Whispers of the Dead

CHAPTER 18

GARDNER WATCHED as a crime scene agent lifted the windscreen wiper and carefully removed the scrap of skin with a pair of tweezers. He and Jacobsen had arrived twenty minutes ago, accompanied by the large van that was the TBI’s mobile crime scene lab. Lights had been set up round the car, and the entire area taped off.

‘You shouldn’t have touched it,’ Gardner said, not for the first time.

‘If I’d realized what it was I wouldn’t have.’

Some of my irritation must have leaked into my voice. Standing next to Gardner, Jacobsen took her eyes from the crime scene team dusting the car for fingerprints. She gave me a faintly worried look, the slight tuck visible between her eyebrows again, but said nothing.

Gardner, too, fell silent. He had a large manila envelope that he’d brought with him, although so far he’d made no mention of what it might contain. He watched, expressionlessly, as a forensic agent carefully placed the skin in an evidence bag. This was a different team from the one I’d seen before. I found myself wondering if they were on another job or just standing down for the night. Not that it mattered, but it was easier thinking about that than what this new development might mean.

Holding the bag carefully in a gloved hand, the agent brought it over. He raised it up so Gardner could get a better look.

‘It’s human, all right.’

I didn’t need him to tell me that. The skin was dark brown in colour, with an almost translucent texture. It was obvious now that it was too irregular to be a glove, but the mistake was understandable. I’d seen this sort of thing often enough before.

Just not on the windscreen of my car.

‘So does this mean that York’s been skinning his victims?’ Jacobsen asked. She was doing her best to appear unruffled, but even her composure had been shaken.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘May I?’

I held out my hand for the evidence bag. The forensic agent waited until Gardner gave a short nod before passing it across.

I held it up to the light. The skin was split and torn in several places, mainly across its back, but still retained a vague hand-like shape. It was soft and supple, and an oily residue from it smeared the inside of the plastic bag.

‘It wasn’t flayed off,’ I told them. ‘If it had been then it’d be in a flat sheet. This is split in places, but it’s still more or less whole. I think it sloughed off the hand in one piece.’

There was no surprise on either Gardner’s or the forensic agent’s face, but I could see Jacobsen still didn’t understand.

‘Sloughed?’

‘Skin slides off a dead body of its own accord after a few days. Especially extremities like the scalp and feet. And the hands.’ I held up the evidence bag. ‘I’m pretty certain that’s what this is.’

She stared at the bag, her usual diffidence forgotten. ‘You mean it slid off a corpse?’

‘More or less.’ I turned to the forensic agent, who’d been watching with a sour expression. ‘Would you agree?’

He nodded. ‘Good news is it’s nice and soft. Saves us having to soak it before we lift the fingerprints.’

I felt Gardner looking at me, and knew he’d already made the connection. But Jacobsen seemed appalled.

‘You can get fingerprints from that?’

‘Sure,’ the agent told her. ‘Usually it’s all dried and brittle, so you have to soften it up in water. Then you slip it on like a glove and take the prints like normal.’ He held up his own hand and waggled it to illustrate.

‘Don’t let us keep you, Deke,’ Gardner said. The agent lowered his hand, a little shamefaced, and went back to the car. Gardner tapped the manila envelope against his leg. The look he gave me was almost angry. ‘Well? Are you going to say it or shall I?’

‘Say what?’ Jacobsen asked.

Gardner’s mouth compressed into a thin line. ‘Tell her.’

‘We’ve been wondering how York managed to leave his victims’ fingerprints at the crime scenes months after they were dead,’ I said as she turned to me. I gestured at the car. ‘Now we know.’

Jacobsen’s frown cleared. ‘You mean he’s been using the skin from their hands? Wearing it like gloves?’

‘I’ve never heard of it being done to plant fingerprints before, but that’s how it looks. That’s probably why Noah Harper’s body was so badly decomposed. York wanted the skin from its hands before he switched it with Willis Dexter’s.’

And then he’d waited a few more days before going back to the woods and collecting the sloughed skin from Dexter’s hands as well. Scavengers wouldn’t have bothered with scraps of drying tissue when they’d got the entire body to feed on. And if they had…

He’d just have used someone else’s.

I felt a weary anger at myself for not realizing sooner. My subconscious had done its best to tell me, prompting the deja vu at the sight of my wrinkled hands when I’d peeled off the latex gloves, but I’d ignored it. Tom had been right. He’d told me I should listen more to my instincts.

I should have listened to him as well.

Jacobsen took the evidence bag from me. Her expression was a mixture of disgust and fascination as she studied its contents.

‘Deke said this wasn’t dried out. Does that mean it must have come from a body recently?’

I guessed she was thinking about Irving. Although no one had actually said as much, we all knew that the profiler must be dead by now. But even if he’d been killed straight away, it would have taken longer than this for the skin to slough off. Whoever this had come from, it wasn’t him.

‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘It looks like it’s been deliberately oiled to preserve it and keep the skin supple…’

I stopped as something occurred to me. I looked over at the car windscreen, at the greasy smears left on the glass by the skin.

‘Baby oil.’

Gardner and Jacobsen stared at me.

‘The fingerprint on the film container in the cabin was left in baby oil,’ I said. ‘Irving thought it was proof that the killings were sexually motivated, but it wasn’t. That’s what York’s been using to keep the sloughed skin supple. Its natural oils would have dried out, and he’d have wanted the fingerprints to be nice and clear. So he oiled it like old leather.’

I remembered Irving’s mocking jibe. Unless the killer has a penchant for moisturizing… He’d been closer to the truth than he knew.

‘If York’s been harvesting his victim’s fingerprints, how come he didn’t take the skin from Terry Loomis’s hands as well?’ Jacobsen wanted to know. ‘That was still in the cabin with the body.’

‘If it hadn’t been we’d have noticed and guessed what was going on,’ Gardner said, self-reproach making his voice harsh. ‘York wanted to pick his own time to let us know what he was doing.’

I watched the forensic agents carefully dust another part of the car with fingerprint powder. They were making a thorough job of it. For all the good it would do.

‘So why now?’ I asked.

Gardner looked across at Jacobsen. She shrugged. ‘He’s bragging again, telling us he isn’t afraid of being caught. Obviously, he doesn’t think our knowing this’ll do us any good. Sooner or later we would’ve realized what he was doing anyway. This way he gets to stay in control.’

The other question remained unspoken. Why me? But I was afraid I already knew the answer to that.

Gardner looked down at the manila envelope he was holding. He seemed to reach a decision. ‘Diane’ll drive you to your hotel. Stay there till I call. Don’t let anyone into your room; if someone says room service, make sure it is before you open the door.’

‘What about my car?’

‘We’ll let you know when we’re done with it.’ He turned to Jacobsen. ‘Diane, a word.’

The two of them walked out of earshot. Gardner did all the talking. I saw Jacobsen nodding as he handed her the envelope. I wondered what might be in it, but I couldn’t raise much interest.

I looked back at the white-suited figures working on my car. The fine powder they were using to dust for fingerprints had dulled its paint, making it seem like something dead itself.

There was a bitter taste in my mouth as I watched them. I ran my thumb across the scar on my palm. Admit it. You’re scared.

I’d been stalked by a killer once before. I’d come here hoping to put it behind me.

Now it was happening again.

It started to rain as Jacobsen drove me back to my hotel. Fat drops slid down the car windows in uneven bursts, swept away by the wipers only to reappear a moment later. Away from the hospital, the roads and bars were still busy. The bright lights and bustling streets were a relief, but I couldn’t connect with their normality. I felt separated from them by more than the car window, aware that the reassurance they offered was illusory.

For once I was almost unaware of Jacobsen’s closeness. It was only when she finally spoke that I dragged my thoughts back to the here and now.

‘Dan says Loomis and Harper were strangled with some kind of ligature,’ she said.

I stirred, surprised by the conversational gambit. ‘Probably something called a Spanish windlass. A sort of tourniquet.’ I explained how it worked.

‘That’d fit in with what we know about York. He’d like the power something like that would give him. Literally life or death, and much more satisfying than killing someone straight away. It’d allow him to control the process, decide exactly when to exert enough pressure to kill his victim.’ She gave me a quick glance. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t very tactful.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s all right. I’ve seen what York does. I’m not going to faint because he’s playing mind games.’

‘Is that what you think tonight was?’

‘If he was serious about coming after me, why warn me in advance?’ But even as I said it I realized I’d encountered another killer once who’d done exactly that.

Jacobsen wasn’t convinced either. ‘York needs to assert himself. To a narcissist like him, what happened with Dr Lieberman would’ve been a huge loss of face. His self-esteem’s going to demand something even more spectacular to make up for it. Warning his next victim in advance might be it.’

‘I still can’t see why York would bother targeting me. Tom and Irving were both well known. Why go from high-profile targets to a stranger no one here’s heard of? It doesn’t make any sense.’

‘It might to him.’ She spoke flatly, her gaze on the road. ‘He saw you working with Dr Lieberman, don’t forget. And you’re British, a guest at the facility. York might feel that someone like you might make a bigger splash than someone local.’

That was something I hadn’t considered. ‘I suppose I should be flattered,’ I said, trying to make a joke of it.

I wasn’t rewarded with a smile. ‘I don’t think you should take it lightly.’

Believe me, I’m not. ‘Can I ask something?’ I said, wanting to change the subject. ‘Have you heard anything from the lab about the blood samples from the cabin?’

There was a beat before she answered. ‘A full DNA analysis takes weeks.’

That wasn’t what I’d asked, but her evasion told me I was on the right track. ‘No, but they should have found out by now if the blood was human or not.’

At any other time I might have enjoyed her surprise. ‘How did you know that?’

‘Call it an educated guess. So it was from an animal, then?’

The darkened profile gave a nod. ‘We only got the results this afternoon, but even before then we knew there was something not right about it. Forensics weren’t convinced by the spatter patterns in the cabin, although York made a good job of faking them. So the lab ran a preliminary test which suggested the blood was non-human. But we still had to wait until they’d extracted the DNA before we could be sure.’

‘What was it? Pig’s blood?’

I could see the white of her teeth in the darkness as she smiled. ‘Now you’re just showing off.’

Well, perhaps a little. ‘It isn’t as clever as it sounds,’ I admitted. ‘Once we’d confirmed that Terry Loomis had been strangled, then the blood obviously couldn’t have been his. So the cuts on his body had to be post mortem, in which case most of the blood in the cabin had to have come from somewhere else.’

‘I still don’t see how you could know it was pig’s blood…’ she began, then answered herself. ‘Oh, I get it. The teeth we found with Willis Dexter’s body.’

‘I’d wondered if the blood could be animal before then. But once I saw those I guessed it was probably from a pig as well,’ I told her. ‘Seems to be the sort of game York enjoys.’

Jacobsen fell silent. Her face was marbled by the rain running down the windows. In the slanting planes of yellow from the streetlights, her profile looked like a Grecian sculpture.

‘I shouldn’t really tell you this,’ she said slowly. ‘The blood samples from the cabin aren’t the only results we’ve had. Noah Harper tested positive for Hepatitis C.’

God. Poor Kyle. Unlike the A and B strains, there was no vaccine for Hepatitis C. The virus wasn’t necessarily fatal, but the treatment was time-consuming and unpleasant. And even then, there were no guarantees.

‘Does Kyle know?’ I asked, uncomfortably aware that it could easily have been me instead.

‘Not yet. It’ll be a while before he gets his own results from the hospital, and Dan didn’t think there was any point worrying him.’ She gave me a quick look. ‘You understand this is strictly in confidence?’

‘Of course.’ For once I agreed with Gardner. There was still a chance Kyle might escape infection, but I wouldn’t have wanted to stake my own life on so slim a bet.

We’d arrived at the hotel. Jacobsen found a parking space near the entrance. As she pulled in I saw her glance in the rearview mirror, checking the cars behind us.

‘I’ll see you up to your room,’ she said, reaching into the back seat for the manila envelope that Gardner had given her.

‘There’s no need.’

But she was already climbing out of the car. There was a new alertness about her as we went inside. Her eyes were constantly moving, flicking over the faces around us, checking for potential threats, and I saw how she walked with her right hand held close to where her gun was concealed under her jacket. Part of me felt unable to take any of this seriously.

Then I remembered what had been left on my windscreen.

An elderly woman gave us a twinkling smile as she stepped out of the lift, and I could guess what she was thinking. Just another young couple, on their way to bed after a day in the city. It was so far removed from the truth it was almost funny.

Jacobsen and I stood side by side in the lift. We were the only passengers, and the tension between us seemed to increase with every floor. Our shoulders brushed lightly at one point, causing a quiet snap of static. She swayed away, just far enough to break the contact. When the doors opened she stepped out first, her hand slipping under her jacket to rest on the gun at her hip as she checked that the corridor was empty. My room was at the far end. I swiped my key card through the slot and opened the door.

‘Thanks for escorting me.’

I was smiling as I said it, but she was all efficiency now. The barriers that had briefly come down in the car had gone back up.

‘May I take a look in your room?’

I was going to tell her again there was no need, but I could see I’d be wasting my time. I stepped aside to let her in.

‘Feel free.’

I stood by the bed while she searched. It wasn’t a big room, so it didn’t take her long to satisfy herself that York wasn’t hiding in it. She was still carrying the manila envelope from Gardner, and when she’d finished she brought it over to where I waited. She stopped a few feet away, her face a perfect mask.

‘One more thing. Dan wanted me to show you these.’ She busied herself opening the envelope. ‘There was a security camera over the road from the hospital payphone. We pulled the footage from the time the call was made to Dr Lieberman.’

She handed me a thin sheaf of photographs. They were stills from a CCTV camera: low quality and grainy, with the date and time printed at the bottom. I recognized the stretch of road where the phone booth was situated. One or two cars and the boxy white shape of an ambulance were partially visible in the foreground, blurred and out of focus.

But I was more concerned with the dark figure that was caught turning away from the payphone. The image quality was so poor it was impossible to make out its features. The head was bowed, the face no more than a white crescent that was all but hidden by a dark, peaked cap.

The other photographs showed more of the same, the figure hurrying across the road, shoulders hunched and head down. If anything it was even less clear in those.

‘The lab’s trying to clean up the images,’ Jacobsen told me. ‘We can’t say for sure that it’s York, but the height and build look about right.’

‘You aren’t just showing me these out of courtesy, are you?’

‘No.’ She looked at me unflinchingly. ‘If you’re York’s next target Dan felt you ought to know what he might do to try to get near you. The dark clothes and cap could be some kind of uniform. And if you look on his hip there’s something that looks like a flashlight. It’s possible he tries to pass himself off as a police officer or some other authority figure who—Dr Hunter? What is it?’

I was staring at the photograph as the memory fell loose. Flashlight…

‘A security guard,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry?’

I told her about being stopped in the car park a few nights earlier. ‘It’s probably nothing. He just wanted to know what I was doing there.’

Jacobsen was frowning. ‘When was this?’

I had to think back. ‘The night before Irving was abducted.’

‘Did you get a good look at him?’

‘He kept the torch pointed at my face. I couldn’t see him at all.’

‘What about anything else? His mannerisms or voice?’

I shook my head, still trying to recall. ‘Not really. Except… well, his voice sounded… odd, somehow. Gruff.’

‘Like he was disguising it?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘And you didn’t mention this to anyone?’

‘I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Look, it probably was just a security guard. If it was York why did he let me go?’

‘You said yourself it was the night before Professor Irving disappeared. Maybe he had other plans.’

That silenced me. Jacobsen put the photographs back in the envelope.

‘We’ll check with hospital security, see if it was one of their people. In the meantime, keep your door locked when I’ve gone. Someone’ll be in touch tomorrow morning.’

‘So I’ve got to just wait here until I hear from you?’

She was all stone again now. ‘It’s in your own interests. Until we know how we’re going to play this.’

I wondered what she meant by that, but let it go. Any decision would come from Gardner or above, not her. ‘Do you want a drink before you go? I don’t know how well stocked the minibar is, but I could order coffee or—’

‘No.’ Her vehemence seemed to surprise both of us. ‘Thanks, but I need to get back to Dan,’ she went on more calmly. But the flush spreading from the base of her throat told another story.

She was already heading for the door. With one last reminder for me to keep it locked, she was gone. What was that about? I wondered if she could have read too much into my offer of a drink, but I was too tired to worry about it for long.

I sank down on the edge of the bed. It seemed impossible that it was only that morning I’d heard of Tom’s death. I’d intended to call Mary again, but it was too late now. I put my head in my hands. Christ, what a mess. Sometimes it seemed I was dogged by ill luck and disaster. I wondered if events would have followed the same track if I’d never come out here. But I could almost hear what Tom would say to that: Stop beating yourself up, David. This would have happened no matter what. You want to blame someone, blame York. He’s the one responsible.

But Tom was dead. And York was still out there.

I stood up and went to the window. My breath fogged the cool glass, reducing the world outside to indistinct yellow smudges in the darkness. When I wiped my fist across the pane, it reappeared with a squeak of skin on glass. The street below was a bright neon strip, car headlights creeping along in a silent ballet. All those lives, busily going about their own concerns, all indifferent to each other. Watching them made me acutely aware of how far from home I was, how much I didn’t belong.

Whether you belong or not, you’re here. Get on with it.

It occurred to me that I still hadn’t eaten. Turning away from the window, I reached for the room service menu. I opened it but only glanced at the gushing descriptions of fast food before tossing it aside. All at once I couldn’t stand to be in the room any longer. York or no York, I wasn’t going to hide away until Gardner decided what to do with me. Snatching up my jacket, I took the lift back down to the lobby. I only intended to go to the hotel’s late-night bar to see if they were still serving food, but I found myself walking straight past. I didn’t know where I was going, only that I needed to be somewhere else.

Outside, the rain had stopped, but the air was still freshened by its recent fall. The pavement was slick and shiny. My shoes raised small splashes as I set off down the street. The skin between my shoulder blades twitched, but I resisted the impulse to look behind me. Come on then, York. You want me? Here I am!

But my bravado soon burned itself out. When I came to a diner that was still open I went inside. The menu was mainly burgers and fried chicken, but I didn’t care. I ordered at random and handed the menu back to the waitress.

‘Anythin’ to drink?’

‘Just a beer, please. No, wait—Do you have any bourbon? Blanton’s?’

‘We got bourbon, but just Jim or Jack.’

I ordered a Jim Beam with ice. When it arrived I took a slow drink. The bourbon traced a gentle fire down my throat, easing away the lump that had formed there. Here’s to you, Tom. We’ll get the bastard soon, I promise.

For a while I almost believed it myself.

The straps and cogs gleam in the lamplight. You polish them after every time, waxing the leather until it’s soft and supple and the tooled steel gleams. There’s no real need. It’s an affectation, you know that. But you enjoy the ritual. Sometimes you think you can almost smell the warm beeswax scent of the saddle polish; probably just a faint trace memory, but it soothes you all the same. And there’s something about the sense of preparation, of ceremony, that appeals. Reminds you that what you’re doing has a purpose; that the next time might be the one. And this time it will be.

You can feel it.

You tell yourself not to get your hopes up as you lovingly burnish the leather, but you can’t deny the tingle of anticipation. You always feel it beforehand, when everything is possible and disappointment is still in the future. But this time it seems different. More portentous.

Special.

Leaving the skin on the car windscreen was a calculated gamble, but well worth it. They were bound to realize what you’d been doing eventually; better for it to be on your terms, when you can use it to good effect. You’re still in control, that’s the main thing. By the time they realize what’s happening it’ll be too late, and then…

And then…

But that’s something you shy away from. You can’t see that far ahead. Better to stay focused on the job at hand, on the immediate objective.

It won’t be long now.

You gently turn the winding mechanism, watching the leather strap tighten as the cogs turn smoothly, their teeth meshing with a clockwork whisper. Satisfied, you breathe on them before giving them a final rub. Your reflection stares back at you, distorted and unrecognizable. You stare at it, obscurely disturbed by thoughts that never quite break surface, then wipe it away with a sweep of the cloth.

Not much longer now, you tell yourself. Everything is in place and ready. The camera is loaded and in position, just waiting for its subject. The uniform is brushed and cleaned. Well, if not cleaned, exactly, at least clean enough to pass a first impression. And that’s all you’ll need.

It’s all a matter of timing.