.

Henry stood back. He hated to admit it, but he was starting to enjoy watching the little man get all worked up. Plus, Stolz had more than enough help with Bonzado and two of the students joining in. Even O'Dell had her jacket sleeves pushed up and was grabbing hold of a shoulder. This time the group wasn't taking any chances on having the corpse slip out of their control. They barely had the body turned and Henry's stomach took a plunge.

"Jesus Christ," he said under his breath, and everyone stopped, looking up at him, and then back at the corpse. "It's Steve Earlman."

"You know this man?" O'Dell asked.

Henry found the nearest boulder to lean on before his knees buckled. "Not only do I know him, I was a G.o.dd.a.m.ned pallbearer at his funeral last May."

CHAPTER 20.

Maggie could now see the tacks and pins holding Mr. Earlman's tie and jacket lapels in place. She lifted an eyelid and found a small, convex plastic disk in the eye socket, something morticians used to give definition to the eye area and to keep the eyelids closed.

"It looks like an autopsy incision," Dr. Stolz said, taking his gla.s.ses completely off and pocketing them.

"Can't be," Sheriff Watermeier said. "There was no autopsy."

"You're sure?" Maggie was back on her feet, inspecting the rest of the body while the M.E. poked at the flap of skull. The suit looked awfully clean, almost as if it had gone directly from the casket to the sealed barrel. "It certainly looks like a Stryker saw."

"It definitely was a bone saw of some kind," Stolz insisted.

"I know for a fact there was no autopsy," Watermeier said.

"How about surgery?" Adam Bonzado was beside Stolz now, on hands and knees, peering into the top of the dead man's head.

"No surgery," Watermeier answered quietly. "Steve died of an inoperable brain tumor."

Maggie glanced at Watermeier to make sure he was okay. She knew what it was like to discover a friend had been a victim of some heinous crime. Almost a year had gone by since she unzipped a body bag to find a friend of her own with a bullet hole in his forehead. She was sure she would never forget Special Agent Richard Delaney's empty eyes staring up at her. None of the law enforcement workshops and no amount of experience could prepare someone for that shock, that helplessness, that sick feeling in the bottom of the stomach.

Watermeier removed his hat. He wiped the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his shirt, despite what Maggie had noticed was a chill in the air now that the sun was disappearing behind the ridge of rock and trees. Watermeier put the hat on and this time pushed it back. Maggie surveyed the equipment the crime-lab technicians had carefully stacked out of the way on one of the boulders. Finally she saw a red-and-white water jug. She reached and grabbed it, glanced at Carl and waited for his nod of approval. Then she unscrewed the top, took a long slow drink and, as casually as possible, handed the jug to Sheriff Watermeier as if handing it down the line. He didn't hesitate, took a generous swig and pa.s.sed it on.

"Was it public knowledge?" she asked Watermeier.

He looked at her, knew she was addressing him, but his eyes drew a blank. "What's that?"

"Did Mr. Earlman tell people about the tumor? Friends, family, acquaintances?"

"Oh, yeah. He didn't hide it," Watermeier said. "But he didn't complain about it, either."

"Was there any public mention of it? Was it listed as COD in the obituary?"

Watermeier scratched his head, reaching under his hat. "I don't remember about the obituary, but almost everyone knew Steve. He owned the butcher shop in downtown Wallingford. Bought it from old Ralph Shelby years ago but still kept the name. Figured everybody already knew it as Ralph's. That was Steve. He was a pretty humble guy. And a good guy, fair and honest. Even after he got sick he was going in to work every day. Still did the custom cuts himself. After Steve died, the store closed. Someone bought all the equipment but didn't want to run the shop. It's some kind of knickknack shop now."

Dr. Stolz looked up at Maggie from his perch. "What exactly are you thinking, Agent O'Dell?"

"If it's not a surgery cut, it had to have been made postmortem, right?"

"Yes."

"Was his funeral an open casket?" she asked Watermeier, who now only nodded. "So it had to be after the funeral."

"Someone dug up his grave?" Henry asked, but from the look on his face, Maggie could tell he didn't really want to think about it.

"When and how would they able to do that?" Stolz said. "A sealed vault isn't the easiest thing to break into."

"Not all caskets are put into vaults," Bonzado offered. "Depends on whether or not the family wants to add that extra expense. If I remember correctly it's about $700 to $1,000."

"There's another possibility," Maggie said. "The body could have been taken before the casket was buried."

"You mean someone may have s.n.a.t.c.hed the body right from the funeral home?" Bonzado said as he stood, brushing his knees clean.

His sartorial get-up was an odd uniform for a forensic anthropologist, even for a professor. Maybe not for an eccentric professor with muscular, tanned legs. As Maggie caught herself admiring Bonzado's legs, she also noticed his knees were covered with the rust-colored dust from the rocks and a green weed had latched onto the tops of his socks. It reminded Maggie to take a closer look at the dead man's clothes for any similar debris.

"If someone had access they could have made a switch," Maggie answered as she examined the suit, a lightweight wool, damp and sticky with what she guessed to be embalming fluid.

The skull cut had definitely been made after the body had been embalmed and prepared for its casket. There would be no way to hide leaking embalming fluid for an open-casket viewing without repairing the gaping hole, and the cutter hadn't felt the urgency to make any such repairs. Now that she got a closer look at the blue suit, she could tell there were no signs of green weed, no brown rock dust on the wool. The cut hadn't been made out here. In fact, other than the sticky embalming fluid, the suit looked clean.

"I helped carry his casket," Watermeier said, sounding quiet and far away. "It was heavy. He had to be in there."

Maggie glanced up at the sheriff. He rubbed his temple, not like a man puzzled in thought, but pressing hard-hard enough to wince-as if he wanted the image before him to disappear.

"I'm just saying we need to consider all the possibilities," Maggie said. "In any case, we should find out who had access to the casket and the grave. Maybe his suit might tell us more." She found Stolz watching and met his eyes, ignoring their skepticism and what she immediately recognized as a trace of suspicion. Not even an hour into the investigation and Stolz had already decided to label her an intruder. It didn't matter. She was used to it. "Usually funeral clothes are clean when a mortician puts them on a corpse, right?" She continued, "So anything the clothes came in contact with would have to be from the mortuary or a destination that came later."

Stolz simply nodded.

"We might find something on the suit, some debris from the killer like hair or fibers. He couldn't have done this without making contact with the body."

"He went to a lot of trouble just to take the brain. Maybe he sells parts to teaching colleges," Bonzado's female student suggested, as she helped Carl, who had been quietly collecting evidence that may have spilled from the barrel. The woman seemed overly anxious to help and held open a plastic bag while Carl dropped small particles in with forceps.

Maggie was impressed that Carl already had two bags in his other hand, one containing what looked to be a swatch of hair or fur and in the other, a small, crumpled piece of white paper.

"What is this?" She pointed to the crumpled piece of paper.

"Not sure," Carl said as he handed her the bag. "It's not a note, if that's what you were hoping. It's not even writing paper."

Maggie held it up, examining it in the sunlight. "Looks like a waxy texture."

"Getting back to more important matters," Stolz grumbled. "Like missing brains. Serial killers often take things, clothing, jewelry, even body parts." He looked from Bonzado and Carl to Watermeier and finally-lastly-to Maggie. "As trophies, right?"

"Yes, serial killers often do that. There's only one small problem here," Maggie said, stopping all of them, waiting for their attention. "Mr. Earlman wasn't murdered."

CHAPTER 21.

Adam Bonzado helped Simon with the bags of sand wiches and sodas, keeping an eye on his student. Ramona and Joe had literally dug into this project, but Simon...Well, it was hard to tell. His pasty complexion and quiet demeanor were typical. So when he volunteered to get lunch for the group, Adam knew it was Simon just being Simon, always the first to offer when there were errands that needed to be run.

They made their way through what seemed to be a growing crowd of reporters and cameras. Officer Trotter with the state patrol had the media trained to stay back behind the crime-scene tape, but that didn't stop the barrage of questions.

"Professor, Jennifer Carpenter with WVXB Channel 12. When will we have an official update?"

Adam recognized the attractive blonde behind the gla.s.ses.

"I'm not in charge, Ms. Carpenter. You'd have to ask Sheriff Watermeier."

"I've been asking Sheriff Watermeier. What exactly are you finding? And why are you hiding it?"

"We're not hiding anything," Adam said, and when she whipped off her gla.s.ses, he realized the cameraman behind her was now running film. Jesus! Just what he needed. Why hadn't he kept his big mouth shut? "We're simply trying to a.s.sess the situation. I'm sure we'll let all of you know what's going on as soon as we can."

He turned his back to them and headed for the quarry. Simon waited for him on the other side of the tree line.

"Vultures," he told his student, hoping for a smile.

"I think she likes you."

Adam glanced at him, expecting some smart aleck comment to follow. His students were always razzing him about being single. But Simon looked serious. Adam knew Simon was older than most of the other graduate students, having come into the program late. "Yeah? You think so? I'm not sure she's my type."

Now, Special Agent Maggie O'Dell was another story. From their first introduction Adam couldn't help thinking that if he did actually have a type, she would be in the running. Forget that the woman had amazing brown eyes and could make an FBI-approved navy-blue suit look official as well as make it come alive, the woman was smart. She actually knew what blade chattering was. Definitely a woman who could steal his heart. It had been a long time since any woman had gotten his attention enough for him to check out her ring finger.

According to his mother, it had been an abnormally long time. "It's not good for such a young man to be so alone," she would tell him at every opportunity. But after Kate he had chosen to be alone. Besides, how could he begin to fill the void that Kate had left? When she drowned it was as if she had taken him down under with her. Even now he couldn't think about her without remembering, without feeling her cold, lifeless body, without remembering all those hands trying to pull him away as he continued over and over to pump her chest and try to breathe life into her blue-lipped mouth.

Suddenly Adam realized Simon was staring at him, waiting for him.

"You okay, Professor Bonzado?"

"I'm fine." He turned back to the road, pretending to be distracted, then realized he had actually forgotten something. "What time do you need to get to your job?"

Simon checked his wrist.w.a.tch. "Not until later this afternoon."

"You still have my keys?"

"Oh, yeah, sorry." Simon shifted the sandwich bags to one hand while he dug in his jeans pockets for the keys.

"You mind going back to the El Camino?"

Simon looked eager to please.

"There's a pry bar that might help us open up some of the barrels. You mind getting that?"

"No, not at all." He started handing the bags to Adam, making sure he had a grasp of everything. "Is it still under the seat?"

"I tossed it into the bed, but I bet it got shoved clear to the back when we loaded everything else."

As Simon headed back, Adam took a deep breath, hoping to wipe out the images of Kate he thought he had buried long ago. Henry waved at him, then met him halfway, rescuing several of the bags before Adam dropped them.

"Hey, everybody. Lunch," Henry yelled.

Adam watched the group stop, setting tools down and placing evidence bags in containers. They gathered around as if there was nothing unusual about sitting down to eat sandwiches and drink c.o.kes in the middle of a rock quarry surrounded by barrels stuffed with dead and rotting bodies.

"Where did you get these?" Agent O'Dell asked, unwrapping a sandwich.

"Vinny's Deli."

"Vinny's has the best sandwiches in Connecticut, O'Dell," Henry told her, but Adam could tell she hadn't asked because it looked absolutely mouthwatering. If she had, she wouldn't be so interested in the white paper it had been wrapped in.

"This looks like the same stuff you found with Mr. Earlman," she said, looking at Carl.

"I think you're right."

"What the h.e.l.l are you two talking about?" Henry seemed a little p.i.s.sed off that they weren't paying attention to their sandwiches.

"This white, waxy paper," she explained, and now Adam remembered it. "We found something like this in the barrel with Mr. Earlman."

"Lots of people use this stuff, O'Dell."

"Actually, I don't think so, Sheriff. I've never seen this stuff on the shelves of your regular grocery store. I bet it's a specialty item."

"So what the h.e.l.l are you two saying? That the killer has himself a sandwich while he's slicing and dicing his victims?"

Adam wondered if it was simply the exhaustion that had Henry's face flushed and his voice raised. Maybe the fall sunshine that heated up the rocks and caused the beads of sweat on his upper lip had taken a toll on the aging sheriff. Or was Henry's panic slipping out? So far he had almost appeared too calm.

Whatever it was, Henry was waiting for an answer, standing in front of O'Dell, towering over her. She didn't look the least bit intimidated by the big man, and instead ripped off a piece of the paper to stick in her pocket. Everyone else stood watching, waiting, as if for permission to return to their lunches. Adam couldn't figure out why Henry was suddenly being so tough on Agent O'Dell. After all, he had invited her into the investigation, hadn't he?

"You think this could be important?" Henry finally asked, his tone almost back to normal. He must have realized he couldn't rattle O'Dell so easily.

"When a killer uses something out of the ordinary like this it's often because he has it handy. It may be a way for you to track him down."