ethics or shame. A survivor who would do first of all what made the best sense for him. He would not be too prideful or stubborn to be scared into safe behavior. The severed tongue had been effective.
And here was an amusing thought: Maybe the tongue was something Judith Blaney owed Sanderson. A better-latethan-never piece of the entire woman he’d wrongly served time for possessing.
The Skinner relaxed in the warm sunlight, feeling the weight of his tension evaporate.
He assured himself that there was symmetry and justice in the world, and that destiny was on his side.
“He’s fixated on it now,” Helen Iman said. The lanky redheaded profiler was leaning, all six feet plus of her, with a palm flat on Quinn’s desk. Quinn marveled at how long her fingers were. No doubt she could palm a basketball.
“So he figures to remove the tongues of all his future victims,” Quinn said.
Helen nodded. “That’s the way it usually works in these kinds of cases. Two times in succession means a trend.”
“Fedderman checked with slaughterhouses. They don’t use the kind of knives to remove calves tongues that were used on the victims.”
“Human victims, you mean,” Helen said.
Quinn looked at her. “You a vegan, Helen?”
“No, no, just a plain old omnivore. Still, when you think about some of the stuff we eat…”
“The trick is not to think about it,” Quinn said.
“Maybe the Skinner’s mastered that part of it.”
At first Quinn didn’t know what she meant. Then he did. “Oh, Christ! You don’t suppose…”
“That the killer might be consuming the tongues? That to him they’re a delicacy?”
“I’ve seen so many things I didn’t think possible,” Quinn said.
“I doubt that he’s into cannibalism, but we can’t rule it out. I do know that if he isn’t, he might be plenty pissed off if it was in the news that he was probably eating pieces of his victims. Even cannibals don’t like to be called cannibals. And being falsely accused might make somebody go crazy with anger and make a mistake.”
“Could shake things up,” Quinn said. “Whether he’s eating parts of his victims or not.”
“A win-win,” Helen said.
“Do you think it might be more valuable to us that way than holding back the tongue information from the media?”
“That’d be up to you to decide.”
Quinn sat back and looked up at Helen’s bony face. It was still attractive, but it would become craggy as she aged. She smiled down at him from her lanky height, made even taller by the three-inch heels she was wearing. She should be coaching or starring on a women’s volleyball or basketball team. Or maybe even flaunting her tall self on fashion-show runways.
He smiled. “You seeing anybody, Helen?”
“Why? You interested?”
“Somebody worthwhile should be.”
“Somebody like Fedderman the clotheshorse?”
“Sure,” Quinn said. “Feds is a good man.”
He knew Helen had been going out with some creep of a lawyer who specialized in representing cops’ widows with insurance claims. Sometimes doing more than simply representing them. Guys like that, it always amazed Quinn that women couldn’t see through them, even in times of grief. Maybe it was because they wanted so badly to believe.
Women, he thought. So easy to fool and difficult to deceive.
“Want me to give you Feds’s number?” Quinn asked.
Helen straightened up her long frame and smiled. “I’ve already got his number, Quinn. And it doesn’t work the combination.”
Quinn considered phoning Renz and discussing whether the business with the victims’ tongues should be made public, along with the theory that the Skinner was not only a killer but a cannibal. If Helen Iman was right, that kind of publicity might drive the Skinner over the top. It might cause a killer who had raised procedure and caution to the level of art to make the one mistake that was all Quinn and his team needed.
Renz might go along with it. Then again, he wouldn’t like the additional heat directed at him for not being competent enough to apprehend a monster like the Skinner.
Quinn reached out and dragged the phone across his desk to him. But he didn’t call Renz. He called Cindy Sellers at City Beat.
Sellers had no scruples, and she could keep a secret. Probably Renz was already secretly feeding her information about the Skinner murders; she was his favorite media stooge and ally. Renz had used her to plant and manipulate information in a number of cases. But that wouldn’t matter. It wasn’t as if they were friends. Neither was the kind of person who had real friends. And Sellers wasn’t above playing a double game. In fact, it would appeal to her baser instincts.
She seemed to have a lot of those.
49
Hogart, 2005
As the days passed, the weight of Beth’s guilt became heavier. Wayne Westerley had told her where Salas was living, in a rundown trailer park fifty miles up the highway, near Lorenton. He wasn’t working, as far as Westerley knew.
So what was Salas doing? That’s what Beth wondered. Was he simply lying around hating her, blaming her, having good reason to think she’d ruined his life?
That was what Beth couldn’t stand, not knowing what Salas thought of this entire tragedy. Of the mistake-if he thought it was a mistake-that had cost him his reputation and some of his best years.
As she sat on her porch, in a wooden rocking chair Westerley had bought for her at a Cracker Barrel restaurant, Beth’s mind would dart like a trapped insect in a bottle with a cork, where there was no way out, but there was nothing to do but keep trying.
As she sat rocking, gripping the chair’s armrests so tightly her fingers whitened, she heard Sheriff Westerley’s big SUV turn into the drive. She recognized the sound of its powerful engine and the underlying whine when it switched gears to negotiate the rutted drive beyond the copse of maple trees.
It was sundown, and she was expecting him this evening. She sat quietly, rocking gently back and forth in her chair.
Westerley flashed her a smile from behind the steering wheel and then parked the big vehicle where he usually did, near the back of the house where it wasn’t visible from the road.
She heard the SUV’s door slam shut, then Westerley’s boots crunching on gravel.
Beth smiled as he stepped up onto the porch. He came over and leaned down, and she scrunched up her toes to stop the rocker momentarily while he leaned down and kissed her forehead.
“What were you thinking?” he asked, as she let up with her feet and the rocker resumed its slow rhythm.
“You don’t wanna know, Wayne.”
“Guess not,” he said, looking more closely at her.
She looked toward the orange ball of the sun dropping ever so gradually toward a distant line of pines.
“Eddie around?” Westerley asked.
“I thought I told you the other day, he’s visiting his great aunt in St. Louis.”
“You did tell me,” Westerley said.
He entered the house and came out a few minutes later with a beer can in his hand, letting the screen door slam behind him. “Sip?”
“No, thanks.” She rocked. The chair’s runners made a soft creaking sound on the porch planks.
“You don’t have to worry about Salas,” Westerley said. “I got that straight with him the day after he was
