“At the ankles, they cut off right between the bottom of the leg bones—tibia, fibula—and the top bone of the foot, the talus. That’s hard to do because it’s not straight across. They had to sort of go around the bottom of the tibia. And if you look at the legs, and the one foot, there’s only one cut in the flesh. They knew exactly where to start. If they’d been an amateur, they might have started too high or too low and had to adjust, start over. The same thing at the shoulder. They knew just where to go to get in between the humerus and the clavicle and scapula.”
He touched his arm and then collarbone and shoulder blade as he mentioned them. Probably unnecessary with this audience, but it was a practice he’d developed over the years he’d spent working abroad, using physical gestures in tandem with words to help explain for those with limited knowledge of their own anatomy or medicine.
He went on to the next stack.
“This body, though there’s not much of it—”
“That’s the victim from Belgium,” Annalise said.
Walt nodded. “Again, the cuts are in just the right spot. Most people would try to cut straight across to sever a head, but they came in at a slight angle. See it?” Everyone leaned in to look at the line he drew across the profile shot of the head. “It’s angled up from the back. The spinous process, the skinny fin part of your vertebrae that sticks out at the back, is angled slightly down in your neck. Whoever did this knew that and adjusted their angle so they’d go cleanly between the vertebrae.”
Walt didn’t look at Eric as he tapped the picture of Josephine’s neck. “The same here.”
“What’s the fourth pile?” Eric asked.
Walt glanced at Annalise and Jakob, a little suspicious that they hadn’t said anything or reacted.
“I guess this is the rest of the person from Belgium, but here, these incisions were made by someone who had no idea what they were doing.” He spread out the photos of a knee, ankle, and right hand. “Compare these to these.” He pointed to Alicja’s photos. “See how there’s a deep cut at the wrist, but they were too high? They hit bone, so then they started again, farther down, and managed to get it off. But see how the muscle looks sort of chewed? I’m guessing that’s from either a dull knife or maybe hacking at it.”
“Josephine and Alicja had the same killer, but the Belgium girl is only half this killer?” Eric sounded calm once again. Coldly analytical, even. “Maybe two killers.”
“No,” Annalise said. “They were all killed by the same unsub.” Annalise picked up the fourth pile of pictures. “These are from another body. Not part of the victim from Belgium. One I ruled out, but I wanted to be sure.”
“A test?” Walt tried not to be irritated.
“A test of my skill, not yours. The victim was a possible one, whom I ruled out based on the dismemberment, but I am far less an expert on human anatomy than you.”
Walt relaxed and nodded. “A second opinion.”
While he and Annalise had been talking, Jakob had twisted in his chair, scanning the restaurant. Eric, too, was looking around. Walt winced and checked to make sure no one was close enough to have heard them. The fact that they were speaking English wasn’t a guarantee that no one would understand. Hopefully their poor server hadn’t heard any of this.
“Now we come to the issue of the partnership,” Annalise said. “Killer partnerships are not unheard of. I haven’t had a chance to do an in-depth read of the reports from Rome about Ciril Novak, the man who killed a trinity, then kidnapped and tortured two other members. I want to do that before I make too many statements about how the partnership between Petro, who would most likely have been the dominant partner, and this unsub may be similar, or differentiate from the known—”
“Get the papers,” Jakob said.
Annalise’s brow furrowed at the same time Eric stood up, his chair teetering, almost ready to topple over.
Walt and Annalise shared a look, and then in tandem swept the papers off the table, shoving them into her bag.
“What’s going on, Eric?” Walt asked in a low voice.
“Go out the back,” was Eric’s unhelpful reply.
“I will stay, Fleet Admiral.” Jakob was on his feet, and he’d turned to the main dining room.
Now Walt could see them—a few people who had hats pulled low or newspapers open, but all of whom seemed to be looking their way.
They were being watched.
Why, and by whom, seemed unimportant as his body dumped adrenaline into his system. Walt pushed to his feet.
“Dr. Hayden…” Jakob didn’t look at him, didn’t take his attention away from those watching them, but Walt immediately knew what he was asking.
Walt looked at Annalise, who had her arms wrapped around her bag, holding it to her chest. Her eyes were wide, and she was trembling slightly. He remembered what they’d said in her office the other day. Something about Jakob guarding her due to a stalker. Something bad had happened to Annalise, and now Jakob wanted Walt to look after her. He was pretty damn sure that request didn’t come easily to the other man, which only ratcheted up the tension.
“Come on, Professor.” Walt hooked a hand under her arm and pulled her to her feet. “Time to go.”
“Jakob, follow us out.” Eric grabbed Annalise’s and Walt’s shoulders and started dragging them to the door into the café kitchen. Walt hauled Annalise against his side so Eric wasn’t dragging her.
Jakob’s attention was focused on the room, on the potential danger, as he took calm, measured strides backward. Walt lost sight of him when they burst into the kitchen. Ignoring questions from the staff, he, Annalise, and Eric picked up speed, nearly running when they hit the back door. It opened onto an alley, and there were two large trash cans beside the door, reeking of old food.
Eric glanced left and right. The narrow alley was, luckily, not a dead end, with exits to the streets on both sides.
“You go left. Get someplace safe and stay there.” Eric shot Walt a hard glance, and then turned away, toward the right.
“Where the hell are you going?” Walt called out.
Jakob emerged from the kitchen door. He glanced around, picked up a short broom, and held it like a bat, positioning himself so the first thing anyone who opened the door saw would be him.
“Knew three days here was too long.” There was a wealth of feeling in Eric’s words. “I’m the one they’re after.”
“Who?” Jakob asked, at the same time Walt said, “You’re just telling me this now?”
“I pissed off a few people. If they find my body, start with the Albanian mafia or the guys running the port of Antwerp. They were smuggling cocaine. I kept running into assholes when all I wanted was a damn serial killer.”
Walt thought about Eric casually taking down an extremist cell and teaching children how to fight and appropriately use words like “co-conspirator”. Yeah, he could see that Eric might have made a few other enemies if he’d been rampaging all over Europe like that.
“Fleet Admiral,” Jakob barked. “If you are in danger, the Spartan Guard—”
“I don’t need a babysitter.” Eric smiled grimly at Walt. “Sorry about this. We’ll meet up later.”