“Let’s take a look at the file.” I got up and crossed to an ancient four-drawer filing cabinet that stood beside an interior doorway. The olive drab cabinet, chin high, nearly blocked the doorway, which led to the collection: the series of adjoining rooms where nearly a thousand skeletons were neatly boxed and shelved.
Tugging open the balky top drawer—the top left corner of the cabinet had been dented years ago, possibly around the time I was born, and the drawer had an annoying tendency to stick—I took out a manila file folder at the front. The folder contained a listing of all the forensic cases the Anthropology Department had assisted with, arranged chronologically and with a brief description after the case number. Beside case 93-17—the seventeenth forensic case of 1993 (because it was a criminal case, not a donated body, the year was the first number in the pair)—was the notation “Dismemberment/mutilation of male victim.” Squatting down, I slid open the lowest drawer of the cabinet and removed the case file, taking it to my desk. Besides my forensic report to KPD and the district attorney’s office, the file contained brittle newspaper clippings about the case. The grisly crime and the sensational trial had made front-page headlines off and on for weeks: HUMAN BODY PARTS TOSSED IN DUMPSTERS. VICTIM’S SEVERED HEAD FOUND IN DITCH. SUSPECT ARRESTED IN
DISMEMBERMENT CASE. LOVE TRIANGLE MOTIVATED MUTILATION. DUMPSTER
KILLER SENTENCED TO LIFE.
The file confirmed my memory of the case. “That was a crime of passion,” I said. “A stabbing, followed by a crude mutilation of the corpse. Partly a clumsy attempt to dispose of the body, but partly a chance to add postmortem insult to injury. Stab a guy to death, then stab him some more, then hack him to pieces. It sends a message: ‘Mere murder’s way too good for this guy.’”
I passed the file to Culpepper, who flipped through it wordlessly until he got to the photos of the severed body parts. “Yuck. This stuff makes Willoughby’s body look pretty damn good.”
“Doesn’t it? As you can see, the cases are very different. Willoughby died of natural causes, and his arms and legs were cleanly amputated, not hacked off. Nothing personal about that. Hell, if it weren’t for the paternity suit, the dismemberment wouldn’t have been discovered,” I said. Culpepper was nodding glumly. “Anyhow, the Dumpster killer was in prison when Willoughby was buried, so he’s got a pretty good alibi.”
Culpepper frowned. “Figures,” he sighed. “Not my first dead end of the day either. I followed up on the people working at Ivy Mortuary. The former owner, Elmer Ivy, died in 2005, the office manager got married and changed her name and moved who-knows-where, and nobody knows a damn thing about the embalmer who was working there in 2003.”
“Sic transit gloria mundi,”I said.
“Sick what?”
“Sic transit gloria mundi.Latin. ‘Thus passes the glory of the world,’ I think is how it translates. A highfalutin way of saying, ‘We’re nothing but dust in the wind.’ Most of us leave fainter tracks than we’d like to believe. Doesn’t take long for them to get covered over or swept away.” I thought for a moment.
“I know somebody who would probably be able to tell you more about Ivy Mortuary. Helen Taylor. She runs East Tennessee Cremation Services, a crematorium out near the airport. She’s sharp and first-rate, and she’s done business with all the funeral homes in the area. I’d be surprised if she didn’t remember who worked at Ivy Mortuary seven years ago.” I flipped through my Rolodex and jotted down her name and number.
The card tucked behind Helen Taylor’s was sticking up slightly higher than hers, and out of curiosity I flipped to it. It bore the distinctive gold-and-blue logo of the FBI and the name“Special Agent Charles Thornton.” Underneath his name were the words“Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.” Seeing his card, so close on the heels of my conversation about the Oak Ridge case, spooked me all over again. Did all roads—all tracks—lead me back to Isabella?
The stairwell door slammed again, jarring me back to the present and to Culpepper once more. I took another M&M from the beaker—green this time. Culpepper reached in and took one as well, a yellow.
“Okay, I gotta go.” He raised the M&M as if it were a tiny drink and he were proposing a toast. “To finding the tracks before they’re swept away.” Then he tossed the candy straight up, catching it in his mouth as it arced down. “And to not going off the deep end.”
He closed the stairwell door gently on his way out. I let the green M&M dissolve slowly in my mouth, feeling the wall of denial I’d erected around Isabella’s memory melt and crumble like the hard candy shell.
CHAPTER 8