Bone Deep

16

Grone said hello to Becker but made little effort to be polite to Kom, whose presence insulted him. Kom seemed not to notice, greeting Grone as enthusiastically as if they were old friends, then turning his attention to the body parts arranged on the table. They were still chilled from storage in the cooler.

"They're the same marks," Kom said to Becker. "I see what you mean." He picked up an upper arm, turned it to examine both ends. "Two little slashes, almost parallel, on both ends of the humerus. Same on the left arm. Slashes on the ulna, too. Again on both ends of the femur and on the exposed ends of both tibiae… Seems pretty obvious now, I don't know why we didn't see it in the beginning. It's certainly not caused by his technique."

"You'll find it in my report," Grone said to Becker. "Along with everything else you need to know."

Becker touched Grone's arm, trying to placate him. "I know it." He glanced at Kom, who was absorbed in a study of the torso. "Politics,"

Becker whispered to Grone. "Nothing personal."

"It must be hard to determine the cause of death when a body is decaying like this," Kom said.

"Not at all," said Grone brusquely. "Really? Not my field, of course.

You guys do great work… What did she die of? I don't see any gross wounds."

"It's all in my report," Grone said, again addressin himself to Becker.

"Humor him," Becker said under his breath. "I'll explain later." He hoped he would not have to explain. Grone would not be sympathetic to the idea that Kom was allowed to handle his corpse because Associate Deputy Director Karen Crist wanted him to be Becker's friend.

Grone stood and extended his outstretched fingers toward Becker's neck.

"Strangled her." He pressed his thumb and fingers against either side of Becker's neck, applying a slight pressure. "Cut off the blood to her brain."

Kom touched the corpse's neck with his gloved finger. "Did he crush the windpipe?"

Grone continued to address Becker, lifting his eyebrows to display his impatience with Kom's remarks. "He didn't suffocate her, he just killed her brain. The body followed."

"Can that be done? Just with the hand?" Kom asked incredulously.

"Apparently," Becker said quickly, forestalling something nastier welling up in Grone. "Actually, it's not that uncommon. It's a known technique, let's put it that way."

"They teach you guys that? In the Bureau?" Kom had taken to referring to the FBI as the Bureau in emulation of Karen and Becker.

"It's not easily done with an adult," Becker said. "The victim just has to move his neck a little to start the blood flow again. Under most circumstances it wouldn't work."

"How do you walk around with all that kind of thing inside you, John? I mean the… I don't know what I mean."

Grone rolled his eyes and turned away.

"Yeah, well," Becker said, letting the words serve for an answer.

"Was she in pain, do you suppose?" Kom asked, troubled.

"Can't feel good," Grone offered. "But a lot better than the way some people go. It probably doesn't hurt at all. It would be the fear that would be the problem."

"Do you think they knew what he was doing to them? Surely not."

"Why not?" Grone asked impatiently. "He was killing them. Why wouldn't they know it?"

"I would think… I don't know. I just hate to think they knew what was going on. I hate to think they suffered,"

"That doesn't mean Johnny hates it," Grone said. "He probably enjoys the fear." He looked to Becker for confirmation. Becker looked away, giving him no satisfaction. "Did you manage to get a good photo?" Becker asked.

"Passable, I suppose. There's only so much you can do with a body that far gone."

"Why do you need a photo?" Kom asked.

"For identification," Becker said. "We can't ask people to come look at a dismembered corpse and expect them to make a sensible response. They'd be too horrified, they wouldn't be able to look at it. If we can get a decent photo we use that, otherwise we'll have an artist give a rendering of what she probably looked like when alive."

Kom studied the body again for a moment. "I wonder what she did look like. Pretty, do you think?"

"Her parents thought so," Becker said.

Later, as they left Grone's domain, Kom said, "Doesn't it bother you, John? How can you look at bodies like that without letting it get to you?"

"It bothers me."

"I would never know it from looking at you."

Becker grinned ironically. "Stanley, there are a great many things you'd never know from looking at me. I have my little secrets. One of them is that I don't like looking at corpses with their limbs hacked off. I do it because it's useful and I've learned to do it without losing my lunch, but I don't like it."

"I didn't mean to imply that you liked it."

"I noticed that you managed to look."

"I'm a doctor."

"You don't doctor corpses, do you? You took a good look, you showed a real interest."

"I've offended you, John. I'm sorry."

"My reactions to things are pretty normal, Stanley, despite what you've heard. Putrid flesh makes me want to vomit. Mutilations make me wince.

Sharp instruments cut me. I sound like Shylock, don't I? Hath not a cop tears?"

"I was trying to offer sympathy, really," Kom said. "I certainly wasn't criticizing. I admire you, I admire your work, I… I marvel at how you do it."

"Okay, Stanley. Sorry. It's a sore spot."

"I certainly didn't mean..

"No way for you to know. It's all right. Really."

"I hope you're not mad at me. I was insensitive, I see that. I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world, John. I want very much to stay your friend."

"It's okay. I oveffeacted."

"No, it was foolish, it was stupid, I'm so sorry, John…" Kom took hold of Becker's arm. "It's okay, Stanley," Becker said, pulling free.

"Just leave it alone, for Christ's sake."

Kom could not resist one last apology. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice sounding close to tears. Becker forced himself to look at Kom, the man's face filled with remorse and bewilderment, only partially aware of what he had done to incur Becker's displeasure. He just wants to be my friend, Becker thought. He just wants me to like him. Kom's eyes were wide and watery, his smile trembled hopefully on his lips. Becker fought a strong impulse to put his hand on Kom's troubled face and push hard.

"The girl is-was-Inge Schrag," Tee said, tapping the artist's rendering on the desk in front of him. "She was an all pair for the Hills. They reported her missing five days ago and this morning they identified her from the photo. We'll send the girl's fingerprints back to Germany for verification, but the Hills don't have any doubts about it."

"What do you know about the Hills?"

Tee chuckled mirthiessly. "Only what McNeil tells me. I sent him to check out the missing person report. He didn't take it seriously, thought there was nothing to it. As we might expect."

"I'll talk to the Hills."

"Fine, I plan to talk to them too. I also intend to ask McNeil where he was the night the girl disappeared. He wasn't on duty, I know that much."

"You're going to make him an official suspect?"

"Official, unofficial. John, you know I told you I'd been in his garage and found the knife that could have done it… Are we off the record?"

"If you like."

"Are we just two friends talking now?"

" Okay. "

"Well, I went back and got my fingerprints off the knife."

"And his, too."

"If there were any on there in the first place. You should see how clean he keeps those things."

Becker waited.

"I know I shouldn't have done that," Tee said, hoping Becker would contradict him. He gave Becker time enough to speak, and then continued. "But this case isn't going to come down to finding McNeil's fingerprints on his own knife in his own garage, is it?":, Not anymore," Becker said.

"Thanks for your support."

"I can't tell you that you did the right thing, if that's what you're waiting for."

"I know."

"The right thing was to wear gloves when you went in there the first time."

"Well, I wore gloves this time. And I found something else… a golf trophy, very expensive blown-glass kind of thing, Steuben glass, I think."

"McNeil doesn't strike me as a golfer."

"It wasn't McNeil's. It had the name of the owner right on it. It belongs to Paul Hill."

"The same Hill?"

"The same. I asked him about it. He hadn't realized it was missing until I asked. Which means McNeil was in Hill's house sometime. My guess is the same night he took Inge."

"You think McNeil is burgling houses as well as killing young women?"

"I think this was what Kiwasee called to tell me about."

"But you didn't see it the first time you searched the garage? You said you did a thorough search, right?"

Tee shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "I missed it the first time. Or maybe it wasn't there and McNeil shifted it later, I don't know. It was there this time."

Becker looked out the window of the police headquarters. The station shared a parking lot with the town hall and the town library. He watched a clot of little children and their parents emerge from the weekly story hour in the library. "I don't know McNeil well," Becker said slowly. "I don't like him, he's feisty and defensive and generally oh structive. I make him to be the kind of guy who's envious of anybody he thinks is ahead of him in life and meanspirited about it.

Probably a bully, too. But I don't get the impression that the man is a moron."

"I didn't say he was a moron."

"He would have to be to kidnap a girl and at the same time swipe an expensive trophy that can't be worth much to anybody except the guy whose name is on it. What's he going to do, sell it? Do you want a trophy with the name Paul Hill on it? Nicklaus or Palmer, maybe, but not Paul Hill, amateur golfer. So then what? He'll keep it? Put it on his mantel so he can daydream about what a great golfer he isn't? Who could he show it to? I know-how about steal it, a one-of-a-kind item that can be traced immediately, and hide it in his garage? That way if anybody finds it they can link him to the Hill house right away. An especially good idea if he's just killed a girl who lived there. I'd call that moronic, wouldn't you?"

"The trophy is there, I saw it."

"But who put it there? Why didn't you see it the first time?"

"It was hidden."

"How well?" Tee hesitated. "Not very well."

"How did Kiwasee know it was there? What was Kiwasee doing so close to McNeil's house the night he got killed? Why did Kiwasee drop the dime on McNeil in the first place?"

"You're telling me Kiwasee planted this trophy in McNeil's garage?"

"Kiwasee was a professional burglar. He specialized in Clamden. The Johnny Appleseed case has been in all the papers, he could have read about it in Bridgeport, he could have read about it in jail. Inge Schrag was listed as missing in the police log in the Clamden Forum.

With a little diligence, Kiwasee could have read that. Assume he has a grudge against McNeil for whatever reason and hits on the bright idea of making him a suspect in the Johnny case."

"So he calls me up, says check out McNeil, steals something from Hill's house that can be traced, and plants it in McNeil's garage where I can find it. So why didn't I find it the first time?"

"Maybe you just didn't see it."

"I found it in a rug. I'd spread that rug out flat before believe me, it wasn't there."

"Maybe you got there before Kiwasee thought you would. Maybe-I don't know why."

"And how would Kiwasee know Inge was a victim unless he was there-or McNeil told him?"

"He wouldn't have to know. All he had to know was that she was missing-that would be enough to make a link of suspicion," Becker said.

"I don't have all the pieces to a theory, Tee. But it sounds better at first blush than your notion that McNeil is stupid enough to plant that kind of evidence on himself."

"To each his own," said Tee.

Metzger had hoped to speak to the chief alone, but since the discovery of the latest body the chief had not been alone. He was forced to see him with Becker in attendance.

"There was-uh-an incident the other night that I didn't put on my report because it didn't seem really significant at the time," he said, avoiding the chief's eyes. "I think I was maybe wrong about that. You know, in light of everything else."

"Okay," said Tee. "What was it?"

Metzger told Tee and Becker of his nighttime discovery of the unfinished grave, the light in the woods-he did not refer to it as eerie-and his subsequent check of the cars in the vicinity. "I ran the plates through the computer and they were all where they belonged except for one."

Metzger read from his notebook. "One car was parked in a driveway where the owner did not live, as far as I can determine. It was a four-year-old Chevy Caprice, a beige four-door sedan, and the registration was to something called Lovely Works, which listed an address in Westport. I checked out the address, it's a box in the Mail Box outlet, you know, where they rent you post office boxes. The manager said the box was paid up for three years in advance. Paid in cash. Registered to Lovely Works. He doesn't have a clue who paid him, or what he looked like, it was over two years ago."

"A company has to give names for the drivers of the car for insurance purposes," Becker said.

"Yes sir, I know that. I looked into that, too, because I was hoping there was a logical explanation for it all. The driver listed is a Mr.

T. F. Schilling, who lives at Sixtytwo Ledgewood."

"Have you talked to Mr. Schilling?"

"No sir, not yet. I thought I should tell you about this first. "

"Let's go see Mr. Schilling," said Tee, who was on his feet with an alacrity that Becker had not seen in him in years. "We'll screw his feet to the floor."

Schilling couldn't have been more surprised to have three cops suddenly arrive on his doorstep, asking questions about a car he knew next to nothing about.

"I don't know what car you're talking about," he said. "I don't know anything about Lovely Works, whatever that is-I've never heard of it.

What the hell is this all about?"

"A four-door beige Chevy Caprice," said Tee. "You don't know what that is?":'No, why should I?" 'Because it's parked in front of your house right now."

"That's not my car. That's the Emros' car."

"Who are the Emros?"

"Our neighbors. That's their car. I think it belongs to one of their kids, they leave it parked out there most of the time." Schilling's house was at the end of a cul-de-sac that swelled into a bulb-shaped rotary at its terminus. Three driveways fed into the bulb. It was a common arrangement in the more recently developed sections of the town, and the circular curves at the dead end of the roads made one of the few places in town where a car could be parked outside a driveway without arousing suspicion.

"At least I think it belongs to one of their kids, they've got a boy and a girl in college, or just out of it, I'm not sure-we don't talk that much. I've never actually seen anybody in the car."

"You mean it just sits there all the time?"

"No, somebody drives it. It's not always parked in the same place, so somebody moves it around. I've just never seen them do it."

"Can you tell us why you're listed as a driver of that car on the insurance policy?"

"Chief, it beats the shit out of me. I've never so much as sat in the car in my life."

"It just moves back and forth in front of your house and you don't know anything about it?"

"It's not in front of my house. Does that look like it's in front of my house? It's closer to Emro's driveway than it is to mine. Sometimes it's on the other side of his driveway. It could even belong to the Canils, I don't know."

"Who are the Canils?"

Schilling pointed to the third house that shared the end of the road.

All three houses were set well back from the road, the Emros' and the Canils' partially obscured by intervening woods. "You mean that car's been there for two years and you never reported it to the police?"

"Report what? Call the police on my neighbors because their kid — keeps his car on the street? That would make me pretty popular."

"And you know nothing about a firm called Lovely Works?"

"Nothing at all. What do they do, what do they make?

What kind of firm are they?"

"We were hoping you could tell us."

"Chief, I think you've come to the wrong house."

"You really screwed his feet to the floor," Becker said, as they moved toward the Emro house.

"What did you want me to do, use my truncheon?' "Do you still have one? You almost never see a good truncheon anymore."

"I didn't notice you doing any cleverly incisive FBI questioning there."

"That's because I didn't want to."

"Reason enough. Let me just stand there repeating myself. 'Is that your car? No, it isn't. Is that your car? No, it isn't."

"I believe him," Becker said. "I'd check him out, but I believe him. I don't think he had any idea what you were talking about."

"I hate to say it, but I think you're right."

"What's more," Becker said, "I'll bet you that Emro has always thought that the car belonged to Schilling or Canil, and that…"

"Canil thinks it belongs to Emro. I hate it when we think alike."

"But… how about the fact that Mr. Schilling's name is on the insurance?" Metzger asked.

"All you need for the registration or the insurance is a name with a good driving record. You don't need the body, you just need the name and the driver's-license number to put down on the application. The insurance company checks to be sure this is a driver who is insurable, and that's it. Whoever actually owns this car, whoever Lovely Works is, just needed Schilling's driver's-license ID number."

"And anyone who ever asked to see his driver's license when cashing a check for him would have access to his ID number," Becker added.

"Schilling could have been chosen for a reason or he could — have been picked at random. Mr. Lovely Works parked the car in front of Schilling's house-or approximately in front of Schilling's houseclose enough that if the police ever bothered to check out the plates for whatever reason, they would see that it was driven by Schilling, and leave it alone."

"So somebody just parks it here and uses it when…"

"Whenever he's up to no good. Whenever he doesn't want to use his real car. Whenever he's digging holes in the woods. He comes at night apparently, or someone would have noticed him, and the car has tinted windows so no one is going to see who's driving. If he comes through the woods, that means he's exposed to public view for no more than five or six steps. And that's at night."

"You think this car belongs to Johnny Appleseed?" asked Metzger.

"If we're lucky, if we're very lucky," said Tee.

"Metzger, who else did you tell about this car?"

"No one, Agent Becker."

"You don't have to call me 'Agent." You're sure you mentioned it to no one?"

"Frankly, I was a little embarrassed. I think I should have told the chief sooner."

"Did you tell McNeil?" Tee asked.

"Well, no, I didn't, Chief."

"Did you talk about it in his presence? Was he around when you talked about it over the telephone?"

"No, like I said, I didn't tell anybody until I told you."

"How about when you used the computer to trace the plates? Was he around then?"

"Chief, if I let McNeil know what I told you, about going into the woods and then looking for cars and not mentioning it… frankly, he'd give me a terrible time about it. "

"I know he would," Tee said. "Well, don't tell him, don't mention it at all, to anyone, in any way."

"Okay. Do you want me to start working the car over?"

"We're not going to touch it," Tee said. "If Emro and Canil tell us the same story as Schilling, we're going to leave the car exactly the way it is and see who comes to collect it." He turned to Becker. "Right?"

"Right. But we don't have to hide in the bushes for three days until he shows up. We have electronics for that."

"Not in Clamden we don't."

"I believe I can arrange a loan," Becker said.

That night, after dark so that neither the Schillings, the Emros, nor the Canils would see, Becker affixed a motionactivated radio transmitter to the beige Chevy Caprice. When it moved, if it moved, for however long it moved, it would send out a signal allowing others to follow it. Tee put receivers for the radio signal in his own home and in his office, keeping it separate from the normal police business so that McNeil would not know of its existence.

Becker assigned another Bureau agent to work with Schilling on the tedious job of going through all of his canceled checks for as many years back as Schilling saved them. The theory was that most people who required a driver's license to cash a check would note the ID number on the face of the check, thereby giving Schilling some record of who had access to his number. The flaws in the theory were many. Schilling was an efficient man; he saved only those checks that were relevant to his taxes, and as allowable deductions had shrunk in recent years, so had the number of checks saved. After three years, when the IRS statute of limitations expired and he no longer had to fear an audit for any given year, he disposed of all of his records except those having to do with long-term depreciation. There was also the possibility that his license number had been purloined by any number of other means, including someone just looking in his wallet in a locker room. Still, a lead was a lead and the glacially slow process of investigation had begun, breaking boulders into stones and stones into rocks and rocks into sand, the better to sift it all again and again and again.

Becker and Tee went to work on the maps together. Assuming Schilling's house on Ledgewood to be the center of their circle of search, they cataloged every house within a radius of thirty minutes by foot through the woods. The process was revealing in the number of houses it brought into play. The labyrinthine nature of the Clamden roads distorted true distances, sometimes separating points that were nearly contiguous by miles of winding road. Becker saw how the coyote-if it was the same coyote-had so easily outdistanced him on his bicycle.

" I had no idea," Tee said. "There are eighty-nine square miles in Clamden and you can still start in the middle and walk out of town in any direction in less than a couple of hours. "

"If you stay off the roads," Becker added.

"We've got half the town on this list," Tee said.

"Including your house."

"And McNeil's."

"Said to the sound of licking chops," Becker said.

"What's the matter with McNeil as a suspect? He's too easy?"

"I would welcome easy, Tee, believe me. I would love just once for one of these guys to show up on the doorstep and confess. I just think we ought to check him out a bit more before you fit him for a noose."

"Like what?"

"Like check his alibi for the night Inge Schrag went missing, for starters."

"You mean… investigate?"

"Something like that."

"I knew there was a reason I didn't like this job… He said he was in bed with his wife."

"You asked him already?"

"Sure. I'm not as shy as I look."

"So did you confirm that with his wife?"

"She thought he probably was. She was asleep."

"Not the most inventive alibi in the world, but it might serve."

"Serve, shit. He's going to have to do better than that. He's going to have to come up with a videotape of him sleeping before I buy it."

"Do you have any evidence at all?"

"I knew I shouldn't have brought the Feds into this. I'm a small-town chief of police. I thought I got to railroad innocent men and women. I don't have evidence, I got a gut feeling. You work on gut feelings a lot, you told me so., I "Yes, but I don't hate the man first. I use my instincts to try to understand or anticipate the suspect, I don't just look at somebody, decide I don't like the cut of his jib, then try to stack things against him."

"You'd have a better arrest rate if you did."

"You may have a point there. I wonder if I could convince Karen to let me work that way."

"You must have some pull with r. Threaten to withhold your favors…

What, am I crazy? Withhold your favors from Karen, you lucky stif."

"Scratch that idea."

"Speaking of Karen, it's time for me to pick up Jac from play practice, then go home and cook dinner. Keep working, Chief, you're doing great."

"We've narrowed this down to about a thousand houses. What am I supposed to do now?"

"See how many of them have able-bodied males between the ages of sixteen and sixty." 'In Clamden? Just about all of them."

"That should make your job easier, less eliminating to do." Becker patted Tee on the shoulder and left the office. He walked through the parking lot and past the library and skirted the law offices on the corner beside one of Clamden's four stoplights. There were no crosswalks and Becker waited for traffic to clear before slicing diagonally across the road. He came to the tiny shopping center and was cutting through it, heading for the empty lot behind the shops and the slot in the hedge that led to his neighbor's backyard and eventually his own house, when he encountered Tovah Kom.

She stood with the leggy insouciance of the model she once was, one hand resting on a jutting hip, her eyes taunting and mocking him with the same superior expression Becker thought she reserved just for him, as if he were a species she had seen before, as if she had his number coming and going but, like an indulgent relative, was mildly fond of him nevertheless. The take-out pizza carton from the luncheonette that she held in one hand did nothing to detract from the look of amused condescension. "Well, well, well."

"You have me there. How are you, Tovah?"

"You look like you're in hot pursuit of someone. Head down, striding along, looking neither to the right nor to the left. I thought you were trying to snub me."

"Just thinking about what to fix for dinner." He nodded toward the pizza box. "I see you've solved the problem."

"Stanley's not coming home for dinner," she said. "Another hip replacement or something. I don't pay much attention to his excuses anymore."

"You're welcome to join us," Becker said, regretting it imm ediately. He did not know what had possessed him to make such an offer.

"Oh, I can just picture that. Me and your wife at the table together.

Wouldn't that be cozy."

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean."

"I haven't a clue."

"Your wife hates me."

"What are you talking about? That's not true."

She smiled smugly.

"Tovah, really, you're dead wrong."

"If she doesn't yet, she will soon."

'Why?"

"Ask her," she said.

"I'm asking you," he said, struggling to remain patient. "Please tell me what you're talking about." I "You haven't noticed? I thought you were supposed to be such a hotshot observer. You must have seen signs."

"Signs of what?"

She tilted her head to one side as if she could better determine his honesty from that angle.

"You really don't know?"

"I may know, I may know everything. I just don't know what in hell you're referring to."

Becker waited. She continued to study him, her head aslant. She wore dark leather pants that would have looked ridiculous on almost anyone else, but she had the legs, the height, the supreme air of indifference that made it possible. The shiny material rode atop her limbs like a second skin, a visual inducement to grab and touch and remove. But Becker was not interested in her appearance. He decided that she was playing another of her baroque games with him, and that he was as irritated as he was going to allow himself to become.

Becker shrugged. "Okay," he said. "Forget it. I'll see you around."

He turned to go as she shifted the pizza from one hand to the other, holding it on her fingers like a waitress with a tray.

You really don't know, do you?"

"No, and I've ceased caring."

"Your wife…" She let the sentence trail off, then added as if to remove any possible doubt, Karen, is after my man."

His first impulse was to laugh and his second was to hit her, but he controlled them both and just stared at her, trying to keep the emotion from his own face while studying hers to see what she was trying to do.

Her taunting look was gone, and her condescension, and all he saw now was her pain and a desperate hope that Becker would contradict her. "You mean… Stanley?" he asked stupidly, the sense of what she had said still not clear to him, only the accompanying aura of dread.

"That's the boy," she said, her defenses quickly in place again. "My guy's at it again."

"You're nuts," he said, but not strongly enough. He wanted to slap her, he wanted to knock the look of savage victory from her face. Like a child confronted with an unfaceable truth, he wanted to twist her arm until he had forced her to admit she was lying, until she cried out in pain and took back the hurtful words as if they had never been said.

"Wasn't she supposed to be working in New York today?"

Becker nodded mutely.

Tovah-smiled painfully. "They spent the afternoon together. "

"Where?" he said, knowing it was the wrong response. He had already played into Tovah's hand and she knew that she had him. The sadism was open in her face now, and his only comfort was that he could see it hurt her as much as it did him.

"At your house. I just saw them. Hurry and you might catch him."

"You're a liar."

"Look around when you get home," she said. "Don't mention anything to her. If she doesn't tell you about it, then she's hiding it."

He reeled away from her and hurried home through the hedge, telling himself that Karen's car would not be there, she would still be in New York, Tovah's whole vicious slander would be revealed for the nonsense that it had to be.

As he cleared the hedge, pushing the last of the tangled, whiplike branches from his line of sight, a car pulled away down his road. He willed himself not to run, not to give credence to the lie, but his pace quickened as he tried to get past the neighbor's house to see whose car it was. By the time he reached the road, the car had turned the corner and gone, but sitting in his driveway was Karen's green Camry.