Scalpers

NINE

Peggy Carson wondered if she should not call in her partner, wondered why she was driven to do this thing alone, driven to disregard the law and her own morals. Eavesdropping had never been her style. The cruiser sped directly for her destination, smoothly and silently taking her to the scalpers. She fantasized blowing their frigging heads off with her arsenal of weapons. The unit was equipped with a shotgun, and with her she had a .38 Smith and Wesson. A third gun, a long-barrelled .45, her own, was resting between her thighs at the moment.

It was seeing the dead girl, or what remained of her, and knowing in her heart that the girl had become a surrogate for death, a stand-in for Peggy herself, that was pushing the usually self-contained Officer Carson to a brink she had not known since childhood, when she had wanted more than anything in life to see a man killed.

As the car bumped over tracks and wound its way into Park's neighborhood, Peggy thought of the lonely Jane Doe on the slab. She would be alive today if Peggy had been killed that night herself. Dean said as much when he told her the killers had been in search of a black female's scalp. And now, with Dean Grant pointing the finger at Lt. David Park, Peggy felt she must do something—anything but go home. She felt an urgency like never before. She believed others like herself were at this moment being stalked by the bastards all the other cops were now calling the Scalpers. She wanted more than anything to blow their scalps off with her .45, and she wanted to see the little dwarf's body bleeding from as many holes as her shotgun could inflict. She wanted to see his body bounce from the impact of the weapon. And she wanted to see that cold son-of-a-bitch, Park, pay for his part in all this.

No, she couldn't just go home to an empty house and stay wide-eyed for ten hours, staring at the ceiling. Neither sex nor food nor any other band-aid solution was workable any longer. Nothing could stop the hurt but vengeance, vengeance for all those who had agonizingly died at the hands of butchers working over them while they remained alive. After seeing, really seeing, the truth, there was now no varnishing it or hiding from it. If she didn't take action, another black child would be dead tonight.

She had prior knowledge of Park's address, an apartment building near the bustling intersection of 436 and Interstate 4. The apartment complex was laid out like a Holiday Inn, a low-lying, rambling structure, wrapped around by a twisting parking lot filled with cars of every size and make. One of them she passed looked like Park's. He must be here. A confrontation was quite likely.

She pulled up to his door quietly and parked. Unsure what her next move might be, she tucked the .45 into her belt at the spine and unlatched the holster on her hip to free up the .38, opting to leave the shotgun on its rack. In a moment she was at Park's door, trying to see through the curtains into the dark interior. When she drove up she'd thought there was a light on, but not now. She rapped once, twice, three times and got no answer. She could've been mistaken about the light, but maybe not She knocked loudly again.

When it was obvious no one was going to answer, she determined the direction of the manager's office. The easiest way to gain entry was to flash her badge and “badger” the night manager into opening Park's door. It would be illegal entry, and anything she might gain from the process would be inadmissible in a court of law, but she had to know if Grant was right about Park or not ... and if he was right, perhaps she'd find a way to bypass the courts.

She turned to see a woman in an agitated state coming toward her, asking, “Can I help you, officer? What's the problem?” Keys jangled from a loop in the woman's jeans. The night man had turned out to be a woman.

"I need a key to this unit."

"Is there something wrong?"

"Possibly—and possibly just a false alarm. Got a call about a disturbance."

"Not from me, you didn't.” She began to bang on the door without result, calling out, “Mr. Park? You in there?"

"Please ma'am, the key,” said Peggy, taking out her long-barreled .45 as it was beginning to irritate her back anyway. “Or do I blow off the lock?"

The woman's eyes grew fearful at the sight of the gun. “All right ... all right.” She unhinged the key for Peggy and backed off, asking, “You want I should call the owner ... or anyone?"

"Not at this time. It could be a false alarm, ma'am."

"I'm going back to the office,” she muttered. “No one inside there anyway."

Peggy wasn't so sure and she was sweating badly enough to tear away the bandage over her forehead, revealing the still healing and stitched scar put there by the scalper. She took a minute to return to the unit and snatch out the shotgun, just in case.

Had he seen her pull up? she wondered. Was he inside, pretending not to be? She imagined him pressed against the other side of the door. On entering, he planned to jump her.

"Lt. Park!” she said through the door, “Open up, it's ... it's Officer Carson. I have to talk to you."

Still no answer.

She listened for sounds, breathing, anything. Someone peeked out the door next to Park's, curious, taking a good, long look at Peggy, who by now knew that whatever went down, she was not going to get through it gracefully and unseen.

"I don't think he's in,” said the neighbor. “He's a cop, works a lot of hours ... guess you know that...."

"Yeah, well ... thank you, sir ... I do know that. Tell me, does he live alone?"

"Never seen a woman with him, if that's what you mean."

"Ever see a man with him?"

"Yeah, on occasion, but I never gave it much thought. Why you asking?"

"Ever see a dwarf or a midget with him?"

"Hey, I don't think he's that kinky.” The neighbor laughed and closed his door.

Peggy inserted the key, taking in a deep breath of air. The door cracked, and she saw only a gaping black hole before her, and inside that hole anything might lurk. She reached along the wall for the light switch, her hand shaky. She felt like a little girl again, sleeping just off the floor, afraid to let her hand over the edge of the bed for fear of a rat she'd once seen larking there. She expected a meat cleaver to take her hand off at the wrist if she didn't immediately withdraw it. Then her fingers found the switch and a light went on.

The room was thrown into a dreary, shadowy pall, the single lamp on the switch far in a corner and covered with a god-awful green shade. The wall paper was an ugly dark montage of blades of grass or leaves with an occasional pink flower. The carpet was an institutional green shag that looked infested. All in all, whatever Park was paying for the place, it wasn't worth it.

Peggy found another light switch and this brightened the room a bit more, and she saw that it was a single bedroom with a small fridge and stove perched on a linoleum section of floor. She imagined that Park ate out a lot. But she hadn't time for wondering, she knew. She must search the place as quickly and cleanly as possible and get the hell out.

She began with a suitcase that had been set aside, and she was a bit fearful of its contents. She'd seen the movie Magic, and more than anything the thought of dummies and dolls coming to life to kill people sent shivers up her spine. If the dwarf were just that, hell, he could very well be inside the damned suitcase. She knew her thoughts were childish, but she'd seen the hairy dwarf, and he, or it, had not looked quite human. She pulled back the lid slowly, cautiously, her sense of touch registering the fact long before her eyes that the case was completely empty. Park must then have placed his things into the drawers to her right.

Peggy began a search there, stopping when she came to a paper notebook with pockets crammed with newspaper clippings, stories of scalping murders which had taken place in Montana, Idaho, Iowa, and Michigan. Most of the stories were photocopies, except for the Michigan ones. Peggy unknowingly staggered to the bed and sat down, her eyes and mind entirely focused on the evidence against Park.

Her mind became like a vacuum, taking in all the photos and headlines at once. She did not hear the noise in the rooms on either side of her any longer. She didn't worry herself with the possibility that Park might enter at any moment. She didn't hear the soft step of a man in expensive loafers as he peered from the blackness of the bath not four feet away, holding his breath, nor the dwarf who stood on the body that lay prone in the tub.

The man in the tub had the dwarf's large hunting knife plunged in his heart. They'd done their work and had been getting ready to leave when Peggy Carson arrived. It was only through sheer luck, the dark carpeting and the shadows of the place that she had not seen the splat of blood where the pair of brothers had dispatched Lt. David Park. This killing was not for hair, or scalp, or skin. This one had been for safety's sake, because Park, above all others, had tenaciously chased them across the country, never giving up, like a hound on a scent. This plan had been hatched by Ian and approved by Van.

The unexpected entry of Peggy Carson posed a new wrinkle.

Ian saw that she was absorbed in what she was reading, material they must turn to their own use and benefit now.

He stepped out silently, in slow-motion time, realizing she was armed and dangerous, as she had proven before, realizing also that it would be a struggle to keep Van from slicing her forehead and scalp where Ian had begun before, that he would want to finish the job started. But Ian had a far more fetching and possibly rewarding plan for Peggy Carson and the police, a plan that would screen Ian and Van long enough to get the baby scalp that Ian wanted before they must rush from this area where too much of their activity had come to light.

Ian had a handkerchief he'd doused with chloroform. Within inches of the concentrating reader now, close enough to feel the heat rising off her body, Ian struck, forcing the sleeping potion into her eyes, nose, and mouth all at once. He felt the kick and fight go out of her almost instantly, and in a moment Peggy Carson lay in his arms and the dwarf was straddled across her midsection, undoing her uniform, forcing a hand against her breast, cooing and getting excited at the touch of her skin. He examined the forehead and realized for the first time it was the same woman as that night in the alley.

Ian knew he was going to have to disagree and fight with Van this time.

"Let's do her right this time,” said Van. drooling onto his hairy chin.

"We can't, no ... no!” Ian whispered, pointing to the walls which were paper thin.

"This is too tempting,” Van whispered back, his long, uncut nails digging into the flesh of Peggy Carson's scalp. He then began to undo her belt and zipper, sniffing over her like a dog in heat.

Ian pulled him away from her, tearing out long strands of his hair to do so, he must tug so hard. “I said no!” It was hard to be emphatic and whisper at the same time, but Van was beginning to realize that the girl meant something special to Ian.

"Peggy's scalp stays. We don't harm her."

"Peggy?” he snarled at the suggestion, the big orbs glaring at Ian.

"I've got a much better plan for her."

"I want her ... I want to eat parts of her...."

"No! Not if you want the babies, remember the babies! The black scalp didn't work. Now we've got to try baby hair, like I said! If we kill this one, it'll only tell them we're still at large."

"No, no ... if we kill her, they'll still think he did it,” He indicated the bathroom where Park's body had been left.

"Be reasonable! You're always unreasonable when you ... when you're like this."

"I am being reasonable."

"No, no you're not. If Park scalped her, then how in God's name did she kill him with his own knife? Trust me, this time I know what's best for us both."

The grim, large lips of the dwarf parted in a lopsided smile and he nodded his head successively while getting ahold of his emotions. He did very much want to do the girl ... very much ... but something in Ian's voice told him that his brother was taking on responsibility and growing. “Yes, all right ... let's hear your plan."

"No time to tell it to you. Just help me bring Park's body back out here and place it right where you stabbed him."

"Oh, clever ... I begin to see...."

Dyer was incredulous. He didn't believe what Dean was trying to tell him as they sped toward Park's place. He didn't want to even consider the possibility that Park had anything whatever to do with the slayings—any more than he had wanted to believe Sid Corman had—and he didn't want to believe that Peggy Carson could be so stupid as to go after the man on such flimsy evidence, acting like Annie Oakley.

"Christ, Dr. Grant, it's crazy ... all of it! Why're we all focusing in on the department this way, like this perverted killing is something of an inside job? To my way of thinking, we should be focusing outward. To my way of thinking, these murderers are out there in the community, not in the department. Sure, Dave can be uncooperative and secretive, and he's been a real ass not to confide in me, his partner, about his true identity, but that hardly makes him a mass murderer. I mean, come on, Doctor."

"I'm sorry my investigation of his past got out, Frank."

"Yeah, well, sorry won't help if one of those two cops shoots the other when Peggy goes storming in, Christ."

"That's why I called you."

Dyer had killed the siren now that they were near their destination, not wishing to add to the chaos he expected to find on Park's doorstep. “I don't understand your job, Dr. Grant. I mean, you're a coroner, right? And coroners work with microscopes and slides, not guns and bullets, yet here you are, investigating people over the wires. That kind of stinks, you know that?"

Dean wondered if he should confess now to Dyer that Dean's contacts he, too, had been on Dean's list of people being surveyed by in Chicago. It wasn't the best of moments to do so. Instead Dean replied, “Everyone's suspect in a case like this, Frank, and you know exactly why we're all looking over one another's shoulder. Someone did take Sid's scissors to plant at the murder scene. Now, whether that someone is one of our scalpers or not, he's guilty of a crime. Besides, you know of the calls to Dr. Hamel, the contents of those calls."

"Park wouldn't have had anything to do with such a play."

"Who then? You?"

"Me? What the hell'd I do a thing like that for?"

"Sid fools around some, a lot, from what I've seen. You have a wife—"

"And kids, but you're clutching at straws here, doc. I'm not no goddamned killer, or liar, or the kind of man who would handle a problem like that by devious means. If you do a check on my record, like you did Park's, you might learn how I'd handle Sid Corman, if he ever went near my wife."

"Then you won't mind if I do just that—run a check on your past?"

He glared at Dean. “You're something of a real bastard, doc."

Dean considered his point briefly. “You get as old as me, Frank ... see as much as me ... if you remain a cop for as long as I have remained a coroner, and you'll have people calling you a bastard, too, believe me."

"Bastard,” Frank Dyer muttered in repetition.. “Park ... he's a bastard, too, come to think of it. This working like James Bond, on his own, it ain't no good for nobody, and it doesn't inspire confidence in a partner, believe me. Suppose he is close to the killer. Suppose he's hot on his trail, and suppose the killer turns around and pops him. Where does that leave the rest of us? Some bag of shit we got ourselves here, Doc, a caseload of four dead by scalping and more elsewhere from what you say, a so-called investigative team that so distrust one another, nobody can tell what's what. Just the kinda business that let the Boston Strangler do his handiwork for so long without ever being detected. Nice going, one and all."

Dyer was right again, but so far as Dean could tell, the screw-up had begun well before his arrival, at the top level, with Chief Hodges. “I agree one hundred percent, Frank, and I'd like to make a pact with you now. No more secrets between us."

Dyer looked across at Dean to take his measure. “Okay, fair enough."

"You remind me a lot of a cop friend of mine in Chicago, Frank."

"Oh, yeah?” Tough guy, or what?"

"Smart guy who cuts through crap like a razor's edge. How do you size up Park?"

"I say you've got the man all wrong. I say what he told you was pure truth, but hey, I've been known to be wrong."

"Thanks for the qualified observation."

After returning Park's body to the living area and unceremoniously dumping him at the spot where it would be determined Peggy Carson had killed him when he'd attacked her, Ian cooly gave Van orders to help him wipe clean all traces of the dead man's blood in the bathroom. “The tiles, the bath, sink, floor, everything."

"Do it yourself,” said Van, nastily, “I'm going to look at the girl."

"Damn it, Van, we're doing this to keep you safe from harm, from men like Grant!"

"I'm not afraid of Grant or any of those bastards you seem so in awe of, big brother."

"Van!"

"And you're getting just a little too smart for your own good!"

"We don't have time for this, please. Oh, damn it, I'll do it myself."

He worked until nothing was left on any of the surfaces. Then he guided Peggy's lithe body over toward the corpse and saw to it that blood was smeared on her hands and clothing. He had worked with rubber gloves on the whole time.

Ian went out to Peggy Carson's squad car, pulled open a door, and taken the shotgun. He pointing it at Van, telling him he could riddle Van's entire hairy little body with the pull of a trigger and then really become the hero of the hour, having bagged both members of the Scalping Crew. Van's face blanched beneath the wolfman features. “You'd do that to me?"

"If you don't get off her and agree to my plan as it stands, yes!"

Van laughed as he got down off Peggy, his mouth drooling. “All right ... all right, Ian."

After some pleading with Van, they left her there, the two slowing only at the door to make certain no one saw them. The dwarf scurried out ahead for the safety of the car. They'd had to delay their hunting because of Park and his feeble blackmail attempt Park had been onto them for some time, but he hadn't wanted to bring them to justice. He'd only wanted a payoff, a large payoff, and he'd wanted to talk to the dwarf, he'd said. The bastard had gotten just what he deserved. Nobody talked to Van but Ian.

And now Ian knew the flaw in his deformed brother's reasoning, but he was having a terrible time convincing Van of it, convincing him that the victims of the scalpings should of necessity have been innocent, virginal, young, and untouched, that this would more likely please the Dark One than all the scalps they might bring from such as Peggy Carson, the redheaded bitch, and that whore from the park. It was imperative now that they find scalps of children. It just made good sense. Someone pure of heart and experience, a soul Satan would delight in winning over. The magic Van wished to work via His power and Ian's genes and Ian's hair could very possibly take hold if the elemental ingredient was a virginal boy or girl, an infant, perhaps, a so-called angel of God. So, why couldn't Van see-this and understand? No, he was too stubborn, too set in his ways, inflexible, self-important, arrogant. Why could he not accept the fact that the Dark One had for once whispered in Ian's ear, told him what Van was unable to fathom or didn't want to, about kids, about innocent little kids.

All Van could see was anger and rage at any slight suggestion, yet everything Ian did, he did for Van. It wasn't fair, none of it, for even if they were ever to succeed, there'd be no place left for Ian anywhere, he knew that. And he knew that when they got home tonight, Van would beat him, and he'd stand for it, stand for it as he always had.

"You see Park's car anywhere?"

"No, but it could be on the other side of the complex.” Dyer took a deep breath and tried shouting, calling Park's first name. “Dave! Dave, you in there? Dave? It's me, Frank Dyer."

This got no response, but suddenly a light went on and inside someone screamed. “Peggy!” shouted Dean, “Peggy, open up!"

The door was being unlocked from inside, and when Dean pulled it open, he and Dyer stood face-to-face with a wild-eyed, frightened Peggy Carson, who fell forward into Dean's arms. “He ... left me no choice ... came up from behind,” she said as he carried her into the room, coming to a standstill when he and Dyer saw what remained of Frank's partner on the floor. Dean had prayed they would get here soon enough to stop any bloodshed, and his predominating fear was for Peggy, certain that Park would do her harm. But here he was, lying in a pool of his own blood in the semi-dark of the tawdry hotel room that he'd been living out of since his move from Michigan. Dyer, under his breath, cursed several times while Dean made Peggy as comfortable as he could in a straight-backed chair in the corner, since the bed was littered with an array of guns. Judging from her empty holster, at least one piece in the arsenal was hers. But Dyer had died of a knife wound to the heart, from all appearances. Dyer went to his knees over his partner, disbelieving his own eyes.

"Damn it, you've killed him, Carson."

"Don't touch a thing,” Dean ordered Frank. “Call for Corman and bring my valise from the car, Frank ... Frank!"

One of the neighbors, having heard the disturbance, stepped into the doorway. It was the man Peggy had spoken to earlier, and he stared wide-eyed at Park, whose chest was a dried mat of blood, the hilt of a hunting knife protruding from it. “Holy shit, this one of those gags they play at parties?"

"Get him out of here, Frank, please,” ordered Dean, who looked up at the stricken eyes of Peggy Carson. “I could break your neck, Peggy, coming here like this."

"But I didn't do it, Dean ... I swear!"

Dean took her by the arms and motioned her to a chair in a corner. “Sit down before you collapse,” he said. Then he took in the room at a glance, analyzing it the way any policeman coming to the door would. On the bed lay two handguns, both Peggy's. Propped against a wall was Peggy's shotgun. Scattered and torn and tossed about the room were newspaper clippings and photocopies of news stories, and Dean, using his fingertips, turned one to read the headline:

TEEN FOUND MUTILATED IN FOREST GLEN WOODS.

Another used the word scalped. Dean then saw the scalpel at Park's side. Maybe they had the bloody Scalper after all. What a blessing, if it were so. There'd be no more such horrendous murders, no more need to go to sleep wondering if tomorrow the next victim would be found. He could go home to his wife and his own piled up work and spend Christmas, only a week away now, where he could feel in a Christmas mood, in the arms of Jackie, surrounded by a snow-whitened landscape outside their high-rise condo fronting Lake Michigan.

But there was much to prove before such fantasies could be made realities. Dean and Sid would have to be more thorough and relentless on this particular crime scene than on any of the previous ones they'd worked together. They were about to set out on a course to prove beyond any doubt, through scientific investigation, that David Park, part Indian, had developed a murderous rage against people and randomly ripped from them their scalps.

First in Dean's mind was the question of where in this small apartment were the scalps? That, above all else, would tie Park to the killings. When Dyer returned, his face ashen, Dean put him to work looking through the closets and beneath the bed for anything resembling a container, from a shoebox to a leather pouch. As Dyer searched and Peggy Carson began to regain enough control to repeatedly deny killing Park, Dean removed the long bowie knife from Park's heart and placed it, blood and all, into a clear bag which he promptly sealed and placed in the valise. As he did so, he said, “Office Dyer, you will witness this evidence gathering for the record please."

"Yes, sure,” Dyer's voice was still shaky. Obviously he had not found anything in the way of a shoebox yet.

"The long knife is of the type Sid and I were agreed upon as the second weapon used on the victims of the Scalper, Frank."

"I just can't believe it was Park all this time..."

"There's a lot of evidence to point to it. Note that now I have the scalpel put aside."

"Got it."

Dyer went toward the bathroom, going deeper in his search. When he looked into the dark interior of the bathroom, he saw something hanging from the shower curtain. He thought at first it was a pair of women's pantyhose, but when he flicked on the light, he gasped and backed away several inches.

"What is it, Frank? Frank?"

"The redhead's ... hair ... sc-sca-scalp...."

"Had to be somewhere,” Dean offered, stepping over the body and joining Frank, staring at the very clean and nicely cured, long-haired scalp. “Only the one, huh? Nothing else?"

"Maybe he tossed them after a while .. smells, don't it?"

It had an animal odor, yes, like wet leather. Dean went back to his case, took out a pair of forceps, returned to the scalp, snatched it off the rod, and stuffed it into another of his plastic bags. “What the hell's keeping Corman?” he wondered aloud. “Weren't you able to get him?"

"I know dispatch is beeping him. He's got to know by now."

"I'm not waiting all night for him.” Dean returned to the body and began taking scrapings, scrapings of coagulated blood from the chest and from the hands. “I'll want the clothing once he's transported, including the shoes,” he told Dyer. Dean allowed a momentary glance into Park's open eyes and face. It was always a mistake to do so, and now he wished he hadn't. They'd been talking earlier that day in Dean's lab, the man's mind active and alive, his muscle, nerves, and senses working, and now he was as lifeless and still as a mound of sand. Something in the dead man's eyes or expression told Dean he had been taken by surprise by Peggy Carson, shocked, perhaps, by her forcing her way in at gunpoint. But how, then, did he die as a result of his own knife?

Dean went to Peggy to ask her if she could now tell him exactly what had happened between her and Park. But Peggy seemed totally confused, telling him that she had not confronted Park, that he hadn't been in the room until she was grabbed from behind and choked unconscious.

"Choked?"

"Yes, and I must've fainted."

"Where were you when you were grabbed from behind?"

Dean sat at the very spot she indicated and glanced over his shoulder to where the bath was. “Had you secured the bathroom, Peggy, before going over the news clippings, you might not have been surprised by Park."

"No, I thought he was out ... thought I was alone. Then somebody grabbed me and I ... I lost consciousness.'

This sounded odd to Dean. He slipped out a slide from his valise and asked Peggy to exhale on it."

"What for?"

"Call it a breathalizer test."

"I wasn't drinking!"

"I just want a sample, Peggy, please. Humor me, all right?"

She looked deeply into Dean's eyes. Seeing the concern there, she did as he asked. He immediately treated the slide with a fixative, covered it, and clamped the two together. Later he'd analyze it in the lab.

"What in God's name!” It was Chief Hodges in evening attire. His bulk filled the doorway. “I was just across at Nero's when I heard."

"Come on, give me a hand,” Dean said to him.

"With what?"

"Spray."

"Spray?"

"Seconal."

"Oh, yeah ... that shit."

"I want the whole carpet covered with it,” said Dean.

"The whole damned carpet, huh?” Hodges wasn't use to taking orders, but the situation called for cooperation, and soon he was going about the room with the can of seconal spray as if it were Lysol.

"The bed, too, Chief."

Hodges frowned, but did as he was told.

"It'll highlight any blood spots, give us a trail, if there is one, tell us exactly where Park was when he died and if he did any twisting,” said Dean. “More to the point, we'll know if he died here, or was carried here."

"That's rather obvious, isn't it?” asked Dyer from his knees at the bed. He was searching between the springs and the mattress for any additional incriminating scalps. "Ugh," he said, his hand touching hair. “I think I've got another one, Dr. Grant"

Dean rushed to the spot, telling Dyer to keep his mitts off. With the foreceps, Dean again had the prized evidence put into a sealed bag. Dean had already gathered up the newspaper clippings, pointing them out to Hodges who, by this time, was embarrassed and delighted at once. Embarrased because he believed all that David Park had led him to believe, and had been led to believe so by someone in faraway Michigan as well. Delighted because now he could return to the Mayor and tell him that the Scalper was a thing of the past. The two scalps in Park's room alone were enough to convict him, in Hodges’ book.

Even so, the more evidence Dean and Dyer unearthed in the tiny apartment, the more Dean wondered. Something smelled here, and it was more than just the scalps. It would take a little more time for the seconal spray to work, and in the meantime, Dean went again to Peggy Carson and asked her questions. “Did you hear Park come up on you? Did he say anything to you?"

"No, nothing."

"When did you grab hold of the knife?"

"I didn't. I swear, I didn't see the knife until you and Frank came through the door. I didn't kill him!"

"Don't worry, Officer Carson,” said Hodges, “you did this city a service, and it's going to be written up that way. Don't be surprised if you get a commendation, young lady."

"I don't want a commendation for killing someone I had no part in—” But Hodges wasn't listening to Peggy. He merely continued on.

"But how did you know Park was the man who had attacked you before?"

"I was acting on information I ... learned from Dr. Grant, sir—but believe me, I swear it's the truth when I tell you—"

"Then Dr. Grant is to share the limelight as well. Right, Dr. Grant?"

"Hold your commendations, limelight and all your congratulations, Chief,” said Dean, who now turned out the light switch and asked Dyer to do the same with the light in the bath. The seconal spray turned splat marks and sprays of blood both large and small all about the room into eerie irregular shapes over walls and floor, but nothing on the bed. It were as if the blood was telling a tale. Most of the story was in the shaggy, near black-green carpet. The seconal told Dean Grant that Park's blood had created a clear and eerie trail between here and the bath. To Dean's trained eye it meant only one thing.

Pointing to the floor on the far side of Park's body where the seconal spray indicated more than one trail of blood from the bath to where the body now lay at the foot of the bed, Dean said, “Lt. Park's not the Scalper and he never was."

"That's nonsense,” said Hodges, not wanting to believe Dean. “No one can make that kind of judgment based on a can of spray—"

"Chief, Dean's right,” said Sid Corman, who entered in darkness from outside, where now a police barricade had formed to keep people back. “Park would have had to stagger back and forth two, maybe three times, to lose that much blood in that section of carpet from just a single knife wound."

"Bullshit,” replied Hodges. “I've known cases, even seen men with knife wounds to walk blocks to get to a hospital and survive!"

"Not with a knife shoved all the way into the heart, I'm afraid,” said Dean. “Besides, if all that blood on Park's chest is his, it's been pumping out of him for at least an hour. It's so coagulated that—"

"Shit, I saw a man once in a bar fight who took a knife to the brain, right down the middle, and he was rushed to a hospital. Didn't survive the removal of the blade, but he lived for hours after the initial—"

"The brain and the heart are two entirely different organs, Chief,” said Sid.

"God damn it, you two aren't going to tell me that we don't have solid proof against this crazed cop! We've got two scalps! We've got a knife and a scalpel! We've got all those news stories and the man's record with the Michigan cops. He was there and now he's here. We've got him!"

The lights were returned and the men squared off at one another with darting eyes. Hodges, understandably, wanted what all of the others wanted: an end to the madness in his city. “I want the same as you, Chief, but we can't whitewash this thing simply because it will please everyone to do so. Suppose for a moment that—"

"Screw you, Grant. This is no longer your concern. Corman's the coroner of Orlando, and if you'll just hand over what you've taken here, you can get on a plane for Chicago and we'll all be much better off burying our own trash."

"Burying, Chief? Or sweeping it under the rug?"

"You are no longer needed here, Grant. Now do you go, or do I have my officers take you out bodily?"

Dean looked to Sid for support. “Chief, please—let us do our job. Grant's concern is only for the truth,” said Sid. “Give us time to prove Park guilty, and we will ... we will."

Hodges gritted his teeth. He was a man unaccustomed to backing down from a directive already issued, or a fight he knew he could win. “You've got twenty-four hours.” Hodges then tossed the seconal spray can down and stormed out as an ambulance, siren blaring, rushed into the lot outside. This time, Hodges wisely dodged the press. His last remarks in the press had been an embarrassment even to himself.

Soon enough the tragic and awful tale of a cop turned psycho would be spread across the front pages, Dean thought, unless he could prove otherwise. At the moment “otherwise” amounted to a series of oddities about the scene and his own gut reaction. They were not enough to save Park, and whatever family he had, from the merciless scrutiny of the public. No one in Dean's position, no policeman on any force in the nation wanted to point the finger at an innocent cop, dead and unable to tell his side of the story—no more so than, say, the Pilot's Association wanted to see the finger pointed at a defenseless and dead pilot after a 747 crash. As much as he'd suspected Park of keeping secrets, Dean could not now condemn him out of hand as the so-called Scalper. Maybe, just maybe, it was exactly what the real killer or killers wanted him and Sid Corman and the rest of the city to believe. Time would tell. Time, and tests which they must begin immediately.

Talk outside was running to a lover's quarrel between Park and Peggy Carson. Sid had heard the wild rumor on his way in, along with the fact that Park had taken a knife to the heart.

"Lay you ten-to-one, Sid, the knife I took out of Dave Park's chest will fit contour for contour the wounds inflicted on our scalping victims."

"And the scalpel?"

"Neat switchblade job, just as you thought."

"You ever get a strange, kinda sick feeling, Dean, when you're right about such things? Almost like ... like if you say something, it then happens?"

Dean knew the feeling well. It was a kind of déjâ vu. When a man spent so much time thinking, contemplating, and gathering information on a case he'd become obsessed with, it was not uncommon.

"Yeah, Sid ... I know the feeling.” Dean then asked Dyer to take Peggy home. She was being charged with nothing, and in fact had been commended by the Chief of Police for bravery above and beyond the call of duty.

"Are you going to be all right, Peggy?” Dean asked her at the door.

"I ... I'm a survivor.” She managed a weak, less-than-persuasive smile as her hand went to grip his.

Dean almost said obviously, but instead, he gave her a warm hug. “Hopefully, by sunrise Sid and I will have made some sense of all this. As soon as I know—"

"Thanks ... thanks so much."

"It wasn't wise of you to rush out on me tonight,” he reprimanded her.

She dropped her gaze. “I'm sorry I betrayed our friendship. I just felt I had to do something ... and now this. I can't remember killing Park. I don't believe I did, and if I didn't—God, they might've killed me, too. When I came to, my shirt was torn open, my belt unbuckled, and the zipper on my uniform opened, and something ... or someone ... had touched me. I was shivering from it."

"Go with Frank now,” Dean advised her. “Get some rest, and tomorrow we'll talk more."

Dean turned to find Sid working over Dave Park's inert form. “What do you think, Sid?"

"What do I think? What do I think? Well, I'll tell you, Dean, old boy, I think we're both goddamned fools."

"How's that, Sid?"

"Figure it out, Dean. We're here ulcerating inside over a dead body and trying to put all the pieces together again, at least so no seams show while other doctors are in bed. I know you enjoy being a member of a rare breed, and I know that guys in our profession are in short supply, but that doesn't cut it with me anymore. I tell you, I'm about ready to hang out my shingle, become a G.P.” While Sid talked, he worked. He was taking a car vacuum to Park's body, the little machine sifting fibers, loose hairs, any minute evidence that could tell them something about how the man might have died.

Dean knew exactly what Sid's complaints were. He had heard them recounted a hundred times by every M.E. he'd ever met. Only a fraction of the medical examiners around the country were even qualified as forensic pathologists, and only a few of these worked at it fulltime. Maybe forty or forty-five doctors in the whole United States had the requisite extra five years of medical training and were full-time M.E.'s like himself.

When the money end of it was looked at, Dean realized why most doctors opted for hospital and private practice, where they could pull down $175,000 a year. Maybe Sid was right. Maybe the two of them, making in the neighborhood of $75,000 yearly, were fools after all.

Outside, Dean could hear a strident woman's voice, shouting such things as, “I saw she had blood in her eyes, I knew she'd come for no good reason. God help me, I just knew—I knew!—shouldn't've let her go bustin’ in, but I, I didn't know what else to do...."

Somehow, a sharp-eyed reporter had gotten through the door with the medics, and Dean found him looking over his shoulder at Park's remains just before the medics were allowed their way with the body, Sid instructing them to bag the clothing and deliver the corpse to Sid's slab room for an autopsy.

"Did the policewoman kill him, Dr. Grant?” asked the reporter.

For the first time Dean looked at the extra pair of eyes in the room. The man looked remarkably like Tom Warner without the glasses. “We're not soothsayers or seers, young man, we're pathologists. And pathology takes a great deal of careful reading of scientific evidence. I'm afraid I can't answer you one way or another at this time. Now please, if you will—"

"But Dr. Grant, your reputation, your years of experience ... can't you give me at least your best ‘guesstimate'?"

"Guesstimate—do you people want to print guesses and hunches and gossip, or do you want facts, figures and informed opinions?"

"We're in the business of reporting to the public, and the public has a right to know if it's true or not, if the Scalper has been killed by an Orlando policewoman tonight, a policewoman who was attacked by the Scalper not two days ago!"

"Yeah, all right, then ... you've already got your story outside in the parking lot. You don't need me to add anything to it."

"Can I take that as confirmation, sir?"

"You may not."

"But you said—"

"I said, if you were listening, that at this point nobody knows what happened here, and nobody knows if David Park was or was not the Scalper. Is that clear enough? Sorry to spoil the headline you'd probably already fashioned and sent to your editor. Officer, will you get this man out of here?"

"Come on, Murphy!” shouted a cop at the reporter. “How'd you slide in here, on your own grease, or VO-5?"

"Damned reporters,” muttered Sid. “They always want to try people in the press."

"Everyone wants assurances, Sid—assurances from men like us—that everything's right with the world again, and that God has seen to the punishment of the wicked."

"Ain't it the truth. Looks like we got an all-nighter ahead of us, my friend. Are you up for it?"

"Hodges hasn't given us much choice."

"Got a cot in the lab. We'll try and catch forty winks between tests. Got to keep the coffee coming, and somehow make my wife believe I'm working again."

"Come on, let's get out of here and get to it,” said Dean.

"Got everything?"

"It's all here,” Dean said, patting his valise, “all the real story, if we can rightly decipher it."

"Hate to imagine what tomorrow's headlines'll say."

"Pretty good notion,” Dean muttered as they arrived at the coroner's car and began putting their wares into the back seat. “I know I'll be misquoted, and have my words twisted or given some innuendo I hadn't intended—or taken out of context."

"It's an occupational hazard,” replied Sid. “It's why I try my best to leave the talking to others."

They pulled out of the lot, driving down 436 to Denny's for two takeout meals and coffee, and soon they were racing back downtown.