The Boys from Santa Cruz

CHAPTER TWO
1

Due to the length of the convoy blocking the driveway leading up to Sweet’s trailer, the two FBI agents had to hike the last few hundred yards. Pender had changed into a pre-rumpled blue-and-white-striped seersucker sport coat and peach-colored golf slacks before they left Marshall City. Izzo was wearing the same miraculously unwrinkled gray suit he’d worn throughout the stakeout and the chase, but had ditched the Kevlar vest.

They arrived just in time to see the sheriff’s deputies pulling a tarpaulin off a bulky object in the middle of a clearing, unveiling a charred human body jackknifed over the side of a scorched metal steamer trunk. The upper half of the corpse was inside the trunk, which was filled with sooty, oily-black water. Chunks of flesh had been torn from the lower half, presumably by turkey vultures, two of which lay dead within a few yards of the trunk.

“And me without my spoon,” Pender muttered, as the flashbulbs began to pop.

Once the body had been photographed in situ from every imaginable angle, the deputies struggled in vain to remove it from the trunk. It wasn’t until after they’d drained off the water that they realized the head was firmly encased in eight to ten inches of melted, rehardened plastic.

Yet another surprise was in order for the deputy who’d been assigned to free the body by chipping away at the plastic. Up close and personal, he announced, the corpse appeared to be female from the waist up and male from the waist down.

One more important discovery was made by one of the weaker-stomached deputies. After getting a good look at the star attraction, the man had staggered off into the bushes to launch his lunch and returned with a videocassette he’d found lying in the dirt. He handed it to Izzo, who showed it to Pender, who winced when he saw the label: Principals of Accounting, Tape 4.

“C’mon, there’s bound to be a VCR in the trailer,” Izzo said eagerly.

“Let me know how it comes out,” said Pender.

Izzo thought Pender was kidding at first. He started toward the trailer, then turned back-Pender hadn’t moved. “What’s the problem, Ed?”

Pender shrugged. “I’ve been chasing serial killers going on ten years now. I’ve seen shit that’d turn Jack the Ripper’s stomach. Half-eaten corpses, skulls stacked like cannonballs on the courthouse lawn, you name it. But up until three weeks ago, I’ve never actually had to watch the victims suffering before they died. Now it seems like everybody and their brother’s got a camcorder. Mapes and Nguyen, Sweet and Swantzer, it’s like a fad or something, and lemme tell you, podner: it’s getting real old, real fast.”

Izzo, who’d taken a sudden interest in studying the dirt at his feet, waited a few seconds, then asked Pender if he’d finished venting.

Pender nodded-a short, sharp nod, like a bull rider signaling for the chute to be opened.

“Good,” said Izzo. “Because I’m at least as sick of this shit as you are, and I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to watch this thing by myself.”