The Blackbird Papers (18 page)

27

S
terling returned the camera and tape to the secret compartment and slid the key in his wallet. He jumped into the Mustang and started toward the hospital. He wanted to speak with the chief pathologist to find out if there had been any reported cases of human bufalin toxicity. It was a reach, but he figured if this many birds were dying in the wild from a rare poison, it might have found its way into humans as well. A quick check of the hospital toxicology reports and cause-of-death statements might provide some insight.

His cell phone rang. “Bledsoe,” he answered.

“Agent Bledsoe, Lieutenant Wiley here.”

“Good morning, Lieutenant. What's cooking?”

“How soon can you get to the pit?”

“Ten minutes if I obey the traffic signals, five if you grant me immunity.”

“Then make it seven.” Wiley sounded anxious, which was unusual.

“I'm on my way.” Sterling hung up and immediately screeched into a U-turn.

He entered the police station through the side door and walked down a couple of hallways before reaching the pit. He opened the door to sheer pandemonium. Everyone screaming, phones ringing, fax machines squealing. Wiley and Brusco stood at the head of the table. “Bledsoe,” Brusco yelled over the noise.

“What's all the commotion?” Sterling asked.

“Another body,” Brusco said.

“Who is it?”

“No idea,” Wiley said. “Unable to make a positive ID.”

Brusco looked grim. “This one was bad.”

“How bad?”

“They found her stuffed in a freight box in a dumpster behind the Grand Union grocery store. Completely naked. Bruises and scratches all over her body.”

“Sexual?”

“Hard to tell right now,” Brusco said.

“Facial injuries?”

Brusco shook his head slowly. “It's headless.”

Sterling took a hard swallow and then scribbled in his pad. “Who found the body?”

“Garbage man emptying the dumpster this morning,” Wiley said. “It fell out of the crate in the back of the truck. He noticed a human leg sticking out.”

“Where's the body now?”

“At the morgue,” Wiley said.

“Autopsy?”

“Dr. Withcott is already on his way up from Concord. He should be here in less than an hour.”

One of the officers walked over to them. “We just received an e-mail from Quantico.”

Three large computers had been set up in the middle of the pit, all connected to their own color printers. Sterling followed the officer to the middle computer and clicked on the mail icon.

Sterle,

These are the latest. We did some fidgeting and the quality is much better. We just got some new software that allows us to digitally manipulate the image, so we're trying more reconfigurations. I'll be sending updates as soon as I get something that works. I hope this helps. Let us know if there's anything else we can do.

Warmest,

Harry

The first picture showed the man's reflection almost as if the glass door were a mirror. His eyes were still hidden, but his lower lip was more visible. He seemed to have a smirk on his face, but there wasn't enough exposure to make any real determinations. It wasn't even clear if he was black or white or somewhere in between. Sterling passed the photo to Wiley and Brusco.

The next photo was a wider shot, focusing on the lower part of the reflection. Harry had zoomed in on the reflection of the man's left hand. A perfectly clear image. He carried three videotapes. Sony stickers marked the outer cases.

“Videotapes?” Sterling thought aloud.

“You were right all along, Bledsoe,” Brusco said. “The sonuvabitch wasn't there because he couldn't fall asleep. There's something on those tapes that he wanted.”

“Wilson had a shoe box full of those tapes,” Sterling said. “When I first went to his office, I saw them but didn't pay them any mind. They were sitting on one of the shelves in his closet.” Sterling zoomed in on the gloved hand holding the tapes. The three men reexamined the photo. “He's a fairly tall man,” Sterling said.

“How can you tell?” Wiley asked, looking at the computer screen.

“Look at how long his fingers are. And check out his arms, the way they reach far down his body.”

Wiley and Brusco followed Sterling over to the dry-erase board and picked up the marker.

“We know it's a male,” Sterling said, writing the word “male” on the board. Then he wrote “left-handed.”

“How do you know he's left-handed?” Wiley asked.

Sterling took out his cell phone and tossed it to Wiley. “Go out the door, and then come back in.”

Wiley looked confused but went along with the drill while the others watched. He left the room and returned a few seconds later. “Now what?” he asked.

“What hand is holding the phone?” Sterling asked.

“The right.”

“What hand did you open the door with?”

“The left.”

“Exactly. When people are carrying something they care about or don't want to drop, they put it in their dominant hand. Then they use the free hand for something that doesn't require fine motor skills, like opening a door.”

“Not bad,” Wiley conceded.

“There are tiny pieces of evidence all around us, Lieutenant,” Sterling said. “The key is to look everywhere, especially in places you least expect to find them.” He went back to the board and reviewed the photos of Wilson's body, then tacked on the new photos of their number-one suspect. “Wilson's skull was cracked on the right side of his head,” Sterling said. He fingered the blown-up photo that showed dried blood caked in the Professor's curly hair. “Exactly how a lefty would strike.”

The officers stood around Sterling. “Let's get over to the hospital,” he said. “I want to see how this woman was decapitated.”

W
ithcott stood on a footstool, leaning over the table with his headlight focused on the remnants of the neck. He hummed as he worked, not bothering to look up when they entered. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said. “This was a vicious murder. Any idea who she might be?”

“None,” Wiley said. “Nothing yet we can even remotely identify. No sign of clothes, purse, or anything personal. And nobody's filed a missing persons.”

“There was quite a struggle,” Withcott said, lifting up the badly bruised and scratched arms. Withcott turned her hands over. “Look at the cuts on the palmar aspects of her hands.” Withcott pointed to the first web space of her right hand, the area between the thumb and index finger. A large, gaping wound that reached through the superficial and deep-tissue layers down to bone. Similar wounds stretched across the finger joints. “This injury pattern is classic for defensive knife wounds. She must've grabbed the blade several times in self-defense.”

“Any idea what type of blade?” Sterling asked.

“That's what I was trying to figure out as you came in,” Withcott said. “Come and take a look.”

They moved to the neck. Wiley had never seen a decapitation before. He felt his stomach lurch and took deep, quiet breaths through his nostrils to keep from being sick.

Sterling put on a pair of gloves and moved closer to the body. “Look at the skin edges,” he said. “They're jagged, not smooth like they would be if cut by a sharp knife.”

“That's right,” Withcott said. “The edges are not only torn, but there's a rather consistent pattern to how the skin is puckering.”

“As if it were done by a machine,” Sterling observed.

“You're reading my mind,” Withcott said. His female assistant returned to the table with a folder and opened it. Withcott riffled through the photos and papers until he found what he wanted. “Look at this,” he said, showing the photo to Sterling. It was of the wounds on Wilson's forearms.

“The cut pattern along the skin edges is similar,” Sterling noted. “Maybe the same instrument.”

“Very possible,” Withcott said. “If you look here, the neck has been severed quite evenly.”

Wiley took this opportunity to look the other way.

“Much different than what you'd expect if someone had been hacked at the neck,” Sterling thought aloud. “An ax or heavy machine could cut quickly and decisively. But they wouldn't leave the skin edges jagged like this.”

“And they would've shattered the cervical vertebrae,” Withcott said, pulling back layers of red tissue and yellow-brown lobules of fat to expose the bones of the spinal column. One of the vertebrae looked as if it had been cut in half with even strokes. “An ax wouldn't be able to make such a clean cut.”

“What's going on with the saw blade we found in Professor Bledsoe's body?” Wiley asked.

“It was sent to the state office to see if they could figure out the company that manufactured it and where the blades were sold,” Withcott said. “We don't have an answer yet.”

“That blade could be the critical link between the murders,” Sterling said. “There's not much else to go on right now.”

“There's something under the nails,” Patrick, the lab assistant, said. He held the right hand of the corpse carefully, using a magnifying glass to examine the fingers.

Withcott took a closer look. He grabbed a pair of forceps and a small, hooked probe and carefully scraped underneath the fingernail of the woman's right index finger. He pulled back the forceps and carefully deposited the tiny debris on a sheet of white tissue paper. “Looks like skin,” he said, carefully moving around the mangled debris. “Send it to the lab for DNA.”

A thought suddenly came to Sterling's mind. He took off his gloves and walked to the door. “Let me know if anything else shows up,” he said to Withcott. “You can reach me on my cell.”

Sterling left without waiting for Wiley. He needed to take another look in his brother's lab, but this time with some help.

28

S
terling drove back to the campus and up Main Street. He took a quick detour to the Food Stop and picked up a cheesesteak with everything—except peppers. He continued to the center of campus, keeping a casual eye on the townspeople and students as they went about their business. This bucolic New England town hardly seemed like the setting for one brutal murder, much less two.

Sterling put his cheesesteak on the passenger seat, took out his cell phone, and dialed Sean Kelton's number. He'd gotten the home number of Wilson's lead post-doctoral student from Kay.

Sean had been expecting the call. All laboratory operations had been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation. Many of the researchers hadn't even been allowed back in to collect their personal items.

“I was hoping you'd go with me to the lab,” Sterling said. “I want to take another look around, but I need someone who's more familiar with the layout.”

“No problem, Mr. Bledsoe. When do you wanna go?”

“How soon can you get over there?”

“I live a few minutes past the golf course. I can be there in fifteen.”

“I'll meet you outside,” Sterling said. “What will you be wearing?”

“A bright red shirt with
Big
Red
on it.”

“I'll be waiting.”

Sterling turned off Main Street and into the parking lot of the Grand Union. The area around the dumpster had been marked off with yellow police tape and orange pylons, and a crowd of curious onlookers had gathered. Several uniformed and plainclothes officers were still working the scene. Sterling recognized one of the officers who worked in the pit.

“How's it going?” Sterling asked.

“Trying to make sense of all this, Agent Bledsoe,” the man answered. “Two murders like this so close together. The damnedest coincidence.”

Sterling nodded slowly. “Hasn't been a murder in this area in over fifty years. Suddenly two murders within a week. I'm not buying coincidence. Have the store employees been questioned?”

“We've talked to everyone who was on duty when the body was found,” the officer said. “Last night's crew doesn't come on till three o'clock, so we'll have to wait a couple more hours for them to get here. But so far, no one saw or heard anything strange when they arrived to work this morning.”

“I'm not surprised. She probably wasn't murdered here. The body was brought here and dumped.” Sterling left the officer and walked farther along the side of the building until he stood in the small area directly behind the store. He looked along the building and up at the lights attached just underneath the gutter. He walked back to the officer. “Is the manager here?”

“Over there, in the brown shirt,” the officer said, pointing to a nervous-looking man raking his hands through what remained of his thinning hair. He was of average height and probably somewhere in his late forties. He had the disgruntled look of a chronic underachiever.

Sterling approached. “Agent Sterling Bledsoe,” he said, extending his hand. “FBI.”

“Miles Borwind,” the manager said, his eyes darting back and forth.

“I was hoping to ask you a few questions,” Sterling said.

“I've already told everything to the police. I don't know much.”

Sterling looked away from the manager's darting eyes before they made him dizzy.

“Yes, I understand,” Sterling said. He had plenty of practice dealing with nervous and uncooperative interviewees. Confrontation rarely worked. The trick was to make them feel at ease. “I'm sure you told them everything, but sometimes when you answer the same question a second time, it helps to jog your memory.”

Borwind shrugged in resignation. Sterling noticed that he had a nervous tic that made him jerk his head slightly toward his right shoulder. “What time does the store close at night?”

“Eleven o'clock Monday through Friday and nine o'clock on the weekends,” Borwind squeaked.

“Who's the last to leave?”

“I'm the weekday manager. I typically leave at five, then one of the assistant managers works till eleven and closes up.”

“Who's that?”

“Kathy Geddes, but she didn't work last night. She called in sick, so I came back to close up.”

“Did you leave out of the front or back door?”

“Back. I locked the front door from the inside, turned off the lights, and then left out the back.” Borwind's tic settled down. Sterling's questions were easier than he had feared.

“When does the garbage truck come to empty the dumpster?”

“Three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. They collect the garbage before I open up in the morning at nine.”

Sterling continued to enter the details in his book. He was about to put it away, then asked one more question. “Did you see any other vehicles in the back of the building when you went to your car?”

Borwind thought hard. The officers hadn't asked him that earlier. “Not really,” he said, still thinking. “There was an old truck parked at the far end of the building, but no one was in it. It probably belonged to someone in one of the houses next door. Sometimes they park in the back of our lot even though we have signs all over telling people it's customer parking only.”

“What did the truck look like?” Sterling asked.

“I didn't pay it much attention. One of those old pickups. It was a rusted red or brown. Nothing fancy. It had tall wood railings in the back to keep cargo from falling out.” Borwind massaged his temples. “That's about it.”

“Thanks a lot for your time, Mr. Borwind,” Sterling said. He didn't make the mistake of extending his hand again. “I'm sure things will get back to normal soon.”

Borwind sighed and shook his head. He glanced at the growing commotion around the dumpster before lowering his head and hurrying back into the safety of the store.

Sterling quickly surveyed the scene, then found the crime scene photographer and pulled him to the side. “Follow me,” he instructed. The two disappeared behind the store.

“What are we looking for?” the photographer asked. He was a short, bald man with a rim of wispy black hair that seemed to be hanging on just for the heck of it. He carried two cameras around his neck and a portable flash big enough to light an entire studio.

“Tire tracks,” Sterling said. “A truck was parked back here last night. There's a strong possibility it's linked to all this.”

The two searched the lot, an empty asphalt surface with a heap of used boxes and crates haphazardly piled next to the door. The area was small, not more than thirty feet wide and a hundred feet long. A row of hedges and small trees separated the Grand Union's property from the adjacent houses. But there was enough of a gap between the trees to entice neighbors to ignore the “no parking” signs.

Sterling and the photographer walked shoulder to shoulder, their eyes fixed on the sandy, uneven surface. Then Sterling spotted something off in the corner where weeds and crabgrass sprouted through the cracked asphalt.

“Hold it,” Sterling said, bending down over a faint impression. He traced tread marks, their grooves barely holding, vulnerable to even a strong wind. “Shoot this.”

The photographer immediately went to work, snapping photos with the small camera first, then alternating with the bigger one whose long lens made it look like a menacing creature. As he snapped away, Sterling walked back in a semicircle and stopped. “This is another one,” he said, pointing to the ground. The photographer reloaded the cameras, then sent off a flurry of flashes. By the time he finished, he had four rolls ready to be developed.

“How soon can we get these?” Sterling asked.

“A few hours. I'm using a developing outfit over in Norwich.”

“As soon as they're ready, call me on my cell.”

“Do you want me to bring them back to the pit?”

“No, just hold on to them.”

“What are you looking for?”

“I want to see if these tracks match those we found on River Road and at the medical school. I have a strong suspicion they will.”