Deja Dead Page 0,75
a lot easier with teeth and dental records. Besides, he left the hands.”
“So?”
“If a corpse is mutilated to prevent identification, usually the hands are removed too.”
He looked at me blankly.
“Prints can be taken from badly decomposed bodies, as long as there’s still some preserved skin. I’ve gotten prints from a five-thousand-year-old mummy.”
“Did you get a match?” Claudel’s voice was flat.
“The guy wasn’t entered,” I responded with equal lack of mirth.
“But this is just bones,” said Bertrand.
“The killer wouldn’t know that. He couldn’t be sure when the body would be found.” Like Gagnon, I thought. Only this one he buried.
I stopped for a minute, and pictured the killer prowling the dark woods, distributing the bags and their grisly contents. Had he carved the victim elsewhere, bagged the bloody pieces, and brought them here by car? Did he park where I had parked, or was he able, somehow, to drive onto the grounds? Had he dug the holes first, planning the location of each? Or had he just carried in bags of body parts, digging one pit here and another there on four trips from his car? Was the dismemberment a panicky attempt to conceal a passion crime, or had both the murder and the mutilation been coldly premeditated?
An appalling possibility struck me. Had he been here with me last night? Back to the present.
“Or . . .”
They all looked at me.
“Or, he could still have it.”
“Still have it?” scoffed Claudel.
“Shit,” said Ryan.
“Like Dahmer?” asked Charbonneau.
I shrugged.
“We better take Fang back for another sweep,” said Ryan. “They never brought him near the torso site.”
“Right,” I said. “He’ll be pleased.”
“Mind if we watch?” Charbonneau asked. Claudel shot him a look.
“Not as long as you think happy thoughts,” I said. “I’ll get the dog. Meet me at the gate.”
Striding off, I heard the word “bitch” in Claudel’s nasal tone. No doubt a reference to the animal, I told myself.
The dog leapt to its feet when I approached, its tail wagging slowly. It looked from me to the man in the blue jumpsuit, seeking permission to approach the newcomer. I could see “DeSalvo” stamped on the jumpsuit.
“Fido ready for another go?” I asked, extending a hand, palm down, toward the dog. DeSalvo gave an almost imperceptible nod, and the animal leapt forward and wetly nuzzled my fingers.
“Her name’s Margot,” he said, speaking in English, but giving the name the French pronunciation.
His voice was low and even, and he moved with the fluid, unhurried ease of those who spend their days with animals. His face was dark and deeply lined, a fan of small creases radiating from the corner of each eye. He looked like a man who’d lived outdoors.
“French or English?”
“She’s bilingual.”
“Hey, Margot,” I said, crouching on one knee to scratch behind her ears. “Sorry about the gender thing. Big day, eh?”
Margot’s tail picked up velocity. When I rose, she leapt back, pivoted full circle, then froze, studying my face intently. She tilted her head from side to side, and the crease between her eyes furrowed and unfurrowed.
“Tempe Brennan,” I said, offering my hand to DeSalvo.
He clipped one end of Margot’s lead to a belt at his waist and grasped the other end with one hand. He reached out his other hand to me. It felt hard and rough, like distressed metal. His grip was an uncontested A.
“David DeSalvo.”
“We think there may be more in there, Dave. Margot good for another go-round?”
“Look at her.”
On hearing her name Margot pricked her ears, crouched with head down, hips in the air, then sprang forward in a series of short hops. Her eyes were glued to DeSalvo’s face.
“Right. What’ve you covered so far?”
“We zigzagged the whole grounds, ’cept where you were working.”
“Any chance she missed something?”
“Nah, not today.” He shook his head. “Conditions are perfect. Temperature’s just right, it’s nice and moist from the rain. Plenty of breeze. And Margot’s in top form.”
She nuzzled his knee and was rewarded by strokes.
“Margot don’t miss much. She wasn’t trained to nothing but corpse scent, so she won’t get sidetracked by nothing else.”
Like trackers, cadaver dogs are taught to follow specific scents. In their case, it’s the smell of death. I remembered an Academy meeting at which an exhibitor had given away samples of bottled corpse scent. Eau de putrefaction. A trainer I knew used extracted teeth, bummed from his dentist and aged in plastic vials.
“Margot’s ‘bout the best I’ve worked with. Something else’s out there, she’ll scent it.”
I looked at her. I could believe it.
“Okay. Let’s take her over to