The Absence of Mercy Read online

  The smell of hot dogs and candy apples hung thickly in the air, intermixed with the less pleasant aroma of animals pacing restlessly in their cages. Hay and broken peanut shells crunched underfoot as they exited the colossal tent. Thomas was four years old, and Ben had stopped to buy him an orange hydrogen-filled balloon from one of the countless vendors. The transaction had taken less than thirty seconds, and he’d assumed that Susan had been holding on to their son’s hand during the process, but by the time he turned around Thomas had vanished into the crowd filing out into the massive parking lot in a great swarm.

  Suddenly, everything changed. The music being piped out to small speakers high above them took on a taunting, grating, fun-house air. The faces of the strangers shuffling by seemed to smirk at Ben nastily, their eyes darting to the side to watch him as they passed. A man in a purple vest and lime-green bow tie hawking peanuts (“Fresh peanuts! Get your fresh peanuts here!”) to the exiting patrons turned in Ben’s direction and, covering his mouth halfheartedly, spat something onto the ground that looked like a mixture of mucus and dark blood. His eyes caught Ben’s incredulous gaze, and he grinned up at him through a rotten, toothless mouth. “What about it, mista? Wanna peanut?” he asked, and then burst into a cackling laugh that caused Ben’s skin to break out in gooseflesh.

  For twenty endless minutes they looked for Thomas, with Susan anchoring the spot where they’d first lost sight of their son and Ben setting out through the crowd in expanding circles around her, calling out Thomas’s name into an ocean of passing strangers, trying to make his voice heard above the blaring music emanating from the speakers above him. In that short time, his mind discovered the ability to think of every possible evil thing in the world that might have beset his son.

  Then, through a small opening momentarily created between the bodies of the shifting crowd, Ben spotted his boy—or at least thought he did.

  “Thomas,” he called, pushing his way roughly past a large man clutching an enormous bouquet of cotton candy.

  “Hey!” the man protested indignantly, but Ben barely heard. For on that warm August night, with the first tendrils of fall still three weeks away and the trees holding steadfastly to their summer foliage, it had been Thomas, the familiar brown cowlick of hair rising like a question mark from the top of his head as he stood looking up at the unfamiliar faces all around him.

  Ben dropped to his knees and swept his startled son into his arms. “Jesus Christ, you scared me!” he scolded him, hugging the boy tightly. The man in the purple vest and lime-green bow tie (“Fresh peanuts! Get your fresh peanuts here!”) glanced over at them suspiciously.

  Ben muttered a prayer of gratitude, then stood up, holding Thomas in his arms as he began to make his way toward Susan through the thinning horde.

  “They git away from ya, those little ones.”

  Ben turned in the direction of the voice, and found himself facing the peanut hawker, whose yellowed eyes stared back at him accusingly.

  “Pardon?”

  The man considered him for a moment. The olive shirt beneath his purple vest was dark with sweat stains and his black boots were caked with mud and flecks of trodden hay. He sneered at Ben with a rotten, toothless mouth. “Ya oughta watch ya kid more closely nex’ time,” he admonished Ben, and spat another wad of maroon phlegm onto the ground, where it seemed to twist and hiss like a pat of butter on the scorched brown earth before it finally lay quiet and dead. He leered at Ben contemptuously, his buckled jaw listing to the right at an impossible angle as if it were dislocated from his skull. Still, his mandible moved up and down as he chewed, and bits of mashed peanut shells spilled out from between his twisted lips like dead insects and came to rest at his feet. “Kid like that needs ta be watched.”

  Ben, not knowing what to say, simply stood there, transfixed, staring back at the man.

  “Yaah,” the peanut hawker said to himself after a moment’s consideration, as if suddenly coming to some irrefutable conclusion. He spat again on the ground, then wiped his mouth absently with the back of his hand. “Kid like that jus’ slip away from ya, if ya not careful wit’ ’im.” He paused for a moment, reflectively. Then he unfurled a gnarled, accusatory index finger and held it out in Thomas’s direction. Ben pulled the boy closer against himself, turning slightly so that his own body was between his son and the figure in the purple vest.

  “Ya nevah know what a boy gonna do when he git out ’n the world,” the man said, observing Thomas with a predatory gaze. The volume of his voice began to rise now, high above the crowd like a Bible-thumping preacher before a spellbound congregation. “Ya think ’e’s safe, mistah. But ’e ain’t! Ya think ya gotcha boy back now. But ya don’t! You don’ know whe’ah ’e’s been, who ’e’s been consortin’ wit’. Jus’ lookit ’im. ’E’S BEEN EATIN’ PEANUTS! AN’ THE’AH ROTTEN! EV’RY LAS’ ONE!!”

  And with that, Ben turned to look at his son, whom he held protectively in his arms. Thomas turned his face upward, glancing at Ben with a doomed expression of guilt and horror. It was obvious now that the boy was sick. “I’m sorry, Daddy,” he said. “I didn’t know.” Then his small body convulsed sharply, and he vomited an enormous torrent of bloody, macerated peanuts onto the ground at Ben’s feet.

  Part 2

  To Witness the Dead

  8

  Sam Garston was the sort of man who made it seem as if the job of county sheriff had been established not so much because there was a need for it, but because the Jefferson County legislature realized that they needed to come up with some way to make use of the man’s talent and steadfast dedication to public service. Having moved his family to the area thirteen years ago, Ben had not known Sam for as long as some of the true locals. Nevertheless, his position as medical examiner brought him into contact with Sam frequently enough that he felt he knew the man fairly well. He was not surprised, therefore, to find a Jefferson County patrol car parked in front of the Coroner’s Office at nine o’clock on this bright Saturday morning and the six-foot-five, 260-pound chief of police leaning casually against the wall of the building, waiting for Ben to arrive.

  “Good morning, Chief,” Ben greeted him as he ascended the six steps to the building’s front door.

  “It’s a nice one,” Garston agreed amicably, squinting slightly as he surveyed the blue sky above. His left thumb was tucked casually into his gun belt, and the large man seemed to lean against the building with enough purpose to make one wonder whether he perhaps moonlighted as a structural support beam for the CO’s front exterior façade. As Sam pushed away from the building’s wall with his right foot Ben could almost feel the CO shift slightly as it resumed responsibility for the entire weight of its frame.

  “Thought I might actually beat you here this morning, Sam,” Ben commented as he unlocked the front door and stepped inside. A fine mist of dust floated within the identical sunbeams cast through the lobby’s two large front windows. The CO was old, erected at least eighty years ago, and had served as county post office for many distinguished decades before its eventual reassignment. The floors were swept and mopped five days a week by a janitor who took pride in his work and did his job well. Nevertheless, the dust inhabiting the old building had apparently decided long ago that it had a right to be there, and returned every evening after the lights went out and the place was locked up tight. It provided a familiar welcome on mornings like this when Ben was the first to arrive and startle it up from its resting place on the wooden floorboards.

  “You won’t be beating me anywhere showing up at nine A.M.,” the big man countered. “Far as I see it, day’s almost half over. Been up since five-thirty, and waiting here for you since eight. Hell, I’m almost ready for lunch.”

  Ben unlocked the door to his small office, and the two men entered. Ben walked behind his desk and sat down in a swivel chair on plastic rollers that tilted slightly to the left. Garston stood next to the only other chair in the room, his head nearly brushing against the low tile ceiling. His mass
ive frame eclipsed the token ray of light emanating from the hallway just outside, and Ben switched on the desk lamp.

  “Have a seat, Sam,” he said, indicating the vacant chair. The chief descended upon the hapless piece of furniture, which groaned in modest protest. The look of guarded anticipation that darted across Sam’s face suggested to Ben that more than a few chairs had failed him unexpectedly during his tenure on this earth. Ben was grateful when this one did not. He liked Sam, who was sharp as a tack and conducted his job with surprising kindness and decency.

  “Looks like this one’s gonna hold,” Sam observed, optimistically glancing down at the chair beneath him.

  Ben smiled. “If it don’t, we’ll take it out back and shoot it.”

  “Won’t be the first time,” the chief commented. He interlocked his fingers and cracked the knuckles loudly, the noise reverberating off the walls of the small office. It was a bad habit he’d abandoned twenty years ago at the request of his wife, but it occasionally resurfaced during times of stress. He looked up guiltily. “Sorry about that.”

  “No problem.”

  Sam took a deep breath and let it out. “So, what’ve you got?”

  Ben opened the left drawer of his desk and pulled out a dark green file. It contained multiple photographs and his typed dictation from the night before. “Young kid, as you know,” he began. “I’d say about fourteen.”

  “We think we have an ID on the victim,” Garston said. “Kevin Tanner—a fifteen-year-old high school student from a neighborhood adjacent to the spot where the victim was found. Apparently, he didn’t come home last night. Wasn’t reported missing until this morning, about two and a half hours ago. Kid’s mother and younger brother are out of town visiting relatives, and the father works nights at a shipping company in Steubenville. Father came home this morning to an empty house and became concerned. Contacted us at six thirty A.M.”

  “This Tanner kid might have just gone over to a friend’s house overnight, or left early this morning before his old man got home from work.”

  “Not likely,” Sam replied. “Father says his son wouldn’t spend the night at a friend’s house without checking with him first. He also says he got home a little before six this morning, so it would’ve been pretty early for the boy to be up and out of the house. Also, the family has a dog. The animal urinated on the carpet overnight. Father says he’s never done that before. Probably hadn’t been let out since Mr. Tanner left for work at five P.M. yesterday afternoon.”

  “Long shift,” Ben commented.

  “He works twelve-hour shifts a couple of days a week. The father’s description of the boy matches that of the victim. He’s down at the station right now filing a report. They’ll keep him for some brief questioning, but we’d like to get him over here to ID the body after that.”

  “That’ll be ugly,” Ben said. “The body’s in pretty bad shape. Someone did a number on this poor kid.”

  “Uh-huh.” Sam cracked the knuckle of his right index finger. Pop! It sounded like a firecracker within the tight confines of the office, and Ben jumped slightly in his seat. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  The pathologist looked down at the report in front of him. “Well, there were multiple stab wounds from an unknown instrument,” he began. “I don’t think it was a knife. The entrance wounds measure about 0.75 by 0.9 centimeters, and all appear to be made using the same weapon.”

  “Screwdriver?”

  “Maybe. There’s a wound entering the neck and extending to the skull base. That would mean the instrument was at least six to eight inches long. There were eight stab wounds to the head itself. Two of them pierced the skull.” He was sliding pictures across the desk as he spoke.

  “Interesting.”

  “Yeah, that takes some force—or at least determination.”

  “Or rage,” Sam commented, studying the pictures.

  “The attack was extraordinarily violent,” Ben continued. “The victim was bitten by the assailant several times. In fact, he wasn’t simply bitten—he was ravaged. There are several large avulsion injuries to the soft tissues of the face, neck, and chest where the skin has been partially torn away.”

  “Consistent with bite wounds?”

  “It appears so.”

  “Could the bite wounds have come from an animal, perhaps one that came across the body after the boy had been murdered?”

  “Unlikely.” Ben shook his head. “Most animals have much sharper canines than humans, and a different dental structure. These serrations along the wound edge”—he pointed to a picture lying in front of them on the desk—”are consistent with a human dentition pattern.”

  Sam studied the picture for a moment. “I see what you mean,” he said, and when he looked up at Ben his face was slightly ashen. “It just seems so… savage. I don’t understand it.”

  “I haven’t gotten to the best part yet,” Ben replied.

  “You mean the fact that the victim’s genitals were discovered in the woods fifty yards from the site of the body?”

  “Yeah. That won’t be easy for the father to hear about.”

  “Then I suggest,” Sam said, eyeing Ben from across the table, “that you don’t tell him.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” Ben said. He swiveled around in his chair so that he could look out through the open office door while Sam shuffled through the photographs sprawled like fallen soldiers across the desk. It was Saturday, but the Coroner’s Office was beginning to come to life. Tanya Palson, who tended to most of the clerical responsibilities of the office, had arrived and could be heard at the front desk answering the phone.

  “There’s one other thing you might find of interest,” he commented as Chief Garston continued to study the photographs in front of him.

  “What’s that?” Sam asked, eyebrows raised slightly.

  “I think the perpetrator was left-handed.”

  “Yes, I was just noticing that,” Sam observed. “The puncture wounds to the body are clustered along the right chest and flank. Assuming the assailant was facing the victim, he must’ve been holding the weapon in his left hand.”

  “Exactly,” Ben concurred. “Also, the two head wounds puncturing the cranium follow a trajectory through the brain that angles slightly to the victim’s left. They enter through the coronal and sagittal sutures.”

  “The what?”

  “The skull is actually made up of several different bones which merge together during early childhood along what are called suture lines. They’re weak points in the skull.”

  “Fault lines,” Sam suggested.

  “Yes,” Ben agreed, “in a manner of speaking.”

  “So he got lucky, then?”

  “Perhaps. But there were eight wounds to the skull, and all of them were clustered around the suture lines. I think,” Ben said thoughtfully, “that maybe he knew what he was doing.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “My overwhelming impression”—Ben looked somberly across the table at the Jefferson County Sheriff—“is that he’s done this before.”

  Pop! Pop-pop! Sam’s knuckles sounded off beneath the table.

  “Yeah.” Ben nodded.

  In the front room, the phone was ringing. “Coroner’s Office,” Tanya answered. “How can I help you?”

  Ben gathered the photos and returned them to the olive file marked simply “John Doe.” “Do you want to see the body?” he offered.

  “Not really,” Sam replied. “But they tell me it’s part of my job.”

  “I thought you had detectives to take care of this stuff.”

  “Oh, he’ll be by soon enough,” Sam answered. “Carl Schroeder. Good man. Fifteen years on the force. He’s questioning the boy’s father right now. It’s his case.”

  “Okay. Then, if you don’t mind me asking, what are you doing here?”

  Sam stood up slowly. He was such a pleasant man that you forgot how physically intimidating his size could be until he was standing directly
in front of you. “I’m the chief,” he said. “I have an overriding responsibility to protect the citizens of this county that goes well beyond any single investigation. What happened yesterday…” He seemed to mull it over in his mind, searching for the right sentiment. “What happened yesterday offends me, Ben—and I aim to take a special interest.”

  At that moment, Ben was very glad to be on the right side of the law. “I see.” He nodded seriously, then gestured toward the open door and the autopsy room just beyond. “Well, …this way, Chief.”

  The two men filed out of the tiny office and made their way toward a lonely shape lying patiently on a steel table in the next room.

  9

  Eleven A.M., Coroner’s Office. Ben sat in his small office and waited. Chief Garston had received a call from Detective Schroeder that he was on his way to the CO with the boy’s father. That had been ten minutes ago. It was not a long drive.

  Sam had gone out to stand on the front steps of the building. Reporters had been gathering since 9:30 A.M., and they were expecting a statement from the chief regarding the results of the autopsy and the early progress of the investigation. Sam hoped his appearance would draw their attention while Detective Schroeder ushered Mr. Tanner into the CO through the back door. It wasn’t a flawless plan, but it was the best one they had.

  Ben could hear Tanya fielding calls at the front desk. The phone had not stopped ringing since Ben’s arrival, and he simply wished it would stop. Then again, he considered, the silence might be worse. He sat at his desk and tried to focus on something—anything—except for the covered figure in the next room.

  Sam Garston, he considered, was an interesting man. His formidable physical characteristics and dogged devotion to his job suggested a no-nonsense approach to life. It was undoubtedly one of the reasons for his continued success throughout the course of his career. But there was also a different side to him, one that Ben had come to witness on at least one occasion previously.