“No, it would go deeper than that. Somebody you had some sort of strong connection with. Somebody who feels like you betrayed him somehow. Ruined his life.”
I felt baffled. Angry, too. So this unfolding nightmare—this set of gruesome murders—was somehow my fault? I felt myself flush. “I’m not exactly a treacherous kind of guy,” I said testily. “I’ve never cheated on my wife. I’ve never lied on a job application. I’ve never stabbed anyone in the back, literally or figuratively. Hell, I’ve never even gotten a speeding ticket.”
“Easy, Doc. Easy. Let me be clearer. I’m not saying you did betray this guy—this hypothetical guy. I’m just playing What if: What if you had some connection to somebody who ended up coming unhinged? What if he decided, rightly or wrongly—completely, one-hundred-percent wrongly—that you’d let him down, betrayed him, wrecked his life? That sort of scenario, that kind of guy, might fit the facts. Anybody like that come to mind?”
“No.”
“Well, sleep on it.”
“How am I supposed to sleep, with this hanging over my head?”
“You might want to try to engage him,” he mused. “Draw him out. Engage him. Goad him.”
“How would I do that? Put up a billboard by I-40? ‘Hey, serial-killer guy, you stink’?”
“Something like that. Guys like this tend to be very narcissistic. He’s almost certainly reading the newspaper and watching TV, looking for coverage of the killings. He gets off on it—it gives him a sense of power. If the police, or especially you, disparage him to the media—talk about his carelessness, his stupidity—he’ll probably be very agitated. He might respond, maybe get in touch with the paper or a TV station. If he does, that gives us another thread to follow.”
I heard a rap on the doorframe. Tyler stuck his head in, gave me a Let’s roll look. “I gotta go pick up a dead woman,” I told Brubaker. “Another thread to follow. I’m hoping the thread doesn’t end up leading to my door.”
LATE THAT NIGHT—AFTER Tyler and I had gathered up the woman’s body from the base of the sweet gum sapling at Cahaba Lane; after I’d talked to a newspaper reporter and a WBIR reporter; after we’d taken the corpse to the Annex; after we’d plucked and pickled the five biggest maggots; after we’d put the remains in to simmer, so we could render them to bare bone; after I’d showered at the stadium and dragged my weary self home and wolfed down a leftover turkey sandwich and crawled into bed beside Kathleen, who’d given up on me for the evening—I finally fell into a fitful sleep.
In my dream, I found myself once more in my backyard, approaching the opening where the gigantic snake lurked. In one hand I held a half-sized garden hoe, a pitifully undersized weapon with which to do battle. Leaning down, I peered into the hole, switching on the flashlight I held in my other hand. The beam of light disappeared into unfathomable darkness.
Straightening, I turned to go, but a movement at the edge of the yard caught my eye. A track of flattened grass led from where I stood to the edge of the woods—the sort of track an immense serpent would create as it slithered across the lawn. Just inside the tree line, where the grass ended and the track disappeared, I saw the body of a woman—a headless and footless woman—her legs twitching and bucking on either side of a tree trunk. In the shadows beyond, I saw more women lying in the woods. All of them splayed against tree trunks; all of them dead; none of them lying peacefully.
I bolted awake, drenched in sweat, my heart racing. The digital clock on the nightstand read 3:47. Slipping out from beneath the covers, I tiptoed from the bedroom and through the living room, my footsteps keeping time with the hollow ticking of the regulator clock on the mantel. The kitchen was lit by the blue-green numerals of the microwave and—once I lifted the telephone from its cradle on the wall—by the faint glow of the keypad. “Nine-one-one,” the dispatcher answered. “What’s your emergency?”
“It’s not an emergency,” I said. “But it’s important. This is Dr. Bill Brockton, at UT. I need to leave a message for a KPD homicide detective. Detective Kittredge.”
“Sir, this is 911 emergency dispatch. We don’t take messages.”
“It’s about the Cahaba Lane murder,” I went on. “Tell Detective Kittredge he needs to search that whole hillside.”
“Sir—”
“Tell Detective Kittredge there are more bodies—more dead women—out there in the woods.”
CHAPTER 27
Satterfield
SATTERFIELD SMOOTHED THE NEWSPAPER on the kitchen table, taking care not to smudge the ink. The story was briefer than he’d have liked, but it was prominently displayed—at the top of the front page—and it was accompanied by a large photo. He reread the text: