Absolute Instinct (9 page)

“
Until now.” Reynolds held his gaze. “Until this.” He indicated the Olsen body.

“
Right... until now. Now that we have a spine-theft murder in our own backyard—what to me appears a copycat of Towne's work.”

“
There's not a shred of evidence to say so.”

Abrams waded back in, his eyes traveling the room to see who was paying attention. “Look, Reynolds, the man tried the insanity defense and lost, and then he wanted a sanity defense? And now he wants a quick execution?” Abrams punctuated this with laughter. “Come on!”

“
That's some new Johnnie Cochran—style twist his lawyers must've come up with,” added Pete as she wandered in from the kitchen.

“
Yeah, who's he got? O.J.'s dream team?” commented another tech team member.

A third leapt in with, “Come up with the insanity to sanity defense. Straight out of the Johnnie Confuse em' Cochran School or that guy Roy Black.”

Jessica stayed out of it and kept working.

Reynolds kept on Abrams, ignoring the side remarks. “Look, Abrams, his lawyers are saying he deserves another hearing in light of the way his confession was gotten, in light of this crime, and the fact he couldn't be tied to the one in Minnesota.”

“
If Robert W. Towne is innocent I'll—”

“
You'll what? If Towne is innocent, and we find out too late, how will that play, Chief?”

Jessica had motioned for the photographer to take close-ups of the head wound she'd cleaned, and the man moved in with purpose. Jessica said to Darwin, “Are you personally involved in the Oregon case, Darwin? You seem to be.”

“
I see a wrong I'd like to right. That's the extent of my personal involvement.”

Jessica considered this as she finished the depth measurements to the killing wound down the length of Joyce Olsen's back. “My guess, Dr. Sands, some sort of surgical scalpel, a large one... A very controlled cut.”

“
Didn't use a machete or a scimitar, that's for sure.”

“
The M.E.'s in Portland and Minnesota concluded the same,” said Reynolds firmly, his gaze probing hers. “In all three cases, there are commonalities, Dr. Coran.”

“
Those being?”

Darwin spread the fingers of his enormous left hand and ticked off each item. “The obvious—a missing spine—for one. Each victim lived alone. Each had next to no family. Led a sedate life. Heavily committed to their pets—their pet preoccupations, as it were. And each of the victims had sketches drawn of themselves while involved in a favorite pastime with their pets, and there's the way the guy smeared the blood with a mop or a broom to cover his footprints. In Minnesota and Portland he used a broom in each case, here a mop. He uses a scalpel or scalpel-like knife for the incisions, and a bone cutter, not a noisy Stryker saw to detach the spine fully from the body.”

“
Obviously, you've given this a lot of thought.”

“
You're going to find that he used a bone cutter to remove the Olsen woman's ribs, too.”

“
How long have you been working on this, Reynolds?” Jessica asked.

“
Since things in the Oregon case didn't add up to me. I don't believe Towne's guilty of any of this. In fact, he claims there is—floating around somewhere—a photo of him at a lake at the Canadian border where he was fishing with a friend when his wife was being murdered.”

“
Gone fishing? That's an awful alibi. I could cite you hundreds of foolish men who used it, including Scott Peterson.”

“
But in Towne's case, it's true. He's an avid fisherman and hunter.”

“
Who owns a deboning knife, a rib cutter, and a ball peen hammer, I'm sure,” said Sands with a shake of the head.

“
And a bow and arrow, and a collection of hunting rifles rivaling Sears Roebuck.” Reynolds dropped his head, nodding. “All of which was carted into the courtroom to prove him some sort of animal.”

“
Then why the hell did he confess?” asked Petersaul.

“
He was out of his mind at the time.”

“
What's the source of your information?” asked Jessica.

“
All right, there is a personal connection. An old friend of mine is on the defense team, and I can assure you Towne couldn't afford a Roy Black. They started an appeal but Towne, shown of sound mind at the time, refused any appeals made on his behalf.”

“
So you're saying that the Minnesota case, and now this awful butchery, that this constitutes new information for Towne's defense?”

“
I've always maintained he could not have done the Minnesota killing. I've already faxed the broad outlines to Oregon, but they've wired back that the governor's not buying it. The DA's somehow gotten the time of death changed by a day to counter claims that Towne was in Canada at the time.”

“
I see.”

“
So much for that. The governor can't be convinced of a stay of execution, citing the fact that Towne himself refuses any further appeal!”

“
Meanwhile, you uncovered all this coincidence surrounding the murders.” Jessica put a fiber slide together as she spoke. “Like the sketches left at the murder scenes in both Millbrook and Portland, and now here in Milwaukee.”

“
According to my experts, done by the same hand,” added Darwin. “And Towne has no history of artistic ability whatsoever.”

“
How do you know that?”

“
Let's just say that I've seen what he can't do with the back of a napkin.”

“
So you're maintaining that he can't have created the charcoal sketches,” said Abrams, still playing devil's advocate, “and I gotta agree, not here with the Olsen woman and her dog since he's sitting on death row. But this could just be a copycat killing. Your boy Towne could've done the bird lady in Minnesota, and his wife.”

This drew some laughter.

Darwin dropped his head as if defeated. Jessica saw his frustration as he realized he could not change any of their minds. She jumped in, asking, “Agent Reynolds, when Towne was in his insanity phase, did the defense use schizophrenia as a mitigating circumstance?”

“
Afraid so, yes, but—”

“
And so, did he ever in any other personality show any artistic—”

“
None, I tell you.”

“
And you have the autopsy reports on the two other crimes?” she asked.

“
As a matter of fact...”

“
I'll be happy to look them over, but I must tell you, I am skeptical, at least as skeptical as Dr. Sands and Chief Abrams.”

“
Understood.”

“
But I am also equally skeptical anything can be done to save Towne from execution at this late date.”

“
Skeptical is fine, perfect actually. I want your skepticism, Dr. Coran. It's what makes a good M.E., correct? And when you are convinced, it will mean something to Oregon.”

Skepticism is the hallmark of the medical examiner, she thought. “But for now I have, as Dr. Sands says, my hands full.”

Reynolds held up his hands in the universal gesture of retreat, and he did just that.

# # #

“
I'LL give you transport to the crime lab,” Darwin Reynolds offered Jessica when it became apparent that she and Dr. Sands could do no more at the scene. “I'm sure you can trust Ira and his people to maintain the chain of evidence, Dr. Coran.”

She'd automatically begun to search the room to see what final steps needed to be taken before leaving the crime scene. “Once we let it go,” she said, her gaze sweeping over everyone and everything remaining, “it's gone. No longer ours. Any mistakes we make now. All that.”

Even as she and Reynolds started toward the door, Jessica couldn't help but again regard the smoothed out dried blood running from the body to the door where it had been purposefully disturbed—mopped. She noticed the techs placing plastic bags over the mop ends and rubber-banding them. Another pair of men zipped up a body bag, having lifted Joyce Olsen's remains up and into it. Jessica's last glance met the woman's features, a mildly chiding reproach in the dead eyes. Now, in the hands of God, the eyes of the victim shone on Jessica like some sort of scolding preternatural light that insisted “find my killer.”

Such had fallen to her countless times before, and the responsibility and burden only grew as more was learned of the victim. Joyce had been a librarian who walked to and from her job, kept a steady schedule of walking her dog, Shep, in the nearby park, and according to a diary entry, read by Darwin, as Jessica and Sands had worked over her corpse, she adored the roasted sweet corn at the West Allis Fairgrounds during the state fair, a place the librarians and their relatives went each year to celebrate and party. She had had to go alone for the past two years, and Joyce lamented about this in her private book.

At the elevator doors in the hallway, Dr. Sands was already swamped, surrounded and captured by newspeople who'd finally gotten past the uniforms below. Sands appeared to revel in the attention. Reynolds snuck Jessica out via a back stairwell. Behind them, Jessica heard Sands saying, “Boys, whoever the devil is, he's pretty well destroyed any chance at blood spatter evidence of any sort.”

“
What kind of weapon'd he use on her, Doc?” came a question.

“
From the neatness of the incisions, I'd say our killer used a scalpel or a very good deboning knife.”

“
A deboning knife?” went up the cry.

“
Damned handy with it, too.”

“
Is it true that her entire spinal column from top to bottom was extracted, Dr. Sands?” asked a female reporter, her voice shivering with the words.

Sands regarded her. “Scary as hell, isn't it? The very idea. The man used rib cutters or a bone saw to extricate the thoracic vertebrae. My guess is rib cutters.”

“
Why rib cutters?” another reporter came back.

“
No one in the building heard anything like a bone saw. Bone saw sends up a noise like a wailing woman. Whereas bone cutters just toss off these snap, crackle, pop sounds.”

“
Why? Why'd he do this? Why'd he take, of all things, the spine?” asked the lady reporter. “It's horrifying... maddeningly so.”

“
No one knows. If we knew, Briana, it might help lead us to him,” replied Sands.

Jessica realized that Sands did love the attention. At his age, he had learned to play the press to his advantage, and it appeared he made no excuses to his superiors.

Reynolds pulled Jessica away and guided her through the stairwell door. “I'm sure you don't want to be part of the circus.”

“
Absolutely right about that, and I'm not so sure I like Sands giving up so much of what we have. It's not wise.”

“
Hey, it's Ira, all right? What can I say. He runs his office the way he runs his office. He's ahhh... garrulous. Has lost a lot of jobs over the years over his outspoken style. Funny as hell.”

As they made their way down the stairs, Jessica asked, “Funny good or funny bad?”

“
He tells the funniest stories about having been fired from hither, thither and yon, and he has a bag full of hilarious stories about on-the-job stuff as well.”

“
Does strike me as a character.”

“
That he is... that he is.”

The ease of step here on the stairwell made Jessica recall how the carpet in Olsen's apartment had crackled underfoot like Rice Krispies, hardened as it had become with Olsen's dried blood. She wondered if she'd ever get that sound out of her ear, or the image of a river of blood out of her head. There were no Caine's eardrops, earplugs, or sleeping pills to help.

She looked askance at Reynolds as they descended the two flights. She believed him ruggedly handsome in a Dick Tracy sort of way, and his stony onyx-black eyes showed a depth of intelligence that easily mesmerized others.

“
Time for Towne is slipping away like the proverbial sand through the hourglass,” he muttered.

“
Why've you taken such a personal interest in Towne?”

“
I hate the death penalty. We have to find another way. Too many on death row are innocent, there for the same reason as Towne—a confession beaten from them, if not literally so, then figuratively.”

“
But there's more to it than that. And you have to know from my record that I have sent a lot of men to their deaths on the row.”

“
Yes, I know your record and where you stand on the issue.”

“
The death penalty is too good for some of the scum we see. That aside, you've uncovered something else about these spine snatchings, haven't you?”

He stopped midstep, turned and stared deeply into her eyes. “I went back to the case in Millbrook, Minnesota. Went over it with a fine-toothed comb, but not until I talked with the detectives who worked it, did I realize how identical our killings this side of the Mississippi are to Towne's 2003 case.”

“
I see. And just what did these detectives have to say?”

“
Come with me,” said Reynolds, going toward the back exit of the apartment building. His car had been brought around by another agent. They got in and he peeled away, the diminishing blue strobe lights of the squad cars on the street reflected in Jessica's side-view mirror, growing smaller. It felt like escape.

She curled up in the leather seat. Fatigue claimed dominance, her eyes heavy with it, as if lavished on with a brush.