furnace-that now looked like nothing more than what it really was-stood a dilapidated water heater in the middle of a large rust stain that spread outward from it on the floor. Along the walls, seeping cracks flanked by dark mold became immediately evident in the illuminated swath. Those certainly accounted for the damp, musty smell that permeated the cold air.
“Old coal chute,” Skip said, directing the light at a single point for a moment. The highlighted area was covered in the same peeling, off-white paint as the rest of the walls, but a pattern of bricks and mortar seams were evident beneath. “It was bricked up even back in seventy-five, so no way in through there.”
He began panning again and the beam of light eventually fell across a vertical column rising upward from the centerline of the basement to bear the load of the structure above. Several feet to the right, directly in front of them and against the side of the staircase Constance could see the shadow of its twin.
Skip finished the slow arc and then waved the beam back toward the center of the room and mused aloud in a sad tone, “Hasn’t changed…”
“Stands to reason,” Constance offered. “If the house has been vacant for seven years.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. His voice still seemed strained. “But I mean it hasn’t changed since seventy-five.”
She didn’t respond to the explanation. She really didn’t know how.
After a moment he tilted the beam downward and began walking slowly forward on a direct line between the support columns. She followed.
“Right over here,” he finally said, playing the light across the floor in front of them.
The yellow swath of illumination revealed an oblong outline chalked on the concrete. A foot or so away was a much smaller outline, roughly perpendicular to the first. Dark stains colored portions of the floor within the two shapes, spreading outward in haphazard flows, as if randomly spilled with no regard for the lines themselves. Similar dark splotches were heavily splattered on the wall nearby.
“And over there,” the sheriff offered, sliding the light to the corner a few feet away, where a basketball-sized circle was drawn. It too, bore a dark stain beneath.
“And over there,” he continued, again aiming the beam toward a location apart from the others. This one looked like the outline of a giant, disproportionate boomerang.
“Torso and upper right arm,” Carmichael announced, panning the light back to the first location. Moving it rapidly to the second spot he added, “Head.” Aiming at the third he said, “Left calf and most of the thigh.” Waving the light slowly around to reveal other outlines, he hesitated for a moment at each and named them off one by one, “Left arm and hand; right forearm; right calf, thigh, and foot; left foot; right hand. And…well…that’s pretty much it.”
“And the body parts are dumped exactly the same way, every year?” Constance remarked as much as asked.
He played the beam slowly over the blood-stained wall. “They aren’t just dumped. It happens right here.”
“Yet the killer gets away?”
“That’s the mystery,” Sheriff Carmichael replied. He swung the flashlight back and forth again, rapidly illuminating each of the spots in succession. “But to answer your first question: yep. Exactly the same every year. All seven victims dismembered the same way, left in exactly the same position, every single time. We don’t even bother to clean up the outlines anymore.”
“Don’t you mean eight victims?” Constance asked.
He grumbled his response. “Not yet. Not until Christmas Day anyway.”
“I mean John Horace Colson,” she explained. “Aren’t the seven recent victims positioned in exactly the same way he was found dismembered in nineteen seventy-five?”
“Yes, they are, Special Agent Mandalay,” he spat, adopting the formal tone he’d used before when he wanted to stress a point. “But you need to bear in mind that John Colson was a monster. Merrie Callahan was the victim, not him.”
“I agree, Merrie was definitely a victim. But, whether you and I think it’s right or not, legally, Colson was too.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s really just semantics.”
“Well, you can keep your semantics.” The words came as a growl. He had moved a step beyond cold formality and was now toeing a line called anger.
Unfortunately, his growing flare was igniting hers as well, and it was clear in her voice as she mimicked his sudden conventionalism. “Semantics aside, Sheriff Carmichael, I think we can agree the connection between the murders is more than obvious.”
“I’m not a rookie, Special Agent. What’s your point?”
“My point is that you aren’t looking at this crime objectively.”
“I never claimed to be,” he replied, his voice even sharper than before. “You’re a smart girl; I thought you’d figured that out by now.”
Constance felt herself bristle at the condescending remark and immediately opened her mouth to fire back a rebuttal. However, before she released the volley, her training kicked in to override her emotions. She didn’t know what had sparked this sudden escalation of tempers between them, but she knew it wasn’t productive, and it needed to end right now.
She drew in a deep breath, then forced her tone to remain calm and even. “Skip…” she began. “I’m not trying to be adversarial here. I’m just-”
“You sure as hell could’ve fooled me,” he snapped, truncating her sentence before she could finish. His voice rose as he launched into a short-lived tirade, “Goddammed know-it-all Feds. You’re all the same… Coming in here uninvited and placing blame where it doesn’t belong… Screw the whole lot of ya’…”
Constance felt heat radiate from her cheeks as her face flushed, but she continued to bite back her temper and held her tongue. Conflict resolution wasn’t an easy task in the first place, even when you were the detached outsider. It was much harder when you were firmly entrenched in your own side of the argument.
“Have you seen enough?” Carmichael demanded on the heels of his outburst. “Are we done here?”
“Yes,” Constance replied as calmly as she could manage. “I think we are.”
He turned and started for the stairs. “Come on then. I’ll drop you off back at the Greenleaf.”
“Actually, why don’t we just go to your office,” she said as she turned to follow. “I’d like to have a look at the original case file. If you still have it, that is.”
Skip didn’t answer. He simply kept walking, then stomped up the stairs, flashlight in hand, leaving her to negotiate the uneven bottom double-step alone and in the dark.
CONSTANCE glanced over the top edge of the thirty-five-year-old police report as a hand slid an unmarked, cardboard burger carton across the break room table and brought it to rest in front of her. The carton was soon followed by a plastic fork and then by a thick-walled, stoneware mug that had wisps of steam wafting slowly up from the coffee it contained.
In the seconds following the appearance of the items, there ensued a balloon of silence that was slowly expanding to fill the room. It finally popped when Skip cleared his throat and said, “Hope you like cranberry-mince pie. It’s all they had over there this morning.”
“Peace offering?” She asked without looking up from the file.
“Works with my daughters,” he grunted. “Not so much with my wife, but with the girls it does…most of the time, anyway. And, since you remind me a lot of my oldest, I figure I might have a fifty-fifty shot…”
Constance gave in and laid the open file on the table, then looked up at him with a curious expression. “Why just fifty-fifty?”
“Because my oldest takes after her mother.”
“I see… But pie? For breakfast?”
“Think of it as a doughnut you have to eat with a fork.”
She arched her eyebrows and nodded. “Never thought of it that way.”
“So…” he said after a measured pause. “Is it working?”
She chuckled as she quipped in return, “I guess that all depends on how good the pie is.”
“Yeah. You’re definitely a lot like my oldest,” Skip replied. He dropped a second carton on the table, then
