take it from here.”
“Yes, I’m sure you will.”
Cartwright slunk out of view, and Clegg looked pleased.
“Why are you giving him such a hard time?” I asked. “He’s trying to help us.”
“That guy,” Clegg said, “didn’t want to give up this body. I had to go to the dean to get Cartwright to comply with Mrs. Grayson’s wishes. The dean, it turns out, was a lot more understanding.”
An ME unzipped the bag and nonchalantly pried open the sides like it was just another day at the office for him. It was time for me to do my job.
Someone had to make the call that the body would fool the Fiend. To my surprise, Higgins had asked Clegg to include me in this gruesome show-and-tell. The plan was mine to begin with, and it was my wife in jeopardy, so maybe that was why Higgins wanted my input. Maybe he worried a preserved body would look too different from a freshly killed one. Maybe he just knew that Clegg would bring me along regardless.
It looked like a wet and heavy cloth had been overlaid on an old and withered frame, but the counters were all there, the basic scaffolding of features that defined a face. He had caterpillar eyebrows, wisps of gray hair, and wrinkles that spoke of a long and fulfilling life. His arms were two twigs, chest sunken, a body ravaged not by disease, but by the aging process alone.
“Who is he?” I asked. “I need to know about him.”
“He’s an eighty-two-year-old retired pharmacist who wanted to donate his body to his alma mater. He was a pilot, a war vet, and from what I read in his file, an all-around nice fellow.”
“Was it hard to get the permission?”
“Not hard,” Clegg said. “We found the right person. There was a lot of paperwork to fax back and forth. Mrs. Grayson’s son helped her do it. It took a while, but we got it done.”
“Why’d she agree to do this?” I asked.
“The Graysons had a daughter,” Clegg said.
“Had?”
“Had, as in the daughter’s dead.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” I said in a respectful tone, as though expressing my condolences. “How did she die?”
“She was murdered,” Clegg said. “About twenty years ago. When we told the wife we needed to use her husband’s body, but we couldn’t say how or why—police business was all we could tell her—Mrs. Grayson wasn’t too keen on helping. Then we told her about Ruby, or more specifically that a young woman’s life might be saved, and she agreed to help, whatever it took. We had a lot of people making a lot of calls, John. For a while there, I didn’t think it was going to happen.”
I nodded, feeling a reverent appreciation for the Graysons’ sacrifice.
“What now?” I asked.
“Now you tell me if you think our killer is going to believe that you took out an old guy.”
“I think he’ll believe that the most,” I said. “I took a life at the end of a life. Yeah, this will work.”
“He looks a bit like a marinated olive to me,” Clegg said. “We’re going to need to get some blood to add a bit of realism here.”
“Will he be on the news?”
“Not his face, just a news report,” Clegg said.
“We’ll need proof.”
“The profilers at the FBI think he’s going to contact you after the news breaks. We’ll get you a video clip you can send him. That should work.”
I nodded.
“Okay,” Clegg said. “Then we’re a go. I’ll prep it.”
Without warning, Clegg hoisted up one of the man’s frail arms and splayed open the fingers of his bony hand. He reached into his back pocket with his free hand and removed a pair of spring-loaded pruning shears.
“I hope this works,” Clegg said, snipping off one of the man’s fingers as nonchalantly as an ME opening up a body bag.
CHAPTER 61
It all went down. The best-laid plans of mice and men. The MEs, accompanied by a substantial police escort, brought Mr. Oliver Grayson’s body to a cordoned-off section of woodlands near the Boston Police VFW Post in Dorchester. I guess I could have killed somebody there in the predawn dark. A press release went out to the news media shortly thereafter, around 4:30 that morning, six hours before the deadline. “The police have found a body in Dorchester,” the alert read, “another apparent victim of the SHS Killer.” News media descended on the scene the way vultures are drawn to carrion.
Yellow crime-scene tape held the press at bay, though reporters did everything