The Breathtaker Page 21

  “Duke? Where are you, boy?”

  No dog came panting through the curtain of gray. Instead, a thick fog came up in a nearby field and began to swirl. Then the most incredible thing happened—a large cone-shaped funnel shot up from the fogbank and moved slowly toward him, like something out of a dream.

  Toby’s shoulders lifted as he took a stunned breath. Debris flew out of the base of the tornado, whipping up into the air, and he could see something tracking toward him. It hurtled through the air at maybe forty miles an hour. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think. His final scream died in his throat as a flying piece of sheet metal sliced through his neck.

  2

  CHARLIE PULLED over to the side of the road and parked, in a foul mood. The mailbox said LAKE. A teenage boy was dead. It hit him once again with dull shock. The dispersing storm clouds looked like gray brains, and the late afternoon sun sent crepuscular rays shooting down—Jesus rays, some people called them. A midnight-blue Buick was rolled over onto its side in the driveway. Yesterday’s F-2 had circumvented the house, coming to within eighty yards and littering the landscape with debris.

  The farmhouse looked old and run-down—peeling paint, rusty window screens. Charlie got out and climbed the porch steps. The doorknob was jiggly loose. He walked through a dark vestibule and stood in the living room doorway.

  The living room had a plank floor and a potbellied stove, and a cautious sun poked intermittently between the gauzy curtains. The victim reclined on an old plaid sofa, positioned in the center of the room but facing away from the door. Charlie could see the back of the boy’s head resting on a pillow. He wore a Texas Rangers baseball cap and a pair of headphones. The sofa faced a blood-spattered television set.

  “Chief Grover?”

  He turned.

  Compact and muscular, with wrinkled brown skin and frosty eyes, Sheriff Dorsey stood in the kitchen doorway. “We’ve been piecing together a scenario from the blood evidence,” he said. “We think he was standing right here when he received the first blow.”

  There was blood spatter on the walls and “flyers” on the ceiling—blood and tissue flung from a weapon being raised and lowered with each successive blow.

  “Was the scene staged?”

  “See for yourself.”

  As he moved toward the sofa, Charlie became rooted in revulsion and shock. The boy’s torso was missing. His severed head was propped against an embroidered pillow, and a fence post was stuck like a stake in the bloody stump of his neck. There was a look of mild surprise on the boy’s face, as if he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. His hair was shoulder-length and pale blond, like the wheat in late summer, and his eyes were brown and long-lashed.

  Charlie swallowed hard. “What’s his name?”

  “Toby.”

  “Where’s the rest of him?”

  “Kitchen,” Sheriff Dorsey said. “When his mother came home and found him like that, she just lost it.”

  Charlie turned the corner. Three grocery bags had coughed up their contents on the speckled linoleum floor. The dog food in its plastic doggie dish still held the shape of the can. There were drag marks from the back door to the kitchen table, and seated at the table was the headless boy, his elbows propped on either side of a straw-colored place mat. A computer had been set up in front of him, and someone had downloaded forecasting information. The website displayed raw satellite data, a hook echo rotating across the screen.

  Charlie tried to rein in his revulsion. Usually when somebody committed serial murder, the M.O. would change from scene to scene but remain consistent in other ways. This was very different, this beheading; the killer was becoming bolder, taking chances. The cut was too clean to have been made with an ax or even a saw. Behind him, Sheriff Dorsey said, “We found a piece of sheet metal out back… looks like he got decapitated by the tornado.”

  Charlie lingered on the horror. The decapitation probably fed into the killer’s sick fantasy of himself. He and the wind were both murderers now; they were one and the same.

  “They call this guy the Debris Killer, you believe that?” Sheriff Dorsey shook his head. “Sick bastard gets a nickname.”

  “Debris Killer, Tornado Killer, Plains Slasher,” Charlie said, putting on a pair of latex gloves. “They got a lot of names for this guy. Mind?”

  “No, go right ahead.”

  He went back into the living room and, very gingerly, held the boy’s head. His pale mouth was at the beginning stages of rigor. Charlie peeled back the lips and examined the teeth. “There.” A lower incisor was missing, and in its place was a bloody replacement tooth.

  Sheriff Dorsey squinted. “What is it?”

  “This tooth has been replaced.”

  The sheriff gave a low whistle.

  “Have your coroner send it to the state lab for processing. They’ve got the rest of them.”

  He looked up. “The rest?”

  “Yeah. We’ve managed to keep it from the press. Make sure to seal your findings.”

  They heard a dog barking outside, and Sheriff Dorsey went to the door. “Hey, fellah,” he said, kneeling down to pat the dog. “Sorry you can’t come in, buddy.”

  Charlie had a sudden thought. The killer had spared the dog. What if there’d been a time when he’d spared the human being and killed the dog?

  3

  WE’VE BEEN collecting death and injury statistics for about six years now, yeah.” Rick hunched over his computer keyboard. “Total tornado deaths, livestock losses, that sort of thing.”

  Charlie drummed his fingers on the desktop. Rick’s office was located in a corner of the underground facility, the brains of the operation, he jokingly called it. There was a fake plastic traffic sign on the wall that said GENIUS AT WORK, a multitude of yellow stickies posted everywhere you looked and plenty of state-of-the-art equipment. Tacked to the cluttered bulletin board was a handwritten note that said “Gone Chasing” in black Magic Marker and a computer-printed note that said “Recipe for a Slow-Moving Wedge: Blend the following ingredients—Meso-slow dryline bulge + 700 mb winds exceeding 20 knots + CAPE (greater than 4000); stir in 500 mb winds & wait 3 hours.”

  “Let’s see… horses, cattle, pigs.” Rick punched in a command, and the data scrolled on screen. “Sometimes there are so many carcasses afterwards they have to plow the fields and bury them in a mass grave.”

  Charlie glanced at the TV set, where a spiraling, comma-shaped cloud pattern arced across the screen.

  “Those radar signatures are from another planet, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  Rick grinned. “Don’t worry, Chief. You’ll get the hang of it. Willa says you’re a natural.”

  Charlie just looked at him.

  “What?”

  “What is it with you and me?”

  “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Because I kind of get the feeling it’s more than that.”

  “Nah. Willa and I are just friends.”

  “Nothing more? Because maybe it’s something we should talk about.”

  “C’mon, Chief. She’s like a sister to me.”

  “Okay,” Charlie said uneasily. “Good.”

  “Look, I’m a little grumpy today. I’ve been up all night working on these algorithms. Hand cramps and eyestrain, that’s all I’ve got to show for it.”

  “Appreciate the help.”

  “Okay, here we go. House pets. Cats and dogs. Check this out. Somebody lost a pet llama once… impalement with a fence strut… had to be euthanized.”

  “I’d like a list of all family pets that were killed by flying debris going back six years.”

  “For the whole USA, or just Tornado Alley?”

  “Within a five-hundred-mile radius of Promise. Print it out for me, would you?”

  “Sure.” His fingers spidered across the keyboard. He hit the command for print, then turned to Charlie, his wrinkled nose holding up his glasses. “You’re looking for patterns, right?
Because that’s what we do here. We search for weather patterns the way you search for crime patterns. Science is all about patterns.”

  “I figure he started with animals first. Most serial killers start with animals, then progress to human beings.”

  Rick gave an involuntary shudder. “So you’re tracking his apprenticeship, so to speak?”

  Charlie shrugged. “You follow as many leads as you can and hope that something sticks.”

  The printer spat out several pages, and Charlie scooped them up. He studied the data for a moment, then frowned.

  “What is it, Chief?”

  “Lots of dog deaths starting around three years ago. Now all I have to do is convince someone to let me exhume their pet.”

  4

  THIRTEEN PEOPLE on the list refused to cooperate, but five said yes, and Charlie spent the rest of the week driving to various parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Nebraska, digging up people’s backyards and checking out their dead pets’ teeth. At four o’clock on a Friday afternoon, he found himself in the kind of mom-and-apple-pie Kansas town that had more letters in its name than residents. The Cavitts had lost their golden retriever four years ago, and the family farm was overrun with chickens, goats, boys on bicycles and girls on skateboards.

  Mr. Cavitt had deep-seated eyes, slick gray hair and a protruding Adam’s apple. He greeted Charlie with a firm handshake and a rusty shovel. “C’mon around back,” he said with quiet dignity. They cornered the house and walked into a shady backyard, where the large handsome elm cast a wide shadow.

  “When it comes to kids, you need to be straight with them,” Mr. Cavitt said as he approached the grave marker, a large pink slab of stone. “Don’t sugarcoat it. If you tell them the dog got ‘put to sleep,’ they might stop closing their eyes at night. So you tell them flat out… your poor ol’ doggy’s dead.”

  Charlie helped him remove the stone, and then Mr. Cavitt stepped on the shovel and broke the earth.

  “Salem was a good boy,” he said as he dug. “Whenever I got home from work, soon as I opened the door, there he’d be.” He paused for breath, resting his callused hands on his hips. “I must be getting sentimental in my old age,” he said, tears resting on the rims of his pale eyes. “This is harder than I’d expected.”

  “Here, let me.” Charlie took the shovel and dug up the dog’s skeletal remains in the cool shade of the old-growth tree. There were fly pupal cases among the bones. He picked up the skull, pried open the jaws, and there it was—a human-looking tooth, much smaller than the one it had replaced.

  5

  THAT NIGHT, Sophie went to a party where kids her age were drinking beer and making out to heavy-metal music. She followed Boone into the darkened backyard, where the trees were beginning to grow their leaves back, a green mist settling over everything. They sat in matching lawn chairs, and Boone dropped his crutches in the grass.

  “I’m on diazepam and Skelaxin,” he told her. “I am feeling no pain.” He drew thoughtfully on his cigarette as if he were participating in a national taste test. He wore a pair of unlaced sneakers, a black ribbed undershirt and denim jeans slit up the leg so that his cast would fit. “Oh man, wouldja look at that sky?”

  “No good, huh?”

  “Sucks.”

  She caught sight of the evening star rising above the plains and the moon popping out from behind a scud of clouds. “You can’t go chasing, anyway,” she told him. “Not with your leg in a cast and your truck totaled.”

  “Maybe you’ll take me, Sofe?”

  She laughed, secretly relieved that tornado season was almost over. She didn’t want there to be any more deaths. The wind pushing through the trees made her stomach hurt. “The bust is in, huh?” she said.

  He leaned over and kissed her.

  She tasted salt on his lips and felt an odd elation, like being underwater for an extended period of time. She drew back. Wrapped around her heart were confusion and anxiety.

  “Wanna go upstairs?”

  Looking deeply into his eyes, she said, “Okay.”

  The house belonged to a friend of Boone’s whose parents were away for the weekend. Upstairs, they found an unoccupied room with a large bed, a TV set and an orange chair over by the window. Sophie went to use the bathroom and tried to catch her breath. The light was harsh in here. The sink was white, shiny as an eyeball.

  She didn’t understand the changes her body was going through, despite all the sex education classes she’d taken. Real life was somehow different than any book. She’d read somewhere that the average woman would sleep with twenty men before she got married, but Sophie refused to believe it. She’d never slept with a boy before and only wanted to sleep with one.

  Back in the bedroom, Boone stood naked in front of the TV set, the bluish light playing over his skin like an aura. “I got the condom,” he said.

  She nodded and crossed the room.

  “Can I undress you?” he asked thickly, and she let him unzip her jeans.

  At first, it hurt, him going inside her; but then a space opened up, and she could feel his heartbeat overlapping hers. He rocked against her, his breath shooting out in hisses and grunts, and then Sophie started to shake and couldn’t stop shaking. She squeezed her eyes against this unexpected pleasure.

  Afterward, he lay behind her, tracing words on her bare back. She couldn’t guess a single one.

  “What’re you thinking?” he said.

  She shrugged, feeling calm and peaceful.

  “You think your dad’s a good guy, don’t you?”

  “What?” She turned to face him.

  “You think all cops are good guys.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He withdrew into himself.

  Shivering, she pulled the sheets up around her neck. There was a soreness between her legs that wouldn’t go away. “Boone? What’s the matter?”

  “There are things I wish I could tell you, but I can’t.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Forget it.”

  She stroked his cheek with her finger.

  “We belong together, you and me.”

  “I know,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her body close.

  An hour later, Sophie was running across the yard toward her house. Moths swarmed around the porch bulb, and the air was thick with the scent of lilacs. The house was the same, but she was somehow different. Inside, she paused in the wide arched doorway to the living room, where her father sat reading on the sofa. He closed his book and looked at her.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said, mouth going dry. “I’m going to bed now. G’night.”

  “You weren’t over Katlin’s tonight,” he said in a hostile monotone.

  She could feel her shoulders sagging.

  He stared at her an angry beat.

  “Dad, I’m sorry.”

  “I called Katlin. She said you were with Boone Pritchett at some party. I won’t tolerate deception, Sophie. You’re better than that.”

  It was so quiet in here she could hear the white noise in each room. “It was just a party, Dad,” she said. “No biggie.”

  “Just a party?”

  Her laughter was false. The place between her legs still hurt, and her underpants were spotted with blood.

  “You lied to me,” he said, infuriated. “You snuck around behind my back. I’ve been sitting here listening to every car that drives past, thinking it’s you. Hoping it’s you.” He stared at her. “Christ, are you drunk?”

  She leaned against the wall. “A little… I’m just… I’m a little drunk. I had a beer.”

  He strode across the room. “That’s it, young lady. You’re grounded for a month.”

  Her thoughts grew like arms, arms with fists, thrashing, whaling away. “I hate you!” she cried.

  “Every car that drives past, and I’m listening for the sirens,” he said. “Don’t you ever do this to me again.”

  “Do this to you?”

  “
You can’t see him anymore. I forbid it.”

  “I hate you!”

  “Fine. Hate me, I don’t care. I’m not about to let you ruin your life.”

  “It’s mine to ruin!” She ran upstairs and collapsed on her unmade bed, so heartbroken and exhausted she couldn’t summon the energy to cry.

  6

  CHARLIE DROVE past strip malls and welding shops out into open countryside, where a chorus of crickets repeated its lulling refrain. He came to a fork in the road and threw the car into the turn, hitting a pothole so hard he almost sprained an ankle. These little county roads got practically no traffic. They weren’t high-priority, so they got run-down and stayed run-down.

  Boone lived with his parents on the bad side of town, where dire poverty had a tendency to turn family member against family member, where most of the calls they got were either domestic or drug-related. Charlie told himself to remain calm. Steady, steady. It was, after all, his fault. He’d raised too innocent a daughter. She didn’t judge. She was open and honest and trusting. Nowhere near cynical enough. Boone Pritchett was as transparent as glass to everyone else but her. She’d been raised in rarefied air. All his fault.

  Now he parked his car on the side of the road and got out. Beyond the barbed-wire fence with its No Entry sign was something too wild to be called a meadow. Amid the tall grass and flapping trash was Boone’s wrecked pickup truck, a casino-pink accordion. Parked in the driveway behind it was the full-size rust-red pickup belonging to his dad. Charlie had pulled Eddie Pritchett over a number of times for various misdemeanors and DUIs.

  Now he opened the creaking gate and crossed the wild, overgrown yard toward the one-story house, where he knocked on the door. “Police! Open up!”