“They were all murdered.”
“Exactly. And in the same way: blunt-force trauma to the back of the skull. Not the kind of thing you do in battle. It’s the way you kill someone in a kneeling or prone position. In my research, approximately 25 percent of the deaths in prehistoric burial sites come from violence. Statistically speaking, outside of infant disease, the number-one cause of death was another human doing the killing.
“This is the norm up until the development of agriculture. Even then, violence didn’t steeply curve until the age of reason. And this violence wasn’t committed by a statistical few. It was regular folks. Once upon a time I might have been the one holding this person down while you clubbed them in the back of the skull.”
I’m unsettled by the casual way he suggests this. I get the impression he’s imagined this scenario quite a lot.
He lines the skulls up in a row. Their haunted eye sockets stare out at us.
Seaver points to them, calling out their backstories one by one. “This one was murdered six thousand years ago in what’s now Hungary. This one died three thousand years ago in China. This one died one thousand years ago in Wyoming. This one was sent to me by the Genocide Project; the victim was from a mass burial in Darfur five years ago. The last one was found in the woods in Colorado twenty years ago. We still don’t know who they were or why they were killed.”
“Savage,” I reply.
“No, Dr. Cray.” Seaver shakes his head. “That’s the point. These are far from the most savage deaths I’ve come across. These are the humane ones. They were killed dispassionately. I have other skulls and bones with hack marks and stab wounds inflicted long after the victim was deceased. I have collarbones with tooth indentations, not from cannibalism, but from someone trying to bite the victim to death, after they were incapacitated. I can show you murder sites that would make the most hardened Nazi concentration camp commander want to vomit.” He waves at the skulls. “This is killing. Murder is what you’re interested in.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Killing is a solution to a problem. Murder is something you do because you want to. You divorce your wife because you don’t love her. You murder her because you hate her.”
The man who killed Juniper certainly took great pleasure in the act. He could have strangled her or slit her throat. But he didn’t. The act of killing was his purpose. Which leads me back to the method.
“Have you ever heard of someone making a murder look like an animal attack?”
“Disguising it after the fact?”
“No. Killing someone in the same way an animal would.”
“Virtually all acts of premeditated killing in warfare involve some kind of animal symbolism. Animal mascots for military units. Wearing animal claws and teeth. Prehistoric man would wear the skins of other predators to assume their powers.”
“What about the act of killing itself? Are there cases where someone has consciously used killing methods like an animal’s?”
“Ah, that’s more challenging. Up until when we went out into the savanna, we were opportunistic omnivores that only ate things much smaller than ourselves. We had to invent the spear and throwing projectiles because our teeth and fingernails weren’t adapted to hunting.
“Mimicry would be a very inefficient way for someone to try to kill, with a few exceptions.”
“Exceptions? Such as?”
“Certain weapons that would resemble the way an animal would strike.”
“Like what?”
“Follow me.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
SHARK TEETH
Seaver guides me to a different part of the basement and takes a dusty cardboard box down from a towering shelf. He lifts the lid and reveals a flat club with triangular white teeth sticking out around the sides, like a chain saw blade.
“In Hawaii they call this a leiomano. They use tiger shark teeth for the blades. It’s somewhat similar to the obsidian macuahuitl clubs they used in Mesoamerica. This one was found in a mound in Illinois. The teeth were from a great white shark. The Mound Builders obviously traded far and wide to have access to those.”
He hands me the club. The tips of the teeth are still sharp. I’d hate to have this slice into me.
“The amusing thing about this is that some anthropologists regard this as a more humane weapon than a sword, proof in their minds that their wielders were more kindhearted than we give them credit for. The reality is that this is the kind of weapon you make if you don’t have iron or bronze. When you get cut by this, you die of infection from a hundred different wounds you can’t sew up as easily as one gash.”
I hand it back. “I don’t think anyone would mistake the victim of this for a shark attack.”
“No. For the Hawaiians it was more symbolic. You’re talking something practical?” He returns the weapon to its box and the box to its shelf, then walks away. “Let’s go down a few rows.”
Seaver removes a long, curved knife from a drawer. “This is a karambit. It’s designed to resemble a claw. Fairly practical. You can find modern versions in most knife shops.”
He digs through another drawer and pulls out a metal handle with sharp nails. “This is the head of a zhua, a clawed staff used to pull men from horses and rip away shields.”
I examine the hooks at the end. This is close but wouldn’t leave the deep gouges I found in the victims.
We go over to another cabinet, and he sorts through some boxes until he finds the one he’s looking for. “Ever heard of a bagh naka? This one is from India, but there have been variations in other cultures. In the nineteenth century, the raja would have men fight each other with these until their skin peeled off.” He unfolds a piece of cloth and holds up a set of metal knuckles with four long blades sticking out.
I’m stunned. While I could imagine what kind of weapon the killer would use, I didn’t imagine that it was something that had ever been used widely.
“Here,” he says, extending it toward me. “Hold it. In the Great Calcutta Killings, Hindu girls were given these to protect themselves.”
I grip the weapon in my hand. The claws stick out an inch or so over my knuckles. I can easily imagine how a version of this with blades like the karambit could resemble an animal claw. If you cast the blades from an actual bear claw, the similarity would be even more pronounced.
As I hold the bagh naka up to the light, I get an image of the gashes across Chelsea’s body. I slide the weapon off my hand and set it down. I tell Seaver I want to get some photographs, but really I don’t want to touch it anymore.
“Have you ever heard of anyone using something like this to kill someone? Here? In the United States?” I ask.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if some martial arts nut went after a roommate with one, but no. To kill someone with this, you’d have to be strong.”
I think of the deep gouges in the girl’s bodies. “How strong?”
“I don’t know. But strong enough to hit an artery.”
I pick the weapon back up and use my phone to capture it from every angle.
“Thank you, Dr. Seaver. Just one more question. Have you ever heard of anyone mistaking a human attack for an animal attack?”
“There were reports of wolf attacks in France several hundred years ago that might have been the work of a man. That gave rise to werewolf legends in that region.”
“What about around here?”
“Like the wendigo?”
“I’ve heard the name. But I don’t know much about that.”
“It’s an Algonquin legend. A half-man creature that eats people. Indigenous people took them very seriously. But that’s more associated with cannibalism. Is that what you mean?”
“Not quite. But that’s worth looking into. I was just wondering if you had heard of any recent cases of people mistaking a person for an animal.”
“No. Not recent.”
“Well, thank you for your time.”
“Unless you consider the 1980s recent.”
“Pardon me?”