Дэвид Балдаччи - Walk the Wire

“Would she know any of the people who worked here?”

“I don’t see why.”

“Well, she worked right next door,” said Jamison.

“Yes, but no one from the Brothers can just stroll over here.”

“Cramer had a second occupation,” said Decker.

“What was that?”

“An old-fashioned way of terming it would be a ‘lady of the night.’ ”

“She was a hooker?” said Sumter, sitting upright.

Decker just stared at him.

Now Sumter looked more guarded. “And you think one of the men here...?”

“I just want to acquire the facts. It’s sort of like your radar here, always sucking up information.”

Sumter eyed Decker in a new light. “I, uh, I can make inquiries.”

Decker said, “Actually, we would prefer to do that. I doubt that anyone here will volunteer that they paid a hooker. Wouldn’t that land them in trouble?”

“It could. But we’re experienced with ferreting out the truth.”

Kelly said, “Why don’t you make a first sweep, narrow it down, and then we can interview those folks?”

“I’ll have to think about that.”

“This is a murder investigation,” said Decker. “A young woman was badly butchered.”

“And this is a U.S. military installation,” retorted Sumter. “And we do things a certain way. Now, if that’s all, I can get on with my duties and you all can do the same.”

As they were leaving Decker turned back. “You have many accidents here?”

“No. It’s not really a dangerous place to be stationed. Beats the hell out of Iraq or Afghanistan,” he added with a forced grin.

“That’s great. Keep up the good work.”

As they were walking to their truck, Jamison said, “Why did you ask him that?”

“Because I wanted to know the answer,” Decker said bluntly. “And that answer has led to another question.”

“What’s that?” asked Kelly.

Decker pointed to the ambulances. “If this is such a safe place, what the hell are all those for?”

When Decker got back to his hotel room he ended up taking Jamison’s advice and called his sister, but probably not for the reason his partner had intended.

Renee exclaimed, “Okay, I’m going to stroke out, Amos Decker calls his big sister. Stop the presses.”

“Growing up, I never really realized how funny you were, Renee.”

“Disappointed how our last conversation went? Want to make amends?”

“Right now, I just want Stan’s cell phone number.”

“You didn’t get it from him when you saw him?”

“It didn’t seem appropriate under the circumstances.”

She gave him the number and he put it in his contacts. “Thanks. Stan said Diane’s husband lost his job?”

“That was a year ago. Tim’s back on his feet and Diane has a good job. They’re doing okay. And I guess it’s a good thing they don’t have any kids they have to support. Now, don’t call me for another year.”

“What, why?”

“I need time to recover from the shock of talking to you twice in such a short time.”

He next called his brother-in-law. Baker was at work but got off at five thirty. Decker arranged to meet up with him at the OK Corral Saloon at seven thirty.

He had some time to kill and decided to put it to good use.

He pulled out a copy of the pathology report from the postmortem that Walt Southern had performed on Irene Cramer’s remains. He went over it, page by page, line by line. When he got to one sentence, buried in the middle of a long paragraph near the end of the report, he sat up.

Son of a bitch.

He headed out. The rain had stopped falling, but the humidity level was off the charts. He turned left and reached the funeral home a few minutes later. A young man outfitted all in black except for his dazzling white shirt rose from behind a small desk and greeted him. Decker asked for Walt Southern, who wasn’t there. But his wife Liz was.

She came out a minute later. Liz Southern was not dressed in black but rather in lavender. She stood out like a pink flamingo in a desert, and it occurred to Decker even more forcefully how strikingly attractive the woman was. He wondered how happy she was working with dead people. But then again, someone had to do it.

“What can I do for you, Agent Decker?”

“I was hoping to talk to your husband.”

“He’s out of town. Be back tomorrow. Is there anything I can help you with?”

In answer Decker held up the autopsy report. “Had some questions about this.”

She looked at him in surprise. “Questions about the report Walt did?”

“It’s not unusual for detectives to have follow-up questions about a postmortem report.”

“Well, is it something I can help you with? I’ve picked up a lot just being around Walt, and also with the business we’re in.”

He flipped to a page of the report and pointed at one long section.

“Buried in the middle of this it says that her intestines and stomach were sliced open.”

She stiffened. “But isn’t it standard procedure to take out the stomach and slice it open to analyze its contents?”

“Yes it is, only these cuts were not done by your husband. Which is why I need to see her remains. Now.”

She led him into a room where the thermostat was set very low. It felt great after all the heat outside.

Out of the fryer and into the fridge.

Set against one wall were columns of small doors behind which corpses were kept in refrigerated climates.

Southern opened one of the drawers and slid the gurney out.

“There she is,” she said.

Decker nodded and glanced at her when the woman made no sign of leaving. “Thanks, I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

She seemed unsure about this but withdrew from the room.

Decker turned to the body when something suddenly occurred to him.

The room’s not electric blue.

It wasn’t that he missed experiencing this phenomenon. But Decker’s brain had begun to change recently; his memory had hiccups and he had momentarily forgotten some things he thought he never would. And he didn’t enjoy change like that.

Decker lifted the sheet off the corpse and looked down at Cramer.

The first time he had viewed her body, he had known nothing of the woman’s past. Now he knew that she was a teacher and possibly a prostitute/escort, although the jury was still out on that. And he also knew that her past beyond her time here was a mystery.

But what he had always known was that someone had murdered her.

Decker turned to the pages in the report that contained photos of the deceased’s remains. There were pictures of every organ. But Decker focused on the images of the small and large intestines and the stomach. The slices referenced in the report had not been photographed, which was why Decker was here.

He was about to do something he had never done before, something he had never even thought of doing before, but under the circumstances he could see no way around it.

After finding them in a locker, Decker put on gloves, donned a long apron, and settled a surgical mask over his mouth and nose, and a pair of goggles over his eyes. He grabbed short-handled forceps off a tray and pulled out the Y-incision sutures, often called the “baseball stitch” because of its resemblance to that threading. Inside the revealed cavity the woman’s organs had been placed in bags to prevent leakage.

He took out the stomach and looked at it from every angle he could. It had been sliced open on the bottom, revealing the inside of the organ, like a slit balloon. Southern had apparently used this opening to examine the stomach’s contents because Decker could see no other incision. Whoever had made this cut had saved him the trouble. He used an overhead light to peer into the chest cavity once more and opened the bag containing the intestines. They lay coiled inside like a snake sleeping. He saw where sections of them had also been sliced open in multiple locations. He hit these spots as best he could with the light. The slits were large enough to get a hand into them. Decker knew that for sure, because he did so himself. The cuts were jagged and seemed hurried, as though the killer had either been rushed while doing it, or—