"He probably gets high off the stuff," Marino muttered as Katz walked into the room.
"Ferguson's got what appears to be human skin in his freezer." Wesley went straight to the point.
"You want to run that one by me again?" Marino said, startled.
"I don't know what we're dealing with here," Wesley added as the window fan inside the room began to whir.
"But we got one detective dead with incriminating evidence found with his frozen hamburgers and pizza. We got another detective with a heart attack. We've got a murdered eleven-year- old girl."
"Goddam," Marino said, his face turning red.
"I hope you brought enough clothes to stay for a while," Wesley added to both of us.
"Goddam," Marino said again.
"That son of a bitch." He looked straight at me and I knew exactly what he was thinking. A part of me hoped he was wrong. But if Gault wasn't playing his usual malignant games, I wasn't certain the alternative was better.
"Does this house have a basement?" I asked.
"Yes," Wesley answered.
"What about a big refrigerator?" I asked.
"I haven't seen one. But I haven't been in the basement." Inside the bedroom, Katz turned off the window fan. He motioned to us that it was all right to come in.
"Man, try getting this shit off," Marino said as he looked around. Super Glue dries white and is as stubborn as cement. Every surface in the room was lightly frosted with it, including Ferguson's body. With flashlight angled, Katz side lighted smudges on walls, furniture, windowsills, and the guns over the desk. But it was just one he found that brought him to his knees.
"It's the nylon," our friendly mad scientist said with pure delight as he knelt by the body and leaned close to Ferguson's pulled-down panties.
"You know, it's a good surface for prints because of the tight weave. He's got some kind of perfume on." He slipped the plastic sheath off his Magna brush, and the bristles fell open like a sea anemone. Unscrewing the lid from a jar of Delta Orange magnetic powder, Katz dusted a very good latent print that someone had left on the dead detective's shiny black nylon panties. Partial prints had materialized around Ferguson's neck, and Katz used contrasting black powder on them. But there wasn't enough ridge detail to matter. The strange frost everywhere I looked made the room seem cold.
"Of course, this print on his panties is probably his own," Katz mused as he continued to work.
"From when he pulled them down. He might have had something on his hands. The condom's probably lubricated, for example, and if some of that transferred to his fingers, he could have left a good print. You're going to want to take these?" He referred to the panties.
"I'm afraid so," I said. He nodded.
"That's all right. Pictures will do." He got out his camera.
"But I'd like the panties when you're finished with them. As long as you don't use scissors, the print will hold up fine. That's the good thing about Super Glue. Can't get it off with dynamite."
"How much more do you need to do here tonight?" Wesley said to me, and I could tell he was anxious to leave.
"I want to look for anything that might not survive the body's transport, and take care of what you found in the freezer," I said.
"Plus we need to check the basement." He nodded and said to Marino, "While we take care of these things, how about your being in charge of securing this place?" Marino didn't seem thrilled with the assignment.
"Tell them we'll need security around the clock," Wesley added firmly.
"Problem is, they don't got enough uniforms in this town to do anything around the clock," Marino said sourly as he walked off.
"The damn bastard's just wiped out half the police department." Katz looked up and spoke, his Magna brush poised midair.
"Seems like you're pretty certain who you're looking for."
"Nothing's certain," Wesley said.
"Thomas, I'm going to have to ask for another favor," I said to my dedicated colleague.
"I need you and Dr. Shade to run an experiment for me at The Farm."
"Dr. Shade?" Wesley said.
"Lyall Shade is an anthropologist at the University of Tennessee," I explained.
"When do we start?" Katz loaded a new roll of film into his camera.
"Immediately, if possible. It will take a week."
"Fresh bodies or old?"
"Fresh."
"That really is the guy's name?" Wesley went on.
It was Katz who answered as he took a photograph.
"Sure is. Spelled L-Y-A-L-L. Goes all the way back to his great-grandfather, a surgeon in the Civil War."
5
Max Ferguson's basement was accessible by concrete steps in back of his house, and I could tell by dead leaves drifted against them that no one had been here for a while. But I could be no more exact than that, for fall had peaked in the mountains. Even as Wesley tried the door, leaves spiraled down without a sound as if the stars were shedding ashes.
"I'm going to have to break the glass," he said, jiggling the knob some more as I held a flashlight. Reaching inside his jacket, he withdrew the Sig Sauer nine-millimeter pistol from its shoulder holster and sharply tapped the butt against a large pane in the center of the door. The noise of glass shattering startled me even though I was prepared for it, and I half expected police to rapidly materialize from the dark. But no footfall or human voice was carried on the wind, and I imagined the existentialist terror Emily Steiner must have felt before she died. No matter where that might have been, no one had heard her smallest cry, no one had come to save her.
Tiny glass teeth left in the mullion sparkled as Wesley carefully put his arm through the opening and found the inside knob.
"Damn," he said, pushing against the door.
"The latch bolt must be rusted." Working his arm in farther to get a better grip, he was straining against the stubborn lock when suddenly it gave. The door flew open with such force that Wesley spilled into the opening, knocking the flashlight out of my hand. It bounced, rolled, and was extinguished by concrete as I was hit by a wall of cold, foul air. In complete darkness, I heard broken glass scrape as Wesley moved.
"Are you all right?" I blindly inched forward, hands held out in front of me.
"Benton?"
"Jesus." He sounded shaky as he got to his feet.
"Are you okay?"
"Damn, I can't believe this." His voice moved farther away from me. Glass crunched as he groped along the wall, and what sounded like an empty paint bucket clanged dully as he knocked it with his foot. I squinted when a naked bulb went on overhead, my eyes adjusting to a vision of Benton Wesley dirty and dripping blood.
"Let me see." I gently took hold of his left wrist as he scanned our surroundings, rather dazed.
"Benton, we need to get you to a hospital," I said as I examined multiple lacerations on his palm.
"You've got glass embedded in several of these cuts, and you're going to need stitches."
"You're a doctor." The handkerchief he wrapped around his hand instantly turned red.
"You need a hospital," I repeated as I noticed blood spreading darkly through the torn fabric of his left trouser leg.
"I hate hospitals." Behind his stoicism, pain smoldered in his eyes like fever.
"Let's look around and get out of this hole. I promise not to bleed to death in the meantime."
I wondered where the hell Marino was. It did not appear that SBI Agent Ferguson had entered his basement in years. Nor did I see any reason why he should have unless he had a penchant for dust, cobwebs, rusting garden tools, and rotting carpet. Water stained the concrete floor and cinderblock walls, and body parts of crickets told me that legions had lived and died down here. As we wandered corner to corner, we saw nothing to make us suspicious that Emily Steiner had ever been a visitor.