“With some cage-fighting thrown in,” she added. A pause. “I know Satterfield tried to kill you.”
“Not just me. My whole family—Kathleen and Jeff and Jenny, who was Jeff’s girlfriend at the time. They were in high school. Actually, Jeff was still in high school; Jenny had just graduated. Satterfield snuck into the house at dinnertime. He had come to UT and hidden in the back of my truck. I drove him right into our garage. Like inviting a vampire to come in, though I didn’t know it, of course. We had just sat down at the kitchen table, the four of us, when he came up the stairs. The uninvited dinner guest from hell. If it hadn’t been for Decker, and Tyler . . .” I trailed off, picturing the astonishing way our salvation arrived: a three-foot concrete statue of the archangel Michael, flying through the sliding glass door from the patio, his outstretched wings and raised sword pinning Satterfield to the wall.
“Tyler was your assistant?”
“He was. Tyler Wainwright, my first assistant.” I looked at her. “My second-best assistant. Jeff and Jenny’s son—the first one—is named for him.”
“I remember you saying that once, when you introduced me to them at a cookout. One thing I never understood, though. Why did Satterfield come after you in the first place? He was a serial killer, preying on women. Prostitutes, right?” I nodded. “So why come after you—a professor—and your family?”
“Ah. For revenge. Satterfield was in the navy, and he wanted to be a SEAL. He was on the verge of getting in—there’s a scary thought—but then he killed a woman, a stripper in San Diego. No, wait—Tijuana. Anyhow, I was called in to consult—one of the navy prosecutors was a former student of mine—and I was the one who found the evidence that the woman had been strangled.”
“Her hyoid was broken?”
I nodded, smiling. “Bingo. But Satterfield was never tried. They had a circumstantial case, but no direct evidence. So all that happened was, he got kicked out of the navy.”
“You’re kidding. That’s it?”
“That’s it. But in his mind, I destroyed his dream. Ruined his life.”
She took a moment to process this. “And then, instead of dying a painful death with your family, you lived—and helped put him behind bars.” I nodded again. “So these twenty wasted years—”
“Twenty-four,” I corrected.
“These twenty-four wasted years—also your fault?”
“I haven’t asked him, but that’d be my guess.”
“Jesus,” she said. “He’s coming, and he’s pissed.”
Never one to mince words, Miranda. “That,” I agreed, “would be my guess. He’s probably coming, and he’s definitely pissed.”
CHAPTER 25
MY CELL PHONE RANG, AND I SAW THAT THE CALL was from Decker. “Hey, Deck,” I said. “Is the cavalry all saddled up and ready to ride?”
“Cavalry? Hmm,” he grunted. “Hope we make out better than Custer did at Little Bighorn. You coming?”
“Am I invited?”
“Sure you are,” he said. “I mean, if you want to be.”
“Absolutely. If you don’t think I’ll get in the way—or get shot.”
“Well, dang,” he said. “I was counting on you to draw fire away from my entry team, but if that’s how you feel, I reckon you can hang out with me in the command post instead.”
“Deal,” I told him. “I wouldn’t want to show up your men.”
“You wanna ride with me?”
“Sure. Can’t think of a safer place to be.”
“Ha,” he said. “Never ridden with me, have you? But if you’re feeling brave and want to come along, meet me in the south parking lot at KPD. We’ll roll out in about an hour.”
THE KNOXVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT OCCUPIED A drab, hulking four-story building of brick and concrete atop Summit Hill, situated across a low valley from the city’s downtown. Through the valley flowed the concrete ditch called First Creek and the concrete freeway called James White Parkway, both of them spanned by a series of bridges, some old and graceful, others new and boring.