Ridley Pearson - The Angel Maker

They had a visitor. Boldt heard the feet trodding up the wooden steps of the front porch and announced, "It's Dixie," before the man even knocked. "I'll get it."

"You amaze me," she said.

Boldt stopped at the door. He felt tempted to turn the lock rather than the door knob, tempted to crawl up her skirt and make some trouble, or another baby. "He's going to want me to go with him somewhere," Boldt informed her when he saw the glare of the headlights and realized Dixie had left the car running. He opened the door. "Be with you in a second," he told Dixon before the man could utter a word.

Dixon managed to ask, "But how-?"

"He's psychic," Liz interrupted, helping Boldt to locate his gun and jacket. She asked Dixon, "How long will you be?"

"A couple hours maybe," the befuddled man replied.

She asked Boldt if he had his keys because she would be asleep by eleven. She hated the way policework robbed them of their private time. Tuesday was his night to put Miles down. Now she would have that chore as well. She whispered into his car, "Wake me," following it with a quick dart of the tongue. Boldt returned a kiss and heard the door close and lock behind them as he and Dixie descended the steps. "What's up?" Boldt asked across the roof of the car, after reaching the passenger door. "They've found the remains," Dixon told him. "Water level in the river is high, and rising. We excavate tonight, or we lose it. Monty's on his way-our forensic archaeologist-and I've asked an entomologist from the U-Dub to join us as well. We would rather do this by daylight, of course, but not if we risk losing the remains by waiting."

Boldt's depression vanished instantly, replaced by an elevated pulse and a tingling sense of curiosity. A dozen questions crowded his brain once again: When had the body been buried? Exactly what was the cause of death? What could it tell them about the harvester? Was this his first kill? They needed the rest of the remains and the identity of the victim before they could answer any of these questions. "You're certainly talkative," Dixon said, a few minutes into the ride. Another fifteen minutes later they were away from the lights and the traffic, the density of the darkness increasing around them. It rained lightly for a few minutes. Boldt felt hypnotized by the motion of the wipers. Dixon asked Boldt to pour him a cup of coffee from his thermos, knowing better than to offer any to Boldt. "The blood toxicology workup on Chapman c me in today," Dixon baited his friend. a "Am I interested?""Ever heard of a drug called Ketarnine? "No. Should I have?" ',You're about to."

Good."

"It's a drug used by veterinarians." For a moment, Boldt actually thought his heart had stopped. "Animal hairs," he said, recalling that a variety of such hairs had been found on both Chapman's clothing and Sharon Shaffer's furniture. "What?" asked Dixon.

I recalled Dr. Light Horse's comments about Bo the closure appearing unusual. A veterinarian when you looked at the evidence, it suddenly seemed so obvious. The road ahead of the car was clear, but there was plenty of traffic in his head to make up for it. "Talk to me."

"You ever watch 60 Minutes?" Dixon asked. "You know better than that." Boldt hadn't owned a television since Walter Cronkite went off the air. "It's a drug used in surgery by vets. It paralyzes the patient from the neck down. The dog, cat, whatever, remains semi-awake-that is, doesn't require ventilation or other life support during surgery-but can't feel or move. It's often used in conjunction with gas. It's a very serious drug to use on adult humans because of its psychological effects. Oddly enough, some pediatricians are now using it on children 60 Minutes did a thing on a guy who evaporated Ketamine down to a powder, slipped it into the drinks of women he met in bars, and then took them to motels and raped them." "I read about it," Boldt said. "I remember the case."

"Well, apparently you're not the only one.

The interesting thing about Ketamine, especially in large doses, is its devastating effect on short-term memory. None of the rapist's victims ever remembered what happened to them. And I mean, they remembered nothing. it was only because one of them escaped before the drug fully took effect that he was ever caught. He was lucky he didn't kill someone. In large doses it's lethal: convulsion, asphyxiation, death."

"A vet?"

"He's using a knockout intravenous dosage of Ketamine combined with Valium. Throw in a dash of electroshock for good measure and there's no one-no one-who's ever going to identify him." Dixon turned off the darkened road onto a muddy dirt road and slowed down to where the rear end of the vehicle wouldn't fishtail. "A vet?" Boldt was stunned. Suddenly he was having to rethink his line of investigation-it was like starting all over. He couldn't manage any other words. "There's more. Once I discovered the Ketamine in the workup, I knew what to look for. I told you we saved some tissue samples from the ones we lost to hemorrhaging."

"Daffy told me."

"We save those things for a reason. Reasons like this." The car was acting squirrely, having a hard time with traction. More than once Boldt was tempted to reach over and grab the wheel, but Dixon did a good, albeit disturbing, job of talking while driving. "Vicryl had been used in two of the three cases. It's a woven suture made by a company called Ethicon-it's used internally for closures. But the Vicryl used in both Peter Blumenthal and Glenda Sherman was a number two. That's huge, way too big for human use. Horses, cows-gorillas, maybe; not humans. The point being that oversized woven suture will loosen up on you. Your knots fail. In the case of a kidney, let's say you've tied off an artery with it. It comes loose and you have forty-five percent of the body's blood flow pouring into the back side of your intestines. You're dead real fast. Real fast. Like walking down the street and keeling over, which is how Sherman was found by 911. Do I have your interest yet?"

There was a red flare burning like a Roman candle on the left side of the road up ahead. Dixon slowed and turned at the flare, following a good number of rutted tire tracks. They wouldn't be the first on the scene. "A vet?" Boldt repeated. "May I use your phone?" he asked, taking the car phone from the cradle before Dixie consented. It took him three calls to find Daphne. She was staying at Sharon's, looking after Agnes Rutherford in Sharon's absence. "How do you feel about unpaid overtime?" he asked rhetorically, not waiting for her answer. "It's not a surgeon, it's a veterinarian. Dixie has the proof. Roust Lamoia. Make a list, just like the AMA list. All the local vets capable of this. Think of ways to narrow it down. Find out about the distribution of a drug called …" He looked at Dixie. "Ketamine."

Boldt repeated it. He added, "We're closing in, Daffy. Search and Rescue found the bones."

"I'll find Lamoia. We'll be at the office."

"And I want a psych profile, ASAP," Boldt reminded, though the phone had gone dead. "Out of range," Boldt said. He hung up. "There's more," Dixie announced proudly. "The Ethilon-a suture used for the subcutaneous closure-followed what we call a continuous interlocking stitch. I'm talking about Chapman now, about those photos you took to Dr. Light Horse. I got your memo. She's right about the technique used on the closures. And it all fits with a vet, incidentally: They use the interlocking because of its strength. The giveaway is the subcutaneous stitch, the continuous interlocking stitch. it is always done right to left by right-handers and left-to-right by left-handers. This one was left-to-right."

"A leftie?" Boldt asked excitedly. "That certainly narrows the field, although whether a person is right- or left-handed is not the kind of thing we have access to." He realized that it would require a hell of a lot of manpower to chase down a lead like that. "I thought that would interest you."