Alan Jacobson: Inmate 1577

After reaching the fourth floor, they hung a right toward Room 400. Above a set of opaque glass doors, anachronistic metal Helvetica lettering spelled out Bureau of Inspectors.

Inside, Burden led Vail through the administrative area, where several blue-walled cubicles were arranged behind a maple countertop. Mounted over the entryway that led to the office space where the inspectors worked, a hand-carved wood sign, with irregularly shaped letters, read Bureau of Investigation.

“The facility is tired but the people are topnotch.”

“Tired,” Vail said. “That must be California-speak for ‘old and desperately in need of renovation. Ten years ago.’”

Burden chuckled as he led her to his cubicle. “No argument from me. Money’s tight, so we put it into stuff that helps us clear cases.”

“Money well spent, for sure.”

“Have a seat.” He motioned to a black fabric chair, then sifted through the messages on his desk. Off to the side sat a thick paperback book of sudoku puzzles.

Vail picked it up and thumbed through the pages. “Don’t tell me you’re into this.”

Burden moved a file, then found an envelope and pulled it out. “Some people are addicted to cigarettes. Drugs. Booze. Me? I’m addicted to sudoku. Keeps my mind sharp. Maybe that’s why I wanted to be a detective. What we do, it’s like solving complex puzzles, right?” He handed Vail the envelope. “Your copy of the case file.”

Vail took it and removed the folder. “Thanks.”

Burden’s phone buzzed. He consulted the screen and said, “Mrs. Anderson’s waiting for us. And she’s getting cold.”

“To quote Twain, it’s summer in San Francisco, right?”

“That’s not the quote, Karen.”

“Yeah, whatever. I got the gist, didn’t I?”

VAIL AND BURDEN WALKED INTO the morgue and met the medical examiner, Dr. Beth Chow. She disposed of pleasantries with a wave of her hand, then pulled back the sheet on the chilled Maureen Anderson.

Anderson looked surprisingly good for her age. That is, if you could get past the severe bruising and wounds.

“The discoloration, the ecchymoses all over the face,” Vail said. “Would you agree that indicates Mrs. Anderson was still alive when the trauma was inflicted? And that she lived for a bit after the beating?”

“That’d be correct,” Chow said.

The ME was a stout woman, thick in the neck with the puffiness of adipose tissue smoothing out the normal age-induced facial wrinkles.

“Inspector Burden tells me she was tortured. With the electrical cord.”

“Yes. I think it may’ve caused the heart attack that ultimately killed her. Disrupted her heart rhythm, which wasn’t good to begin with.”

“How do you know that?” Vail asked.

Chow moved back a step and pointed to a bulge below the woman’s left collarbone. “Implanted pacemaker.”

“I thought it was a multiple COD,” Burden said.

Chow flexed her gloved fingers. “Yes and no. We’re splitting hairs, really. The blows to the head were so violent that the trauma caused a great deal of bleeding between the surface of the brain and the bony skull-which obviously can’t expand. So the bleeding compressed the brain tissue, causing massive dysfunction. And all that was happening around the time that her heart stopped. Regardless, the damage to the cortex from the pressure it was under would’ve been deadly on its own.”

“Brain damage,” Burden said.

“Rather severe.”

Vail leaned over the body to view the head wounds. “And the penetration?”

“The sexual penetration came first. Condom, no semen. And she was sodomized, rather brutally. Substantial injury to her internal organs. It was an angry attack.”

Vail looked up at Chow. “I think we should refrain from classifying it as emotional, or not, for now.”

Chow chuckled. “Her uterus was torn to shreds. All her sexual organs, for that matter. And the liver, too. I don’t think it was a friendly act.”

“The liver was damaged?” Vail asked, straightening up. “That’s like…what, a foot up into her abdominal cavity?”

“He used an umbrella, Agent Vail.” Chow said it with disdain, then shook her head. “Whether anger was involved on the killer’s part, you’re right. I can’t say. I’ll let you people determine that. But what I can tell you is that for Mrs. Anderson it was, unequivocally, an extremely unpleasant death.”

Vail clenched her jaw, trying to wipe the violent image from her brain. A moment passed before she asked, “Which came first? What did he do to her first?”

“Based on the bruising and capillary bleeding, I’d have to say he raped her first, then sodomized her, then he kicked her, then he burned and shocked her with the wires.”

“Jesus Christ,” Burden mumbled. “This guy…when we catch him…if there ever was a guy who could serve as the poster child for the death penalty, this one’d be it.”

Vail could not pull her eyes from the corpse. “Couldn’t have put it better, Burden.”

The three of them stood there a moment before the inspector’s cell phone began vibrating. He answered it, listened, and then said, “We’ll be right there.” He hung up and turned to Vail. “My partner found the husband.”

Walton MacNally felt the glass door behind him close, springing against his buttocks. It nudged him forward, as if it were the survival portion of his brain urging him on, telling him that if he did not complete this act, he and his son would go without food.

Could it really be that simple? Was the money in Township Community Savings there for his taking?

Yes. Sometimes society provided for those who were less fortunate. Wasn’t that in the Bible? It had to be. It made so much sense.

MacNally let his eyes roam around the bank’s interior. Women with reading glasses perched on their noses and coifed beehive hairstyles counted money, stamped slips, and chatted politely with their customers. It was a small institution, with wooden desks to his right and doors along the far wall ahead of him.

MacNally walked in slowly, glancing around, looking for security guards. Were they armed? He had no idea. He realized now that he had not thought this through very well. He had been so focused on how he would get away-and preparing Henry for driving the car-that he hadn’t devoted any time to figuring out how he would even get the money. Could he merely go up and demand it? Can it be that simple?

He walked over to a desk that stood thirty feet from the wall of tellers. The nameplate read G. Yaeger, but Mr. or Mrs. Yaeger was apparently on a break at the moment. Next to a blotter that sported messages and notes along its edges sat a flyer that read, Introducing New Rates for 1958, with the text below urging customers to place their money in a certificate of deposit. At the edge of the blotter in front of him lay a gold Cross ballpoint pen. He picked it up, turned the advertisement over, and scrawled, in nervous caps:

THIS BANK IS BEING ROBBED. I DON’T WANT TO SHOOT ANYONE BUT I WILL IF I HAVE TO. PUT ALL YOUR MONEY IN A BAG. DO IT QUICKLY AND DON’T SAY A WORD.

MacNally looked around again. There-about a hundred feet away, an overweight man with graying hair wearing a uniform and octagonal cap stood near the end of the line of tellers. His head was down, reading what appeared to be a newspaper. From this angle, MacNally couldn’t tell if he had a sidearm.

He turned back to his note and reread it. The threat of shooting them was good. MacNally did not have a gun-he had never even held one-but the woman with the money didn’t know that. Still, to “sell it,” he had to convince her with the look on his face. Anger was the key. He needed to channel the pain he felt most nights as he lay awake in bed picturing his wife lying on the floor of his home, murdered. He closed his eyes and thought of the man who had killed her, who had turned his life upside down.