Scalpers dgmm-2 Page 5

  "Bags?"

  "You know, the kind you wrap your sandwich in."

  "Trash,” replied Park, getting up and asking Dyer if he were coming.

  "In a minute, Park.” There was now some irritation in Dyer's voice. When Park had left for their squad car, Dyer shook his head. “What a case that guy is. I've had all kinds of partners, but he's something else. Can't put two words together."

  "Seems frustrated,” chanced Dean.

  "Yeah, he works hard. We both do. We've been trying with all we've got to put some common thread together on this one—you know, identify the killer's likes and dislikes as to the kinds of victims he chooses, his geographic preferences, and with the first two that seemed a possibility. Then in comes the Mayor's niece—kinda down on her luck, but still a yuppie type—and now Officer Carson. Every possible lead we had has been shot to hell, as far as I can see."

  "I'm surprised your Chief Hodges hasn't shown up,” said Dean, “or has he come and gone?"

  "Hodges is strictly first watch, and off by noon or one o'clock to the golf course."

  "Likes his nightlife, too, I'm told,” added Sid.

  "So, if he can point the finger elsewhere...” began Dean, but let the thought drop.

  "How does Hamel figure into the picture?” asked Sid. “I mean, he's somehow become a big cheese on this case. Last month he was a nobody, sitting in his office and playing with rubber bands."

  "Hodges brought him in in desperation, for answers,” said Dyer. “He's certainly not getting any from Park and me."

  "So Hodges gets Hamel to profile the killer, to soothe the mayor into thinking something's being done,” added Sid. “Meanwhile, if things are being poorly managed and botched, it's not Hodges’ department, but mine."

  "Watch your backsides, gentlemen,” said Dyer as he got up to go. “Got to catch up with my pard."

  "Thanks,” said Dean, rising.

  "What for?"

  Dean considered this. “For making up for Park, I guess."

  "I understand why Park's reluctant to talk. He's really too damned new to the department to be handed such a case to begin with, and he doesn't always share his thoughts, or his actions with me, either.... So, don't feel unduly offended by the man, if you can help it."

  Dyer rushed off.

  "Park's new around here, hunh?” asked Dean.

  "Yeah, well, there aren't too many people in Orlando, or Florida for that matter, who can claim to be first generation."

  Dean emptied half the bitter machine-made coffee back into the machine, wondering if the thing would recycle it. He crushed the cup and tossed it in a container. Sid got up alongside him, and together they found Sid's car in the lot.

  "Thinking about what Dyer said?"

  "Yeah, that and the baggies."

  "Yeah, weird, huh?"

  "Not unlike our bagging specimens at a crime scene, Sid, if you ask yourself what happened to those chunks of flesh the killers made off with."

  "So the Scalper is now the Scalpers, and they are collectors of specimens."

  "One uses what might well be a scalpel, Sid."

  "Points to a professional man, you think? A doctor?"

  "Or maybe someone who likes to play doctor."

  "Some warped-out, whacko Jack-the-Ripper with a fetish for hair?"

  "Or maybe the guy next door, who turns into something else when the sun goes down."

  "A hundred thousand maybe's."

  They got into Sid's big car and pulled away. Fending off Sid's arguments to the contrary, Dean managed to get to the Hyatt Regency Hotel where he had made reservations. Arguing even as he drove away, Sid left him there for the evening to sleep and contemplate all that had occurred before and since his arrival in the city.

  The voice on the phone was unshakably real, yet it could not be her, it could not be Angel Rae, the woman Dean had put an end to in Chicago this past summer. Yet her body had never been recovered from Lake Michigan, its assumed resting place, and there was always the nagging doubt that perhaps she'd somehow miraculously escaped her own drowning death. And that she had come back not in a quiet, haunting way, as in his oft-repeated dreams of her, but in a most real and vicious way. A way that meant Jackie was in trouble at this moment, with this madwoman stalking her, and with Dean over a thousand miles away from his wife, unable to do a damned thing but listen to the eerie, surreal voice coming through the connecting wires in a monotone, frustrating in its calm, deliberate choice of words. It drove him mad, this voice from his past that simply would not let go, lodged as it was in his brain, saying, “You've been too long at school ... Nurse Grant is mine now ... all mine, and she will be delivered, made free to float to the sky."

  "No!” Dean shouted the instant the phone rang. Trembling in the air-conditioned dark, he lifted the receiver after the third jolting ring, trying to regain himself. It had been a nightmare, no doubt brought on by his call to Jackie at home. She wasn't home, and he tried to convince himself she was at the hospital, taking someone else's shift, but when he started to dial, he was gripped with a fear at not finding her there. He rationalized his not having called because of the lateness of the hour. So he hadn't spoken with her, and now she was calling him.

  "Yes, hello,” he said into the phone, “Jackie?"

  A ripple of fear fluttered through him. Could he possibly stand it if even a recorded word from Angel Rae were to come through the wire?

  "Dean, old boy, sorry to wake you,” said Sid Corman.

  "What the hell's it now, Sid? What time is it?"

  "Four-twenty, and I'm sorry to do this to you, but—"

  "Four-twenty?" Jackie hadn't bothered to call him, either.

  "—but the son-of-a-bitch scalping crew has hit again, and this time it's a kid."

  "Oh, Christ,” Dean moaned. “How old?"

  "Sixteen, maybe seventeen, in a park not far from our offices downtown. The girl appears to be a runaway. She was most likely hustling and she just hustled the wrong guy—"

  "Or guys."

  "Want me to pick you up?"

  Dean had told Sid to do just that, should another victim be found. Knowing how important the initial crime scene evidence gathering was to any case, Dean wanted to be on hand for this. If he was to be able to help Sid turn the murderous tide of this scalping crew, as Sid had put it, then he must be in that park before anything was disturbed.

  "Did you tell the police what we want?"

  "Sure, the moment you asked for it. Should be standard by now, but Orlando's sudden growth has put on a lot of green recruits."

  "Don't waste time picking me up, Sid. Get to the scene and control the cops. Do your job."

  "I'm at the scene, and I'm doing my goddamned job, Dean.” Sid's sudden anger was understandable.

  "I'll get a cab. Just give me the location."

  "Conway Park, north entrance, at the water's edge, can't miss it."

  "Give me fifteen minutes."

  "Hold on, Dean. We got a unit freed up to pick you up and bring you here. Be waiting out front."

  "Will do."

  Dean raced into his clothes. Soon he was standing in the early morning darkness watching a revolving light and siren approaching. Lodged deep in his mind was the voice of Angel Rae telling him that no matter what had become of her, she had effectively taken Jackie away from him.

  "You Dr. Gant?” asked a baby-faced police officer with a modified punk haircut and a jewel in his earlobe.

  "Grant, Dr. Grant,” Dean corrected him roughly. He got into the large white squad car and it raced for the downtown exit off I-4. Sitting in the dark rear seat Dean felt like a criminal and a failure—both as a husband and as a forensics specialist. Yes, he had put the Floater killer away in Chicago, and yes, Angel Rae and Brother Timothy were indeed dead. But no one knew how they lived on despite death, despite the vanquishing of evil by so-called knights of criminal justice like him. Because the evil lived on to destroy sleep and peace—and love and marriages.

  FIVE />
  Dean wondered if there were any similarities between the killer in Chicago, who enjoyed drowning people to watch them float to God, and this vicious bastard who cut people's heads apart while they were still alive. It was suddenly and cruelly apparent that in the case of both the young Jane Doe in the park and Officer Peggy Carson, this son-of-a-bitch didn't care whether the victim felt pain.

  "You're saying she was completely conscious when the scalp was taken?” asked Frank Dyer as he leaned into the discussion Dean and Sid were conducting over the nude and mutilated body of the black teenager.

  "That's a distinct possibility, yes,” Dean said firmly. “And we both know that it was the case with Carson when the knife wound to her head was done. In the earlier cases, I could not say for certain, what with the multiple contusions and abrasions, any number of which could have been a killing blow. But this ... look at her. Other than the scalp removal, there's nothing beyond a patch of skin and hair in the pubic area."

  "Was she sexually molested?” It was Park asking.

  "No,” Dean replied.

  "You can tell just like that?"

  "I can."

  "It's our man, or men, all right,” said Sid.

  "Yeah, neuter cases,” agreed Park. “Pricks without pricks."

  "Impotent, or sexless, or both, like Dr. Hamel said,” added Dyer.

  "Maybe the Scalpers are working out some sort of religious fantasy, you know, appeasing some—” Dean stopped himself from exploring ideas aloud. He knew it could lead to an investigator down the wrong path. As it was, it sounded as though Dyer and Park were already confused enough by Dr. Hamel's assessment of the killers.

  "Can you definitely say, doctors, that this young woman was killed by two men and not one?” asked Dyer.

  "The wounds indicate two instruments were used. The head wound is neat, the tool a precision instrument, quite likely a scalpel. The other cut is careless, hurried, the result of a serrated knife, most likely a switchblade, and one that could cut much more deeply."

  "I've seen scalpels that are made to close and switch open, Dean,” said Sid.

  Dean agreed with a nod. “Whoever's behind this seems to have taken parts of skin and hair from each victim for a reason; and however sick that reason, perhaps if we could understand it, we might have a clue as to who it is we are searching for, gentlemen."

  Sid nodded over the bloody corpse, recalling Dean's final assessment in the Floater case.

  "You know,” began Dyer, sounding confused, “the wounds to this girl, they just don't seem enough to ... to kill a person, Dr. Grant. I mean, they are not that deep, and she hasn't lost near as much blood as I've seen in accident victims on the highway...."

  "Trauma killed her in the end, Dyer. The trauma of having your scalp ripped from you is enough to devastate the mind and cause enough pain and fear to kill the average person."

  "Only a few people in all of history have survived and lived to tell about a scalping,” said Park, surprising Dean.

  "You've done some reading on the subject."

  Park nodded, “Part of the job. Get to know the enemy, right?"

  "Good strategy, yes."

  Park ambled off, deciding there was no more he could learn from Grant and Corman. Dyer hung closer by again, taking in as much as he was capable of.

  "Guess we'd best finish up here, Dean,” said Sid as Dean stared after Park. Park's quiet, rough exterior had reminded Dean of a young Marlon Brando, but the act was wearing thin. But Sid was right, and so Dean turned his attention toward the dead girl, whose bag had been rifled by the police who had discovered her. She'd had a change of clothes stuffed into the handbag, and a clutch purse with the usual makeup and loose change, but there was also a crumpled fifty, a ten, and a five-dollar bill which the murderers hadn't taken. They were not after money. They were not after sex. They were after scalps, and this night in particular, it seemed they were bent on gaining the scalp of a black female. Failing with Peggy Carson, they had found this poor soul.

  Dean and Sid began the laborious work of clipping and brushing the body for fingernails and the residue of foreign fibers and hair. As they worked, dark turned into day, and Dean's knees began to throb. While they worked over the body, Dyer searched about the park for footprints they might take molds of, but there were none. Yet he found something else, a pair of surgical scissors which he promptly placed into an evidence bag, to be dusted for prints at the lab. Sid took custody of them.

  When they were nearly finished, Sid suggested they lift the girl's arms overhead for a look at her armpits. “Once burned, you know,” he said.

  Dean, Sid, Frank Dyer stared at the bare armpits which were not shaven, Dean guessed, but shorn, shorn with the surgical scissors discovered by Dyer a few yards away. But there was no blood. There were no cuts, no skin peeled away, just the clipped nubs of hair.

  "Bastards like hair,” said Dean.

  "We've gotta take clippings from this area, too,” said Sid.

  "Right,” agreed Dean.

  Dyer shook his head, wondering why, but saying nothing.

  Sid began a casual search through his own surgical kit for the proper tool to take hair samples from the deep groove of the armpit. It took time and Dean saw a strange look come over Sid's face, and he then saw the empty space in Sid's black case where his scissors should be. Alongside the empty space were a pair of smaller nail scissors, and Sid, closing the valise to prying eyes, made do with these.

  Dean watched Sid's work closely and clinically now, assessing his friend's method as he had not done before. Dean wondered if there could possibly be more to Sid's major oversight on the redhead. He wondered if Sid, for some as-yet-unaccountable reason, was hiding a great deal more than a lack of professional bearing in the case. He even allowed himself the ugly thought that Sid, in some other mental state, could possibly be the scalpel-wielding killer, who with his medical knowledge had faked the appearance of a second set of wounds that might look, even to a trained eye, like the work of a second murderer. But this thought was simply foolish, Dean told himself. Sid was no more guilty of this horrid business than his wife, Jackie, had been of the drowning of that old woman at her hospital. Dean's imagination was running away with him, and Sid could easily explain the loss of his surgical scissors and would do so if Dean put the question to him.

  Then Dyer, watching as Sid cut miniscule nubs of hair at their base from the dead girl's armpit and carefully placed them into a bag no larger than those used by stamp collectors, said in disgust, “Christ, Dr. Corman, do you have to do everything the fuckin’ murderer did to her all over again?” Not answering, and with great care, Sid clipped and numbered the bag as Dean, equally calm, helped in recording the clippings.

  "Like vultures,” Dean heard a uniformed cop tell another some distance off.

  Dean took in a deep breath of the dew-wet air. He then stood, his legs aching, his back throbbing, his nerves on edge. “Dyer, we're here to speak for this girl through scientific investigation. We're not vultures, nor are we delighting in our work, not here, not now."

  But even as he said it, Dean wondered if he were speaking for Sid as well as himself. Sid's surgical scissors were missing from his valise. Dyer had found just such a pair of scissors only a few yards off. Sid had lied to Dean before, and now this.

  "What're you going to do with armpit hair?” Dyer wanted to know.

  "Determine if it was cropped or torn out, determine if it was cut by one blade or two, as with scissors, like those you found, or a knife; match the hair against any found on the scissors from which, hopefully, we'll find prints."

  "Forget the scissors, Dean,” said Sid suddenly.

  Dean and Sid stared at one another for a moment as Dyer asked, “Whataya mean, forget the scissors?"

  "They're mine,” said Sid. “I must've dropped them earlier. When I first arrived on the scene, my case popped coming down the incline, and ... well, they must have just come out. I didn't know until I reached for them."

/>   Dean knew Sid was missing them earlier, when he had taken samples from the crown of the head and from the pubic area, but he had not said anything then. Now, faced with his own surgical scissors impounded as evidence in a slaying, he had to come out with it. His prints were on those scissors.

  "You're sure, Sid?” asked Dean.

  "Yes, it's the only explanation."

  "Did anyone else see the case come open?"

  "You think I'm lying?"

  "Sid, you need some corroboration here. If these are your scissors, and they've been missing—"

  "All right ... all right."

  Dyer's face went from confusion to wonder in the process of Dean's interrogation. “What gives?"

  "I didn't know the scissors were missing until I went to look for them. I don't know what happened to them, and now ... well, I must've dropped them somehow."

  "Dr. Corman,” said Dyer, “this'll have to be reported."

  "Dyer,” said Dean, “can you just give us time to run the scissors through routine tests first? They may not be Dr. Corman's. In fact, they may have the killer's fingerprints on them."

  "Or mine,” added Sid.

  "Do you know of any reason anyone would deliberately set you up, Sid?"

  "I've got my share of enemies in the department, sure, but this?"

  "Who'd be in a position to get hold of your surgical equipment?"

  "Any number of lab techs, attendents—you name it."

  "What about it, Detective Dyer?” Dean asked again stalling for time.

  "Dyer! Corman, why in the hell didn't you contact me about this?” shouted someone from above them on the ridge, making Dean look over his shoulder. It was Chief Hodges, and beside him loomed the tall, slender figure of Dr. Hamel, the two of them looking like angry Gestapo figures out of an old movie. “I told you men I wanted first notice on this case!"

  "We tried to reach you, Chief,” Dyer began to explain, but Hodges exploded.

  "More goddamned excuses, Frank! I don't want to hear them. I want this freak caught.” Hodges and Hamel came down from the police barricade where reporters and people had gathered to gawk and speculate and wonder.