Absolute Instinct

THREE

Milwaukee awoke with-the sound of blaring horns and rush-hour traffic jamming the nearby interstate. X. Darwin Reynolds hovered nearby, taking a protective stance over Jessica, acting as a shield. Along West Allis Boulevard Jessica could see the signs of commerce dotting the horizon, Exxon, Econo Lodge, H amp;R Block, Burger King, Popeye’s, KFC, McDonald's, BP, Cooney's Funeral Home, Bridge-stone Tires, Schwinn Bike Outlet, Costco, Jewel-Osco and Joe's Crab Shack.

Jessica said to Darwin, “Imagine a Milwaukee resident of a hundred or even fifty years ago, standing here, staring at the once tree-lined avenue and asking, 'What have they done to my home, Momma, what have they done to my home?'“

Before entering the death scene a second time, Jessica filled her nostrils with Caine's Ail-Purpose Odor Firewall. The scent was an improvement on the old Vicks VapoRub.

The brutal sight was no less brutal, but the odors of a week-old corpse were somewhat tamed by Caine's Firewall, first developed for firemen and crematorium workers and anyone else working with burn victims, such as police officials, paramedics, pathologists and medical examiners.

The scene must be tolerated in order for her to perform her duties. She'd come way too far to be here just to crap out now. No walking away from this, not even in her mind. But she must somehow remain aloof, above the horror in order to deal with it in a controlled, professional manner, and to stand her ground with Darwin Reynolds and the other men and women present, especially the young ex-marine, Petersaul.

She composed herself with great gulps of the last vestiges of the early morning Milwaukee air. She said to Darwin, “Air here is supposed to be filled with the fumes of… what… ninety-nine local breweries? My best friend and right hand in the lab, John Thorpe, told me that if things get too hairy in Milwaukee, the natives just suck up the brew from the fumes. Does it work?”

“Takes the sport out of drinking. Most of us like to sidle up to a bar and down a tall one.”

“One big swilling swear-never-to-get-drunk-again fest, eh? I understand, every Friday and Saturday night.”

“We gotta be imaginative to compete with neighboring Chicago somehow.”

Traffic below seemed like the world was rushing by the open balcony with the death room inside; the jaded world, ignoring the collection of squad cars and coroner's vehicles that had converged on the apartment house in this residential neighborhood. People in Milwaukee appeared as world-weary of strobe lights and sirens as military men were to exploding bombs lobbing overhead. Still, the requisite crowd had gathered, curious, asking questions, pushing at the barriers. Newspapermen and camera crews in particular clamored to be on the inside, gathering news. She heard a familiar phrase from the beat cop holding everyone in check, a kind of mantra at such scenes: “Can't let out no names or take any pictures till the next of kin's been notified. You know that.”

Jessica thought again of the worst monster she had ever chased down and killed, Mad Matthew Matisak. No creature of the night she'd ever hunted compared in utter brutality, until now. This ripping out of a woman's spinal cord, this ranked a Tort 10 on the torture scale if the victim were alive when he splayed open her back, and from the coloration around the naked wound, it would surprise Jessica to learn otherwise.

Matisak's blood-drinking measures had exacted a slow kind of torture, the draining of his victim's very lifeblood, and so it had rated a Tort 9 on the torture scale. The scale of torture represented in the spine-thief case she looked at today did not compare with regard to the time it took to die. The Olsen woman did not suffer long. Still, in Jessica's book, this monster rated a ten for sheer animal brutality, and it made her wonder if it were not some sickening animal need that drove him, some genetically predisposed urge toward gnawing on bone, a throwback to the caveman mind dwelling in us all.

It felt in her own bones-scuttling like a spider along her own spine-as if the putrid disease of evil carried about by the criminally insane Matisak had unaccountably returned, maybe had never really left. Perhaps in a new guise, a new shape, a new form, but the same evil nonetheless. “Cut of the same satanic cloth, this one,” she muttered to herself.

“What's that?” asked Reynolds, his forehead creased in consternation.

“Confound bastard is like a fiery coal from hell's own hearth.” She took in another deep breath. “Should've brought some whiskey along.”

Jessica re entered the death room and stepped to the body again. “This one,” she said to the others in the room, “this one may lead me into early retirement. You say she lived alone, that she hardly socialized or went out?”

“That's right, a reclusive type,” replied Agent Reynolds. “Vic's name's Joyce Dixon-Olsen, aged forty-eight, a loner, lived with her dog, Shep. Dog's at his vet's… nice, good-natured as all hell.”

“I suppose it'd be asking too much to hope that someone in a forensics capacity got to the dog before he was shampooed?”

Sands frowned and shook his head. “Gone long before I got here, I'm afraid.”

“He was one hell of a mess, a long-haired cocker spaniel,” Reynolds replied apologetically. “First on scene took better care of him than he did securing the body, I'm afraid. Dog lover.”

Jessica kneeled beside the blood-soaked corpse, and looked into the woman's face, turned as it was sideways against the carpet. Jessica mentally traced the features, thinking she had character written right into them, that she appeared to be someone who had seen and overcome much adversity until now. That which does not kill us, makes us stronger. She might be anyone's mother or aunt. “No family?”

“Ex-husband passed away two years ago. Some distant relatives in Nebraska. They've been notified,” said Reynolds in his resonant voice.

Jessica placed the ruler end of her scalpel against the wound to Olsen's cranium. “Diameter of the wound is less than an inch; the work of a small blunt object, likely a hammer of some sort as Sands said. From the concave appearance an educated guess says the hammer blow came from a ball peen styled one.”

Darwin Reynolds now knelt alongside the cadaver, too. Reynolds's black skin was as ebony as one of his African ancestors-Nigeria or Ghana, Jessica guessed from his bone structure and height. He had a broad, strong face, and a nose any Roman would kill for, all beneath those black, probing eyes. Every girl's dream, she thought, but not mine. I've got Richard.

Milwaukee Police Chief Wyatt Abrams, who had remained sullen and silent throughout, a great anger seething below his calm, had also partaken of the balcony air. A big man not to be missed by anyone, his footsteps alone announced his return from outside. Everyone else had returned ahead of Abrams. Staring down at the scene, at Reynolds, Sands and Jessica all on knees perched about the body like so many ghoulish scavengers, Abrams erupted, “I don't fucking suppose you people in Washington have anything like this in your data banks! We gotta catch this moth-erfuckingfreak before he strikes again.”

“I couldn't agree with you more,” she replied.

“Not in my city… not here. I can't look at this kind of thing again, not ever, Dr. Coran.”

“Sir… I completely understand.”

“What about those international guys you guys check with all the time, Interpol? They ever get anything remotely like this overseas someplace? Say just off a military base? Maybe our guy is some sort of military butcher or even a military medic type.”

Jessica stood and went to Chief Abrams. She walked with him away from the others. “Checked with Interpol and every law-enforcement agency that cooperates with the FBI worldwide, Chief. Sorry, no one anywhere has ever seen anything like this save Portland, Oregon, and-”

“I know, Millbrook, Minnesota.”

“But this is the first one to fall under the lens of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit. It's a… a uniquely sick MO… nothing like it in anyone's computers.”

Reynolds had followed them, listening. He added, “Wyatt, it's got to be related to the Towne case in Portland, Oregon, over a year back. Ex-husband, a regular mountain man type, a black Jeremiah Johnson for the modern age, and he's on death row for the crime. He supposedly hated her enough to do something like this.” He pointed back to the mutilated corpse. “Can you really imagine that two men on the planet could conceive of and execute this exact atrocity?”

“Yeah, I can if they turn out to be bunk mates in a prison cell, or two nuts meeting on a train or at a window placing a bet, and your boy Towne in Oregon spent a lot of time in prison cells from what I gather.”

“He's locked up. Can't have done this here in Milwaukee, and there's no proof he had ever been in Minnesota, Chief.”

Abrams spoke to Jessica. “Remember that case breaking on CNN?”

She nodded.

“Reynolds thinks it's somehow relevant to this murder.”

“Didn't he say he killed the woman for her spine because she always called him spineless?” Agent Pete shouted from the kitchen where she was using Luminol spray and a blue light to scour for useful blood evidence. Obviously by now everyone in the apartment was involved in the speculation and debate.

“And in his confession,” added Sands, getting into the foray. “What was it he said at the trial? Let me see if this old brain still has it tucked away. Oh, yeah… yeah. He said, 'I guess in a way I did kinda get her hackles up. Got those spiney bones breaking skin on her backside once't or twice't… kinda made her what she was-all spine and blister.'“ All but Darwin Reynolds laughed at this.

Abrams shouted, “The man had an insanity defense at trial, and at the time, the guy was a lunatic, but jail time sobered his ass up, and now he claims his entire confession was a bold-faced fabrication!”

“To end an eighteen-hour, marathon interrogation,” countered Darwin.

“Were there sketches at the Portland murder scene?” Jessica asked.

“Matter of fact, yes.”

“Charcoal drawings?”

“Yes.”

“And what did they depict?”

“The dead woman and her horses.”

“Horses?”

“She loved horses… a real horse lover.”

Sands broke in. “Didn't the husband say she slept with her horses?”

“Actually, he said she'd rather have fucked a horse than ever get down with him again,” replied the resident expert on Towne, Darwin Reynolds, and this brought on laughing jags all around and a halt to the discussion, and everyone took a moment.

Dr. Sands turned his attention back to the body and began probing the ugly wound, taking a few more measurements. Abrams said he needed a smoke, but remained.

Reynolds didn't let it drop, however. “Look, the victim was white, and Towne's only prior was an aggravated battery charge, a domestic, and that only once, but him being a black man-”

“Oh fucking hell, here we go again with the poor black man's wrongfully accused defense because he's black shit,” countered Abrams. “Pah-lease, Darwin.”

“A black man beating on a white wife,” continued Darwin. “It conjured up every redneck's primal prejudice- images of O.J. and Nicole-and it was all that came up on every Portland cop's radar screen.”

“The woman was found with her spine ripped out,” stated Abrams. “And his prints were all over the place.”

“The man lived there for years. And as for her spine, it was never recovered. Neither was the one in Minnesota or here to date.”

“Aggravated battery, hell, I'd be looking close at him for his wife's murder even without that, but with it on his record, Darwin, it's not about race,” argued Abrams, his face reddening.

“I'm not so sure. Way people behave in this life, seems everything is about race. And you know the fact is the other two victims were white women approximately the same age.”

“Yeah, so what, Darwin?”

“Dr. Coran, will you please tell these backward Milwaukee yahoos how damned rarely a serial killer kills outside his own race? Tell 'em, Dr. Coran.”

“True. There's even less chance, statistically speaking, for a black man to kill outside race,” she added.

“Towne was convicted on highly suspect, circumstantial evidence alone. And now, with this at our feet, hell, it becomes even more suspect!” Darwin paced, adding,”The first victim two years ago in Millbrook, Minnesota, also lived alone, no relatives. She was found clutching a charcoal sketch, too.”

“All information the cops up north let out to the press, so anyone could copycat it,” added Sands, tsk-tsking his disapproval.

“No one was ever apprehended for the murder.”

Jessica recalled what little she knew of the Millbrook case-a small burb outside the Twin Cities. She told Reynolds, “FBI field office wasn't called in. It was handled as a local murder by the Millbrook authorities. Kept relatively quiet given the sensational way in which she was dispatched.”

“Case went nowhere,” replied Darwin. “There were no repeats, so for the most part, authorities were pleased it just went away, that it didn't become a recurring nightmare.”

“Then it happened over a year ago in Portland,” said Abrams.

“A year in between the first and second killing,” said Sands. “Not your typical bad boy, this one, and now this, a year later.”

“Agreed,” said Jessica. “Highly unusual if all the killings were done by the same man. Spacing his killings so far apart.”

“The Oregon black mountain man case,” began Chief Abrams, “got play on Court TV. High-profile case. Guy was put on psychoactive drugs and claimed later, after getting his head straight, that he didn't do it.”

Reynolds finished for Abrams, adding, “Towne then refused any appeals made on his behalf. He's on death row, end of story for everybody who wants to look the other way-just about the whole world, because he's decided to regain control himself with institutional suicide.”

“I remember reading something about it at the time,” said Jessica.

Reynolds added, “Towne has till the end of the week, a handful of days.”

“Then he's toast,” Abrams put in.

“He's been on death row for over a year now,” added Darwin. “Third Strike law… Nature of the crime… Speed Law of the West.”

“Everybody's anxious to see him die. Isn't that right?” asked Sands as he worked to place a stray particle of lint beneath a slide. “Even he wants an end to it.”

Jessica, returned to the body to continue her pre-autopsy examination.

“Are you that anxious to see him die?” asked Reynolds of Abrams.

Sands looked up to see Abrams's reply.

Abrams said, “Frankly, until this discovery here… Frankly, Darwin, I hadn't given much thought to the case.”

“Until now.” Reynolds held his gaze. “Until this.” He indicated the Olsen body.

“Right… until now. Now that we have a spine-theft murder in our own backyard-what to me appears a copycat of Towne's work.”

“There's not a shred of evidence to say so.”

Abrams waded back in, his eyes traveling the room to see who was paying attention. “Look, Reynolds, the man tried the insanity defense and lost, and then he wanted a sanity defense? And now he wants a quick execution?” Abrams punctuated this with laughter. “Come on!”

“That's some new Johnnie Cochran-style twist his lawyers must've come up with,” added Pete as she wandered in from the kitchen.

“Yeah, who's he got? O.J.'s dream team?” commented another tech team member.

A third leapt in with, “Come up with the insanity to sanity defense. Straight out of the Johnnie Confuse em' Cochran School or that guy Roy Black.”

Jessica stayed out of it and kept working.

Reynolds kept on Abrams, ignoring the side remarks. “Look, Abrams, his lawyers are saying he deserves another hearing in light of the way his confession was gotten, in light of this crime, and the fact he couldn't be tied to the one in Minnesota.”

“If Robert W. Towne is innocent I'll-”

“You'll what? If Towne is innocent, and we find out too late, how will that play, Chief?”

Jessica had motioned for the photographer to take close-ups of the head wound she'd cleaned, and the man moved in with purpose. Jessica said to Darwin, “Are you personally involved in the Oregon case, Darwin? You seem to be.”

“I see a wrong I'd like to right. That's the extent of my personal involvement.”

Jessica considered this as she finished the depth measurements to the killing wound down the length of Joyce Olsen's back. “My guess, Dr. Sands, some sort of surgical scalpel, a large one… A very controlled cut.”

“Didn't use a machete or a scimitar, that's for sure.”

“The M.E.'s in Portland and Minnesota concluded the same,” said Reynolds firmly, his gaze probing hers. “In all three cases, there are commonalities, Dr. Coran.”

“Those being?”

Darwin spread the fingers of his enormous left hand and ticked off each item. “The obvious-a missing spine-for one. Each victim lived alone. Each had next to no family. Led a sedate life. Heavily committed to their pets-their pet preoccupations, as it were. And each of the victims had sketches drawn of themselves while involved in a favorite pastime with their pets, and there's the way the guy smeared the blood with a mop or a broom to cover his footprints. In Minnesota and Portland he used a broom in each case, here a mop. He uses a scalpel or scalpel-like knife for the incisions, and a bone cutter, not a noisy Stryker saw to detach the spine fully from the body.”

“Obviously, you've given this a lot of thought.”

“You're going to find that he used a bone cutter to remove the Olsen woman's ribs, too.”

“How long have you been working on this, Reynolds?” Jessica asked.

“Since things in the Oregon case didn't add up to me. I don't believe Towne's guilty of any of this. In fact, he claims there is-floating around somewhere-a photo of him at a lake at the Canadian border where he was fishing with a friend when his wife was being murdered.”

“Gone fishing? That's an awful alibi. I could cite you hundreds of foolish men who used it, including Scott Peterson.”

“But in Towne's case, it's true. He's an avid fisherman and hunter.”

“Who owns a deboning knife, a rib cutter, and a ball peen hammer, I'm sure,” said Sands with a shake of the head.

“And a bow and arrow, and a collection of hunting rifles rivaling Sears Roebuck.” Reynolds dropped his head, nodding. “All of which was carted into the courtroom to prove him some sort of animal.”

“Then why the hell did he confess?” asked Petersaul.

“He was out of his mind at the time.”

“What's the source of your information?” asked Jessica.

“All right, there is a personal connection. An old friend of mine is on the defense team, and I can assure you Towne couldn't afford a Roy Black. They started an appeal but Towne, shown of sound mind at the time, refused any appeals made on his behalf.”

“So you're saying that the Minnesota case, and now this awful butchery, that this constitutes new information for Towne's defense?”

“I've always maintained he could not have done the Minnesota killing. I've already faxed the broad outlines to Oregon, but they've wired back that the governor's not buying it. The DA's somehow gotten the time of death changed by a day to counter claims that Towne was in Canada at the time.”

“I see.”

“So much for that. The governor can't be convinced of a stay of execution, citing the fact that Towne himself refuses any further appeal!”

“Meanwhile, you uncovered all this coincidence surrounding the murders.” Jessica put a fiber slide together as she spoke. “Like the sketches left at the murder scenes in both Millbrook and Portland, and now here in Milwaukee.”

“According to my experts, done by the same hand,” added Darwin. “And Towne has no history of artistic ability whatsoever.”

“How do you know that?”

“Let's just say that I've seen what he can't do with the back of a napkin.”

“So you're maintaining that he can't have created the charcoal sketches,” said Abrams, still playing devil's advocate, “and I gotta agree, not here with the Olsen woman and her dog since he's sitting on death row. But this could just be a copycat killing. Your boy Towne could've done the bird lady in Minnesota, and his wife.”

This drew some laughter.

Darwin dropped his head as if defeated. Jessica saw his frustration as he realized he could not change any of their minds. She jumped in, asking, “Agent Reynolds, when Towne was in his insanity phase, did the defense use schizophrenia as a mitigating circumstance?”

“Afraid so, yes, but-”

“And so, did he ever in any other personality show any artistic-”

“None, I tell you.”

“And you have the autopsy reports on the two other crimes?” she asked.

“As a matter of fact…”

“I'll be happy to look them over, but I must tell you, I am skeptical, at least as skeptical as Dr. Sands and Chief Abrams.”

“Understood.”

“But I am also equally skeptical anything can be done to save Towne from execution at this late date.”

“Skeptical is fine, perfect actually. I want your skepticism, Dr. Coran. It's what makes a good M.E., correct? And when you are convinced, it will mean something to Oregon.”

Skepticism is the hallmark of the medical examiner, she thought. “But for now I have, as Dr. Sands says, my hands full.”

Reynolds held up his hands in the universal gesture of retreat, and he did just that.

“I'll give you transport to the crime lab,” Darwin Reynolds offered Jessica when it became apparent that she and Dr. Sands could do no more at the scene. “I'm sure you can trust Ira and his people to maintain the chain of evidence, Dr. Coran.”

She'd automatically begun to search the room to see what final steps needed to be taken before leaving the crime scene. “Once we let it go,” she said, her gaze sweeping over everyone and everything remaining, “it's gone. No longer ours. Any mistakes we make now. All that.”

Even as she and Reynolds started toward the door, Jessica couldn't help but again regard the smoothed out dried blood running from the body to the door where it had been purposefully disturbed-mopped. She noticed the techs placing plastic bags over the mop ends and rubber-banding them. Another pair of men zipped up a body bag, having lifted Joyce Olsen's remains up and into it. Jessica's last glance met the woman's features, a mildly chiding reproach in the dead eyes. Now, in the hands of God, the eyes of the victim shone on Jessica like some sort of scolding preternatural light that insisted “find my killer.”

Such had fallen to her countless times before, and the responsibility and burden only grew as more was learned of the victim. Joyce had been a librarian who walked to and from her job, kept a steady schedule of walking her dog, Shep, in the nearby park, and according to a diary entry, read by Darwin, as Jessica and Sands had worked over her corpse, she adored the roasted sweet corn at the West Allis Fairgrounds during the state fair, a place the librarians and their relatives went each year to celebrate and party. She had had to go alone for the past two years, and Joyce lamented about this in her private book.

At the elevator doors in the hallway, Dr. Sands was already swamped, surrounded and captured by newspeople who'd finally gotten past the uniforms below. Sands appeared to revel in the attention. Reynolds snuck Jessica out via a back stairwell. Behind them, Jessica heard Sands saying, “Boys, whoever the devil is, he's pretty well destroyed any chance at blood spatter evidence of any sort.”

“What kind of weapon'd he use on her, Doc?” came a question.

“From the neatness of the incisions, I'd say our killer used a scalpel or a very good deboning knife.”

“A deboning knife?” went up the cry.

“Damned handy with it, too.”

“Is it true that her entire spinal column from top to bottom was extracted, Dr. Sands?” asked a female reporter, her voice shivering with the words.

Sands regarded her. “Scary as hell, isn't it? The very idea. The man used rib cutters or a bone saw to extricate the thoracic vertebrae. My guess is rib cutters.”

“Why rib cutters?” another reporter came back.

“No one in the building heard anything like a bone saw. Bone saw sends up a noise like a wailing woman. Whereas bone cutters just toss off these snap, crackle, pop sounds.”

“Why? Why'd he do this? Why'd he take, of all things, the spine?” asked the lady reporter. “It's horrifying… maddeningly so.”

“No one knows. If we knew, Briana, it might help lead us to him,” replied Sands.

Jessica realized that Sands did love the attention. At his age, he had learned to play the press to his advantage, and it appeared he made no excuses to his superiors.

Reynolds pulled Jessica away and guided her through the stairwell door. “I'm sure you don't want to be part of the circus.”

“Absolutely right about that, and I'm not so sure I like Sands giving up so much of what we have. It's not wise.”

“Hey, it's Ira, all right? What can I say. He runs his office the way he runs his office. He's ahhh… garrulous. Has lost a lot of jobs over the years over his outspoken style. Funny as hell.”

As they made their way down the stairs, Jessica asked, “Funny good or funny bad?”

“He tells the funniest stories about having been fired from hither, thither and yon, and he has a bag full of hilarious stories about on-the-job stuff as well.”

“Does strike me as a character.”

“That he is… that he is.”

The ease of step here on the stairwell made Jessica recall how the carpet in Olsen's apartment had crackled underfoot like Rice Krispies, hardened as it had become with Olsen's dried blood. She wondered if she'd ever get that sound out of her ear, or the image of a river of blood out of her head. There were no Caine's eardrops, earplugs, or sleeping pills to help.

She looked askance at Reynolds as they descended the two flights. She believed him ruggedly handsome in a Dick Tracy sort of way, and his stony onyx-black eyes showed a depth of intelligence that easily mesmerized others.

“Time for Towne is slipping away like the proverbial sand through the hourglass,” he muttered.

“Why've you taken such a personal interest in Towne?”

“I hate the death penalty. We have to find another way. Too many on death row are innocent, there for the same reason as Towne-a confession beaten from them, if not literally so, then figuratively.”

“But there's more to it than that. And you have to know from my record that I have sent a lot of men to their deaths on the row.”

“Yes, I know your record and where you stand on the issue.”

“The death penalty is too good for some of the scum we see. That aside, you've uncovered something else about these spine snatchings, haven't you?”

He stopped midstep, turned and stared deeply into her eyes. “I went back to the case in Millbrook, Minnesota. Went over it with a fine-toothed comb, but not until I talked with the detectives who worked it, did I realize how identical our killings this side of the Mississippi are to Towne's 2003 case.”

“I see. And just what did these detectives have to say?”

“Come with me,” said Reynolds, going toward the back exit of the apartment building. His car had been brought around by another agent. They got in and he peeled away, the diminishing blue strobe lights of the squad cars on the street reflected in Jessica's side-view mirror, growing smaller. It felt like escape.

She curled up in the leather seat. Fatigue claimed dominance, her eyes heavy with it, as if lavished on with a brush.

“Picture the Olsen kitchen again. You were there, you saw it, right?”

Jessica joined him there. “All neat and tidy.”

“I had a look in the trash bin. Guess what I found inside?”

“I haven't a clue.”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing… hmmm… should I be impressed, Sherlock?”

“Freshly cleaned out. Same as in Millbrook. Now look into the dishwasher,” he added as he “opened” an imaginary dishwasher between them in the cab of the car. “The killer is our neat freak. He even turned on the dishwasher and did the dishes.” He paused to let this sink in. “A check with her landlord, and I'm told Joyce Olsen was not obsessively neat about the place.”

“Still, how do you know she didn't do her dishes?”

“There are six dishes inside. No way is a woman going to wash four cups and two saucers. It's not economical, and from all accounts, Olsen was economical. Besides the noise of the washer would drown out the noise of his bone-saw activity.”

Jessica found herself playing devil's advocate now. “She was expecting him, perhaps, so she put her dishes away when the doorbell rang… out of habit or nervousness.”

“Look, the broom in Minnesota used to smear all the blood and any tracks and here… here it's a mop swept over the evidence.”

“Done in Portland as well?”

“Not to mention the size and depth of the wounds, and the M.E.s all agreeing that he used a scalpel-styled knife, and a bone cutter, for the removal of the spinal cords.”

Darwin allowed all he'd said to settle in.

Outside the car, the bustle of traffic in downtown Milwaukee moved like a herd of water buffalo going across a wide stream-slow going at best. Neon lights, electronic billboards and display windows vied for attention.

“All right, I see the similarities,” Jessica conceded. “No great stretch.”

“I tell you, Towne is innocent, and the real killer has surfaced again,” pushed Reynolds.

“I can see that you believe this.”

“You will, too, if you take the time to review the Portland and Minnesota cases. In Oregon, a moblike mentality prevailed in the community-a fucking witch-hunt engineered intentionally or not around the same kind of brainless thinking as… as went into the guilty verdict in To Kill a Mockingbird, or countless real-life cases I can give you chapter and verse on if-”

She held up her hands in mock surrender. “So, you are saying that they railroaded a conviction based on his being black? Come on.”

“Worse than that. They rammed it to him for being black and supposedly killing a white woman. The machine ran a single-minded track and steamrolled over an innocent man.”

Her silence telegraphed the fact that her skepticism hadn't significantly diminished.

“I'm telling you that's how it went down. They railroaded Robert onto death row. Oregon's still got that Wild West approach to law and order, an inherent vigilantism is at work there. Rob Towne didn't get a fair trial, and he'd never get a fair appeal, either, so he says why bother?”

“What does the governor think?”

“Hughes? Ahhh… He's persuaded-that is, moved by the political winds-and is persuaded that no way can he overturn a Court TV verdict. He's the consummate-”

“-politician, I'm sure, and easily led by his political advisors.”

“Exactly, but he's begun to listen somewhat. There is hope, Dr. Coran, and you're it.”

“Me? Meaning?”

“Meaning that I'm going to send Governor Hughes a copy of your report.”

“You mean you're going to shove it down his throat, right?”

“Perhaps, yes.”

“Does Hughes know you're a cross between James Earl Jones and Michael Dorn?”

“I've met with him. First time was the day after the trial verdict last year. Yeah, he knows I can hurt him, but I don't operate like that.”

“Sorry… meant no offense. That was rude… thoughtless of me.”

“I'll forgive your insensitive response, Doctor, if you'll seriously look over the evidence and report your findings to Hughes.”

“So this has been a setup? Hughes is expecting a report?”

“Yes, he is.” Darwin hesitated just a beat. “Hughes wants us, you in particular, to put the Millbrook and Milwaukee killings alongside what he has in Portland, kind of overlay each atop the other to see what comes of it, forensics-wise, I mean.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that the governor of Oregon asked for all this to come his way? That he's anxiously awaiting my opinion?”

“Evidence is evidence.”

“And state's evidence is state's evidence. Hughes isn't likely to want to pick a fight with his own people, to reverse the process that arrested, tried and convicted Towne. Come on, Darwin. Out with the truth. I can't work with you if you're going to play fucking games.”

“This is the truth! I've dogged the governor's office since Towne was convicted, and I've wired him about you, about the new findings. He's gotta listen to us. I'll make him listen to us.”

“Whataya going to do? Corner him with a sucker punch? You know governors of state, you know they hate granting reprieves, even short ones. And look at what you've done with me. You've blown it with me.”

“How have I blown it with you?” he sounded genuinely surprised.

“Come on, Darwin. You've already prejudiced and compromised me, by-”

“-by informing you? That's all I've done.”

“You've told me your opinion and that you fully expect your opinion to be upheld by my findings. In forensics, that's putting the cart before the horse-conclusion made, now go prove it. Besides, you're lying about Hughes's level of interest in reviewing Towne's case.”

He pulled the car into an underground police crime lab facility that looked like a bank, nondescript with no indication it was FBI. Once in the lot, as he located a space and pulled into it, Darwin leaned heavily into his steering wheel and sighed. “Ail right. I'm sorry. You're right, of course, but I simply want you to review the facts and keep an open mind.”

“Who is Towne to you? Really?”

Reynolds lifted his gaze to her, his jaw set. “He's a black brother, and I'm a member of For Blacks Only. Look, Towne is just another in a long, long line of black men who've been shafted by the American judicial system.”

“Are you saying this is some sort of crusade, a cause?”

“It's as good a cause as any, Dr. Coran. An innocent life at stake.”

“And you're not clouded by the passion of the crusade?”

“Not in the least. All right… perhaps some… All the same, I'm right and Oregon is dead wrong.”

“And this guy Towne couldn't possibly be guilty? Couldn't possibly have done this to his wife, not even a chance he'd read about what happened to the Childe woman in Minnesota and-”

“I understand your skepticism, and I applaud it. Fact is, I want you to pit it all against the case files, and I am certain you'll see that Hughes and his state attorney's office are the guilty party here.”

“Towne could as well be proven guilty by my scrutiny, by DNA testing, Darwin. Are you ready to accept that possibility?”

“I am prepared for whatever verdict you decide, Dr. Coran. Will you review the material I've amassed?”

She sighed heavily now. “Tonight, I'll go over everything you want to share on the cases. But for the moment, I have an autopsy to get to.”