The Breathtaker Read online

  “Thanks for looking after her, Peg.”

  “Oh please, don’t even mention it.” She had penny-colored hair and a mole beside her mouth that wasn’t pretty. “You look like you’ve been through the wringer, Mr. Man. How about some French toast and bacon?”

  “I don’t have time to even contemplate breakfast, Peg.”

  She had a laugh like watered-down Scotch. “What about coffee? You got time to contemplate that?”

  “Love a cup.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Some major damage. A few people died.”

  “Mary Jo Crider, Rob and Jenna Pepper, Danielle, John Payne, and Bill Rowley. Oh my gosh, when we first heard about it on the radio, we couldn’t believe our ears.” She shook her head in shock. “You hear about tornadoes all your life, but you never think it’ll happen to you.”

  “How’s Ben?” he asked, remembering Peg’s boyfriend.

  “Lost a few horses, but we all survived, didn’t we?”

  He paused on the stairs. “Can you stay tonight?”

  “Sorry, Charlie. I promised Ben.”

  “Yeah, sure. Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure something out.” He took the stairs two at a time, then knocked on the DISASTER AREA sign taped to his daughter’s door. “Sofe? You awake?”

  “C’mon in,” came her groggy voice.

  Entering his daughter’s room with its peach-colored walls, ivory curtains and vanilla oak floor was like diving into a pale pool. Disaster area was right—there were dirty clothes everywhere you looked, magazines and soda cans, CDs and cosmetics. Her room looked like the inside of a Dumpster, but she knew exactly where everything was. Sophie was curled in a fetal lump beneath her bedcovers. She slept with her fists squeezed shut, as if she were clinging to a thin rope of consciousness.

  “Hey there, jelly bean.”

  “Dad!” She sat up and gave him a hug. “I was so worried about you!” She had her mother’s widely spaced eyes and sensual mouth, same mixture of innocence and self-reliance. She had Maddie’s long cinnamon-colored hair and porcelain skin with that rich pink color to her cheeks; but make no mistake about it, she was her father’s daughter. Stubborn, methodical, same worry line between her eyes. At five foot seven, she was taller than most of her classmates but had fortunately inherited none of her father’s innate awkwardness. She was blessed with Maddie’s athletic grace and moved like liquid mercury. “Phew, you reek,” she said, clamping her pillow over her face.

  He ran his fingers over his beard bristle. “I was just about to take a shower, thanks a lot.”

  “Take a nice long one, okay? With lots and lots of soap,” she said with a muffled giggle. “You’re staying for breakfast, right?”

  “Can’t.”

  She removed the pillow and looked at him, disappointment in her eyes. “Dad… I need some face-to-face time with you.”

  “Yeah, well. I need face-to-face time with you, too.”

  “So?”

  “How’s tonight sound? I think I can get away.”

  She frowned. “‘Think’ isn’t good enough.”

  “Lemme see what I can do. C’mere.” He wrapped his arms around her again and gave her a lingering hug, needing to know that she was okay. If she’d been left relatively unscathed by yesterday’s events, then he could get back to work and quit worrying.

  “The whole house was shaking like a leaf,” she told him. “You could hear hail bouncing off the metal cellar doors. Peg and I were like, ‘What was that? What was that?’ We were jumpy as hell. I was so scared at one point I thought my heart was going to burst.”

  “I’m glad Peg was with you.”

  She gave him a despairing look. “I tried to call Grandpa, but the lines were down.”

  He could feel his face tense up. “Don’t worry,” he said. “That side of town didn’t get hit.”

  “Yeah, but still… shouldn’t you go check on him?”

  “I’m sure he’s fine.”

  “Please?” She fingered the locket at her throat, the heart-shaped locket on its long silver chain that her mother had given her for her tenth birthday. She never took it off. She slept with the damn thing on, probably bathed with it on. Just like all the other sentimental objects she couldn’t bear to part with—her cowgirl lamp with its torn shade, the moth-eaten Indian throw rug with the mystical symbols on it. He was sure she’d die of old age with that silver chain clasped around her neck.

  “Your grandfather’s fine,” he insisted.

  “Come on, Dad. Please? For me?”

  “Get some sleep.”

  “Yeah, right. He’s only your father.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you trying to guilt-trip me?”

  “Gee, I dunno. Is it working?”

  “Fine. I’ll go see him,” he said. “Happy now?”

  “Tell him to call me, okay?”

  “I’ve got a few things I have to do first. But I promise, okay? Now get some sleep, you pain in the butt.”

  She giggled and said, “You should talk.”

  4

  CHOKING BACK the stench of the autopsy suite, Charlie observed this most indecent scene through narrowed eyes. The three victims lay side by side on identical chrome tables—Jenna Pepper, Rob and their fourteen-year-old daughter, Danielle. The bodies had been X-rayed, weighed and measured, and any identifying marks such as tattoos or old injuries had been recorded. The bloodstained clothing, along with the wrapping sheets, had been bagged and sent off to the state lab for processing, and now the victims lay naked and exposed, miscellaneous debris protruding gruesomely from their bodies.

  “Sorry I’m late.” Roger Duff secured his lab coat around his stout middle as he swept into the morgue. “How’s Sophie?”

  “Fine.”

  “Good. Glad to hear it. Any property damage?”

  “Minor. You?”

  “I can’t find my cat.” Duff was a small man with a big attitude, a sour-faced old-timer whose irritating arrogance Charlie had long ago accepted as part of the package. He was the medical examiner for the whole county and was often called out of bed in the middle of the night to drive to a crime scene as far away as Camargo. There was always a push-pull between them. An intellectual tug-of-war.

  Duff took the clipboard down from the wall and read the stapled information sheet, then rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Okay, Charlie. Run it by me again.”

  “All three victims have defensive cuts to the hands, face and forearms…”

  “Hold it right there.” His eyes narrowed skeptically. “That could easily be attributed to shattered glass. You crouch in a defensive position, arms across your face, when the windows explode. That would explain those cuts.”

  “We found blood in the downstairs hallway. Blood on the couch cushions and mattress they were using to protect themselves with.”

  “Again, cuts and abrasions from shattered glass. Flying debris blown into the house through numerous broken windows, open doors and that great big hole in the roof.”

  “What about the sliding marks on the stairs?”

  Duff shrugged. “Maybe Jenna and Danielle got injured, and Rob dragged them upstairs. We do strange things when we’re scared. That’s why it’s called ‘scared out of our wits.’”

  Charlie wasn’t buying it. “What about the scrape marks on Rob’s back? If he dragged the other two upstairs, then how’d he get those?”

  Duff sighed noisily. “You bring up some good points, Charlie. I’m not saying this isn’t a mystery. But tornadoes have been known to do some pretty weird things. For instance, several years ago in Kansas, this tornado picks up a cake inside a house, carries it outside and sets it down so gently on the hood of the car it barely smears the icing. Coffee?”

  He shook his head. “Never drink the stuff down here.”

  “Why not? Because of the smell? Ah, you get used to it. Okay, fine, no coffee.” He put the clipboard back on its hook. “Let’s see what the autopsies tell us.”

 
Charlie followed him over to Rob’s rotatable table, while Duff clipped a tape recorder to his belt and slipped on his headset. “Rob Pepper has sustained an impalement injury to the right side of the chest with a wooden projectile approximately two and a half feet long,” he dictated into the machine. “What appears to be a staircase baluster has entered the right side of the chest anteriorly and exited posteriorly. Right lung is lacerated and contused. Internal exam will further assess pulmonary parenchymal damage.” He paused a moment and stood tracing the line of his jaw with his fingers. “Remember the Oklahoma City tornado back in ’99? Plenty of penetrating trauma due to flying debris. Terrible. The nightmares I had about that one. I’m seeing the same type of injuries here, Charlie, only…”

  “Only what?”

  “Bear with me a moment.”

  It was getting hot down here in the basement. Charlie shrugged out of his jacket, while Duff slowly circled the table, his breath whistling through his nose. He had nose hairs or adenoids or something. The morgue’s narrow transom windows cast brilliant puddles of sunlight over the floor as the day moved into late afternoon. The small dissection tables rolled around on squeaky wheels and were used for cutting up and examining organs. Nearby was the hanging scale for weighing body parts, and a large tank on the floor collected fluids from each of the autopsy tables.

  Ripley Funeral Home, two years ago. Maddie lying on a gurney, dead of a brain tumor, the starched white sheets drawn up around her shoulders.

  “Maddie?”

  There was a long scar like a headband across the top of her head, which had been shaved for the operation; her cinnamon-colored hair had grown back in thick and dark. Strange as the flowers that’d blossomed in the rubble after Hiroshima. Thick and dark and ominous. A grieving cap of hair.

  “Maddie?”

  She hated people always asking, always thinking about the tumor. She didn’t want to discuss it, preferred to be just Charlie’s wife, Sophie’s mother. A normal person, not her illness.

  Charlie leaned over the gurney and for a moment didn’t feel connected to her in any way. Instead, he became acutely aware of the man and woman waiting for him out in the hallway. They’d opened the funeral parlor just for him. He stared down at Maddie’s arched eyebrows, the delicate curve of her lips, that ski-slope nose. “Jesus, Maddie, I’m so sorry,” he said, hoping she’d forgive him and open her eyes. Wake up and relieve him of this awful misery.

  Duff stood holding the staircase baluster from Rob’s chest in his gloved hands. “This is odd,” he said, looking at it.

  “What is?” Charlie noticed that one end of the baluster, the penetrating end covered in dried blood, was as sharp as the blade of a knife.

  “My father used to make wooden knives,” Duff said. “It’s a simple procedure, really. You find a straight-grained piece of hardwood and carve it into the shape of a blade. Then you dry it over an open fire until it’s slightly charred. The drier the wood, the harder the point. You make the point of the blade slightly off-center, since the pith is the weakest part.”

  “So you mean,” Charlie said, a stiffness invading his limbs, “this is a weapon we’re looking at, Duff?”

  He pointed at Rob’s chest. “See these multiple stab wounds around the site of penetration, Charlie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Those superficial stab wounds indicate to me that the perp was searching for a point of entry. A regular steel knife would require rather low velocity in order to penetrate flesh and muscle, but a wooden knife… that would require much higher velocity.”

  Charlie looked up. “You mean, upper-body strength?”

  Duff nodded. “Also, it’s easier for a wooden knife to penetrate if you can avoid all the bones.”

  A chill ran through him.

  Duff set the baluster aside. “Hold on a second,” he said, his nose whistling like a melancholy wind. “This bruising troubles me.” He picked up a magnifying glass and stooped over Rob Pepper’s rigored face. “Notice the reddening around the mouth?”

  Charlie craned his neck and spotted a flaky white crust in the curl of the dead man’s smile.

  “Hm.” Duff fell uncharacteristically silent.

  “What is it, Duff?”

  “Sorry, Rob,” he said before placing his gloved hands on either side of the victim’s face. With one sharp snap, he cracked the jaws, breaking the rigor.

  Charlie drew back in revulsion.

  Duff pried the lips apart and stood staring into Rob’s mouth. “There’s something wrong with this picture,” he said.

  Charlie strained to see.

  “See that tooth?” he said. “It doesn’t belong in there.”

  5

  THE PEPPERS’ family dentist, Peter Forgaard, was an ugly brute with a ruined face who smoked unfiltered cigarettes and liked to play the horses when he wasn’t drilling and filling. The three of them—Charlie, Duff and Peter Forgaard—stood in a glum semicircle around Rob Pepper’s naked body, a stabilizing block placed underneath his head.

  “You’re right,” Peter said, his usually trumpeting voice pitched low. “That tooth doesn’t belong in there, Roger.”

  “I noticed the swelling around the jaw,” Duff explained. “Then I saw that the upper right canine was slightly askew in relation to those lateral incisors… and the gums were bleeding…”

  Peter stroked his fleshy lower lip as he mulled over his next thought. His blue sweatshirt and gray sweatpants were soaked from this morning’s jog, and his eyes gleamed sharply with speculation. “May I?” he asked Charlie.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Should I remove it?”

  “Yes, remove it.”

  Peter pulled on a pair of unpowdered gloves, selected a forceps and grasped the unusual-looking tooth. Working his elbow back and forth, he quickly extracted it.

  “When a tooth is pulled,” he said, “a blood clot will form in the socket. But if the patient is already dead, then no clot will form. In Rob’s case, it looks like there was some bleeding involved.”

  “You mean…” Charlie lifted a haggard look toward Peter. “He was alive when it happened?”

  Peter nodded.

  Shock set in. A vague, annoying numbness.

  “Alive,” Duff corrected, “but unconscious.”

  “Most likely,” Peter agreed.

  Charlie was sweating heavily now, his shirt sticking to his back. He could feel his emotions packed strongly inside his body—revulsion, anger, an overwhelming sense of confusion. He looked into the red porous meat of Peter’s face. “What happened? How’d that tooth get in there, Peter? In the plainest language.”

  “Well, Rob’s upper right canine was extracted and a ‘replacement’ canine was inserted back into the fibrous tissue of the gums. The root of this replacement tooth is long dead.” Charlie and Duff followed him over to the drain-board of a large sink against the wall, where Peter plucked a dental X ray off the wall. “He had three crowns and twenty-five teeth in good condition. That’s twenty-eight altogether, minus the four wisdom teeth. As you can see from his X rays, this replacement tooth is slightly smaller than the original… more curved on the labial surface. Its root is deep and prominent at the place of insertion. The crown is large and spearheaded. The convex labial surface is marked by three longitudinal ridges.” He lowered his brooding glance. “Needless to say, these are two entirely different teeth.”

  Charlie took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, the adrenaline beginning to wear off. Shock setting in. “What about Jenna?” he asked.

  “You want me to take a look?”

  “Yeah, let’s do them all.”

  They walked in a grim group over to the chrome table where Jenna Pepper lay still as dust. Peter took a hard swallow before he pried her delicate, rigored mouth open and methodically examined her teeth. It didn’t take long.

  “There.” He pointed. “Second upper molar.”

  “I see it,” Charlie said.

  After Duff snapped a few pictures, Pet
er reached for the forceps and extracted the tooth in about five seconds. “As you can see from her X rays,” he said, gesturing toward the light board, “there was a large amalgam in her second upper molar, whereas this… is in perfect condition.” He held it to the light and squinted. “Absolutely flawless.”

  “And you know for certain it’s not hers, because of the filling?”

  Peter nodded. “This is definitely not her tooth.”

  Charlie held himself rigidly upright, afraid to appear even the slightest bit vulnerable. The gravity of it all, the scope of the crime, was beginning to sink in. He could read fear in Duff’s taut features, Peter’s stern face, and he realized they were all quietly mortified.

  “Her teeth are worn down on the lingual surface… see how these two don’t line up quite right inside the mouth? Notice the different patterns of wear and tear? Even the shape isn’t the same. Neck, crown…”

  “Color’s not a match,” Duff added.

  Peter caught Charlie’s eye. “I’m assuming the tornado didn’t do this?”

  Charlie glanced at Duff, then said, “We need you to keep it confidential, Peter.”

  “Of course. You can count on my discretion.”

  “We don’t know exactly what happened. We’re still piecing it together. But the crime occurred around the same time the tornado struck.”

  Peter let this sink in. “Can I ask you something, Charlie?”

  “Sure.”

  “What happened to the original teeth?”

  Duff jumped in. “It’s some kind of ritualistic killing. That’s what it is.”

  “We haven’t completed the autopsies yet,” Charlie told Peter. “We don’t have all the facts.”

  “We have enough,” Duff interrupted, “to assume that whoever did this took the original teeth with him as trophies.”