substances designed to turn them into zombies. Every time you turned around, Congress was trampling on someone’s rights in favor of drunks, skunks and punks, so why not fabric conditioners, bathroom deodorants and fluoride?
She hung out her washing the proper way: fold a corner over the previous one to make it thick, pin them together, then tuck its far corner under the corner of the next item and pin them together, her mouth stuffed with pins, more in the pockets of her apron. Yep, her way meant half the number of pins and a line so crowded that no wire showed; finished, she levered a forked sapling under the line to stop it from sagging. The good thing about today was that it wasn’t cold enough to freeze things while they were wet. Purist though she was, Ruth never relished wrestling with frozen washing.
Throughout this exercise she had been aware that the three curs from farther down Griswold Lane were fighting at the bottom of her yard; they were bound to move on up because curs always did, and she was not about to let curs soil her blindingly white whites, her vividly vivid colors. So she returned to the house to fetch a straw broom and marched resolutely down the yard to where, at the end of it, a streamlet trickled. The streamlet was a nuisance – kept the ground from freezing quickly, admittedly, but it created
“Git!” she shouted, descending like a witch dismounted from her broom, waving it about viciously. “Git, you mangy critters, git! Go on, git!”
The dogs were squabbling amicably rather than fighting, all three tugging at a long, fleshy bone smeared in mud, and were unwilling to give up this prize until Ruth’s broom swiped two of them so hard that they fled, yelping, to stand some distance off and wait for her to give up. The third dog, pack leader, crouched and put its ears back, growling and snarling at her. But Ruth had lost interest in the curs; the bone was double, and had a human foot attached.
She didn’t scream or faint. The broom still in her hands, she walked back to the house to call the Holloman police. That done, she stationed herself on the edge of the mud to stand guard until help arrived while the dogs, thwarted yet undefeated, circled.
Patrick cordoned off the whole area of the streamlet and concentrated first on the grave, only ten yards from where the dogs had competed for their find.
“My guess is that the raccoons were first,” he said to Carmine, “but I’m positive that she – yes, this has to be Francine – was deliberately buried in order to be unearthed soon after. Just twelve inches down. Eight of the ten pieces are still in situ. Paul found the right humerus in some bushes – raccoons. The left tib-fib and foot were what alerted Mrs. Kyneton. I’ve got reliable people searching, but I don’t think the head is here.”
“Nor do I,” Carmine said. “And it comes back to the Hug.”
“Looks that way. My guess is he’s got a grudge.”
Carmine left Patrick to it and plodded up to the house to find Ruth Kyneton ready and able to talk, though she was by no means indifferent to Francine Murray’s fate.
“Poor little baby! Shoulda been him dog’s meat, only that’s too good. I’d boil him in oil – sit him in it and light the fire with my own hands, then watch him cook real slow,” she said, one hand pressed against her midriff. “Mind if I have a drink of tea, Lieutenant? It settles my stomach.”
“If I can have one too, ma’am.”
“Why us?” she asked. “That’s what I’d like to know.”
“So would I, Mrs. Kyneton. But more importantly, did you see or hear anything last night?”
“You sure it was last night?”
“Fairly sure, but tell me anything unusual that’s happened on any night for the last nine of them.”
“Nothing,” she said, putting a tea bag in each of two mugs. “Never heard no noises. Oh, them dogs barked, but they bark all the time. The Desmonds had a barney – screams, yells, things breaking – night before last. That happens regular. He’s an alkie.” She reflected for a moment. “So’s she.”
“Would you hear anything if you were asleep?”
“Don’t sleep much, and never until my son comes home,” Ruth said, swelling with pride. “He’s a brain surgeon at Chubb, deals with them little bubbles on veins that burst like a water main.”
“Arteries,” Carmine corrected automatically; a Hug education was beginning to make itself apparent.
“Right, arteries. Keith’s the best they got at repairing them bubbles. I always think of it like patching the inner tube on an old bicycle. Did a lot of that when I was a girl. Maybe that’s where Keith gets it from. Dunno where else.”
If I were not so worried and angry, Carmine thought, I could fall in love with this woman. She’s an original.
“Keith. He’s Miss Silverman’s husband.”
“Yep. They’ve been married coming up for three years.”
“I take it that Dr. Kyneton comes home late often?”
“All the time. The operations take hours and hours. He’s a tiger for work, my Keith. Not like his old man.
“Was he late last night? The night before?”
“Two-thirty last night, one-thirty the night before.”
“Does he make a lot of noise when he comes in?”
“Nope. Quiet as a corpse. Makes no difference – I still hear him. He cuts the engine on his car and coasts down the lane, but I can hear him,” said Ruth Kyneton positively. “I listen.”
“Was there a moment last night when you thought you heard him, but he didn’t come in? Or the night before?”
“Nope. The only one I heard was Keith.”
Carmine drank his tea, thanked her, decided to go. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk about this to anyone except your family, Mrs. Kyneton,” he said at the door. “I’ll be back to see them as soon as I can.”
Patrick had finished washing the body parts and assembling them on his table when Carmine walked in.
“They were so covered in mud, humus and leaves that getting anything useful will be a miracle,” Patrick said. “I’ve saved all the washing fluid – distilled water – and I took a sample of the stream water. This time I have more to work with,” he went on, sounding content. “The rape pattern is the same – a succession of increasingly large sheaths or dildoes, vaginal and anal penetration. But see that straight line of bruising on the upper arms just below the shoulders, and that other straight line of bruising below the elbows? She was tied down with something about fifteen inches wide, heavy fabric like canvas. The contusions occurred when she struggled, but she couldn’t free herself. It also tells us that this killer isn’t interested in breasts. He bound them flat under a canvas restraint that hid them from sight. That means she was lying on a table. As to why he didn’t just manacle her wrists or tie her hands down, I don’t know. Keeping her legs free is more logical, he needed to move them around.”
“How long was she alive after she was grabbed, Patsy?”
“About a week, but I don’t think he fed her. The digestive tract was empty. Mercedes had been fed on cornflakes and milk. Though all we had of Mercedes was the torso, I think he changed some of his habits for Francine. Or maybe each victim is a little different. Without the bodies, we’ll never know.”
“How long had she been dead?” Carmine asked.
“Maximum, thirty hours. Probably less. She was buried last night, not the night before, but I’d say before midnight. He didn’t keep her long after she died, but I can tell you that she died from loss of blood. Look at her ankles.” Patrick pointed.
Carmine hadn’t gotten that far; he stiffened. “Ligature welts,” he breathed.
“Not a part of his method of restraint. They weren’t on for more than an hour. Oh, but he’s clever! No fibers or slivers from those welts, I know it in my bones. My guess is that he strung her up with single-strand stainless steel wire that he rigged to make sure that the joins were never in contact with her flesh. The wire bit in, but it didn’t break the skin by sawing at it or catching on it anywhere. These kids are small and light, weigh about eighty pounds. Like Mercedes, he cut her throat to bleed her out first, then decapitated her later – not such a long wait between the two for Francine compared to Mercedes.”
“Tell me there’s semen.”
“I doubt it.”
“You’ll test the wash water for semen too?”
