Prodigal Son

CHAPTER 90

Standing at the folding table that served as Harker's desk in the go-nuts room, Deucalion sorted through the stacks of books.

"Anatomy Cellular biology Molecular biology. Morphology. This one's psychotherapy But all the rest… human biology."

"And why did he build this?" Carson asked, indicating the light box on the north wall, where X-rays of skulls, spines, rib cages, and limbs were displayed.

Deucalion said, "He feels that something's missing in him. He's long been trying to understand what it is."

"So he studies pictures in anatomy books, and compares other people's X-rays to his own…"

"When he learned nothing from that," Michael said, "he started opening real people and looking inside them."

"Except for Allwine, Harker chose people who seemed whole to him, who seemed to have what he lacked."

Michael said, "In the statement Jenna gave, she says Harker told her he wanted to see what she had inside that made her happier than he was."

"You mean, leaving out Pribeaux's victims, Harker's weren't just selected at random?" Carson asked. "They were people he knew?"

"People he knew," Deucalion confirmed. "People he felt were happy, complete, self-assured."

"The bartender. The dry cleaner," Michael said.

"Harker most likely had drinks from time to time in that bar," Deucalion said. "You'll probably find the dry cleaner's name in his checkbook. He knew those men, just like he knew Jenna Parker."

"And Alice's looking glass?" Michael asked, pointing to the three-way mirror in the corner of the attic.

"He stood there in the nude," Deucalion said. "Studying his body for some… difference, deficiency… something that would reveal why he feels incomplete. But that would have been before he started to look… inside."

Carson returned to the books on the table, opening them one by one to pages that Harker had marked with Post-its, hoping to learn more from what, specifically, had interested him.

"What will he do now?" Michael asked.

"What he's been doing," Deucalion said.

"But he's on the run, in hiding. He doesn't have time to plan one of his… dissections."

As Carson picked up the book on psychotherapy, Deucalion said, "He's more desperate than ever. And when the desperation increases, so does the obsession."

One of the bookmarks was not a Post-it. Carson discovered an appointment card for Harker's third session with Kathleen Burke, the appointment that he didn't keep.

She turned and looked at the mural of stapled images.

Where they had peeled at the collage, the fourth layer had been revealed below the demons and devils. Freud, Jung. Psychiatrists

In memory, Carson heard Kathy as they had stood talking with her the previous night in front of this very building: But Harker and I seemed to have such… rapport.

Reading her as he always could, Michael said, "Something?"

"It's Kathy. She's next."

"What'd you find?"

She showed him the appointment card.

He took it from her, turned with it to Deucalion, but Deucalion was gone.