Scalpers

ONE

O'Hare International Airport held no allure for Dean Grant. He'd had to sit in bars and lounges and cafes too often and too long at airports all over the country to find any fascination with planes and the people who moved them. He had had to wait too often for his bags, and he had sat in too damned many holding patterns to wish it upon himself again. “Holding pattern” was a nice way of putting it, a euphemism for incompetence and disorder, yet it might do for the Chicago City Morgue at times, too. Grant's thoughts were never far from his work and his workplace.

When he could, he flew out of Midway Airport to avoid the O'Hare crowds, from the cabs, buses, and cars going in, to the hawkers and press stringers that hung on like kudzu. But this time out, he hadn't a chance of getting to Orlando quickly from Midway, and for the past month—since his publication of a medical paper detailing the floater cases—news reporters had been dogging his every step, despite his advice that they read the article in M.E., the magazine for medical examiners who kept up with current practices and news in the field. Since his article's publication, filled as it was with startling evidence of a horrid serial murderer, the drowning deaths, and the possible involvement of killers remaining at large, Dean's phone had not stopped ringing. Boston, L.A., as well as Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and New York were continuing to uncover mysterious deaths that had gone on record as insoluble and which seemed to fit the modus operandi of one Angel Rae, a.k.a. Brother Timothy.

Officer Ken Kelso was following up the most promising leads in an effort to uncover a nest of Angel Raes, sick family members with the same mental aberration, people prepared to turn any helpless victim into a floater in order to float them to the “other side” in God's name, enjoying their work so immeasurably as to keep scrapbooks and pictures. However, to date no significant leads had surfaced. Ken was shuttling back and forth from Chicago to Boston and New York a lot lately.

Kelso, like Dean, had argued hotly for more manpower, to hire someone to compile and correlate all data that could be assembled on such deaths nationwide. Such things were time-consuming and costly. Dean and his friend, Kelso, kept after their superiors on this one, determined as two pit bulls. But bureacratic minds moved even more slowly than bureacratic wheels. As with everything in the Chicago police and crime divisions, the rule from on top was: Ignore it long enough and it will go away. The sad thing was, all that went away were helpless old people and children suckered into a pool of water somewhere, and convinced that drowning was the answer to life's problems.

The plane was finally on line for takeoff and the sound of the idling engines became a roar. Dean felt the power build in the jet as it seemed held against its will, then suddenly released to speed down the runway. Now it was a charge, the wheels beneath them unheard, whirring and bumpy, until the giant creature in whose belly he rode lifted off the ground.

As the plane slowly worked its way out of the pattern and wound around Lake Michigan, Dean felt better, finally on his way. Maybe a change of place and a change of people would help his troubled mind. Lately he feared he was beginning to act and sound like Irwin Cook, an old friend who had worked himself into an early grave over the floater business. Dean's own health was failing over it, along with his relationships with others: co-workers, friends, his wife, Jackie, and most of all, his knuckle-headed superior.

In the meantime, Sid Corman, an old friend who'd gone through Korea with Dean, and the Orlando, Florida, Chief Medical Examiner, telephoned with a request for Dean to help him out on a case which promised to be more bizarre and puzzling than even the case of the Chicago floaters. Dean had put Sid off for weeks, and in that time another beaten body had been found in Orlando, missing patches of skin and scalp.

When Sid first contacted Dean, he listened patiently to the larger man, whose voice boomed over the wires. He finally said, “Sid, we see a lotta battered people with pieces of scalp and skin torn away. I don't see what you're driving at."

"Damn it, Dean, this isn't just a little scalp, it's the whole damned scalp—you know, like in John Wayne's westerns, when the Indians get fuckin’ mad."

"You mean scalped scalped?"

"That's right."

"How many victims did you say?"

"Three so far, and now the whole damned city's going crazy for revenge or something. A guy just shot down one of our original natives on 436."

"Original natives?"

"A Seminole!"

"Indian?"

"Yes, damn it, right near here! Altamonte Springs Road. The papers put it down as another pissed commuter going nuts in the congestion out that way—we've got terrible traffic problems here, what with tripling our damned population—but it's not the roads, you know?"

"Sid, this is long-distance."

"Anyway, turns out under interrogation that this guy confesses to having shot the Seminole to put an end to the scalping murders. People're going nuts."

"What can I do to help?"

"I read about your work on the floaters up there—and, well, Dean, you're the only man I know that might come up with something we could've overlooked. Would you come and—"

"To Orlando? Just drop everything here, Sid? Come on!"

"You've got Sybil! She could—"

"She could, but I'm also breaking in a new man."

"Yeah, I heard about Huxsoll. How's he holding up?"

"He isn't, Sid."

"The hell you say! He went that quick?"

"He didn't wait, Sid.” Dean had a flash back to the funeral, a picture of the man's broken parents at the casket. He'd cursed the ugly disease that had taken a sensitive, caring man who was the best laboratory assistant Dean had ever worked with. Huxsoll had only been twenty-nine.

"Damn...” Sid had muttered, unable to say anything the least bit philosophic or useful.

"Precisely.” Dean had added that Huxsoll had left a note, saying he wished no one to suffer any further grief or pain on his account.

"Guess maybe if I had AIDS, I'd shoot myself, too."

"Warren jumped from the roof of his apartment building."

"Sorry, Dean ... really sorry."

"Makes you wonder about a lot of things, my friend, like when's it going to stop—"

"If ever."

Dean nodded at his end of the phone. “You always could finish a sentence for me."

"Dean, old buddy, you damn sure could use time away from that chilly city. Tell you what, you come on down, bring Jackie with you, and when we get a moment—"

"Jackie can't pick up and go parading to Florida anymore than I can, and even if she could—"

"Then what about you? All expenses paid, compliments of the Orlando City Police. Free citrus. Hell, boy, you're more famous now than Peter Hukros ever was."

Dean laughed at the reference to the famous pyschic. “They're not likely to roll out any red carpets for an M.E."

"Try me."

Dean hesitated a moment. “You've got that much pull down there, huh? Must be nice."

"Don't give me that shit, doctor. I know you've got that fat cop, Kelso, wrapped around your pinkie."

Dean thought of all the reasons not to make the trip. He also thought of all the reasons it might do him some good—and his standing at home, and the job downtown. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, he thought.

No doubt his taking some of the years of accrued vacation time he had coming to him would be frowned upon. Such an act would be construed as a cover for a job-hunting foray into the sunbelt. Orlando sends for Grant with a cock-a-mamy story about rampant scalping in order to woo him away from Chicago. Once he saw what Orlando had to offer ... all that. Even if it weren't true, he could jockey for better treatment and conditions at home, get some of that money they kept so tightly balled in their fists.

Besides, he'd been promising himself for years he would one day visit Sid's so-called “dynamite” set-up in Orlando, to see his sleek, modern forensics lab that was supposed to be housed in a newly built skyscraper overlooking a lake filled with boats. The building also housed all administrative law enforcement agencies in the rapidly expanding city where, by all accounts, new towers sprouted as quickly as beanstalks.

"I know you want to see some sunshine, and we've got it, even if it is December,” Corman promised.

"It'll have to be short, Sid."

"Have you back before Christmas."

Dean left off by saying he had to make arrangements, and told Sid it would take him perhaps forty-eight hours to get out of Chicago. Dean then set about making those difficult arrangements. His hardest task was talking with Jackie. She remained shaken at having nearly been a floater casualty herself, and her nights were frequented by Angel Rae's ghost. But Dean believed she must confront the situation to become whole again, and that his being so close at hand only made her hide within herself more. Dean was not at all sure if this time their marriage could survive the onslaught of his work. He'd convinced her to see a psychiatrist, to go to work at chipping away at the horror retained in her psyche from a close call with drowning and murder.

Chief Ken Kelso did not make Dean's junket to Florida any easier, either. In fact, they had had a fight over it. Ken thought him foolish and heartless to leave Jackie at a time like this, while Dean argued that it was necessary for her as well as for him. Kelso also tried to tell Dean he had much too much work in the crime lab to go off looking for more, and he reminded him of the ongoing investigation into possible links with other floating deaths across the nation. “Am I supposed to do it all on my own?” he'd screamed.

Sybil alone had thought Dean's taking off was great. It would leave her in charge at the lab, and she could lord it over the new man even more than she did now.

Telling Borel, their superior, was easy. It jolly well left a good feeling in Dean's heart because it left the little four-eyed pimp guessing and begging information all over the building. Dean had calculated right on that score.

Now he was on United Flight 217, with a briefcase full of news accounts and papers forwarded to him by Sid to review before his touchdown in Orlando.

Dean now opened up a copy of yesterday's Orlando Sentinel to stare again at the headline and the splatter picture across the front which looked vaguely like a poster for the latest horror movie. It was actually a colored photograph of a scalping victim. The sprawled, partially clad figure of a woman looked like a manikin dropped from a height, broken and disfigured. The head was ghastly, missing a wide splotch of hair and skin. Dean wondered how on earth police had allowed a photographer in so close to get such a shot, and how a responsible paper could come to the conclusion that it was proper to use it. But then, anything could be justified, and if community feeling was aroused enough, as it seemed to be, the mayor of the city himself may well have seen to it the papers got the photo. It could be a cautionary tale: lock your doors, and do not wander about after dark, for the thing that kills is loose again.

Dean saw that Sid, as expected, had run every test imaginable at the crime scenes, but had come up with only the minutest evidence. It appeared that Sid was looking for a miracle, and Dean was not at all sure he could produce one. The trip would likely do little more than bolster Sid's spirits, but if it helped, why not? Still, the whole case was as intriguing as it was disturbing.

Dean knew that scalping alone could cause enough trauma and blood loss to end in death, but he also knew that there were recorded cases of people who had survived the butcherous work of a scalper. He wondered if there was anyone anywhere in the state of Florida, or in the nation for that matter, who was going about today with his scalp missing, a ball cap pulled tightly across the forehead to hide the disfigurement. It was one of those thoughts that came in at him from out of nowhere, for no particular reason. But it led to a second thought: he wondered if anyone had ever lived through a scalping recently, and if so, could he or she identify—or help to identify—this assailant? If there were such a person, how would he go about finding him? Hospital records? Clinics, perhaps? Such a victim would have to create vivid memories at the late-night emergency ward. Dean wondered if the cops had given it a thought.

Tired, feeling drained, Dean nevertheless considered the many unanswered questions. He wondered if the guy who was responsible for the scalping might not be missing his own scalp, either due to a chemical accident or a war wound, or malformation at birth. For one reason or another, the killer seemed to have a bizarre fetish for this piece of skin and hair. Was he just a crazed bald man? Dean chuckled inwardly at the thought. A stewardess came by with the beverage cart, asking if he would care to have anything to drink. He ordered a Tom Collins and made a mess of moving his papers about locating his wallet. In a moment she was gone and he was left with his drink and his questions.

He scanned some of Sid's workups on the earlier victims and saw what he expected: multiple contusions, knife wounds, punctures. He noticed the killer's habit of not only taking the scalp, but leaving a design on the victim's head: a triangle, a circular pattern, a square. What was that all about? The victims’ hair color and gender didn't seem important. One victim was a man, middle fifties, small in stature. Dean wondered if there was any way to connect the victims. This was important, for if the victims knew one another or lived within a certain radius, then there was not only somewhere to begin, but it meant the killer's work was not completely and utterly random.

God forbid the killer did his work without knowing something about his victims. Without connecting them in some way in his mind, he was leaving no scent and no trail. A patternless, random killer, selecting his victims on a whim, at any time of the day or night and in any setting, was a law enforcement agent's worst nightmare. Such a killer was the hardest to catch. His or her movements left no trail; his so-called serial acts had no serial nature about them, beyond the dire results: bodies. All the cops had to go on were corpses. They could not put together much of a psychological profile, they could not point to a victim type which triggered in this killer the desire to destroy a given face, a given shape, a given creature with platinum hair or gray eyes. Instead, all answers were smoke.

An even more gruesome photo slipped from one of the files Sid had forwarded Dean, a picture of what was once a middle-aged redhead, the latest victim. She bore no resemblance to the others, beyond the ugly scar—a deep wound over the eyes. The shiny veins and blood pool beneath the layers of skin removed from the skull glossed in the photo. That strange, rectangular wound haunted Dean's mind as had the others. This time the killer had carved a rectangle out of the flesh.

The woman's head where her hair had been ripped from her showed ugly, scarred, puckered skin. The idea that someone was going about actually scalping people, men as well as women, even with this evidence before him, seemed more than ludicrous. It made Dean think of the woman, Angel Rae, who had stalked her victims to drown them out of a mistaken religious notion handed down by generations.

Dean felt the drink begin to calm him. He called for another and downed it too fast. He closed his eyes and began to think, only half-wondering where his thoughts might take him. Hopefully he'd sleep and wake up in Orlando. He didn't particularly care for flying and got through it only by keeping his mind busy, or on hold. He thought about something he'd read somewhere about the Plains Indians, who'd mutilated and scalped the bodies of General George Armstrong Custer and his Seventh Cavalry. They had done so for religious and ritual purposes—the scalp of an enemy represented the enemy's head taken in mortal combat.

If this modern-day scalper were some displaced Indian, his mutilation hardly seemed correct, even by eighteenth-century standards. The stalking of an unarmed, helpless woman for her scalp seemed a perversion of the notion of the right to slash away at a corpse you claim for having beaten in a fair and equitable fight. Still, a madman—and the killer was a madman—could be counted on to pervert any notion, be it social, psychological, or ritualistic. The mind of man hadn't, after all, changed in its physical makeup since the first men ran about wielding flint spears to kill game.

If Sid could be believed, today's popular, mistaken notion that scalping and the American Indian went hand-in-hand seemed to be motivating a backlash against reservation Indians outside Orlando. It was complete nonsense to blame Seminole Indians out of hand, Dean thought—or any other person of Indian heritage, because scalping was not ever an art exclusively Indian. It was Spanish, it was French, it was English, and it went back so far into man's history that stone-age evidence had been unearthed to support the now widely held belief that man had, from the time of fashioning the first deadly weapons, taken scalps.

All this Dean thought about as he sipped his third powdery-tasting Tom Collins at thirty-two thousand feet.

Dean's sudden fascination with Orlando started with his having stared down at the shining city and its mirrored buildings, separated like fine jewels in a jeweler's case. The downtown, if it could be called that, had nothing of the skyline of Chicago or New York. It was as if the city fathers had said there shall be no building to rival the stars or the sky, nothing to cast too long a shadow or interfere with the work of the sun. The work of the sun was to bake this sprawling metropolis, which had, since the last time he'd seen the place, sprawled at every conceivable chance and seemed to become a city of connected suburban townships.

Tourist attractions like Sea World and Disney World aside, Dean wondered if anyone in his right mind would settle here. But news of widespread growth and new industry, like the new Universal Studios and Disney Studios setting up shop here, drew people like bees to nectar, and given the year-round balmy temperatures, how many could resist? The climate even excited Dean, who was normally calm about such things as weather.

From the bright sunshine to the impossibly warm air that hit him like a wall as they exited the terminal for Sid's waiting car, Dean felt he was in another country. He hadn't felt such a transformation since the time he'd vacationed in Mexico. Orlando spread lazily amid the arched palms, hiding its bare, spots as best it could. From ground level, as from overhead, it seemed to be concealing something harsh and daunting just beneath its surface—something unseen. Superficially, like most cities, Dean decided, the place gave off an air of the unreal, as if nothing bad could ever happen here, so close to Mickey Mouse Land, so filled as it was with tourists and the people who made their living pleasing them. But here was Sid Corman, and here was the Orlando City Police Force. The city, like any other, had its soft and slimy underbelly, regardless of the sheen and tiles on top of what was lately being dubbed, “The Big Orange."

Maybe part of Dean's feeling had to do with the very real ugliness of Chicago in winter—brown, ice-scarred earth, bare, prickly trees, a white-gray, cold sky for months at a time. Here it was clean, save for the trash along the highways. There were sand piles, but no snow piles or street-blackened, sooty mounds for block after block. Here it never snowed. Dean's lightest trenchcoat wound up on his arm as he and Sid Corman ambled out of the terminal together.

From the air, the city had looked like San Diego. The center of the city was a low and unimposing skyline, and from it the arteries and veins of streets spread away, hugging the earth, it seemed, for moisture and relief from the sun and heat even in December.

Tourism was far and away the largest draw for the city coffers. But Dean had the feeling that it was hardly the only way to make a buck here, either legally or illegally.

Sid Corman looked robust and larger than Dean remembered, and when the two men found each other at the airline terminal, they warmly shook hands and exchanged an old greeting that dated back to their Korea days. “Seen the sunrise!"

"Damn straight, partner,” said Sid after the exchange. “Seen so many, I'd almost forgot all that nonsense."

In Korea it had been an expression used between combat personnel. “Seen the sunrise lately?” one would ask and the other would reply, “Yeah, up the captain's ass."

It didn't go over so well at the United desk.

The two M.E.'s laughed over it now.

"So good to see you, Dean.” Sid climbed into his side of the car, automatically unlocking Dean's door. The M.E.'s car in Orlando was a fully air-conditioned, full-sized Chrysler. Dean was impressed, but he tried not to show it.

"So good to see you,” Sid repeated himself.

Dean replied agreeably, telling Sid that he had had time on the flight to go over the copies of the files and photos he had sent him. “Looks like one hell of a psycho on your hands, Sid."

"You think it's the work of one man, then?"

"I saw nothing to indicate otherwise."

"There's lots of talk it's the work of a team of hoodlums."

"Who's doing the talking, Sid?"

"Cops."

"Do they know something they're not sharing?"

"Naw, it's just talk. Some shrink in the department has it that way ... you know how that is. Guy's an odd duck, name of Hamel. Says he believes it's the work of two men, or a man and woman working in connection."

"This guy Hamel give you any reason to believe him?"

"Lots of mumbo jumbo about strong wills overcoming weak wills, that the knife wielder is sometimes in the power of the one who plans the whole thing, then sends this shlep out to kill because he hasn't the stomach for it. Typical psychobabble that goes out to every division on a multiple-kill case, you know."

"But what's he basing this on? Evidence or bull, or what? How does he know there's a second killer involved here?"

"He doesn't. Nobody does. It was just an idea he tossed out, damned if people in Central didn't take the bait. Some of ‘em are actually arresting gay couples as a result."

"How many cops they got on this case?"

"It's got so big they're all on it."

"All?"

"From the lowliest traffic cop to the Mayor."

"Isn't that kind of nuts? I mean, given the fact you don't have any kind of a make on the guy?"

"Dean, I got some hair and few lint balls, and now they're looking for a light-haired, cheaply dressed man who probably shops at K-Mart."

Dean laughed hysterically, recalling how Sid had kept them laughing at the MASH unit where they'd worked together years before. “Pared it down considerably, didn't you, Sid?"

"Don't you know it."

He turned the car off the toll road and they were weaving through downtown Orlando.

"You know the type of case we got here, Dean.” He continued talking as he threaded through difficult traffic. “It's the kind where whoever gets the guy is going to wind up a hero in the eyes of the department, with a citation. Usually some faggot that's running nude through the rhododendrons, but hell, Dean, we're talking about a mass murderer here."

"Yeah, I seen that much."

"Hold on, you're about to see more."

"The redhead in the picture?"

"Came up with something interesting on the slides."

"Is that right?"

"It's going to blow you away, Dean, old boy."

"Anything like nail polish, or warpaint?"

"You bastard,” shouted Sid, staring across at him and almost hitting someone in his lane before he put his foot hard on the break. “How'd you know?"

"Just an educated guess. Where there's scalping, there's usually warpaint of one sort or another. The wounds were cut in shapes that mean something to the killer, perhaps, and I wondered if he might not use some sort of makeup on himself, or his victims, for some ritual purpose or other."

"Damn, Dean, you're a little scary, you know that?"

* * * *

Dean was impressed by the glitteringly clean hallways and offices of the Orlando Central Forensics Division and Criminal Detection Agency, OCFDCD, or DCD, as Sid preferred. Sid's office was more spacious than Dean's lab back in Chicago, and all stops were pulled out to furnish the place with the best furniture. Mauve and pastels captured the eye along with sparkling glass and steel. Even the paintings and pictures on the walls were chosen with care. There were thriving plants everywhere, too. The effect was sterile, and the decidely Floridian growth in the planters in the halls and foyer and Sid's office were an attempt, perhaps, to compensate for the calculated pink-ness of the place.

But when Dean was escorted to the slab room, it was like any other. There was an area with refrigerated drawers where cadavers were kept, and three operating theaters, since the place doubled as a teaching hospital. The clinical labs were beyond Dean's wildest dreams. He'd give his right arm to have any one of them in Chicago. The most modern equipment abounded, and there was even talk of setting up a DNA testing site on the premises, the newest technological advance in the war on crime. Sid had it all, and he didn't mind gloating about it.

"You're stalling, Sid, showing off this palace of science. That isn't what I'm here for. What gives?” Dean finally asked.

"Stupid to try and fool you, Dean ... but some people want to meet with you and get your impressions regarding the latest victim of the Scalper—that's what they're calling him in the press now, Scalper."

"And who is it I'll be meeting, Sid?"

Sid laughed a bit nervously. “A couple of cops that are assigned to the case, and their chief, and this guy Hamel, the shrink."

"Why all the to-do, Sid? I don't get it. Certainly not because of the floaters thing in Chicago, unless you made me out as some kinda guru to these guys."

"Not exactly that, Dean ... and I'm ... well, it's not exactly how I put it to you on the phone, old friend."

Dean wondered what Sid was driving at when suddenly the double doors were pushed open and a stretcher was wheeled into the room, followed by the men Dean assumed he was to meet. The two holding back the doors, he guessed, were the detectives, while the two sauntering behind must be the police chief and the psychiatrist.

There were quick introductions all around, Dean barely understanding that the two detectives were Park and Dyer. Dyer was quiet, moody-looking, maybe even pissed; and Park was certainly sullen. It was as if neither man wanted to be here. The chief, in a heavily accented voice, made the introductions, leaving Sid completely out, as if he weren't even in the room. Dean wondered if this were due to familiarity or contempt or both. Chief Ted “Slim” Hodges, large about the chest and middle, with a face that spread wide from the jowls and looked awkward below a cropped head of hair, wore civilian clothing, the buttons open for comfort, with heavy suspenders. He was loud, and saliva formed about the corners of his mouth as he spoke.

But it was Hamel who drew Dean's attention more than the others, for here was the bull-slinger he'd heard Sid speak of, and he was an incredibly striking human being. Tall, slender, but not too slender, with wavy blond hair and thick lashes, he recalled to mind the rugged adventurer type, the underwater diver, the mountain climber, and the rhino hunter rolled into one. His icy, blue-gray stare nailed Dean where he stood as the attendent wheeled the corpse closer.

"Dr. Grant, Dr. Hamel, our head of police psychiatry here in Orlando,” finished Chief Hodges. “He has been working closely with Park and Dyer here on the case."

"Benjamin Hamel,” said the man, extending a powerful hand to Dean, and they shook firmly, each caught in the other's gaze. He didn't appear to be a man who took his work lightly, nor one who might make a quick or sloppy diagnosis, Dean thought.

"We are here, Dr. Grant,” continued Chief Hodges, “to get a second opinion, in a sense."

"Second opinion? On the corpse, you mean?"

"Why, didn't Dr. Corman inform you?"

Dean shot a glance in Sid's direction. Sid put up his hands. “I didn't want to bias Dr. Grant's autopsy in any way."

"You wish me to do a complete autopsy on the victim?” asked Dean, surprised.

"For the sake of thoroughness, you see, to leave nothing to chance."

Dean listened to Hodges’ nuance as well as his words. With such a man, it was the only way to interpret what was being said. It appeared that Sid's situation here was not quite so cushy as he wanted Dean to believe, that something terribly wrong was afoot. The Chief of Police didn't make house calls to the morgue for second opinions on murder victims unless something had been botched, or someone was under investigation. Dean wondered how much of what he might say at this point would impact on Sid's future.

"Are you men going to remain throughout the autopsy?” asked Dean, incredulous.

"We'll be above you,” replied Hamel, a finger indicating the viewing section above.

"And we'll monitor your every word,” added Hodges.

"I see,” replied Dean, “how cozy. But suppose I choose not to become a part of such a performance?"

"Then we will call in someone of our choosing,” said Hodges with a whispered aside—someone's name—to Dr. Hamel.

"I see..."

"Dean, as a favor,” asked Sid quietly.

"Without knowing what this is all about?"

"That's the way we would like it, yes,” answered Hodges.

"A complete autopsy will take all day and night, and some tests will take longer still."

"We are all quite well aware of that, doctor."

Dean's eyes met Sid's, and now he remembered Sid as he really was, always the pain-in-the-ass. He'd get himself into trouble and dig it deeper until someone bailed him out. He hadn't changed, only Dean's memory of him had changed. In Korea, he had been a passable doctor, but in his case, going into forensics had been a much safer occupation, for the dead could not sue for a wrongful cut or clumsiness from a night's binge.

"Please, Dean."

"When you want me to begin?” he asked Hodges.

"Now."

"So this is her,” said Dean when he peeled back the white sheet from the red-haired woman he had only known through routine lab tests and a photo.

Park cleared his throat and Dyer gasped at the still-gruesome sight of the mutilated scalp. Park, trying to be professional, shakily said, “We ID'd her as—"

"Never mind,” pleaded Dean, his eyes riveted on the gash in the woman's forehead and skull. Blue-black beneath the cold hardness of death, the wound seemed somehow alive, a creature unto itself. “I'd just as soon not know her name right now, detective."

"Of course..."

Dean knew that Sid understood, even if no one else might. He just did not wish to know anything more about her—not yet, anyway. The least a forensics man knows of the victim, the better, at such an early stage. If he thought of her as a young woman with children, a husband, a nice home, as a woman with a fair name like Laura or Debbie, it would only serve to get in his way, erode his concentration, taking with it all that rooted him to stand firm before this perverse picture of serenity.

The red-carpet treatment Sid had promised was red all right; red with murder and gore, and now suspicion. Who was on trial here, Sid, the two detectives? It didn't seem that Hodges was after Hamel—rather that these two men had worked out the game plan.

Dean had thought the reports he'd read on the plane most satisfactory; perhaps a bit brusque, given the situation of scalping, an oddity beyond words, yet Sid hadn't left anything out, had he? Or was it Park and Dyer who were getting a shellacking? Odd, how they did things in Orlando. But Dean's sudden involvement was all Sid's doing, and the damned fool hadn't been straight with him. Maybe he was hiding some secret or vital piece of information ... but why?

"We had all agreed, doctor,” began Hamel, a smile creasing his handsome, well-tanned face, “to allow you to do your own work in this case. Then we would tell you if Dr. Corman here had or had not overlooked evidence of a vital nature."

Dean wondered if it were the paint the killer used. Then he wondered if it were a thousand other things Sid could have honestly overlooked. The situation was fraught with bad consequences.

"We will leave you to your work now, Dr. Grant,” said Hodges.

"Dr. Corman will assist you,” said Hamel, almost as an afterthought. “Perhaps he might learn something?"

The dig was not lost on Dean. He wondered for how long Sid and Hamel had been at each other's throats. Dean gave Sid a shake of the head as the others filed out. But true to their word, they didn't go far. In shifts, for the next twenty-four hours, one and sometimes two of them were staring from overhead like vultures as Dean worked. Vultures in search of what type of carion—incompetence, neglect, stupidity, or a simple cover-up?