Then Agar came hesitantly toward him. He had put on firefighter’s protective boots and carried another pair.

“Doctor, I hate like hell to ask you this,” he said. “But we’d appreciate it if-you know, if there’s anything you could identify.”

“I don’t know anything about forensics,” Monks objected. Then he sat abruptly on the ground and pulled on the boots.

The ashes were hot around his sore feet and calves. When he got close to the corpse, the smell of roasted meat blended with the woodsmoke and flame retardant. It was lying prone with arms outstretched, turned slightly onto the left side, as if sleeping. There was no evidence of contortion from pain, or of an attempt to escape. Whoever it was might already have been dead when the fire reached here.

Monks hoped so.

It appeared to be of medium height, maybe a little more. That eliminated Hammerhead, but left most of the others that Monks had seen. There were no obvious injuries or identifying marks. Jewelry would have been destroyed, and dental fillings melted. Only remnants of charred flesh clung to the bones. Skin and hair were gone entirely.

He glanced at the firefighter who had found the corpse and said, “Give me your glove. I’ll be careful.”

Monks crouched and very gently swept the film of ashes off the skeleton’s pelvis. Its heart-shaped cavity was wide, and rounded on the insides of the ilial bones between the sacrum and the pubic symphysis.

He closed his eyes, knowing that he could be tricking himself. He counted to ten, then looked again. His impression was the same.

“I think it’s a woman,” Monks said. “That’s all I can tell you, and I’m not at all sure about it. You’d better get an expert.”

He handed the glove back to the deputy and waded out of the ashes-somber with guilt because his pity for the victim was overcome by the ugly wash of relief that it was not his son.

“Doctor, are those human remains?” someone shouted. It was a newswoman, shoving a microphone past the restraining tape, while a man beside her focused a camcorder on Monks.

He thrust his hand out at them, palm flat, and walked on past.

PART Two

NEW MURDERS INCREASE PANIC

Wendy Reicher

Tribune staff reporter

Published March 10, 2004

Chicago-The latest in a series of more than a dozen multiple murders tentatively linked to the “Calamity Jane” killings was discovered early this morning near Lake Forest.

Walter R. Krieger and his wife, Nancy, were found shot dead in their home in the exclusive gated community of Avalon Greens. Krieger was an executive who sat on several major corporate boards and an influential industry lobbyist. His status in the business world, along with the killers’ penetration of heavy security and the lack of any apparent motive, fit the pattern of previous crimes.

Police confirmed that items were taken from the home but refused to say what. In the past, stolen items have been dumped out in inner cities and homeless camps, among them expensive jewelry and the rare golf clubs that gave the murders their name. This has given the killers a growing Robin Hood image in some areas. Baseball caps and T-shirts with the “Calamity Jane” logo have even appeared, sparking outrage and demands for swift police action from citizens’ groups.

“We’re aggressively pursuing a number of promising leads,” FBI spokesman William Joslin told a press conference earlier today. “It’s only a matter of time before these people are brought to justice.”

But a Chicago police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, “It’s almost like they’re thumbing their nose at us-trying to prove there’s nothing anybody can do to stop them.”

With no suspects in custody, widespread concern is on the rise.

24

Monks cut the last of the pressure-treated two-by-ten deck joists with a Skilsaw and laid it on a stack with the others, then paused to rest, wiping a film of sweat from his forehead. He glanced out to the hazy Pacific horizon for signs of incoming weather, as he had gotten in the habit of doing. It was early March. Spring came more slowly to the North Coast than to other parts of California, and storms were still frequent. But this was a clear day, and the afternoon sun was warm on his shoulders.

He had found out why Lia-he still thought of her as Marguerite-had recognized tools like bolt cutters and pipe wrenches. Her mother, Sara Ferraro, was a professional builder, with her own all-female construction company. She lived in the hills above a little town called Elk, about fifteen miles south of Mendocino and a two-hour drive from his own home in Marin County. He had spent quite a bit of time here over the past couple of months, and had volunteered to rebuild the deck behind her house, one of those things that she had been meaning to get to for years but never had the time. His carpentry skills were decent, but nowhere near Sara’s level, and he was feeling under the gun, performance-wise.

His watch read 4:43 P.M. Sara often worked late, but this was Friday, so she’d be home soon. He figured he had just enough time left to set the joists in place. Then he would have the completed substructure to show off to her.

Standing in the middle of the deck’s twelve-by-sixteen-foot rectangle, he fit the two-by-tens, one by one, into the metal hangers he had nailed at twenty-four-inch intervals along the rim joists. He was careful to keep the lumber crowns pointing up-that was important, he had learned from her, for load-bearing members.

When he finished, it looked pretty good, and he was feeling pleased with himself.

Then he noticed that some of the joists were as much as a quarter-inch higher than the rim joists where they met.

“What the fuck,” he said. When he got his tape measure and checked, he found out that the two-by-tens varied from about nine inches in depth to almost nine and a half inches. The bigger ones were sticking up too high. He dropped the tape back into his tool belt, feeling disgusted, ripped off. What the hell kind of world was this when you couldn’t trust lumber dimensions?

He could hardly leave the joists as they were-that would create humps in the decking. He supposed he would have to pull them out again and notch them underneath-a major, and time-consuming, pain in the ass.

But not today. He got a cold bottle of crisp Kronenbourg beer from the kitchen, then went back out and sat on the lumber pile. The beer was cold and rich, and that dry pilsner taste was just right for the end of a sweaty day of physical work.

In the weeks after the fire at Freeboot’s camp, Monks had dealt extensively with law-enforcement authorities, and had lobbied hard to get Marguerite a deal without jail time. The courts took into account her brainwashing and her help in escaping, and agreed that there was nothing to be gained by punishing her. She had been sent to live with relatives in Phoenix. Privately, Monks thought her cooperation seemed more dutiful than wholehearted, but as long as she kept her job and stayed out of trouble, the law would consider her on probation.

Monks had driven her and the Sara to the San Francisco airport to send her off. When the boarding gate closed, Sara, tough and fiery through the entire ordeal, had collapsed against him and said, “Now take me home and fuck me, will you?”

That first coupling had been more combative than gentle, and it had lasted some time. He had his own tensions to work out. He had battled with guilt about taking a lover while his son was still missing, and with the fear that both he and Sara were in brittle states-using each other for the wrong reasons, which could come around to harm them. It might have been better to cut clean. But it was also really good, and as those things will, it kept happening.