LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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