“No, sir, I don’t. I’m still not quite—“
“Hang on,” I said. “I’m getting there. A woman’s body was found there in the woods. She was naked, and her feet had been chewed off by dogs or coyotes, and her crotch was jammed up against a tree. I’m looking now at one of the photos from that case—the December 1990 case—and the trees are all bare. In the picture somebody sent me last week—the picture of the woman I think you’ve just found—all the trees still have leaves, and they’re just starting to turn. I didn’t look closely at this picture last week—I thought it was just an extra print from that 1990 case—but I’m sure looking now.” I took a magnifying glass from the center drawer of my desk and inspected the woman in the photo. “Hard to say for sure, but it doesn’t look like this woman’s feet were chewed off. Looks more like they’ve been severed.” He didn’t respond, so I went on, talking about what I saw, now that I was finally looking. “The tree she’s up against—looks like a maple.” I moved the lens to focus on the nearest cluster of leaves; they were shaped like five-pointed stars, but with no other serrations. “No, not a maple,” I amended. “A sweet gum, I think, now that I look closer.” Detective Kittredge still wasn’t saying anything, and I wondered if I should just shut up. Instead, I plowed ahead. “Looks like the bottom branch is snapped, but in this picture, the leaves aren’t dead yet. So I’m guessing it got broken just before the picture was taken.”
A pause. Finally, as if he’d made up his mind about something—as if he’d made up his mind that I wasn’t crazy, or a killer—he said, “Yes, sir, she’s up against a sweet gum. And the leaves on the bottom branch are withered now. All the other leaves are turning, and some have already fallen, but these withered on the branch.” Another pause. “Could you tell me a little more about that other case? Morgan County, you said?”
“Sure,” I said, glad that he seemed to be coming around. “This was about two years ago—twenty-two months, actually—outside Petros, the little town where Brushy Mountain State Prison is. A man kills his unfaithful wife and dumps her body in the woods. A couple weeks later, a hunter finds it and calls the sheriff, and the sheriff calls me. The body’s lying against a tree, one leg on each side, with the woman’s crotch pressed against the trunk. At first we think the killer has posed her that way—some kind of sexual display—but then I notice a dark, greasy spot about ten feet up the hill, and I realize that that’s where he dumped her; that’s where her body started to decompose. Then I saw the tooth marks on her feet—what little was left of her feet—and I realized what had happened. After she got nice and ripe up there on higher ground, she was found by wild dogs, or coyotes, and dragged downhill a ways, until she snagged on the tree and the coyotes couldn’t drag her any farther.”
“Hmm.” Another pause. “I’m still playing catch-up with you here, Dr. Brockton. Are you suggesting that this woman I’m looking at right now was killed by the same guy as the woman in Morgan County two years ago?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. That’s not possible—at least, I don’t think it’s possible. That guy confessed. He’s two years into a ten-year sentence.”
“So . . . let me try this again,” the detective said. “You’re saying I’m looking at some kind of copycat killing here?”
“Copycat killing?” As I repeated his words, something about them sounded slightly wrong. I laid one of my Morgan County crime-scene enlargements alongside the photo I’d received in the mail. They were strikingly similar; chillingly similar. “I don’t know if it’s a copycat killing,” I said slowly, “but it’s for damn sure a copycat death scene.” My eyes locked on to the broken branch, and I noticed that it had been pulled toward the far side of the sapling. “Jesus,” I said. “That branch was blocking the shot. Whoever took this picture broke the branch to get it out of the way. So his picture would look just like my picture.”
“Come again?”
“Detective, whoever killed this woman staged her body to look just like the crime scene I worked two years ago. And he photographed her from the same angle. It’s almost like he had a copy of my picture with him, out there in the woods.” A realization struck me, swift and forceful as a fist. “Dear God. This is the same guy.”
“But . . . you just said the guy’s in prison.”
“No,” I said, my heart a cold stone in my chest. “Not that guy. Not the guy in prison. The other guy. It’s the same guy.”
“What same guy?”
“The same guy who killed and dismembered a woman up in Campbell County about a month ago. With a tool that left cut marks he knew I’d recognize.”