by John Saul
Then she saw what lay in the center of the area the police had cordoned off, and knew this was no gang slaying.
A teenage girl, clad in what was left of a skimpy yellow tank top, lay sprawled on her back, flayed open like she’d been field-dressed by a drunken hunter. A tangle of intestines gleamed in the garish floodlights the police had already set up, and scraps of other tissue—some identifiable, some not—were strewn in what looked like a rough circle.
What was left of the girl lay in the center of that circle of gore.
She’d seen this before—in a Starbucks bathroom—and recognized the handiwork in an instant. It was the same sort of havoc wreaked on Caroline Fisher a year ago.
This was the body she’d been waiting for, ever since Michael Shaw had told her she’d need another body for the special she wanted to do.
Well, here it was. The killer was back in action, and if the amount of blood was any indication, he was in top form. If there’d been anyone around to take the bet, she would have put any amount of money on her certainty that when the coroner put all the carnage back together, he’d discover that part of this girl had disappeared.
Tima looked more closely, saw that the girl was facing away, covered with blood. But there was something odd about her head. She took a step closer.
Her ear was gone! All that was left on the side of her head was a mass of bloody hair and a gaping wound on the side of her head where her ear had been.
Tina fumbled opened her phone and speed-dialed the station. “Send a camera crew to the murder site in Van Nuys. And use the chopper! Now!”
“Hey!” a cop yelled as she snapped the phone closed and dropped it back in her purse. “Get out of here.”
Tina nodded, smiled affably, and held up her hand. “It’s okay,” she said, and turned on her digital camera. “I’m supposed to be here.”
By the time the cop recognized her as a television reporter, she had already snapped off a half-dozen zoom shots of the dead girl and wide angle shots of the whole area.
“No press!” the cop yelled, heading toward her with a look on his face that might have intimidated anyone else.
“Lighten up,” she said, still snapping pictures. Then she turned the camera directly on the cop. “Don’t you want to be on TV?” She was about to snap the shutter, and blind the cop with the flash, when she saw something else in the camera’s bright screen. A few yards behind the cop a young girl was sitting in the back of a police cruiser, a blanket around her shoulders, her head in her hands.
A witness?
Turning away from the angry policeman, Tina headed back the way she’d come, feeling the cop’s eyes on her until she was back at the cinder-block wall at the edge of the cordoned-off area. The officer had turned back to the crime scene by then, and she’d worked out a plan to get close to the girl in the back of the black-and-white. She knew she would never blend in with the crowd of stoned kids, so she’d just have to act like she was part of the investigative team.
She strode down the street a few yards, then reentered the parking lot, ducking under the yellow tape as if she’d done it thousands of times before—which, in truth, she had. “It’s okay,” she said to a cop who seemed about to question her, and turned directly toward the girl sitting in the back of the cruiser, whose teary eyes kept glancing toward the crime scene.
“Hi,” Tina said, coming up to the car. “I’m Tina, and I’m so sorry.” She crouched down and put a comforting hand on the girl’s knee. “You knew her?” The girl bit her lip but said nothing. “It’s all right,” Tina soothed. “Take your time.”
“We—she’s my best friend,” the girl said. “We came together, but I told her it was a bad idea.”
Tina felt a tingle of anticipation, certain something important was coming. “Oh?” she asked as casually as she could. “Why was that?”
The girl looked up at her. “It was an Internet date. I knew she was being set up for something—I just knew it. You don’t do that. You don’t go out with guys you meet on the Internet. I told her.” She began to cry again. “I told her.”
“Did you see him?”
The girl shook her head and blew her nose.
“What’s your name?” Tina asked.
“Jennifer Livingston.”
“Has anyone called your mother yet, Jennifer?”
Jennifer sniffed and shook her head. “The cops want to talk to me.”
“Yes, I’m sure—” Tina began, but her words were cut off by a cold voice.
“Hello, Tina.”
She didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. Evan Sands’s voice was unmistable.
Tina offered Jennifer a reassuring smile, then stood up to face the detective and his partner, Rick McCoy.
“How do you do it, Tina?” Sands asked, easing her inexorably away from the girl, and leaving McCoy to get all the information Tina so desperately wanted. “How did you manage to get here before us?”
Tina shrugged and smiled at the detective. “Call it a special gift,” she said.
“Well, here’s a gift for you,” Sands replied. “Scram. We’re busy here.”
“The public has a right to know—” she began, but Sands just nodded.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you can be sure we’ll have a press conference. Until then…” He jerked a thumb toward the other side of the yellow tape, just as the Channel 3 helicopter began to drop out of the sky.
Tina waved to the chopper and pointed to an empty parking lot across the street, then smiled at Detective Sands. “I’ll look forward to that,” she said, then headed toward the crew emerging from the helicopter to set up a remote link to the station.
This would be breaking news even at this hour, and tomorrow morning all of Los Angeles would wake up to it. She’d be all over the breakfast news, and morning radio wouldn’t be talking about anything else.
And she’d get her special, too. Michael Shaw had committed, and even though a year had passed, he’d make good on it. She’d see to that.
For now, though, all she could do was run her fingers through her hair and check to make sure she still had lipstick on. Then the sound man handed her a microphone, and Tina opened her mouth to utter the opening line she’d been waiting a year to speak.
“Death in all its ugliness came once more to Los Angeles tonight, this time visiting a warehouse parking lot in Van Nuys.”
The secret door opened silently into a dark corridor. The left hand closed the door quietly but firmly, while the right hand carried the plastic bag.
The nose drew in the smell of familiar chemicals as the feet moved silently across the floor, down the dark passageway toward another door, this one with pale green light escaping from beneath it, illuminating the hallway just enough for the eyes to see.
The fingers of the hand not carrying the bag closed on a single key that jangled softly on a ring and placed it into the dead bolt on the door.
The bolt turned and the door opened.
The nose crinkled as the smell of chemicals grew stronger.
The smell was almost sickly sweet.
It smelled like success. It smelled like money.
It smelled like the future, a beautiful future.
The smell came from the tank, which was filled with a special mix of chemicals.
The chemicals formed a viscous gel that was lit gently from above by fluorescent light in the tank’s lid, which emanated a cold green glow that seemed to ooze from the tank as if the light itself were a living thing.
The fingers of the right hand released their grip on the plastic bag, letting it rest on a stainless steel counter as the fingers of the left hand found the wall switch and turned on the overhead light.
One hand gloved the other; the other then gloved the first. Then both hands, protected now by surgical rubber, lifted the lid from the tank.
From a stainless steel tray, the eyes selected a hemostat, which the right hand picked up and plunged into the greenish gel. The fingers manipulated the
hemostat deftly, its jaws seizing a bit of flesh and lifting it out of the tank.
The eyes appraised the decomposition rate of the severed breast.
It was maintaining its integrity exactly as planned.
The fingers lowered the hemostat—and the breast—back into the tank, turning it gently, making certain no air bubbles remained to begin the degenerative processes. Then the procedure was repeated with the other breast, the vagina, and two small scraps of skin bearing short hair.
“You don’t look like much right now,” the voice whispered, speaking to the scrap of skin hanging from the hemostat. “You don’t look like an eyebrow, but you will. Soon, you will look exactly as you always did. Except that on the new face, you will be even more beautiful than you were before.”
Everything in the tank was in excellent condition.
The fingers of both hands worked at the plastic bag for a moment, opening it. Buried deep in ice crushed as fine as snow were two ears, complete with a narrow band of selvage.
“Can you hear?” the voice whispered into the first ear. “You will again—I promise. You’ll stay alive, and hear again, and serve a purpose. A great purpose.”
The gloved fingers of one hand lowered the ear into the green gel, then, with the tip of the forefinger of the other hand, it made certain that every crevice in the ear’s contours were perfectly filled. Only when the ear had been completely coated did the fingers carefully push it deeply into the tank to keep company with the other body parts.
Parts that were waiting.
Waiting.
The second ear followed, and the same careful check was made by both the fingers and the eyes to make certain no air pockets remained.
Satisfied, the plastic bag was emptied of its ice, the gloves were stripped first from one of the hands, then from the other, and sealed into the plastic bag, and the hands returned the tank lid to its place.
The eyes looked one last time at the tank thermometer, then the finger of the right hand switched the overhead lights off, the feet moved through the door, the hands closed the door, and the fingers carefully turned the dead bolt.
The feet echoed softly as they moved down the long hallway, and all that remained inside the laboratory was the tank.
The green glowing tank.
12
“GOOD MORNING, SUNSHINE,” MICHAEL SHAW SAID AS HIS TOUSLED daughter wandered into the kitchen, still in her bathrobe, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Morning,” she said. “What smells so good?”
“Scott’s famous French toast,” Michael replied, setting three glasses of orange juice on the table.
“Made to fatten up even the most beautiful maid of honor,” Scott said as he expertly flipped a thick slice of egg-soaked cinnamon bread on the skillet. “So what’s up for today? It’s way too nice to sit around in here.”
“Beach,” Alison said, but before Michael could agree, the doorbell rang.
Scott shot Michael a look. “Sunday morning,” he observed archly. “It’s got to be the lovely Tina Wong again.” He rolled his eyes at Alison. “I keep telling him that as a gay man he has got to understand that Sunday brunch is sacrosanct, but he just doesn’t get it. He keeps letting the lovely Miss Wong barge in anytime she feels like it, which mostly seems to be right about now.”
Michael ignored the jibe, particularly since he was certain Scott was right, given what she’d had to say in her report on that morning’s news, during which she was careful to wear the same dress she’d had on the night before, just to prove she’d been up all night. Girding himself for what he knew was about to come, he walked through the living room and opened the front door, and there she stood, indeed wearing exactly what he’d seen on TV three hours ago. Without waiting for an invitation, Tina walked into the house and past him to the dining room, where she pushed aside the brunch plates to make room for her briefcase. “You’ve got to see this.”
“Good morning, Tina,” Scott said, leaning against the kitchen door frame and eyeing her dress. “Must have been some party last night.”
“I’ve been at the station all night,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm. “Do I smell coffee?”
Scott rolled his eyes at Alison, who covered her grin. “How do you take it?” he asked. “With arsenic, or hemlock?”
Again the sarcasm seemed completely lost on her. “Black with one sugar. Real sugar.” She snapped open her briefcase, took out two files, and set them on the table in front of Michael, who was now seated in one of the chairs. “Did you see the morning news?”
He nodded, but knew he was about to hear it all again. Sure enough, Tina launched into the details.
“The dead girl’s name is Kimberly Elmont, and she was butchered exactly the same way Caroline Fisher was last year in Encino. And I use the word ‘butchered’ advisedly. Do you remember what happened in that coffee shop bathroom?”
“How could I forget?”
“Dead girls at breakfast?” Scott asked, setting a cup of coffee in front of Tina. “Delightful.”
Tina, as always, ignored him. “Look at these, Michael,” she said, opening the first folder and spreading a dozen eight-by-ten photos of Caroline Fisher’s bloody corpse across the table.
“Tina!” Michael barked, shooting her a warning look and tipping his head toward Alison, whose eyes were riveted on the photos, the sugar for Tina’s coffee forgotten in her hands.
“Now look at these.” Tina opened the other file and laid out the grainy photos she’d taken last night of Kimberly Elmont’s bloody body in the parking lot.
A strangled sound emerged from Alison’s throat, and Michael glanced up to see the horrified look on her face. Before he could say anything, Scott was already there, taking the sugar from the girl’s hand and turning her toward the kitchen. “Come on,” he said, scowling at Tina. “If we’re going to throw up, we might as well do it on the kitchen floor. Or maybe we should just do it on Tina’s dress.”
Michael shot Scott a grateful look, but it was too late. The damage was done—Alison had seen it all. Still, he shoved the photos back into their folders, closed them, then looked directly at Tina. “I’d like to fire you right now, but you’re too good a reporter. But hear me and hear me good. Do not ever come here on a Sunday morning—or any other time—and spread stuff like that out in front of my daughter. That belongs in the newsroom, and in the future it will stay there.” He could tell by the look on Tina Wong’s face that she didn’t have the faintest clue as to why he was angry, and he also knew that despite his words, he wouldn’t fire her even if she dragged a body in next Sunday. “All right,” he sighed. “Let’s get to it. What do you want?”
“My special,” Tina instantly replied. “The one you committed to when Caroline Fisher was killed, on the condition that I get another body.” She tapped the folder containing the pictures of Kimberly Elmont. “This is it, Michael. I get my special. I need it now. There’s a lunatic out there and we need to catch him before another young girl”—she tipped her head meaningfully toward the kitchen, where Alison and Scott were talking quietly—“gets hacked to pieces.”
Michael put the two files into Tina’s briefcase, as certain as she was that both girls had been slain by the same man. The carnage was just too similar to have been done by a copycat, and besides, a copycat wouldn’t have waited a year to copy the first murder. “You need to keep me advised of every step you take,” he said.
“Not a problem,” Tina replied. “The first thing I need is to get a budget authorized. Then I’ll go to San Diego and San Jose and get whatever information I can to connect these murders with those killings from sixteen years ago, okay?”
Michael hesitated, but then nodded.
“I’ll be taking a film crew with me.”
“No way.”
Tina leaned in, fixing her eyes on him. “Interviews, Michael, for the special. Family members, police, coroner. These are unsolved murders, and we may find enough clues to solve them.”
He hesita
ted.
“We may have the clues to solve them, Michael. We. Not the police, but Channel 3 News.”
Michael thought for a moment. “Have your budget on my desk tomorrow—”
Tina pulled another sheet of paper from her briefcase. “Here it is—I worked it up two hours ago. Sign off on it, and I’ll be ready to air in two weeks.”
Michael scanned the budget items. “You be careful what you air. We’re not a Fox affiliate, you know. I want to vet all footage before it’s added.”
“No problem,” she said. “But Sunday night ratings haven’t been much lately, so we can push the envelope a little.”
Michael glanced over the budget a second time. It was far more reasonable and well-thought-out than he’d expected, especially considering that Tina Wong had put it together. Her pattern was always to ask for the moon, then settle for what she could get. But not this time. Clearly, she wanted this special, and hadn’t taken the chance of blowing it by asking for too much.
Still, he drew a line through her request for a sound tech on her two trips—she’d have to make do with just a cameraman-—and initialed it.
Tina put the page back into her briefcase and snapped the locks. “I’ll be on the police this afternoon for preliminary information, and probably go to San Jose tomorrow.”
Michael walked her to the door, saw her out, then went back to the dining room, where Alison was straightening the place settings and Scott was serving the French toast.
“What was that all about?” Alison asked. “What’s going on?”
“Just Tina Wong,” Scott said sourly. “Ruining yet another brunch.”
“It’s not ruined,” Michael said. “Nothing could ruin your French toast.”
Scott smiled. “Not even Tina Wong?”
“Not even Tina Wong.”
Alison picked up Tina’s untouched coffee, took it to the bar, and poured it down the sink. She wished the memory of the two mutilated bodies in Tina’s photographs would disappear as quickly as the coffee vanished down the drain, but she knew they wouldn’t.