Sawbones

Chapter 6

“You’ll find her, won’t you?” says Brian as we pull up outside the hospital in Morton, about as far away from where we’re going next as possible. He looks a little better since killing that State Trooper. Like he’s got a bit of spark left in him.

“Yeah,” I say, “we’ll find her.”

He nods, then sits there, like he’s thinking about something. “Mr Jones — will you ask him to send. . you know, my things. Will you ask him to send them here?”

“Brian, I — ”

“He said he’d keep them in the freezer — they could stitch them back on. .” He looks at me with those desperate, puppy-dog eyes, wanting me to tell him that some surgeon can sew his dick back on after it’s been in the Joneses’ freezer for a couple of days. He’s not kidding anyone but himself.

“Yeah. I’ll ask him.”

I pop the door and Brian clambers out, wincing and groaning. He stops, then looks back into the car. “You find the bastard who grabbed her, OK? You find him and then you call me. I want to know that he’s dead.”

And then he turns and limps through the door marked ‘Emergency’.

“You know,” says Henry, “never thought he’d do it. Shoot that cop.” He smiles. “For a stuck-up college asshole, that kid’s got some balls.”

We look at each other in silence for a minute, and then piss ourselves laughing.

“Now this is more like it,” says Henry twenty minutes later, settling into the passenger seat. It’s the fifth car we’ve tried in the hospital’s long-term car park, and the first he’s liked enough to steal.

“Fucking hell!” Jack’s looking round the back seat. “This thing’s ancient!”

“This thing is a classic. 1954 Ford Crown Victoria.”

It’s a huge boat of a car with tailfins and chrome all over the place. Looks like a God-damned juke box, but Henry loves it. “My dad had one of these,” he says, running his hand over the dashboard. “He let me borrow it sometimes. Broke his heart when he had to sell it. .”

I check the sun visor — the spare keys are right there. Some people just don’t deserve nice things. I crank her up and the V8 engine growls into life, sounding like a smoker on a cold morning.

“Jesus,” I say, “think it’s going to make it out of the car park?”

“Yeah,” Jack leans forward from the back seat, “drive it into the ER. This car needs medical attention!”

“You’re a pair of assholes. You know that?”

I shrug and put it into gear. “You remember that when you’re pushing this thing down the Interstate, OK?” I test the brakes as we get to the exit. They’ve got all the bite of a soggy marshmallow. “Where to?”

Henry takes out a notebook — it’s got ‘ILLINOIS STATE TROOPER’ printed in gold on the cover. “According to the cop Brian whacked we got three witnesses. .” I can see his lips move as he skims the page. “One’s from Delaware, one’s from Chicago, and number three lives back there in Bloomington.”

“Shit,” I pull out into traffic, “that’s two counties away, this thing’s never going to make it.”

“Just shut up and drive, OK?” Henry pulls his cellphone out and dials directory assistance, looking for a Mr Brian Milligan in Bloomington. He scribbles half a dozen numbers into the State Trooper’s pad then starts ringing round. “Yeah, hello?” he says, putting on a fake Illinois accent. “This is Officer Ted Newton, State Police. You the guy who spotted a Winnebago out on the Interstate? Where they found them arms and legs? … Uh-huh. . Nah, OK, sorry to bother you.” Then he tries the next one on the list.

It goes on for a while — Henry pretending to be some cop making follow-up calls. In the end he gets the right Brian Milligan and they talk for about five minutes, then Henry hangs up and sits there tapping the phone against his teeth.

“He don’t remember anything other than it was a brown Winnebago,” Henry says at last.

Jack doesn’t sound impressed. “Whoop-defucking-do. Like that narrows it down. How many brown Winnies out there you think? A million? Two?”

“That’s why we’re going to pay the guy a visit,” says Henry, putting his phone away. “See if we can’t jog his memory.”

And we all know what that means.

Ten o’clock and it’s nearly dark. We’re standing outside Brian Milligan’s front door as he peers at the State Trooper ID Henry’s holding out. Henry’s got his finger over the picture so the guy can’t see who it really belongs to.

The guy’s old, not ancient — about Henry’s age — but his hair’s gone south for the winter. There’s none on his head, but plenty tufting out the neck of his bath-robe.

“OK,” the guy says at last, putting his glasses back in his robe pocket, “you can come in, and so can he, but this one,” he points at Jack, “he stays out here. I don’t like the look of him.”

Jack opens his big mouth, but Henry gets in there first, “Most people don’t.” Then he tells Jack to keep an eye on the car. Which doesn’t please Jack very much, but what’s he going to do?

Milligan’s apartment is a shit hole, littered with empty bottles and cans, two fat blow flies chasing each other around a bare light bulb. The guy wanders over to a tatty armchair and settles back into it, pulling his robe tight around his beer gut. There’s a TV in the corner, playing America’s Most Wanted with the sound turned down.

“I told you on the phone already,” says Milligan. “I saw a brown Winnebago. I don’t remember nothing else.”

A woman comes on the TV screen — talking about some guy who’s mailing bits of dead body to various film stars — and I watch her mouthing away as Henry tries to get something useful out of the guy.

“What kinda plate did it have? McLean County? Illinois? Out of state?”

The guy shrugs. “I dunno, do I?”

“Try!”

“I said I dunno, OK? Jesus, you state guys are as bad as the God-damned Feds.”

“Well, what colour was it?”

“Brown!”

“Not the Winnebago, the fuckin’ number plate, you — ”

The woman on the TV vanishes and the next face I see has me scrabbling for the remote, cranking the volume up and shouting, “It’s on!”

‘. . abduction of Laura Jones, missing for nearly three days.’ And there she is, on the screen with her name written underneath her picture. Laura Jones: straight-A student, long blonde hair, little round glasses, a smile that shows off a set of braces like tiny railroad tracks across her teeth.

‘The FBI are concerned for Laura because of what they found at the scene. We’re going live now to Dan Reid.’

And the scene switches to an alleyway, where a man with an umbrella is talking to the camera, ‘Thank you, Jane. This looks like any other alley in New Jersey, but this is where police believe Laura Jones was snatched by a serial killer known only as “Sawbones”.’ A graphic pops up in the bottom left of the screen — a blue high-heeled shoe. ‘Police found Laura’s left shoe along with what’s become this killer’s calling card: a hacksaw blade with the words “In God We Trust” scratched into the side. Jane?’

‘Thanks, Dan.’ And we’re back in the studio again. ‘As far as police can tell, “Sawbones” has been killing young blonde women for at least three years. Travelling from state to state, he always takes ten victims, then vanishes to lie low for up to a year. The FBI confirms five victims were snatched last week and four more since Sunday, making Laura Jones number nine. Sources within the FBI believe that if he follows the same pattern as before he’s got one more young woman to go.’

“Typical!” says Milligan, fidgeting with his robe. “You bastards know about this sicko for three years and you still ain’t caught the sonof-a-bitch.” He pokes a finger in Henry’s chest. “Round here violating my civil rights when you should be out there catching — ”