Dead Mans Hand

5:00 A.M.

The sign before the rambling three-story Victorian house said COSGROVE MORTUARY, COSMO, TITUS, AND WALDO COSGROVE, PROPRIETORS, in suitably somber, Gothic-style lettering. The building was as quiet as death, as dark as the tomb. Brennan crept onto the wooded porch that encircled the house, moving slowly and carefully lest one of the ancient floorboards reveal his presence by creaking in the silent night.

He jimmied a window and stepped through it into the lobby. He paused for a moment and shone his pocket flashlight around the small room. It had dark wallpaper and was cluttered with antique furniture and bric-a-brac. Chrysalis, he thought, would have loved it.

The directory, hanging in a glass case on the wall, listed several viewings. The one he wanted-Jory-was in the West Parlor. He clicked off the flashlight and gave his eyes a few moments to readjust to the darkness, then moved into the bowels of the mortuary.

There was a peculiar odor to the place, a curious mixture of chemicals and death. The silence was oppressive, unbroken by any sounds of movement or life. Brennan had to force himself to move slowly and quietly. He badly wanted to get an answer to his question and then get the hell out into the dirty, but living, city air.

The West Parlor was a long, high-ceilinged room, still choked with scores of flower arrangements. The flowers, like everything in this place, were dead and wilted. Their scent was stultifying in the enclosed dark. They had been placed all over the room, the most were clustered around the closed coffin that was still in place against one wall. Brennan let out a deep sigh of relief when he spotted the coffin. He was afraid that he might be too late, that it might have already been moved to the church. That would have complicated things.

Brennan approached the coffin silently, stopped before it, stared at it. For a moment he couldn't bring himself to open the lid. But he had to know if it was Chrysalis in the coffin, he had to see with his own eyes.

He lifted the lid and held it high. The darkness made it impossible to see any details, but Brennan thought that was a good thing. He kept his pencil flashlight off.

The corpse was wearing a demure dress that covered it from neck to ankles. Above the neck was nothing. The head was totally missing, apparently obliterated beyond any possible hope of reconstruction. The hands, though, holding a Bible on the sunken stomach, were clear, invisible, dead flesh. They were her hands, Chrysalis's hands, of that Brennan was sure, though blood no. longer surged through their pulsing arteries. Whatever fluid that now filled them was clear and unmoving.

"It was a difficult job," a soft voice said behind Brennan. Brennan started, almost dropping the coffin lid. He barely managed to maintain his hold on it while he turned on his flashlight and swung it around.

There was the sound of something moving swiftly away from the light, and the voice spoke again. "Please, the light is painful to me."

The voice was so authentically gentle and sad that Brennan couldn't help but comply with it. "All right," he said, and flicked off the flash.

The speaker moved out from behind the straight-backed sofa. He was a vague pale blur in the darkness, very white, very tall, and very thin. He smelled of strange, powerful chemicals, but his voice was as sweet as a young boy's.

"You work here?" Brennan asked.

"Oh yes. I do the embalming. Light is injurious to me, so I do most of my work at night. I was just stopping by to say good-bye to Chrysalis-it was a difficult job, but I did the best I could."

"This may sound strange," Brennan said, "but you are sure that it's Chrysalis in that coffin?"

"Certainly," the pale man said in his sweet voice. "Why do you ask?"

Brennan shook his head. "Never mind. I was just making sure."

The pale man nodded in turn. "I'll leave you to your private good-byes. Even though its past our regular visiting hours." He turned to go, stopped, and looked back at Brennan.

Brennan could see his small pink eyes shine with light reflected from his flash. "I tried to put her head back together, you know, but her killer had been terribly thorough. There weren't enough pieces to work with. I've repaired the results of many violent killings, but this was one of the most savage. Her murderer deserves to be caught. To be caught and punished, Mr. Yeoman."

"I know," Brennan said, looking down at what was left of Chrysalis, "I know."