by Dean Koontz
Here, behind the pantry, measuring twenty by fifteen feet, this retreat provided a place for him to work on small experiments, often those on the leading edge of his historic enterprise.
Victor supposed that he was to arcane laboratory equipment what Santa Claus was to gizmo-filled toy workshops.
When Mary Shelley took a local legend based on truth and crafted fiction from it, she’d made Victor a tragic figure and killed him off. He understood her dramatic purpose for giving him a death scene, but he loathed her for portraying him as tragic and as a failure.
Her judgment of his work was arrogant. What else of consequence did she ever write? And of the two, who was dead—and who was not?
Although her novel suggested his workplace was a phantasmagoria of gizmos as ominous in appearance as in purpose, she had been vague on details. Not until the first film adaptation of her book did the name Frankenstein become synonymous with the term “mad scientist” and with laboratories buzzing-crackling-humming with frightening widgets, thingums, and doohickeys.
Amusingly, Hollywood had the set design more than half right, not as to the actual machines and objects, but as to ambience. Even the studio behind the pantry had a flavor of Hell with machines.
On the center worktable stood a Lucite tank filled with a milky antibiotic solution. In the tank rested a man’s severed head.
Actually, the head wasn’t severed. It had never been attached to a body in the first place.
Victor had created it only to serve as a braincase. The head had no hair, and the features were rough, not fully formed.
Support systems serviced it with nutrient-rich, enzyme-balanced, oxygenated blood and drained away metabolic waste through numerous plastic tubes that entered through the neck.
With no need to breathe, the head was almost dead still. But the eyes twitched behind the lids, which suggested that it was dreaming.
The brain within the skull was self-aware but had only the most rudimentary personality, sufficient to the experiment.
Approaching the table, Victor addressed the resident of the open Lucite tank: “Time to work, Karloff.”
No one could say that Victor Helios, alias Frankenstein, was a humorless man.
In the head, the eyes opened. They were blue and bloodshot.
Karloff had been selectively educated by direct-to-brain data downloading; therefore, he spoke English. “Ready,” he said, his voice thick and hoarse.
“Where is your hand?” Victor asked.
The bloodshot eyes shifted at once to regard a smaller table in a far corner of the room.
There, a living hand lay in a shallow bowl of milky antibiotic solution. As in the case of the head, this five-fingered wonder was served by numerous tubes and by a low-voltage electrical pump that could empower its nerves and, thereby, its musculature.
The systems sustaining the head and those sustaining the hand were independent of each other, sharing no common tubing or wiring.
After reading the status displays on the equipment and making a few adjustments, Victor said, “Karloff, move your thumb.”
In the dish, the hand lay motionless. Motionless. And then … the thumb twitched, bent at the knuckle, straightened again.
Victor had long sought those genes that might carry the elusive psychic powers that humankind had sometimes experienced but had never been able to control. Recently he had achieved this small success.
This ultimate amputee, Karloff, had just exhibited psychomotor telekenesis, the control of his entirely detached hand strictly by means of mental exertion.
“Give me an arpeggio,” Victor said.
In the shallow bowl, the hand raised on the heel of its palm and strummed the air with all fingers, as if plucking at the strings of an invisible harp.
Pleased by this display, Victor said, “Karloff, make a fist.”
The hand slowly clenched, tighter, tighter, until the knuckles were sharp and white.
No emotion showed in Karloff’s face, yet the hand seemed to be an exquisite expression of anger and the will to violence.
CHAPTER 15
New day, new death. For the second morning in a row, Carson chased breakfast with the discovery of a mutilated corpse.
A TV crew was at the library, hauling gear out of a satellite van, when Carson jammed the brakes, twisted the wheel, and slotted her plainwrap between two black-and-whites that were angled to the curb.
“I break land-speed records getting here,” she grumbled, “and the media’s already on the scene.”
“Bribe the right people,” Michael suggested, “and next time you might get the call before Channel 4.”
As she and Michael crossed the sidewalk toward the library, a reporter shouted to her, “Detective O’Connor! Is it true the Surgeon cut out a heart this time?”
“Maybe they’re so interested,” she told Michael, “because none of those bastards has a heart.”
They hurried up stone steps to the ornate redstone building with gray granite arches and columns.
Admitting them, the police guard at the door said, “It fits the pattern, guys. It’s one of his.”
“Seven murders in a little over three weeks isn’t a pattern anymore,” Carson replied. “It’s a rampage.”
As they entered the reading foyer with the elevated main desk, Michael said, “I should’ve brought my overdue book.”
“You checked out a book? Mr. DVD with a book?”
“It was a DVD guide.”
Crime-scene techs, police photographers, criminalists, jakes, and personnel from the medical examiner’s office served as Indian guides without saying a word. Carson and Michael followed their nods and gestures through a labyrinth of books.
Three quarters of the way along an aisle of stacks, they found Harker and Frye, who were cordoning off the scene with yellow tape.
Establishing that the territory belonged to him and Carson, Michael said, “Yesterday’s hand bandit is this morning’s thief of hearts.”
Frye managed to look greasy and blanched. His face had no color. He kept one hand on his expansive gut as if he had eaten some bad pepper shrimp for breakfast.
He said, “Far as I’m concerned, you take the lead on this one. I’ve lost my taste for the case.”
If Harker, too, had a change of heart, his reasons were not identical to Frye’s. His face was as boiled red as ever, his eyes as challenging.
Running one hand through his sun-bleached hair, Harker said, “Looks to me like whoever has point position on this is walking a high wire. One mistake on a case this high profile, the media will flush your career down the toilet.”
“If that means cooperation instead of competition,” Michael said, “we accept.”
Carson wasn’t as ready as Michael to forgive the toe-tramping they had received from these two, but she said, “Who’s the vic?”
“Night security man,” Harker said.
While Frye remained behind, Harker ducked under the yellow tape and led them to the end of the aisle, around the corner to another long row of stacks.
The end-stack sign declared ABERRANT PSYCHOLOGY. Thirty feet away, the dead man lay on his back on the floor. The victim looked like a hog halfway through a slaughterhouse.
Carson entered the new aisle but did not proceed into the blood spatter, leaving the wet zone unspoiled for CSI.
As she quietly sized the scene and tried to fit her-self to it, planning the approach strategy, Harker said from behind her, “Looks like he cracked the breastbone neat as a surgeon. Went in there with complete professionalism. The guy travels with tools.”
Moving to Carson’s side, Michael said, “At least we can rule out suicide.”
“Almost looks like suicide,” Carson murmured thoughtfully.
Michael said, “Now, let’s remember the fundamentals of this relationship. You are the straight man.”
“There was a struggle,” Harker said. “The books were pulled off the shelves.”
About twenty books were sc
attered on the floor this side of the dead man. None was open. Some were in stacks of two and three.
“Too neat,” she said. “This looks more like someone was reading them, then set them aside.”
“Maybe Dr. Jekyll was sitting on the floor, researching his own insanity,” Michael conjectured, “when the guard discovered him.”
“Look at the wet zone,” Carson said. “Tightly contained around the body. Not much spatter on the books. No signs of struggle.”
“No struggle?” Harker mocked. “Tell that to the guy without a heart.”
“His piece is still in his holster,” Carson said. “He didn’t even draw, let alone get off a shot.”
“Chloroform from behind,” Michael suggested.
Carson didn’t respond at once. During the night, madness had entered the library, carrying a bag of surgical tools. She could hear the soft footsteps of madness, hear its slow soft breathing.
The stench of the victim’s blood stirred in Carson’s blood a quivering current of fear. Something about this scene, something she could not quite identify, was extraordinary, unprecedented in her experience, and so unnatural as to be almost super natural. It spoke first to her emotions rather than to her intellect; it teased her to see it, to know it.
Beside her, Michael whispered, “Here comes that old witchy vision.”
Her mouth went dry with fear, her hands suddenly icy. She was no stranger to fear. She could be simultaneously afraid but professional, alert and quick. Sometimes fear sharpened her wits, clarified her thinking.
“Looks more,” she said at last, “as if the vic just laid down there and waited to be butchered. Look at his face.”
The eyes were open. The features were relaxed, not contorted by terror, by pain.
“Chloroform,” Michael suggested again.
Carson shook her head. “He was awake. Look at the eyes. The cast of the mouth. He didn’t die unconscious. Look at the hands.”
The security guard’s left hand lay open at his side, palm up, fingers spread. That position suggested sedation before the murder.
The right hand, however, was clenched tight. Chloroformed, he would have relaxed the fist.
She jotted down these observations in her notebook and then said, “So who found the body?”
“A morning-shift librarian,” Harker said. “Nancy Whistler. She’s in the women’s lav. She won’t come out.”
CHAPTER 16
The women’s rest room smelled of pine-scented disinfectant and White Diamonds perfume. Regular janitorial service was the source of the former, Nancy Whistler of the latter.
A young, pretty woman who put the lie to the stereotypical image of librarians, she wore a clingy summer dress as yellow as daffodils.
She bent to one of the sinks and splashed cold water in her face from a running faucet. She drank from cupped hands, swished the water around her mouth, and spat it out.
“I’m sorry I’m such a mess,” she said.
“No problem,” Carson assured her.
“I’m afraid to leave here. Every time I think I just can’t puke again, I do.”
“I love this job,” Michael told Carson.
“The officers who did a perimeter check tell me there are no signs of forced entry. So you’re sure the front door was locked when you arrived for work?” Carson pressed.
“Absolutely. Two deadbolts, both engaged.”
“Who else has keys?”
“Ten people. Maybe twelve,” said Nancy Whistler. “I can’t think names right now.”
You could only push a witness so far in the aftermath of her encounter with a bloody corpse. This wasn’t a time to be hard-assed.
Carson said, “E-mail a list of keyholders to me. Soon.”
“All right, sure. I understand.” The librarian grimaced as if she might hurl again. Instead she said, “God, he was such a toad, but he didn’t deserve that.” Michael’s raised eyebrows drew an explanation from her: “Bobby Allwine. The guard.”
“Define toad,” Michael requested.
“He was always … looking at me, saying inappropriate things. He had a way of coming on to me that was … just weird.”
“Harassment?”
“No. Nothing forceful. Just weird. As if he didn’t get a lot of things, the way to act.” She shook her head. “And he went to funeral homes for fun.”
Carson and Michael exchanged a look, and he said, “Well, who doesn’t?”
“Viewings at funeral homes,” Whistler clarified. “Memorial services. For people he didn’t even know. He went two, three times a week.”
“Why?”
“He said he liked to look at dead people in their caskets. Said it … relaxed him.” She cranked off the water faucet. “Bobby was sort of a geek. But … why would someone cut out his heart?”
Michael shrugged. “Souvenir. Sexual gratification. Dinner.”
Appalled, repelled, Nancy Whistler bolted for a toilet stall.
To Michael, Carson said, “Oh, nice. Real nice.”
CHAPTER 17
Peeling paint, crumbling stucco, rusting wrought iron, sagging trumpet vines yellowing in the heat, and a pustulant-looking fungus flourishing in the many cracks in the concrete walkway established a design motif carried out in every aspect of the apartment building.
On the patchy lawn, which looked as if someone had salted it, a sign announced APARTMENT AVAILABLE / ONLY LOSERS NEED APPLY.
Actually, only the first two words were on the sign. The other four didn’t have to be spelled out; Carson inferred them from the condition of the place as she parked at the curb.
In addition to the sign, the front lawn actually contained a flock of seven pink flamingos.
“Bet my ass there’s a couple plastic gnomes somewhere around here,” Michael said.
Someone had painted four of the flamingos other tropical hues—mango green, pineapple yellow—perhaps hoping that a color change would render these lawn ornaments less absurd if not less tacky. The new paint had worn off in places; the pink shone through.
Not because of the implication of borderline poverty but because of the weirdness of the place, it was an ideal building for odd ducks and geeks like Bobby Allwine, he of the stolen heart. They would be drawn here, and in the company of their own kind, no one among them would receive particular attention.
A grizzled old man knelt on the front steps, fixing a railing brace.
“Excuse me. You work here?” Michael asked, flashing his ID.
“No more than I have to.” The old man looked Carson up and down appreciatively, but still spoke to Michael. “Who’s she?”
“It’s bring-your-sister-to-work day at the department. Are you the super here?”
“ ‘Super’ don’t seem to be a word that fits anyone or anything about this dump. I’m just sort of the jack-of-all around here. You come to see Bobby Allwine’s place?”
“News travels fast.”
Putting down his screwdriver, getting to his feet, the jack-of-all said, “Good news does. Follow me.”
Inside, the public stairwell was narrow, dark, peeling, humid, and malodorous.
The old guy didn’t smell so good, either, and as they followed him up to the second floor, Michael said, “I’ll never complain about my apartment again.”
At the door to 2-D, as he fumbled in his pockets for a passkey, the jack-of-all said, “Heard on the news his liver was cut out.”
“It was his heart,” Carson said.
“Even better.”
“You didn’t like Bobby Allwine?”
Unlocking the door, he said, “Hardly knew him. But this makes the apartment worth fifty bucks more.” He read their disbelief and assured them, “There’s people that’ll pay extra.”
“Who,” Michael asked, “the Addams family?”
“Just people who like some history about a place.”
Carson pushed inside the apartment, and when the old man would have followed her, Michael eased him aside and said, “We’l
l call you when we’re done.”
The blinds were drawn. The room was uncommonly dark for a bright afternoon.
Carson found the switch for the ceiling fixture and said, “Michael, look at this.”
In the living room, the ceiling and walls were painted black. The wood floors, the baseboards, the door and window casings were black, as well. The blinds were black.
The sole piece of furniture was a black vinyl armchair in the center of the room.
Closing the front door behind him, Michael said, “Does Martha Stewart have an emergency design hotline?”
The windows were closed. No air conditioning. The moist heat and the blackness and a tauntingly familiar sweet fragrance made Carson feel slow, stupid.
“What’s that smell?” she asked.
“Licorice.”
Thick, sweet, pervasive, the aroma was indeed licorice. Though it should have been pleasant, the smell half nauseated Carson.
The black floor had a glossy sheen, unmarred by dust or lint. She wiped a hand along a windowsill, down a door casing, and found no grime.
As it had in the library with Allwine’s corpse, fear found Carson, a creeping disquiet that climbed her spine and pressed a cold kiss to the back of her neck.
In the meticulously clean kitchen, Michael hesitated to open the black door of the refrigerator. “This feels like a Jeffrey Dahmer moment, severed heads among the bottles of pickles and mayonnaise, a heart in a OneZip bag.”
Even the interior of the refrigerator had been spray-painted black, but it held no heads. Just a coffee cake and a quart of milk.
Most of the cupboards were empty, too. A drawer contained three spoons, two forks, two knives.
According to his employee file, Allwine had lived here for two years. An inventory of his possessions would give the impression that he’d been prepared to leave on a moment’s notice and to travel light.
The third room was the bedroom. The ceiling, the walls, and the floor were black. Even the bed and sheets: black. A black nightstand, black lamp, and black radio with glowing green numbers.
“What is this place?” Carson wondered.