Stranglehold. Part 17

Did you know that?

"Is it your father, Robert?"

No. He wasn't going to cry again, G.o.d d.a.m.n it! And he wasn't going to tell her.

Make him stop, he thought. Somehow.

And then he did cry a little.

He wiped the tears away and said nothing.

Fifteen.

Forest

Duggan stamped his feet against the cold leeching in through his shoes and lit himself a Newport Lite off Al Whoorly's Winston. He hated Newport Lites more than any other cigarette he'd ever smoked but he was trying to quit so he figured they were good for him.

Years ago there'd been a brushfire out this way. They'd stopped it just about here. You could see the newer growth off to the left, the older stands of birch and maple to the right.

The girl was nailed to maple.

The ME was just about finished with her. The photographs were taken. In a few more minutes the Crime Scene Unit could bring her down and bag her. She'd go with Whoorly and the other state troopers over to the lab in Concord.

"What I don't get," Whoorly said, "is why he left us the IDs. Why make it easy?"

"Considerate," Duggan said. "The guy's got heart."

"You know some of these a.s.sholes actually want to be caught. Maybe he's tired of it."

"I don't think you'll prove it by this one."

Her name was Laura Banks-a student at Plymouth State. Her student ID and driver's license were in a brown leather wallet inside her cluttered handbag. The handbag was sitting on top of a stack of neatly folded clothing placed on a rock four or five feet from the tree-coat, jeans, s.h.i.+rt, socks, bra and panties. The girl was the practical type. The s.h.i.+rt was heavy corduroy and the socks were thick red wool.

He thought of how cold she must have been. Unthinkably cold.

Before he got to warming her up some.

Silence lay heavy in the still dry morning air. Six of them out here and n.o.body was saying hardly anything. He guessed they were all a little in awe here. The teenage kid whose big black b.a.s.t.a.r.d Labrador had scented her and then run away into the woods while they were out for their morning walk was down at the station for questioning. The kid had a lot to say but it was just the same thing over and over again because the kid was scared. In a way maybe it scared them too.

Lavore walked over and Duggan shook a Newport out of his pack for him. Lavore was trying to quit just like Duggan but the ME's style was grubbing.

"Okay. You can have her," he said.

"Cause of death?"

"You're kidding."

"For the record."

"Sharpened tree limb. Stake through the heart. Directly through the heart. I mean pretty much dead center. What you're looking for here is a torture-freak vampire-killer who's pretty good with his anatomy. And you know what? He didn't just shove it into her. He pushed it in nice and slow."

"Time of death?"

"My guess now would be about four A.M. Five, six hours ago."

"Rape?"

"Plenty of rape. Looks like he got her seven ways to Sunday. v.a.g.i.n.al. a.n.a.l. I wouldn't be surprised if when we pry open her jaw we find s.e.m.e.n there too."

Duggan pointed to an area by a rock about six feet over to their left.

"You see that?"

"What? The gags?"

Two cotton dishrags had been tossed to the forest floor. One was frozen, drenched with saliva. They were bagging them.

"No. Wood shavings. The guy sat there whittling. Putting a good clean point on his stick. You want to bet she was watching him?"

"Sick," Whoorly said.

"What about the rest of it?"

"All happened before she died as far as I can tell. Though some of it might be postmortem. I'll be able to give you a breakdown when we get her on the table."

He looked at her. Lavore was telling him she'd been alive through all of that.

What the guy had done was amazing and G.o.d only knew how much time he took to do it. Maybe all night. Maybe longer.

The body was hanging there like frozen meat in a meat locker. At some point he'd thrown water on her. To revive her? Or just to watch her shake? There was frost and beaded ice in her long brown hair and in her pubic hair and eyebrows. Small icicles actually hung from her toes where they almost-but not quite-touched the base of the tree.

Her arms were spread three feet apart over her head. Each wrist pierced by a tenpenny nail.

She hung suspended.

Her body was blue-white where it was not a brownish red.

But there was plenty of red.

He'd been at her with a dry stick.

They'd already bagged it. The stick was three feet long and he hadn't peeled too many of the branches off. It was stained with blood and bits of human flesh clung to it, studding its buds and scars.

He'd been at her with matches too.

Duggan was never the type of cop who figured that by now he'd seen everything. He knew that people could always surprise you-that people could be f.u.c.ked beyond his own wildest dreams. He'd seen the b.l.o.o.d.y fallout from domestic anger and drunken driving and armed robbery and all kinds of lethal stupidity but he'd never seen anything like this and hoped to G.o.d he never would again.

He stepped out his Newport, then picked up the b.u.t.t and put it in his pocket.

He'd smell like an ashtray now.

Another good incentive to quit.

What he had to try to do now was to find out all he could about the woman in life and in death, and unless he got lucky, unless somebody saw her step into a car with someone he or she knew or unless somebody went strange on him under questioning, to imagine precisely her suffering at the end and then try to construct the person who could be screwed up enough to put her through it. He'd have to look at her, in the flesh and in the photos, over and over again.

How did you imagine a tenpenny nail through the wrist?

Flesh burned black?

Beating somebody down to raw red meat?

How did you imagine that kind of ferocity?

He talked to Whoorly as they left the clearing and pushed their way back through the thick spiky brush to the cars. What Whoorly was guessing at this point was the most depressing of all the possibilities. That it was probably somebody who was just pa.s.sing through. That somebody had picked her up hitching or something and maybe pulled a gun on her and brought her out here just because it looked deserted enough.

Which meant they'd probably never find him.

"These serial guys are like that," he said. "They just drive around, y'know? Place to place."

"He picked a d.a.m.n good spot for it though," Duggan said.

"Huh?"

"These woods. n.o.body comes here in winter. It's right off the National Forest and people tend to go up there instead if they feel like doing some winter hiking. If that dog hadn't scented her we might not have got her for weeks. Months maybe."

"So you think maybe he knew the place?"

"Could be."

The Danse house lay just over the ridge up there about three quarters of a mile on. He remembered having to go hunt for Arthur the day of the fire and not finding him, the kid showing up that night saying he'd pa.s.sed out somewhere back of the road to Rumney.

Duggan had never believed him.

But it was possible that Ruth or Harry saw something, heard something. The Hurley place and the Wingerter place were up this way too.

He'd get on it.

"Know what, Al?" said Duggan.

"What?"

"I'm thinking he's local. Obviously we've got to check out everything else but that's what I'm thinking. We know he's no city boy anyhow, he's got some woodsmans.h.i.+p."

"How so?"

"Tenpenny nails driven hard and true. Picked a nice supple birch to use on her. Plus the stake."

"Nice and sharp."

"Uh-huh. Boy knows how to whittle."

Sixteen.

Preliminary Investigations

Late that afternoon he got a call from Whoorly in Concord. "Computer's spit out two of them over the past two years that are so close it's scary. And two more possibles."

"Where?"

"The close matches are Franklin and Conway. The possibles Munsonville and Tuftonboro."

"h.e.l.l, all over the place."

"Yep."

"How close is close?"

"One nailed to the back of an abandoned barn. Tenpenny nails, same position of the body. The other tied to a tree limb, feet off the ground. Both beaten, both burned, both raped. a.n.a.l, v.a.g.i.n.al, oral. Knife through the heart on the first one, sharpened stick on the second. Close enough?"

"Jesus."

"You want me to send copies?"

"You bet I do."