“You know I don’t care to,” she said, which was an East Tennessee way of telling me she didn’t mind at all. She disappeared into the lab, situated between two of the imaging suites.
Decker and I waited in the hallway for a couple of minutes. Then we heard a signal indicating that she had finished developing the image. The signal was Stacy’s voice, emitting a high, loud shriek.
DECKER SLIT THE ENVELOPE CAREFULLY, THEN tipped the opening down toward the blue surgical pad we’d laid across the tailgate of my truck. A lumpy packet—blue-lined notebook paper, folded several times—slid out. With purple-gloved fingers, Decker eased open the folds one by one until the object inside was revealed.
“Yeah,” he said slowly, “I’d say that’s a human finger, all right.” He picked it up gently and inspected it, then handed it to me.
The finger was small—a child’s finger—severed as neatly at the base as Kathleen’s had been. I stared at it, trying to make sense of it. It had come from Satterfield; I felt no doubt about that. But whose finger was it? How had he come by it? How had he sent it—and why?
The notebook paper wasn’t just a wrapping; it was also a message, in a handwriting that I recognized from prosecution exhibits at Satterfield’s trial. “As token and pledge,” the note read, “I send you this: a finger from my firstborn son. When the time is right, I will bring him to retrieve it, and the two of us will rain down vengeance upon you and your family.”
I handed the note to Decker, the paper rattling from the tremor in my hand. He read it, then looked at me, his face grave. “You ever hear anything about Satterfield having a kid?”
I shook my head, but suddenly I had a sick feeling. “There was a woman,” I said, “at Satterfield’s trial. A weird woman. Most people were looking at him like he was a monster, you know? This woman was different. She was looking at him like he was . . . her hero or beloved or something.”
He nodded. “I’ve heard about women like that. Like rock-star groupies, but instead of singers or drummers, these gals get obsessed with serial killers. It’s a power thing—they’re attracted to all that dark energy or something. Remember Charles Manson? That whole harem he had? All those creepy women in what he called ‘the family’?”
“I remember,” I said. “And ‘creepy’ is putting it mildly. They all shaved their heads during his trial, right? Carved pentagrams in their foreheads?” I thought for a moment. “Didn’t Ted Bundy have groupies, too?”
Decker nodded again. “Lots. He even managed to marry one of ’em, right in the middle of his murder trial. Pulled some kinda jailhouse-lawyer stunt in the courtroom; conned the judge into pronouncing them man and wife—monster and wife—right there on the spot.” A strange look passed across his face; I could see that he was on the verge of adding something, but then he bit it back.
“What?” I asked. He frowned, looking pained. “What? Spit it out, Deck.”
“He got her pregnant, too. Bundy.”
“What? How? I mean, besides the basic egg-meets-sperm part. Do death row inmates get conjugal visits?”
“Not supposed to,” he said. “But then again, it was in Florida. Crazy shit happens in Florida.” He shook his head—whether about Florida or about the idea of Bundy as a dad, I couldn’t be sure. “One thing you can be sure of, though,” he added. “That snake Satterfield would’ve read about Bundy making a baby. And you know what they say about imitation. Highest form of flattery.”
“Sickest sort of perversion,” I responded. “But Satterfield didn’t manage to get married during his trial. So for sure he wasn’t eligible for conjugal visits.”
“Maybe there was a turkey baster involved,” he mused. “Or a spunk-filled condom. Or a rubber glove.” We looked at each other and grimaced in unison, repelled by the images his words had conjured up.
“He’s a convicted serial killer,” I protested. “He shouldn’t be able to pass a spunk-filled anything to a visitor.”
“You’re right. He shouldn’t.” Decker shrugged. “But prisons are bureaucracies. Systems. And any system can be gotten around or abused, if the price is right. Grease enough guards, do enough favors, gather enough dirt to get somebody under your thumb? You can break any rule—or bend it into any shape you want.”
Glumly I turned my attention back to the finger. The digit was in good condition—slightly shriveled, but not decomposed. “The forensic guys can get prints off that, right?”
Decker plucked the finger from my palm and peered closely at the tip, inspecting the delicate ridges and whorls. He nodded, then shrugged. “Not sure there’s much point, though. I doubt the kid’s gonna show up in AFIS”—I knew he was referring to the FBI’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System. “Not unless he’s some kind of child-prodigy criminal.” Seeing my disappointment, he hurried to add, “I’ll check, though. Like my mama always said, nothing ventured, nothing gained.” He rewrapped the finger and slid it back into the envelope, then said, “So . . .”