It wasn’t clear from the photographs whether they had been taken before or after the corpse was moved from where it was found. Two crushed Budweiser cans were clearly visible, plus a sprinkling of broken glass, the shape and the colors of the shards suggesting yet more retired beer containers. Beneath the body, bottles and cans and twisted tufts of grass grew like leafy cancers from a flat gray bed of gravel. It was one hell of a way to treat a human being.
Deputy Semen’s description of the corpse didn’t touch the reality of what the photographs showed. It was true enough that the hands had been removed, but so had the elbows and a good portion of the upper arms. Dried blood in wild spray patterns decorated the naked chest, which showed the lack of muscle tone that was typical of forty-something desk dwellers. The head was likewise missing, severed by a hacking cut just below the jawline. If Jonathan’s estimates were correct, the larynx had been left behind. Stephenson Hughes had been transformed into a slab of pale flesh that gleamed like a beached fish.
“Jesus, Digger, do you have to put those on my computer? I feel like I need to wash it now.”
“They tortured him, too,” Jonathan said.
Venice reapproached the screen cautiously, as if afraid that the power of the images might hurt her. “How do you know?”
He pointed with a crooked forefinger-testament to the limitations of field-splinting broken bones in the middle of a Latin American firefight. “Look at all the blood spray here around the amputations,” he explainedwsed through the rest of the photos. Each of the five displayed a different angle on the horror, and with each click of the mouse, the grisliness of it grew.
As Venice acclimated to the gore, she leaned in closer to the screen. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing.
Jonathan had been wondering the same thing. A patch of flesh, roughly the shape of a triangle and the size of a hand, had been excised from the victim’s chest above the left nipple. The wound was an ugly purple thing with none of the telltale signs that it had been inflicted during life. In fact, had the wound been viewed out of context, it might have looked like an example of modern art-the kind that Jonathan never understood, but seemed to be all the rage among the MOMA set. Swarming flies capped it all off with a disturbingly surreal quality.
“Are we looking at a serial killer?” Venice asked. “A collector?”
“Don’t think so. This looks like the work of a professional to me. Collectors take body parts as trophies. Professionals take them to prevent identification.”
Venice didn’t press for more details, probably because she didn’t want to know the source of Digger’s knowledge.
He continued, “I think that missing skin used to be a tattoo. The killer didn’t want the tat pointing the way to the corpse’s identity.”
“Did Stephenson Hughes have a tattoo?”
Jonathan shook his head. “I don’t know. Apparently.” Looking at these photographs, at the brutal violence that they represented, he couldn’t help but think of the unspeakable agony that Ellen must have suffered as these animals came at her and bludgeoned her for information that she never knew. He heard her screams in his head.
He said, “Rattle Boxers’ cage and bring him back to work. We’ve got stuff to do.”
Chapter Sixteen
Of the four civil aviation companies at the Indianapolis Airport that rented helicopters, it turned out that all four had choppers out during the critical period from April 19 to 21. Of those four, three sported a lateral wheelbase in the range of seven feet, the nominal separation between the tire prints in the grass, and the fourth was a Bell Jet Ranger that didn’t have tires at all, but rather took off and landed on skids.
After seven hours of drive time and investigation, Gail Bonneville’s case hadn’t progressed at all. The number of suppositions and intuitive guesses were compounding, and without something definitive, some bit of hard evidence that they were even on the right track, she would soon have to regroup and start over from scratch.
“I think you’re right,” Gail said to Jesse as they walked from the civil aviation terminal toward Gail’s official unmarked vehicle. “They borrowed instead of renting.”
“Or they could own their own,” Jesse offered. “But, I know, we’re stipulating that they’re from too far out of town for that. I want to show you something.” They reached the vehicle and he used the hood as an impromptu desk. From his briefcase, he produced a black imitation-leather portfolio from which papers sprouted in all directions. As he searched for the flight plan the aircraft was invisible. They inquired via the telephone whether the radar record could be resurrected to show where they traveled, but the answer, much to Gail’s and Jesse’s surprise, was negative. A helicopter without a flight plan could literally fly under the radar and disappear into the vast American airspace.
The Gulfstream jet, however, was traceable. It was registered to Perseus Foods Corporation, headquartered in Rockville, Maryland. Gail started making phone calls. Thus far, she’d had no luck whatsoever getting through to anyone at the corporate headquarters who could answer any questions.
Back at the office, after an hour in the car on the way back to Samson, Gail completed her third call into the bowels of Perseus Foods, and found herself not a single step closer to an answer. After someone named Lakisha had promised to “ask around” to see who might know something, Gail could feel her blood pressure rising. She hung up the phone aggressively enough to bring Jesse’s head up from the pile of reports that had flooded into the office while they were at the airport. With the blinds closed to protect them from the eyes of the media outside, the atmosphere inside the office was positively funereal.
“I hate people sometimes,” she said in reply to Jesse’s quizzical expression. “No one knows anything, and the Maryland State Police isn’t anxious to push people’s buttons for us. They don’t think we have enough to justify the dedication of manpower.”
Jesse didn’t seem surprised. “Want me to grab a flight out there and talk to someone? It’s easy to stonewall when all you have to do is press a hold button. It gets a little more complicated when you have to look people in the eye.”
Gail stood and stretched. “It might come to that.”
Jesse turned to a page in his pile of reports. “I have an interesting lead here,” he said. “Day before yesterday, outside of Muncie, a pharmacist called the local cops to report what he thought might be a runaway. The report here says he was a kid, a teenager or maybe very early twenties, and he was filthy and clearly distraught. He waited there a long time for the bus to Chicago.”
Gail cocked her head. “How is that a lead for us?”
Jesse sensed disapproval and his shoulders slumped a little. “The timing works. As far as I’m concerned, wherever the stars align, there’s a potential lead. On the morning of the attack, there’s a kid waiting for a bus to the same place where our Gulf Stream headed. All things considered, it’s a pretty close match.”
The sheriff didn’t get it. “If they were going to Chicago, why not just fly him to Chicago? What’s the bus thing all about?”
Jesse gave that some thought. “I can’t say for sure, but a bus doesn’t go right to a location, does it? Maybe he intended to get off somewhere in between.”
Gail looked at her deputy. For the first time since she’d taken office, she saw why this man was so popular among the troops. His mind was suited perfectly for this line of work. “Do we have a name?” she asked.
Jesse nodded, and quickly scanned the page. “We’ve got two, actually. We’ve got a name for the pharmacist, and we’ve got a name for the kid.”