Prodigal Son (4 page)

CHAPTER 7

AN OSCILLATING FAN
riffled the documents and case notes—held down by makeshift paperweights—on Carson’s desk. Beyond the windows, an orange sunset had deepened to crimson, to purple.

Michael was at his desk in the Homicide Division, adjacent to Carson’s, occupied by much of the same paperwork. She knew that he was ready to go home, but he usually let her define the workday.

“You checked our doc box lately?” she asked.

“Ten minutes ago,” Michael reminded her. “You send me out there one more time, I’m going to eat a get-small mushroom and just
stay
in the doc box until the report shows up.”

“We should’ve had the prelim autopsy on that floater hours ago,” she complained.

“And I shoulda been born rich. Go figure.”

She consulted photos of cadavers in situ while Michael watched.

The first victim, a young nurse named Shelley Justine, had been murdered elsewhere and dumped beside the London Street Canal. Tests revealed the chemical signature of chloroform in her blood.

After the killer rendered her unconscious, he killed her with a knife to the heart. With exquisite precision he removed her ears. A peptide profile found no elevated endorphin levels in the blood, indicating that the surgery occurred after she was dead. Had she been alive, the pain and terror would have left telltale chemistry.

The second victim, Meg Saville, a tourist from Idaho, had also been chloroformed and knifed while unconscious. The Surgeon—the press’s name for him—had neatly sawed off Saville’s feet.

“If he’d just
always
take feet,” Michael said, “we’d know he was a podiatrist, and we’d have found him by now.”

Carson shuffled the next photo to the top of the stack.

The first two victims had been women; however, neither Shelley Justine nor Meg Saville had been molested.

When the third victim was a man, the killer established his bona fides as an equal-opportunity maniac. The body of Bradford Walden—a young bartender from a hole-in-the-wall across the river in Algiers—had been found with the right kidney surgically removed.

The switch to souvenirs of internal origin wasn’t troubling—an urge to collect feet and ears was no less disturbing than a fancy for kidneys—but it
was
curious.

Chemical traces of chloroform were found, but this time peptide profiles showed that Walden had been alive and awake for the surgery. Had the chloroform worn off too soon? Or had the killer intentionally let the man wake up? In either case, Walden died in agony, his mouth stuffed with rags and sealed with duct tape to muffle his screams.

The fourth victim, Caroline Beaufort, Loyola University student, had been discovered with both legs missing, her torso propped on an ornate bench at a trolley-car stop in the upscale Garden District. She had been chloroformed and unconscious when murdered.

For his fifth kill, the Surgeon dispensed with the anesthetic. He murdered another man, Alphonse Chaterie, a dry cleaner. He collected Chaterie’s liver while the victim was alive and fully awake: not a trace of chloroform.

Most recently, this morning’s body in the City Park lagoon was missing both hands.

Four women, two men. Four with chloroform, one without, one set of results pending. Each victim missing one or more body parts. The first three women were killed before the trophies were removed, while the men were alive and conscious for the surgery.

Apparently none of the victims had known any of the others. Thus far no mutual acquaintances had come to light, either.

“He doesn’t like to see women suffer, but men in agony are okay with him,” Carson said, and not for the first time.

Michael had a new thought. “Maybe the killer’s a woman, has more sympathy for her own gender.”

“Yeah, right. How many serial killers have ever been women?”

“There’ve been a few,” he said. “But, I am proud to say, men have been a
lot
more successful at it.”

Carson wondered, “Is there a fundamental difference between lopping off female body parts and digging out male internal organs?”

“We’ve been down this road.
Two
serial killers collecting body parts in the same city in the same three-week period? ‘Is such a coincidence logical, Mr. Spock?’ ‘Coincidence, Jim, is just a word superstitious people use to describe complex events that in truth are the mathematically inevitable consequences of a primary cause.’”

Michael made this work a lot less gruesome and more tolerable, but sometimes she wanted to thump him. Hard.

“And what does that mean?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I never did understand Spock.”

Appearing as if conjured into a pentagram, Harker dropped an envelope on Carson’s desk. “ME’s report on the floater. Delivered to my doc box by mistake.”

Carson didn’t want a push-and-shove with Harker, but she could not let obvious interference pass unremarked. “One more time your foot’s on mine, I’ll file a complaint with the chief of detectives.”

“I’m so afraid,” Harker dead-panned. His reddened face glistened with a sheen of sweat. “No ID on the floater yet, but it looks pretty much like she was chloroformed, taken someplace private, and killed with a stiletto to the heart before her hands were taken.”

When Harker continued to stand there, the day’s sun bottled in his glassy face, Michael said, “And?”

“You’ve checked out everyone with easy access to chloroform. Researchers doing animal experimentation, employees at medical supply companies…But two sites on the Internet offer formulas for making it in the kitchen sink, out of stuff you can buy at the supermarket. I’m just saying this case doesn’t fit in any standard box. You’re looking for something you’ve never seen before. To stop this guy, you’ve got to go to a weirder place—one level below Hell.”

Harker turned from them and walked away across the squad room.

Carson and Michael watched him leave. Then Michael said, “What was
that
? It almost seemed like genuine concern for the public.”

“He was once a good cop. Maybe a part of him still is.”

Michael shook his head. “I liked him better as an asshole.”

CHAPTER 8

OUT OF THE LAST
of the twilight came Deucalion with a suitcase, in clothes too heavy for the sultry night.

This neighborhood offered markedly less glamour than the French Quarter. Seedy bars, pawn shops, liquor stores, head shops.

Once a grand movie house, the Luxe Theater had become a shabby relic specializing in revivals. On the marquee, unevenly spaced loose plastic letters spelled out the current double feature:

THURS THRU SUNDAY

DON SIEGEL REVIVAL

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

HELL IS FOR HEROES

The marquee was dark, the theater closed either for the night or permanently.

Not all of the streetlamps were functioning. Approaching the Luxe, Deucalion found a route of shadows.

He passed a few pedestrians, averting his face without seeming to, and drew attention only for his height.

He slipped into a service walk beside the movie palace. For more than two centuries, he had used back doors or even more arcane entrances.

Behind the theater, a bare bulb in a wire cage above the back door shed light as drab and gray as this litter-strewn alleyway.

Sporting multiple layers of cracked and chipped paint, the door was a scab in the brick wall. Deucalion studied the latch, the lock…and decided to use the bell.

He pushed the button, and a loud buzz vibrated through the door. Inside the quiet theater, it must have echoed like a fire alarm.

Moments later, he heard heavy movement inside. He sensed that he was being studied through the fish-eye security lens.

The lock rattled, and the door opened to reveal a sweet face and merry eyes peering out of a prison of flesh. At five feet seven and perhaps three hundred pounds, this guy was twice the man he should have been.

“Are you Jelly Biggs?” Deucalion asked.

“Do I look like I’m not?”

“You’re not fat enough.”

“When I was a star in the ten-in-one, I weighed almost three hundred more. I’m half the man I used to be.”

“Ben sent for me. I’m Deucalion.”

“Yeah, I figured. In the old days, a face like yours was gold in the carnival.”

“We’re both blessed, aren’t we?”

Stepping back, motioning Deucalion to enter, Biggs said, “Ben told me a lot about you. He didn’t mention the tattoo.”

“It’s new.”

“They’re fashionable these days,” said Jelly Biggs.

Deucalion stepped across the threshold into a wide but shabby hallway. “And me,” he said drily, “I’ve always been a fashion plate.”

BEHIND THE BIG
theater screen, the Luxe featured a labyrinth of passages, storage closets, and rooms that no patron had ever visited. With a rolling gait and heavy respiration, Jelly led the way past crates, mildewed cardboard boxes, and moisture-curled posters and stand-ups that promoted old films.

“Ben put seven names on the letter he sent me,” Deucalion said.

“You once mentioned Rombuk monastery, so he figured you might still be there, but he didn’t know what name you’d be using.”

“He shouldn’t have shared my names.”

“Just knowin’ your aliases doesn’t mean I can mojo you.”

They arrived at a door that wore an armor-thick coat of green paint. Biggs opened it, switched on a light, gestured for Deucalion to enter ahead of him.

A windowless but cozy apartment lay beyond. A kitchenette was adjacent to the combination bedroom and living room. Ben loved books, and two walls were lined with them.

Jelly Biggs said, “It’s a sweet place you inherited.”

The key word whipped through Deucalion’s mind before lashing back with a sharp sting. “Inherited. What do you mean? Where’s Ben?”

Jelly looked surprised. “You didn’t get my letter?”

“Only his.”

Jelly sat on one of the chrome and red-vinyl chairs at the dinette table. It creaked. “Ben was mugged.”

The world is an ocean of pain. Deucalion felt the old familiar tide wash through him.

“This isn’t the best part of town, and getting worse,” Biggs said. “Ben bought the Luxe when he retired from the carnival. The neighborhood was supposed to be turning around. It didn’t. The place would be hard to sell these days, so Ben wanted to hold on.”

“How did it happen?” Deucalion asked.

“Stabbed. More than twenty times.”

Anger, like a long-repressed hunger, rose in Deucalion. Once anger had been his meat, and feasting on it, he had starved.

If he let this anger grow, it would quickly become fury—and devour him. For decades he had kept this lightning in a bottle, securely stoppered, but now he longed to pull the cork.

And then…what? Become the monster again? Pursued by mobs with torches, with pitchforks and guns, running, running, running with hounds baying for his blood?

“He was everybody’s second father,” said Jelly Biggs. “Best damn carnie boss I ever knew.”

During the past two centuries, Ben Jonas had been one of a precious handful of people with whom Deucalion had shared his true origins, one of the few he had ever trusted completely.

He said, “He was murdered after he contacted me.”

Biggs frowned. “You say that like there’s a connection.”

“Did they ever find the killer?”

“No. That’s not unusual. The letter to you, the mugging—just a coincidence.”

At last putting down his suitcase, Deucalion said, “There are no coincidences.”

Jelly Biggs looked up from the dinette chair and met Deucalion’s eyes. Without a word they understood that in addition to years in the carnival, they shared a view of the world that was as rich with meaning as with mysteries.

Pointing toward the kitchenette, the fat man said, “Besides the theater, Ben left you sixty thousand cash. It’s in the freezer.”

Deucalion considered this revelation for a moment, then said, “He didn’t trust many people.”

Jelly shrugged. “What do I need with money when I’ve got such good looks?”

CHAPTER 9

SHE WAS YOUNG
, poor, inexperienced. She’d never had a manicure before, and Roy Pribeaux proposed that he give her one.

“I give myself manicures,” he said. “A manicure can be erotic, you know. Just give me a chance. You’ll see.”

Roy lived in a large loft apartment, the top half of a remodeled old building in the Warehouse District. Many rundown structures in this part of the city had been transformed into expansive apartments for artists.

A printing company and a computer-assembly business shared the main floor below. They existed in another universe, as far as Roy Pribeaux was concerned; he didn’t bother them, and they reciprocated.

He needed his privacy, especially when he took a new and special woman to his loft. This time, her name was Elizabeth Lavenza.

As odd as it might seem on a first date—or a tenth, for that matter—to suggest a manicure, he had charmed Elizabeth into it. He knew well that the modern woman responded to sensitivity in men.

First, at the kitchen table, he placed her fingers in a shallow bowl of warm oil to soften both the nails and the cuticles.

Most women also liked men who enjoyed pampering them, and young Elizabeth was no different in this regard.

In addition to sensitivity and a desire to pamper, Roy had a trove of amusing stories and could keep a girl laughing. Elizabeth had a lovely laugh. Poor thing, she had no chance of resisting him.

When her fingertips had soaked long enough, he wiped them with a soft towel.

Using a natural, nonacetone polish remover, he stripped the red color from her nails. Then with gentle strokes of an emery board, he sculpted the tip of each nail into a perfect curve.

He had only begun to trim the cuticles when an embarrassing thing happened: His special cell phone rang, and he knew that the caller had to be Candace. Here he was romancing Elizabeth, and the
other
woman in his life was calling.

He excused himself and hurried into the dining area, where he had left the phone on a table. “Hello?”

“Mr. Darnell?”

“I know that lovely voice,” he said softly, moving into the living room, away from Elizabeth. “Is this Candace?”

The cotton-candy vendor laughed nervously. “We talked so little, how could you recognize my voice?”

Standing at one of the tall windows, his back to the kitchen, he said, “Don’t you recognize mine?”

He could almost feel the heat of her blush coming down the line when she admitted, “Yes, I do.”

“I’m so glad you called,” he said in a discreet murmur.

Shyly, she said, “Well, I thought…maybe coffee?”

“A get-acquainted coffee. Just say where and when.”

He hoped she didn’t mean
right now.
Elizabeth was waiting, and he was enjoying giving her the manicure.

“Tomorrow evening?” Candace suggested. “Usually business on the boardwalk dies down after eight o’clock.”

“Meet you at the red wagon. I’ll be the guy with the big smile.”

Unskilled at romance, she said awkwardly, “And…I guess I’ll be the one with the eyes.”

“You sure will,” he said. “Such
eyes.
”

Roy pressed
END
. The disposable phone wasn’t registered to him. Out of habit, he wiped it clean of prints, tossed it on the sofa.

His modern, austere apartment didn’t contain much furniture. His exercise machines were his pride. On the walls were reproductions of Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical sketches, the great man’s studies of the perfect human form.

Returning to Elizabeth at the kitchen table, Roy said, “My sister. We talk all the time. We’re very close.”

When the manicure was complete, he exfoliated the skin of her perfect hands with an aromatic mixture of almond oil, sea salt, and essence of lavender (his own concoction), which he massaged onto her palms, the backs of the hands, the knuckles, the fingers.

Finally, he rinsed each hand, wrapped it in clean white butcher paper, and sealed it in a plastic bag. As he placed the hands in the freezer, he said, “I’m so happy you’ve come to stay, Elizabeth.”

He didn’t find it peculiar to be talking to her severed hands. Her hands had been the essence of her. Nothing else of Elizabeth Lavenza had been worth talking about or to. The hands were
her.