“Exactly.” Saunders sounded a bit mystified. “What is the administrator of a plastic surgery boutique doing with expired biomedicals from an abandoned hospital? More to the point, a hospital that closed thirty years ago? Dermaknit wasn’t invented until ‘sixty-seven!”
Gray furrowed his brows. “I don’t know,” he said, and he hated to say it. “It’s got to have something to do with the murders. I want you to look into their procurement records, see if you can come up with something.” Askew, Donner and Cuaron – all three of them connected, and only two of them dead. “What about the cameras?”
“Cuaron had visitors the night before,” said Saunders. “The cameras show him going up to the door of the clinic, right? Then he takes out a remote and presses a button – and then the feed cuts out. And before you ask, it cuts out on all cameras in and around the ground floor. He’s not supposed to have access to the external cameras at least.”
“And when did this happen?” Gray was already buttoning up the field kit and securing it in the passenger-side footwell.
“About three hours before the estimated time of death.”
“Fantastic.” Gray reached for the wheel. “Thanks, Saunders. I’ll talk to you soon.” He killed the line and dialed up Murdock.
“I’m here,” she said, the picture of flirty cheer.
“I want you and Bradstreet up at the Donner Gallery,” he said, and rattled off the address. “Drop what you’re doing and back me up. I’m bringing somebody in, and if I’m not mistaken they’re not going to come quietly.”
“Sure thing,” she said, her voice snapping to. “What’s the charge?”
“No charges yet,” he said as the Vectra cleared the curb and began thundering away northward. “I’m getting a search warrant.”
Murdock sounded unsure. “I don’t understand.”
“I need you there for the warrant at least,” he said. “But I guarantee you, I know what I’m going to find.”
“All right, Detective,” she said, “We’ll see you there.”
Gray killed the call and told the car to dial Central. He’d need that warrant quickly, and he’d better be right – but he wasn’t worried. Not a bit. The weight of arrogance and ambition had worked in the favor of plenty of other detectives, and today it would work in his.
He’d get that new badge yet.
Chapter Eleven
By the time the car had made it to the gallery, Gray had secured a search-with-entry warrant for the gallery, as well as a quick probe into the background of the receptionist on file. Audrey Mason had been in the employ of Alexis Donner for the past three years, just before the gallery started. He did what he should have done in the first place before going to see Black-Eyes – he had the computer run a precis on the gallery, specifically on the work done by the man that Donner had referred to as Lindzer Yates.
The truth was that there was no such man attached to the gallery. There certainly was no artist by that name either, especially attached to such strong artistic content. There was no Yates attached to the gallery, at all nor was there a Lindzer – but there was the pretty, timid, girl behind the reception desk, the girl who had been with Donner as his gallery moved from New York to Seattle. The girl who a recent art site whispered might well be Donner’s next protégé. Her last name – Yin – didn’t ring any bells, but her first name certainly did.
Her name was Lindsay.
The Vectra pulled up and parked by the wedge of Murdock and Bradstreet’s patrol car. Emerging from the driver’s side, Walken gestured to the two officers who quickly got out on their own. The Pacificers’ playfulness was gone as they stepped out on the sidewalk, having traded in their light vests for the more traditional body armor; both of their faces were masks of grim resolve.
“With me,” Gray said, and he marched with them up to the front door of the warehouse that housed the gallery. He tried the door a bit; it wouldn’t budge.
“I’ve got it,” said Bradstreet. He took a spark gun from his pocket, so named for its appearance as a sort of skeletal holdout pistol. It was, in fact, a very short-ranged EMP gun that took out local systems; cops used them to short out door locks and the like. Bradstreet put the gun’s snub barrel against the lock panel set into the warehouse facade beside the door and pulled the trigger. There was a sharp snap and the smell of ozone, and Gray pulled on the door again. This time it swung out without resistance.
The three officers entered the gallery, Gray on point. The entryway was empty. “Civil Protection,” he called out to the empty air; the holographic arch still stood there, with its horrible faces licking beneath its surface. “I’m executing a search and entry warrant. If there’s anyone here, I need you to come out now.”
Silence. They waited for several minutes, looking around at each other. Then they walked slowly into the gallery space itself, and the gory constructs of light stared balefully at them from their pedestals. “Man,” muttered Murdock as she looked at the gruesome sculptures, “If your guy hasn’t killed anybody yet, he’s probably well on his way toward doing so.”
“Yeah,” said Bradstreet. He’d unslung his gun, though he kept its muzzle pointed at the ground as they proceeded through the gallery room. “Regular fucking slaughterhouse Rodin, this one.”
“I wanted to be an artist at some point,” said Gray. He thought about painting pretty girls in oils, pale, thin creatures draped over desks or chaise-lounges.
Murdock snorted. “You can use me as your model anytime.”
Gray briefly had an image of the redheaded woman stretched naked across his sofa at home, but buried his thoughts under the weight of the moment. “Next room,” he said, and his hand found the grip of his Hornisse. The gun hissed out of its holster like an uncoiling snake, eager and deadly. Its weight was comfortable in his hand. Gray thumbed the battery on and felt the telltale static buzz as the capacitors filled with power.
They passed through the gallery hall into a storeroom, which was obviously converted from a freight container; the light was dim there, simple worklights bolted into the ceiling. Projector pedestals and physical sculpture lurked beneath plastic drapes, and in the dim glow they were overpriced bogeymen awaiting closet assignments. The low light made the plastic covers shiver in the air as they proceeded. “Creepier and creeper,” muttered Murdock, who produced her palmlight again to sweep the path ahead of them.
One of the two heavy doors at the far end of the container had been left unlocked, and strips of the same heavy plastic sheeting that covered the objects in the room hung there like a partition. Something came to Gray’s ears, a soft sound – something he couldn’t quite identify. “Listen,” he whispered, lifting his hand. “Do you hear that?”
“I do,” said Bradstreet. “Sounds like…I don’t know what that is. It sounds…”
“Wet.” Murdock finally unslung her weapon. “Let’s get in there, Detective.”
And so they moved. Their feet rang on the floor as they hurried forward, their weapons at the ready. Gray hit the plastic first, pushing through it hard with one raised arm – and surged forward into near darkness. The room beyond was lit only by the remnant light from the storeroom behind them, revealing only the vaguest shapes somewhere in the middle of the room. He thought he glimpsed a table, but his brain fuzzed the moment he drew his next breath and the smell hit his sensorium. First there was the scent of meat left out, sickly-sweet and pungent in his nostrils; then the wave of copper, like someone had shoved pennies under his nose. A shudder ran through him, a combination of the dark and the anticipation of death.
“Murdock,” he called back. “Get that light in here.”
The lance of cold blue light parted the darkness, and exposed horror. Reds and blacks thrown into harsh relief, the gleam of steel caught in the glow of the palmlight. It was a museum of atrocity, the room they had entered, and Murdock’s lamp was a spotlight to show each exhibit in turn. From walls covered in acoustic foam the bodies of women hung from hooks driven in close to th
e ceiling. Or rather, the segments of bodies; arms, legs and torsos were strung up like meat purchased in a live-flesh butchery boutique, and every joint had been carved in places. Though no heads hung from the hooks, they were not necessary; every incision was a mouth with which to declare what obscenities the flesh had suffered.
And still the wetness gurgled.
Bradstreet made a little sound, something like ‘oh’ but strangled at one end; Murdock said nothing. Instead she turned the beam downward, and as the spot came to rest upon what lay in the center of the room, even Gray’s hard heart froze in his chest. There was indeed a table in the middle of the room, a large steel thing like one would find in a surgery, on casters. On the table there lay the body of a woman. Pale and thin, she had been arranged in the same position as the rest of the bodies – except for her arms, which had been tucked underneath her. Black hair, once braided, hung in a matted curtain over her face. She was covered in blood and bruises; it made her ethnicity difficult to determine, but the half-mutilated crest of her hair was very recognizable to him. This was the girl he had suspected. This was Lindsay Yin.
And now she was dead.
“Jesus,” muttered Bradstreet, who produced his own palmlight and shone it on the girl’s body. Everyone fixed their attention on her, who though bloody and bruised was at least intact. Bradstreet approached, looking at the dead girl; he slung his gun and with gloved fingers reached out to lift her hair. Sure enough, the matted braids revealed her pale face, the raccoon bruises not makeup at all.
“All right,” said Gray, feeling his skin grow clammy in the face of the abomination around them. “Let’s…let’s call the coroner, get evidence teams in here.”
“This is awful,” Murdock was whispering to herself; she was just staring at the girl, and though her eyes were hidden by the smoky visor, Gray knew the kind of wide-eyed stare she had beneath it. “This is awful.”
Gray put his hand on her shoulder, feeling her turn limply with his slightest pressure, and he pushed her back toward the door. “Go on, Kate,” he murmured to her, the words like ashes in his mouth. “Go out to the car and make the call.” She left without a word, and as she did he took out his own palmlight to make up for the absence.
“Hey, Bradstreet,” he said when Kate had cleared the storeroom and entered the gallery proper. Shock had taken him by the hand and led him away from attachment; he was a machine at the moment, albeit one capable of concern. “You all right?”
The answer he got was a strangled gurgle. The faint smell of cooked meat blossomed in his nostrils.
Gray turned around. His palmlight lay on the ground, throwing up a ghastly cone of light across his body. He half-crouched, half-leaned against the table, and his gun hung from his shoulder. His gloved hands were laced over his stomach. Something wet glittered between his fingers. “Hey,” Gray breathed, his eyes widening. What was this? “Are you all right, man?” What was this?
But he wasn’t. As if cued by his words, Bradstreet let out a great wet cough, and his hands fell away. It was like someone opened up a dam; blood gushed out of a rent that had opened in his front armor, and with the blood came loops of veined purple-gray. Bradstreet collapsed, coughed once more, and died on the spot, all there was of him pouring out of the hole in his gut.
And from behind him, a sound came.
It wasn’t a laugh, not entirely. It started as a kind of moan, which swung upward into a keening giggle and back again – the sound of death in a woman’s throat, mad and inarticulate, and in his shock Gray looked up to see Lindsay Yin standing on the far side of the table, quite naked and quite alive. Her hair had flopped back into a deflated version of the comb it was before so that to Gray it looked almost like a crown, and in her hand there shone a long, white-bladed knife that buzzed and smoked with the stinking remnants of Bradstreet’s belly.
Her face was what spurred him into action. Wide-eyed and triumphant, splattered with the blood of Bradstreet and of those around her, Yin’s head was held back in an expression of victory; she stared at Gray from over her cheeks, the once pretty face twisted into a Roman grotesque. She was the mother of monsters in this instant, spilling all manner of damnation upon the world, and in the back of his head something whispered to him that he could only obey.
They stared at one another for a long moment, man and monster. She smiled at him, showing tiny, pretty white teeth, flecked with unidentifiable matter that his brain swore to him was just lunch. Just lunch. Just lunch…
Like a machine he lifted his gun and pointed its muzzle at that horrible death-mask of a face. The Hornisse hummed twice and she went down in a fountain of blood that was her own, vanished behind the table as if eaten by the shadows at her back. Gray stood there, waiting, until he heard the wet bubbling that was her last breaths ebb and pass. Then waited a little more for the echo of her maniac laugh vanish from his mind, and when it would not he simply turned and left the room. And kept walking – out of the abattoir, out of the gallery with its horrid shadows of death, past a very pale and shaky Murdock who had taken off her helmet and now stared at him from inside her car with her bun half-torn and her red hair dangling over one shoulder.
“Gray,” she called to him, “Hey, wait –” She got up and ran over to him, and as if she felt the madness buzzing off his skin stopped by his side.
“Don’t go in there,” he said, his voice on automatic. “Call a nine-seven-three and stay in the car.”
“Nine seven–” Murdock stared at him for a moment. Then she tore off from him, ran back into the gallery building just as he found the curb. He sat down heavily and stared at the stained concrete, at the gun in his hand, buzzing dutifully like the knife that Lin had held in her hand.
“Nine-seven-three,” Gray murmured to himself. His eyes stung. “Officer down.”
From behind him, Kate Murdock’s scream was the mirror image of Lin’s mad howl, one of loss instead of triumph. It echoed up into the stained and cloudy sky, one more sound amongst night’s chorus.
Chapter Twelve
Lindsay Yin and Tony Bradstreet had died on a Thursday. By the following Tuesday, Dan Gray had become a household name, at least in the city of Seattle. It had taken them two days to go through the scene, and every minute of it was scryed out on camera. NewsNetNow, which had been happy to wait for Gray to call them that evening, had not been happy to spend that time ignoring him; whatever deal it had made with Murdock and Bradstreet that afternoon, it had kept the press off the site.
It did not, however, keep them from watching. Once Gray had torn off for the Donner Gallery, they’d sent a flyer in to watch from above; the whole thing had been witnessed, the officers going in, Kate running back outside to call for backup, puking behind her car, and then Gray’s wooden, stumbling exit from the building after shooting Yin in the face. He had watched himself on television a hundred times since then, how he slumped gray-faced on the curb and looked as though he were lost to the world until Kate had come out and collapsed next to him. Gray hadn’t remembered it, but he had held her while she cried. Her flirting had apparently been a nervous action and nothing serious, because she and Bradstreet had secretly been lovers for years. Kate was about to quit Civil Protection, in fact, because they had recently discovered that she was two months pregnant. She had lost the man she wanted to be her husband, and because she had fraternized with her partner – her subordinate – she was also going to lose her career. The whole thing was a goddamned mess, and Gray was sick that Kate and Bradstreet had been dragged into it. For local markets, who were growing tired of fireworks and Tricentennial jingoism, it had been the best television all year. They had no problem making her into an unethical harpy that had destroyed the lives of three different people, and Civil Protection was going to make an example out of her.
For Gray, however, it was a huge fucking gold star. The bodies of no less than twelve women had been found in the killing room attached to the gallery, all of them young and extremely beautiful. They had all been
butchered in the most terrible of ways, and like Anderson, Askew and Cuaron they had their spines removed. It really was perfect, especially when it was discovered that Anderson and Yin had been dating previous to his relationship with Angie. Maybe he had saved her from joining the other victims. He didn’t know, but it sure as hell seemed like that was the case.
Evidence collected all kinds of things from the gallery, as well as Donner’s and Yin’s apartments. Documents, diaries, scrapbooks that could make the blood curdle and clot in mid-flow. These were collected, analyzed by hand and by computer by the entire department at the expense of everything else, and were woven together and presented to the media thus: Donner, who had been moving around over the last twenty years, had originally been known as Klaus Alexis Muller. Muller was a commander in the Bundeswehr twenty years ago during the European War, when the EU split up into blocs and everyone hired private military corporations like a bunch of fucking idiots – you don’t put a corporation in charge of waging a war, after all. Police were bad enough.
Muller was one of the officers giving the PMCs directives on behalf of the Eastern Mercantile Bloc, of which Germany was the core nation, and pointing them toward targets westward. His orders saw some of the worst abuses the Bloc had been responsible for, especially the rounding up and torturing of civilian prisoners taken from French border cities. Muller liked to have French girls flown into Munich where he was based, then cut them up while recording the whole thing on holo. The collection he’d gathered by the time the war was over was staggering; he’d bugged out and left them all behind when the UN was looking for him. Twenty years ago he’d disappeared, and apparently turned himself into Donner. Nobody knew what his artificial eyes were for, or where he got the work done – he’d just vanished, and in the meantime was apparently still cutting up girls for fun. They’d found the murder records of almost two hundred young women in his apartment, every one of them done in the gallery – or that is, wherever he’d set the gallery up in the cities that he’d been.
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