Deja Dead Part 23

"Katy, will you think about coming up here?"

"Okay."

"Promise you won't do anything without talking to me?"

More silence.

"Katy?"

"Yes, Mom."

"I love you, sweetheart."

"I love you, too."

"Say hi to your dad for me."

"Okay."

"I'll leave something on your e-mail tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay."

I hung up with an unsteady hand. What next? Bones were easier to read than kids. I got a cup of coffee, then dialed.

"Dr. Calvert, please."

"May I ask who's calling?" I told her. "Just a minute, please." Put on hold.

"Tempe, how are you? You spend more time on the phone than an MCI salesman. You surely are hard to reach." He out-tw.a.n.ged both the day and night s.h.i.+fts.

"I'm sorry, Aaron. My daughter wants to drop out of school and run off with a basketball player," I blurted.

"Can he go to his left or shoot the three?"

"I guess."

"Let her go."

"Very funny."

"Nothing funny about someone who can go left or shoot from outside the arc. Money in the bank."

"Aaron, I've got another dismemberment." I'd called Aaron about cases past. We often bounced ideas off each other.

I heard him chuckle. "You may not have guns up there, but you sure do like to cut."

"Yes. I think this sicko has cut several. They're all women, otherwise there doesn't seem to be much linking them. Except the cut marks. They're going to be critical."

"Serial or ma.s.s?"

"Serial."

He digested that for a second. "So. Tell me."

I described the kerfs and the cut ends of the arm bones. He interrupted occasionally to ask a question, or to slow me down. I could picture him taking notes, his tall, gaunt frame bent over some sc.r.a.p of discarded paper, finding every usable millimeter of blank s.p.a.ce. Though Aaron was forty-two, his somber face and dark, Cherokee eyes made him look about ninety. Always had. His wit was as dry as the Gobi, and his heart about that size.

"Any really deep false starts?" he asked, all business.

"No. They're pretty superficial."

"Harmonics are clear?"

"Very."

"You said blade drift in the kerf?"

"Uh. Huh. Yes."

"Are you confident in the tooth distance measures?"

"Yeah. The scratches were distinct in several places. So were some of the islands."

"Otherwise you got pretty flat floors?"

"Yeah. It's really obvious on the impressions."

"And exit chipping," he mumbled, more to himself than me.

"Lots."

A long pause while his mind picked its way through the information I'd given him, sorting the possibilities. I watched people drift past my door. Phones rang. Printers clicked to life, whirred, then rested. I swiveled and gazed out. Traffic rolled across the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, Lilliputian Toyotas and Fords. Minutes ticked by. Finally.

"I'm kinda workin' blind here, Tempe. I'm not sure how you get me to do this. But here goes."

I swiveled back and leaned my elbows on the desk.

"I'd bet the farm this isn't a power saw. Sounds like some kinda specialty handsaw. Probably a kitchen saw of some type."

Yes! I slapped my hand on the desktop, raised a clenched fist, and lowered it sharply, like an engineer pulling the whistle cord. Pink slips sailed up, then fluttered down.

Aaron went on, oblivious to my theatrics. "Kerfs're too big to be any kinda fine-toothed bow saw, or a serrated knife. Besides, sounds like there's too much set to the teeth. With those floor shapes I doubt you're talking about any kinda cross cut. Got to be chisel. All that, 'thout seein' 'em, of course, tells me chef's saw or meat saw."

"What's it look like?"

"Kinda like a big hacksaw. Teeth set pretty wide, so as not to bind. That's why sometimes you get the islands you're describing in the false starts. Usually there's a lotta drift, but the blade chisels through bone just fine and cuts real clean. They're mighty efficient little saws. Cut right through bone, gristle, ligaments, whatever."

"Anything else that might be consistent?"

"Well, there's always the chance you can get something doesn't fit the regular pattern. These saws don't read the books, you know. But right offhand, I can't think of anything else fits all you've told me."

"You are fantastic. That's exactly what I was thinking, but I wanted to hear it from you. Aaron, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your doing this."

"Ah."

"You want to see the photos and impressions?"

"Sure."

"I'll send them out tomorrow."

Aaron's second pa.s.sion in life was saws. He cataloged written and photographic descriptions of features produced in bone by known saws, and spent hours poring over cases sent to his lab from all over the world.

A hitch in his breathing told me he had something more to say. As I waited, I gathered pink slips.

"Did you say the only completely sectioned bones are in the lower arms?"

"Yep."

"Went into the joints for the others?"

"Yep."

"Neat?"

"Very."

"Hm."

I stopped gathering. "What?"

"What?" Innocent.

"When you say 'Hm' like that, it means something."

"Just a mighty interesting a.s.sociation."

"Which is?"

"Guy uses a chef's saw. And he goes about cuttin' up a body like he knows what he's doing. Knows what's where, how to get at it. And does it the same way every time."

"Yeah. I thought of that."

A few seconds ticked off.

"But he just whacks off the hands. What about that?"

"That, Dr. Brennan, is a question for a psychologist, not a saw man."

I agreed and changed the subject. "How're the girls?"

Aaron had never married, and, though I'd known him for twenty years, I'm not sure I'd ever seen him with a date. His horses were his first pa.s.sion. From Tulsa to Chicago to Louisville, and back to Oklahoma City, he traveled where the quarter horse circuit took him.

"Pretty excited. I bid a stallion this past fall and got 'im. The ladies been actin' like yearlings ever since."

We exchanged news of our lives and small talk about mutual friends, and we agreed to get together at the Academy meeting in February.

"Well, good luck nailin' this guy, Tempe."

"Thanks."

My watch read four-forty. Once again the offices and corridors had grown quiet around me. I jumped at the sound of the phone.

Too much coffee, I thought.

As I answered, the receiver was still warm against my ear.

"I saw you last night."

"Gabby?"

"Don't do that again, Tempe."

"Gabby, where are you?"

"You're just going to make things worse."

"G.o.ddammit, Gabby, don't play with me! Where are you? What's going on?"

"Never mind that. I can't be seeing you right now."

I couldn't believe she was doing this again. I could feel the anger rising in my chest.

"Stay away, Tempe. Stay away from me. Stay away from my-"

Gabby's self-centered rudeness ignited my pent-up anger. Fueled by Claudel's arrogance, the inhumanity of a psychopathic killer, and by Katy's youthful folly, I exploded with the fury of a flash fire, rolling over Gabby and charring her.

"Who the h.e.l.l do you think you are?" I seethed into the phone, my voice cracking. Squeezing the receiver with enough force to break the plastic, I raved on.

"I'll leave you alone! I'll leave you alone, all right! I don't know what buga.s.s little game you're playing, Gabby, but I'm out! Gone! Game, set, match, finished! I'm not buying into your schizophrenia! I'm not buying into your paranoia! And I'm not, repeat not, playing Masked Avenger to your damsel in and out of distress!"

Every neuron in my body was overcharged, like a 110 appliance in a 220 socket. My chest was heaving, and I could feel tears behind my eyes. Tempe's temper.

From Gabby, a dial tone.

I sat for a moment, doing nothing, thinking nothing. I felt giddy.

Slowly, I replaced the receiver. I closed my eyes, ran through the sheet music, and made a selection. This one's going out to me. In a low, throaty voice I hummed the tune: