the Millbrook M.E.
He spread the denim overalls and the shirt out across the table, and seeing this, Sergeant Pyle said, “Hey, we eat lunch on that table.”
Before Sharpe could answer, someone barreled through the door and replied to Pyle, “Come on, Sergeant, when's the last time you guys washed that table?” He went to Sharpe and introduced himself as Lieutenant Daniel Brannan.
“Yes, Irish are you?” Richard guessed that Pyle had gotten Brannan out of bed.
“American Irish. All Paddy and proud of it. Understand you're with the FBI, former Scotland Yard man. I suppose I should be impressed, a man of your caliber snooping about a two-year-old case in this fucking hole. My case, by the way.”
“I'm quite aware of that much. There've been two similar killings since Louisa Childe, and we're attempting to determine-”
“If they be related, sure. It's that Milwaukee business, isn't it? What's his name? That black guy, Darwin Reynolds? He put you up to this, didn't he?”
“In a round-robin way, yes. I got it through an FBI medical examiner, an associate.”
“Does Reynolds really have anything? I mean, if I thought there was something to it… Well, does he?”
“Quite possibly, yes.” Richard turned back to examine the blood spatters on the overalls. “These blood spatters have a story to tell,” he said to Brannan.
“The M.E. didn't think it helpful since all the blood belonged to the victim.”
“Look here.” Sharpe carefully tucked the shirt into the overalls, recreating how they were worn. He then pointed with a pen to an area about the chest and the overall straps. “From what I know of blood spatter evidence, it appears that a spray of blood on the shirt matches up with blood along the straps, all about the chest area.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean.”
“The size of the shirt and pants give us some indication of the killer's size.”
“That much is in both my report and the M.E.'s protocol.” Brannan shrugged to emphasize this point.
“If these spatters had come as a result of the first blow to the victim's head, it means the victim had been facing her killer at the time, and that he stood over her, a taller person by at least a head. How tall was Louisa Childe?”
“I don't recall.”
“Perhaps your partner, George Freeman, would know.”
“George died in the line of fire a year ago come October. A drug bust.”
“In sleepy little Millbrook? Sorry… I know how it is… losing a partner.”
Sharpe rifled through the paperwork and found the answer to his question. “Five-seven, so that puts her killer at perhaps six or six-two if I'm right about the trajectory of the blood.”
“Six, six-two… Wow, Agent Sharpe, that really narrows the search,” Brannan said with a smile.
“Death-row inmate Robert Towne in Oregon is five-eleven.”
“Reynolds did put you up to this.”
Sharpe ignored this. “Look here,” he said, pointing at the overalls again. “From the matted blood on the legs and stomach area, her killer appears to have straddled her backside when he cut into her and she bled out, the jeans absorbing it at the crotch.”
“You're pretty sure of yourself, Sharpe, but that was all determined years ago, and it didn't help us then anymore than it helps us now. And it's not going to get Robert Let's-All-Cry-Tears-For-Towne gettin' off death row.”
Sharpe understood Brannan. No cop wanted a cold case of his reopened, because it also reopened wounds in him. Every detective who could not solve a case went away from it limping inwardly and invisibly scarred. Brannan was more than merely touchy on the subject; he was defensive.
Sharpe asked point-blank, “I'd like to know if the glass fragments yielded any DNA evidence whatsoever.”
“You think they'd be dumped in Pyle's dungeon in this box if they had anything to tell us? M.E. found no usable sample, not even a partial print, all wiped clean.”
“What about the other evidence found in the trash bag? Where do I go to have a look at it, and who do I talk to?”
“Perishable evidence is at the crime lab, across town. I'll get you there.”
Sharpe worked the glass fragments, overalls and shirt back into the box, and he returned the sad assortment of death-by-murder artifacts to Pyle. He then followed Brannan out into the institutional-gray corridor.
“Whatever became of the sketches the killer supposedly left behind?” he asked Brannan.
“I've got 'em.”
“Really? On your wall or under key?”
“For a long time they kept me mindful of the fact this killer's still out there somewhere alive and living while Louisa Childe is in her grave. When I heard what Towne did in Oregon to his wife, I knew then and there I could stop taking those sketches out and staring at them.”
“I'd like to see them sometime. In fact, I think the authorities in Milwaukee would like to have them examined side by side with sketches left at the crime scene there-a case, as you know, with some striking resemblances to yours, Lieutenant.”
“I finally flush this case from my system and now this. You really think Reynolds is onto something?”
“I trust Jessica Coran's instincts.”
“Dr. Jessica Coran?”
“FBI M.E., yes.”
“The one who nabbed and killed Mad Matthew Matisak in a New Orleans Mardi Gras warehouse after Matisak left a trail of blood throughout the Midwest, the prairie states, all the way to Louisiana? That Coran?”
“That would be her, yes. Now… there's also a little matter of the authenticated sketches from Oregon and Milwaukee being identified as having been created by the same hand.”
“Jessica Coran,” Brannan repeated.
Sharpe kept speaking. “This alone must give you pause. Towne could not have committed this latest murder in Milwaukee as he was serving time on death row.”
“Whose to say that Towne didn't pay someone to do a copycat killing? You know, just to get leverage to make his case.”
“Be a pretty heartless bastard then, wouldn't he?”
“Which one, Towne or the guy that pimped it for him?”
“Even if that were so, a different man leaves different tracks as surely as a different animal. The striking similarities in all these cases are simply too many to ignore.”
“You're sure of that?”
“I tell you, Brannan, in my experience, seeing modus operandi work as it does, whoever is responsible for each of these deaths, he meticulously designed his every move.”
“All three were precisely, perfectly designed spine thefts.”
“Despite their having been years apart in execution.”
“The other two same exact way, the taking of the spine, same modus operandi, you're sure?”
Sharpe felt exasperation wantonly flirting with him now. He let out a long breath of air with his “Yes, veeery.”
“Call me Dan.”
“Richard.”
“And just how well do you know Dr. Coran? You know, I've read her book on the nature of evil, one hell of a research job. Damn, I had no idea how far back it all went, and how bad it was before the advent of forensic sciences and mass communications.”
“Indeed, the world has been plagued by murder since before man was man,” agreed Sharpe. “Survival of the fittest animal in the jungle, all that. Murder began as feeding, and little wonder it remains in our genetic makeup.”
“Then you believe in all that business of what she says about the aggression gene, and brain implanting, and conditioning… Brainwashed and predisposed to murder and that we'd better learn to accept it so we can deal with
