J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

Jerry Lorenz goes down the line high-fiving everybody, and as much as I don’t like the man, I don’t have the heart not to give him his due. Maybe we’ll make something out of him, after all. The captain snatches him by the arm and heads outside. I follow them as far as the door. Over by the curb, the local news cameras are already setting up, framing their shots of the apartment complex. Hedges advances toward them with his big hand clamped on Lorenz’s shoulder, a proud father introducing his boy to the world.

“What is this?” I say.

Bascombe curses under his breath, the word coming out like a gob of spit. He pushes past me and heads outside, taking a route well clear of the cameras.

The drive back downtown is even more tense than before. I spend most of my time thinking of what I’ll do to the clerical help if there’s not a name waiting on my desk when I get back, though my options are limited to adulterating the break room coffee, which could only be improved by the addition of kerosene or rat poison.

Instead of results, though, I get back to my cubicle only to find it occupied by a familiar-looking stranger with a Fu Manchu mustache and a nickel-plated barbecue gun on his hip.

“You March?” he says.

“In the flesh.” I toss my Kevlar on the desk and retrieve my jacket. “And you are?”

“Roger Lauterbach, Harris County Sheriff’s Department. You and me seem to be working opposite ends of the same case.”

“How so?”

“You’ve got an open homicide with a victim stabbed to death and left in a swimming pool, right? Well, I’ve got one, too.”

That well comes out like whelp , and the news hits me hard. On top of that, I know I’ve seen this guy before, though I’m having a hard time placing him. He’s having the same trouble, too, eyes narrowing.

“You’re. .” His voice trails off and he shakes his head. “I seen you somewheres.”

Then it comes to me. I remember the nickel Government Model more than the man. “You were on the Hannah Mayhew task force, right? I think we stood next to each other at the back of a briefing.”

A shrewd smile: “You were on that thing, too, huh? That must be it. What a fiasco.”

“I wasn’t just on it,” I say, “I put that case down.”

“Good for you.” His smile persists, letting me know how unimpressed he is. I don’t blame him, though. A county detective coming downtown needs some ego the same way a space shuttle entering orbit needs heat shields. “Then I guess you’ve got your stabbing all squared away, too. That’ll sure make my job a heck of a lot easier.”

Touché.

“Who gave you the connection?” I ask.

“Doc Green down at the medical examiner’s office. There’s the swimming pool in common, but she says your killer used a bowie knife. Whelp, so did mine.”

“And your case is from when?”

He glances sideways. “Happened back in April.”

“That’ll sure as heck make my job easier,” I say. “You have a suspect by any chance?”

“What I have is this.” He grabs an unfamiliar folder from off my desk and hands it to me. Inside, a stack of reports and a bunch of glossies from his scene. “Same deal as yours, from what I gather. She was out on her back porch sunbathing when it happened. The suspect must have seen her through the gaps in the fence, climbs over, rapes her, then uses the knife. Cut her up real good and left her in the water.”

“My victim wasn’t raped,” I say. “You have DNA from your scene?”

He does that sideways thing again. “There were some preservation issues.”

“Someone screwed up.”

“Pretty much, but it wasn’t me.”

I flip through the photos. Blood in the water, all around the reclined plastic-covered chair she’d been lying in, her torso slashed up in a terrible frenzy. There are a couple of shots of the body on the mortuary slab, showing the wounds in bright clinical light. There’s no rhyme or reason that I can see, just a jagged and random flay job. I pick out the most illustrative angle and hand it to Lauterbach, along with a similar shot from Simone Walker’s postmortem.

“You think that’s the work of the same man?” I ask.

“A killer don’t always work the same way. They change things up over time to keep it interesting. The similarities are pretty strong otherwise.”

Just a hint of a plea enters his voice, and I realize what this visit must mean to him. He’s been sitting under a cold one for months now, and suddenly sees the chance to unload it on another agency. He’s doing the same thing Fitzpatrick was trying when he walked his case file over to the FBI. Anything to get it off his plate, no matter how desperate.

I decide to let him off easy. I flip through his scene photos again, finding the closest thing to my own snap from the far side of the pool. Then I line the two pictures up side by side on the desk. Everything’s off. His victim floats on the wrong side of the pool and there’s blood where there shouldn’t be. Even the outdoor furniture doesn’t match.

“Do those scenes look the same to you?”

He rubs the back of his neck in confusion. “Say what?”

“They’re not the same. Clearly.”

“Whelp, I guess not, but what’s that got to do with anything?”

I dig my copy of The Kingwood Killing out of my briefcase, flipping to the photo insert. “Now, these two”-I give the book a tap, then the Walker photo-“these two are the same, you see? The placement of the body, the way the furniture’s arranged, everything.”

“Let me take a look at that.” He grabs the book and spends a few seconds going back and forth. “I guess there’s some similarity,” he concedes, “but I’m not seeing the connection.” He turns the book around to examine the cover, then fans through the pages. “What is this, anyway?”

His eyes flare with recognition.

“That’s a book about the Nicole Fauk murder back in ’99,” I say. “I put that one down, too.”

“Hey now,” he says, “I’m not trying to lock horns with you, brother. You see my situation. I’ve got a girl sliced up with a bowie knife and so do you. I got a girl floating dead in the water and so do you. All I’m asking for here is a look-see. If it’s nothing but a coincidence, I’ll be on my way and there’s no harm done.”

“You want to look at the case file, be my guest. All I’m saying is, there’s a lot of swimming pools in this town and a lot of bowie knives, too. It’ll take more than that to connect the dots on this one.”

“If you’re willing to let me look, what more could I ask?”

“Go ahead, then. Have a seat. I’ve gotta follow up on some things, so I’ll be back in a bit. In the meantime, the coffee’s through that door and I recommend it highly.”

I go straight to Bascombe and bring him into the picture, though he’s too preoccupied to do more than stare at Lauterbach through the blinds and shake his head.

“That’s your problem,” he says. “I’ve got headaches of my own.”

He ducks over to the captain’s office, so I avail myself of the phone on his desk, dialing Sheila Green on the number Cavallo gave me.

“Thanks a lot,” I tell her. “You sent that hayseed over to torment me?”

Green’s laughter echoes over the line. “Shoot, March. I thought you and Lauterbach would hit it off like old buddies. He is the Roland March of the Sheriff’s Department, you know, and causes just about as much trouble.”

“Now he’s trying to unload his case on me. It’s painfully obvious there’s no connection between the two.”

“Not to me it isn’t.”

“You’re just messing with me, aren’t you?”

“Tell the hayseed I said hello.”