Robert Walker - Killer Instinct

So, too, perhaps, were the days of keeping people in her position in the dark about essential elements of on-scene evidence and information necessary to making a full analysis of the crime scene rather than making assumptions and long-distance guesswork do. By allowing her to work on the sum rather than the parts of the bomb, she might just have more insight than before. What harm in trying something new and bold? To hell with Zach and his but-we've-always-done-it-that-way mentality. It had no place in a modem crime lab.

Maybe Raynack's way was best for his time, through the Eisenhower years, through the Nixon debacle and the Reagan fiasco, but now, today, the FBI must seek a better operational base, and it seemed to her that only Otto Boutine had the foresight to see this.

“ If we are through, Doctor,” she told him, “I do have a great deal to do.”

He glanced over the scattered medical catalogues strewn about, some with dog-eared pages, others with markers sticking out. “You might at least extend me the courtesy of telling me just what it was that my reports… flagged.”

“ You had shown that the wound to the jugular in each case, from photos taken at the scene, was the work of a scalpel-sure and neat.”

“ Then the Wisconsin killer used a scalpel?”

“ Yes.”

“ A particular kind of scalpel, I suppose.”

“ Yes.” She wished to say as little as possible.

“ That's the reason for the catalogues, then?”

“ Searching for a match, a particular model, yes.”

“ Left-handed grip scalpel,” he said.

“ Sorry?” She was confused.

“ For doctors who're left-handed. As I recall, the slash was made from right to left across the throat. The work of a lefty.”

In all the information she'd absorbed over the last three days and nights, she had seen this but she had paid little heed to it. At least, for now, Raynack was mollified. And before leaving, he even said that he was sorry for having stormed in the way he had.

Jessica, who hated pettiness and whining and old-fashioned thinking, went back to scanning the catalogues for any sign of the instrument used to kill three confirmed cases of murder.?

Otto Boutine stood just outside the glass partition surrounding the lab, staring at her. She'd worked straight through lunch, and she'd for a time put him and the night before out of her mind. Apparently he meant to keep in touch with his people, and obviously he would continue with the 2 P.M. meeting regardless of all that was on his mind. She waved him in to learn that he was anxious for any new results on the exhumations or any of the 101 tests being run on samples taken. He seemed agitated, as if once more he had to prove himself to Leamy, the chief of operations. She led him back into her office, where he said, “I'm sorry about last night… really.”

“ No need to apologize for being human, Otto. Christ, as much as you've been through.”

“ I had no right to drag you down with me.”

“ Otto, really, I was glad that I could be there for you. Someday, you may be able to repay the kindness.”

“ No, I'll never be able to quite repay you.”

“ Now you're getting me mad with this silliness.”

“ Just accept my thanks, Jess.”

“ Consider it done.”

After a few words about the wake and how he must leave by four, he got around to the questions on his mind. “What did the exhumations prove, if anything? I just saw Zach Raynack, and he was actually civil, said something about his part in unmasking the Wekosha vampire. What did you tell him?” She explained in some detail what the exhumations had shown, and she explained to him what she had said to Raynack, and why.

He laughed. It was the first time she'd seen him smile in several days. His laugh was genuine and strong. “I take it all back, Jess, you do know how to be tactful when you want to be.”

“ I think he's calmed his brain at least to a simmer.”

“ Ahhh, Jess, you're doing so well for me here, and you're a good friend.”

She blushed in response.

“ Maybe,” he continued, “after a decent interval, I mean, maybe we could see each other outside of our official cloaks.

She smiled. “I'd like that, Otto.”

“ So, sounds like we've got something to continue our psychological autopsy with, and I think you're in for a few surprises. My people have put together a preliminary profile on our man. You're in for a treat.”

She picked up all the information she needed, including a hospital tourniquet that Robertson had placed on her earlier, tightened and removed, after which he had photographed the slight discoloration about her throat. The control mechanism of the killer? Possibly. She also carried a trach tube with a razor-sharp, beveled cutting edge. “Show-and-tell time,” she said.

J.T. met them at the conference room with a medical teaching tool, a see-through clinical model of a man's throat, some of the organ pieces spilling across the table when he placed it on the slick surface. Byrnes picked one up and shoved it back across at J.T. Ken Schultz examined the plastic voice box with curious fascination, asking J.T., “What gives with the dummy?”

“ A little reenactment of the murder according to Dr. Coran, I assume,” said Teresa O'Rourke. “This should be interesting.”

And it was. The P.P. team were glued to their seats when Jessica lowered the lights and displayed on a screen the rudiments of a tracheotomy. The trach tube was displayed in a profile view, in relation to the cricoid cartilage and the trachea. The short film explained how a tracheotomy was performed. Then the lights came up and she directed their attention to the see-through bust on the table before them. She carefully placed a tourniquet around the unwieldy shape of the see-through plastic model and after tightening it, she held up a trach tube to her eyes for them to see clearly. She then quickly and surely plunged the tube into the transparent tube that represented the see-through man's jugular, just to the right of the trachea.

The trach tube stuck and wobbled in the throat of the model, hanging there like a straw. “If there was blood passing through the jugular, it would shoot through this tube,” said Jessica. “We believe the tourniquet somewhat controlled the flow, but it would have to be a hell of a tourniquet to control it all. Still… this is how he did it, we believe.”

“ Using these exact tools?” asked O'Rourke.

“ Or something very similar.”

The team sat below a pall of silence for a long moment. Byrnes, the heftier of the two men, said, “Looks kind of awkward. Can the tourniquet be held in place, or do you have to keep hold of it?''

“ This model requires a hand be on it,” said J.T., “but there are others that do not. These are calibrated and notched.”

“ We believe the killer used the most sophisticated equipment, and that he is very knowledgeable-”

“- of anatomy, yes,” said O'Rourke. “Yes, he'd have to know exactly where the artery was located… precisely how deep to go with the cutting tube.”

“ Fits… all fits,” said Byrnes.

Jessica showed them slides of the left-handed slash wound to the throat and pointed out the blown-up pattern that indicated that the killer had painted blood on the body after she was dead and after he had slit the throat. AH these steps he took after draining all the blood he could get from the corpse.

The darkened room filled with a combined awe and a few groans.

# # #

He knew he needed more blood if he wished to continue doing blood baths. And the boss had sent him out to the Baptist Hospital in Zion, Illinois, on a special order, and there he met a mousy, bespectacled, brown-haired nurse who was left without a ride home. He gave her a ride in his van with the cooler in the back and the briefcase on the floor. He talked her into a nightcap, and before the night was over, he had capped off the night with some of her blood.