“Yeah,” he said slowly, “I’d say that’s a human finger, all right.” He picked it up gently and inspected it, then handed it to me.
The finger was small — a child’s finger — severed as neatly at the base as Kathleen’s had been. I stared at it, trying to make sense of it. It had come from Satterfield; I felt no doubt about that. But whose finger was it? How had he come by it? How had he sent it — and why?
The notebook paper wasn’t just a wrapping; it was also a message, in a handwriting that I recognized from prosecution exhibits at Satterfield’s trial. “As token and pledge,” the note read, “I send you this: a finger from my firstborn son. When the time is right, I will bring him to retrieve it, and the two of us will rain down vengeance upon you and your family.”
I handed the note to Decker, the paper rattling from the tremor in my hand. He read it, then looked at me, his face grave. “You ever hear anything about Satterfield having a kid?”
I shook my head, but suddenly I had a sick feeling. “There was a woman,” I said, “at Satterfield’s trial. A weird woman. Most people were looking at him like he was a monster, you know? This woman was different. She was looking at him like he was… her hero or beloved or something.”
He nodded. “I’ve heard about women like that. Like rock-star groupies, but instead of singers or drummers, these gals get obsessed with serial killers. It’s a power thing — they’re attracted to all that dark energy or something. Remember Charles Manson? That whole harem he had? All those creepy women in what he called ‘the family’?”
“I remember,” I said. “And ‘creepy’ is putting it mildly. They all shaved their heads during his trial, right? Carved pentagrams in their foreheads?” I thought for a moment. “Didn’t Ted Bundy have groupies, too?”
Decker nodded again. “Lots. He even managed to marry one of ’em, right in the middle of his murder trial. Pulled some kinda jailhouse-lawyer stunt in the courtroom; conned the judge into pronouncing them man and wife — monster and wife — right there on the spot.” A strange look passed across his face; I could see that he was on the verge of adding something, but then he bit it back.
“What?” I asked. He frowned, looking pained. “What? Spit it out, Deck.”
“He got her pregnant, too. Bundy.”
“What? How? I mean, besides the basic egg-meets-sperm part. Do death row inmates get conjugal visits?”
“Not supposed to,” he said. “But then again, it was in Florida. Crazy shit happens in Florida.” He shook his head — whether about Florida or about the idea of Bundy as a dad, I couldn’t be sure. “One thing you can be sure of, though,” he added. “That snake Satterfield would’ve read about Bundy making a baby. And you know what they say about imitation. Highest form of flattery.”
“Sickest sort of perversion,” I responded. “But Satterfield didn’t manage to get married during his trial. So for sure he wasn’t eligible for conjugal visits.”
“Maybe there was a turkey baster involved,” he mused. “Or a spunk-filled condom. Or a rubber glove.” We looked at each other and grimaced in unison, repelled by the images his words had conjured up.
“He’s a convicted serial killer,” I protested. “He shouldn’t be able to pass a spunk-filled anything to a visitor.”
“You’re right. He shouldn’t.” Decker shrugged. “But prisons are bureaucracies. Systems. And any system can be gotten around or abused, if the price is right. Grease enough guards, do enough favors, gather enough dirt to get somebody under your thumb? You can break any rule — or bend it into any shape you want.”
Glumly I turned my attention back to the finger. The digit was in good condition — slightly shriveled, but not decomposed. “The forensic guys can get prints off that, right?”
Decker plucked the finger from my palm and peered closely at the tip, inspecting the delicate ridges and whorls. He nodded, then shrugged. “Not sure there’s much point, though. I doubt the kid’s gonna show up in AFIS”—I knew he was referring to the FBI’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System. “Not unless he’s some kind of child-prodigy criminal.” Seeing my disappointment, he hurried to add, “I’ll check, though. Like my mama always said, nothing ventured, nothing gained.” He rewrapped the finger and slid it back into the envelope, then said, “So…”
“What?”
He held the envelope toward me. “The fact that this was hand delivered. So to speak. I’m not liking that.” He looked at the KPD cruiser parked fifty yards away, as if it contained the answer to some question he was pondering. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.” He walked back to the cruiser, opened the driver’s door, and laid the envelope on the passenger seat. Then he reached under the driver’s seat and took out a small bundle of black fabric. He brought it to me, offering it up on both palms.
I took the bundle, surprised by its heft. “What is it?”
“Insurance,” he said.
“Feels like a lot of it.” I unwrapped the cloth — velvet, with a thick, soft nap — which was rolled around the object several times; unspooling it made me think of unwinding a burial shroud. And in a way, it turned out, I was unwrapping death, for swaddled within the soft black fabric was a handgun, its precisely machined surfaces lustrous with a thin coating of oil. I stared at it, then at Decker. “Jesus, Deck. What are you doing? I don’t want this. I’ve never had a gun in my life. I hate guns; they scare me.” I handed it back to him.
“I know,” he said, although I doubted that he knew how deep-rooted my aversion to guns was, how painfully personaclass="underline" my father had shot himself in the head when I was young, and my mother and I had found him. “But Satterfield scares you, too,” he went on. “And he should. You ask me, that guy’s ten times scarier than this thing. Look how close he came to taking out your whole family — and in a really bad way.” I didn’t need Decker to remind me of that terrible night. “The good news is, he’s behind bars. Solid, well-guarded bars. But if he did manage to get out — or to send somebody else gunning for you, some dark night — wouldn’t the odds be better if you had this beside the bed? Tucked in the drawer of the nightstand?”
“I don’t know, Deck.” It was hard to think rationally; the message from Satterfield — the finger from Satterfield — felt like talons tearing into my belly.
“Look, Doc, I don’t know what he’s up to. And I don’t think he can get out of there. And I’ll go pay him a visit, if you want — discourage him, shall we say, from messing with you. But take this, for now, just in case. If not for your own sake, take it for Kathleen’s.” He hesitated, then plowed ahead, into territory I wished he’d stay the hell out of. “He thinks he’s got unfinished business with you. He started with Kathleen last time, and he’d start with her again if he got a chance. And he’d make you watch it all.”
At that moment — the moment I reached out and took possession of the gun — I wasn’t sure who I hated most: Satterfield, Decker, or myself.
Chapter 22
I checked the time as the garage door clattered down behind my truck in the basement of my house. I hadn’t quite made it home within the sixty-minute deadline I’d set for myself, but I’d missed it by only seven minutes. As I climbed the steps to the kitchen, I rehearsed what I would tell Kathleen about the skull fracture that had supposedly required my sudden trip to the morgue.