“I’ll let you get to it,” I said. “And I’ll get those x-rays and scans to you right away.” He thanked me and hung up.
I turned, with a sigh, to page seven in Miranda’s dissertation and resumed reading, my eyelids instantly feeling heavy. I’d slogged through only a paragraph when my door suddenly boomed with a frantic pounding. I whirled in my chair, muttering, “What the—”
“Doc? You in there? Dr. Brockton!”
My heart still hammering, I unlocked the door—I’d been careful to lock it, ever since Satterfield’s escape—and opened it. “Jesus, Deck, you scared the living crap out of me. What the hell?”
“Is it true, what I heard about Shiflett?” His eyes were wild, and he looked almost unhinged.
“Come on in, Deck,” I said, in what I hoped was a calming voice. “Have a seat, and tell me what you heard.”
He came in, but he didn’t—wouldn’t—sit down. Instead, he paced back and forth, back and forth, like a caged tiger. “I heard his face was blown off. His face and part of his hand.”
“Yes, that’s true. And his neck was broken.”
“Dammit, Doc, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Hell, Deck, I just found out. I just got out of the autopsy suite an hour ago.”
“But you saw him—you saw his face and his hand—up there at the scene. Yesterday! Why didn’t you call me?”
“What difference does it make, Deck? Why are you so upset?”
He whirled on me, furious now. “Christ almighty, Doc, don’t you see? It’s him. Satterfield.”
“The dead guy? No way.”
“No, goddammit!” he shouted. “Not the dead guy—the killer, dumb-ass! Don’t you remember what Satterfield did to the pizza delivery guy, twenty-four years ago? He killed the guy, traded clothes with him, and put a stick of dynamite in the kid’s mouth, with his hands around it. We had his house surrounded, zipped up tight, but he drove off in that shitty delivery car with the Domino’s signs, right under our noses. Thirty minutes later, bam! We go charging in, and it looks like Satterfield has offed himself.” He stared at me angrily. “How can you not even remember that?”
“I never saw that, Deck,” I reminded him gently. “I wasn’t there, remember? Y’all told me to stay away. I left my office and drove home—with Satterfield hiding in the back of my own truck. The Trojan horse, 1992-style. Thank God my assistant slowed him down, and you came charging in.”
“I should’ve blown his head off,” Decker said bitterly.
“I should’ve let you,” I admitted. “But hindsight’s always 20/20, right? So here we are.”
It was easy now to understand Decker’s agitation, because his brother—a bomb-squad technician—had died at Satterfield’s house that day. Decker had struggled for years with PTSD, I knew—once, in my office years after his brother’s death, something had triggered Deck’s PTSD, and I’d had a hard time calming him. Lately, though—until this moment—he’d seemed recovered. But now, the more I grasped Decker’s distress, the more agitated I felt, too. “Deck, what makes you think Satterfield had any connection to Shiflett? Do you have anything linking them?”
“The MO links them. It’s exactly the same thing he did to the pizza guy. Almost exactly, anyhow. Only difference, that one was staged to look like a suicide, this one like an accident. But everything else? Explosive device detonated in the mouth, to throw us off the scent? Déjà vu all over again. It’s Satterfield, Doc. Has to be!”
I hoped he was wrong. But that, I feared, was too much to hope for.
CHAPTER 27
MY INTERCOM BEEPED, AND I GLARED AT IT IN ANNOYANCE. I was bleary and sleep deprived from another bad night: hours of restless thrashing punctuated by harrowing dreams of looming menace and terrible violence. Some of the dreams involved Satterfield, and some involved Shiflett, and one—the worst—involved both of them, teaming up to shove a blasting cap down my throat.
I resolved to ignore the call, but after half a dozen plaintive beeps, I couldn’t stand it anymore. Snatching up the phone, I resisted the urge to shout. “Yes?” My voice was steady, calm, and icy.
There was a pause, then Peggy—her voice carefully casual—said, “Are you shunning me?”
“What? No, of course not.” Am I? I wondered. Maybe. “I’m just preoccupied.”
“Of course. Steve Morgan from the TBI is here. He’s brought something he says you’ll want to see. Shall I tell him you’re preoccupied?”