Chapter 23
PENDERGAST LOOKED VERY brIEFLY through the autopsy report, then handed it to Chambers for review while he drove to the coroner’s office. It did, in fact, look like a mob killing on the surface—but if you drilled down, things got weird.
Dr. Frank Brantley couldn’t have been more different from the unhelpful sheriff—excited, even boisterous, and eager to assist any way he could.
“Come in, gentlemen!” he said as they entered his office.
He, too, had a wall of framed diplomas and citations behind him, and he was dressed in an immaculate white lab coat over a seersucker jacket.
“Please have a seat.” He sat down and clasped his hands on his desk, an inquiring look on his face.
“Thank you for seeing us on short notice,” Chambers said.
“Of course, of course. Nothing’s going on here, anyway. Things slow down in the heat—people are too sleepy to kill each other.”
Chambers put the file on his desk. “Do you recall this case? Please feel free to refresh your memory.”
“I do. It was, let’s see, about two years ago.
” He flipped through the file. “Ah, yes. Body tied to a chair, badly beaten, signs of torture. Didn’t catch the perps, but in these cases you so rarely do.
The wiseguys in New Orleans like to drive a good way out of town, sometimes, to conduct business of this nature.
Less headaches for the city police—and little towns like ours are left with a modicum of clues.
And the mob gets its message across nevertheless.
” He closed the folder. “What’s the FBI’s interest? ”
“We think this might possibly be connected to an active serial killer.”
“What makes you think that?”
Chambers tapped the report. “You say here that the body showed signs of torture—cigarette burns, cuts, bruises. But the right arm seems untouched. Why’s that?”
Brantley shrugged. “Fellow died before they got around to messing it up.”
“The serial killer we’re after seems to have an interest in the right arm of his victims.”
“What for?”
“We don’t know.”
Now Pendergast picked up the line of questioning. “In looking over your report, we noted the right shoulder of the victim had a cluster of pinpricks in it, done perimortem. Do you recall that?”
“I do. My guess is it was due to drug use.”
“Have you ever seen drug use involving the shoulder?”
Brantley thought a moment. “Come to think of it, I haven’t. It’s an odd choice. But sometimes they run out of veins and inject themselves in strange places, between their toes and such.”
“Did you section or take any samples of those prickings or markings?”
“No. It didn’t seem relevant.”
“Was the victim a drug addict?”
Brantley glanced through the report. “There was no obvious evidence of that.”
“So he wasn’t likely to have been a ‘hard stick,’ or to have run out of veins. Did the autopsy identify any drugs in the cadaver?”
“Yes it did—flunitrazepam.”
“Known by the brand name Rohypnol.” He paused. “Any thoughts on why he was given flunitrazepam?”
“I would assume as a sedative to control the victim.”
“Injected or ingested?” Pendergast continued in his smooth manner.
“Ingested. We found traces in the stomach.”
“Seems rather thoughtful to administer a sedative to your victim while simultaneously torturing him,” Pendergast observed.
When there was no reply, he continued. “The victim was stabbed in the heart after being tortured—correct?”
“That’s correct. And that, of course, was the proximate cause of death.”
“With what sort of implement?”
“Examination of the wound led us to believe it was probably a forty-eight-millimeter scalpel blade.”
“Which is not a particularly common murder implement for mob killings—at least, to my knowledge.”
“Never seen it before, actually.”
“And after the autopsy, what was the disposition of the body?”
“It was returned to the family and, I believe, cremated.”
“Pity.” Pendergast leaned forward. “Doctor, could you take a look at the photograph, here, that shows the markings in the shoulder? A dozen or so, shaped roughly like an inverted V?”
The doctor looked.
“Think back, if you will. Is it possible that those pricks—rather than being traces of earlier needle marks—were in fact made at the time of the killing by the point of that forty-eight-millimeter scalpel?”
The doctor looked at the top of the folder for a moment. Then he said: “Now that I think back, I believe you might be correct.”
“And that,” Pendergast said as he turned to Chambers, a suppressed note of triumph in his voice, “is the signature we’ve been looking for.”