LITMIR.BIZ

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      Rukmani was talking through a white paper mouth and nose mask. Head down, she was peering into a sea of tissue and viscera, probing at something red and squishy with a metal instrument. An hour ago, Trent Minors had been vomiting over Brittany’s face. Now the young girl had been literally reduced to flesh and bones.

      Again, Rukmani spoke … more like muttered. Poe could barely understand her. “Can you take a break?”

      “A break?”

      “Yes. Like a coffee break. Or a tea break?”

      She looked up, covered the dissected body with a tarp. “Is the smell bothering you?”

      “A little.” Poe snapped his fingers as his eyes swept across the steel room of death. They eventually settled upon Rukmani, dressed in surgical blues. Wrapped up like an anoxic mummy. He said, “It’s hard to talk in here.”

      “C’mon.” She untied her mask, snapped off her gloves. “But only for five minutes. I don’t like to leave my bodies unattended.”

      “Thanks.” He kissed her cheek. She stank of formaldehyde.

      Together they boarded a two-person staff-only elevator.

      Staff only.

      As if a morgue would be teeming with visitors.

      They took the lift to the third floor. Her office was immediately to the right. About the size of a coffin, but it had a ceiling and a lockable door, and it was all her own. A standard-issue desk and a couple of chairs. A wall of bookshelves held medical tomes and pictures of her two grown children—twenty-five-year-old Shoba, a sophomore at Harvard Medical School, and twenty-seven-year-old Michael, a resident in radiology at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis.

      Married in the old country, Rukmani had given birth to her son two weeks past her sixteenth birthday. The untimely death of her much older mercantile husband, a hidden cache of rainy-day money, and a couple of American relatives had given her a new life in the States. In the States, she wasn’t judged by her caste or her in-laws. In the States, she wasn’t forced to avoid the sun to keep her Indian complexion as Anglo-light as possible. Probably the reason why she had moved to Vegas. At the moment, Ruki was nutmeg-brown.

      “Sit.” All business. She said, “What specifically do you want to know?”

      “Bullet holes?”

      “Not yet.”

      “Stab wounds?”

      “None so far.”

      Poe felt ill. “She died while this monster was gouging out her eyeball?”

      “Not necessarily.”

      Poe drummed on her desktop, waited.

      Rukmani said, “There are other ways to murder besides stabbing and shooting.” She made an imaginary needle with her finger and stuck it in the crook of her arm.

      Poe said, “He OD’d her first?”

      “Or at least sedated her. That’s my guess.”

      “You found something in her veins.”

      “Bloodwork hasn’t come back yet.” Rukmani pushed her glasses back on her nose, then put her hands over his to quiet his fidgeting. “You look tired. Did you sleep at all?”

      “An hour at my desk this morning. What about you?”

      “About four hours.” A pause. “Come to my place tonight. I’ll cook you dinner. If your face drops in the mulligatawny, I won’t say a word.”

      “Sounds wonderful, but I’m probably going to pull another all-nighter.”

      “Romulus, you can’t work effectively on an hour’s sleep.”

      She was right. He said, “Nothing happens in this town before dark. I’ll grab a couple of hours of sleep before I go out again.”

      Rukmani looked grave. “Why don’t you live in a normal house?”

      “I like where I live. It’s very quiet.”

      “It doesn’t have running water or electricity.”

      “Modern conveniences are highly overrated.”

      “At least get a box spring for the mattress.”

      “I couldn’t get it through the doorframe.”

      “So get a bigger door, for godsakes.”

      “Why are you pissed at me? You know I’d love to come for dinner, spend the night with you engaged in wild, passionate lovemaking. Do you think I’m working by choice? I’m paid to do a job. Just like you.”

      “There’s work,” Rukmani said, “and there’s work-obsessed.”

      “Ain’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”

      This time, Rukmani remained quiet.

      Poe thought: Maybe this is why she’s so standoffish. She doesn’t like my house. Or my hours. Still, she keeps the same hours. He steered the conversation back toward business. “Why do you think she was sedated while he was … you know … flaying her?”

      “The evenness of some of the gouge marks. Almost ruler-perfect parallel lines. If she had been awake, she would have been thrashing about, and the lines would have been squiggly.”

      “What about if he bound her?”

      “Even so, she could have squirmed unless he had her head in a vise. Even with millimeters’ worth of motion, there would have been waves or chinks in the lines. Some of the rakes were almost … surgical in their precision.”

      “Someone from the medical profession?”

      “Possibly. Or someone who’s very exacting.”

      Poe made a sour face. “So she was either sedated or dead when he … attacked her.”

      “There was evidence of fresh bleeding into the depressions. I’d say she was sedated. Very heavily sedated. Alive but unconscious. She probably never felt a thing.” She gave him a weak smile. “Small comfort.”

      He thought about her words. “That could say something about the killer.”

      “Like what?”

      “He’s a control freak. Wants her completely defenseless so he can do his thing. Doesn’t want to leave anything up to chance.”

      “Or maybe he has sensitive ears and doesn’t like screaming.”

      Poe nodded. “You may have something there.”

      “Sensitive ears?”

      “He doesn’t like to hear screaming because he doesn’t do torture for torture’s sake.”

      “Just enjoys raking human flesh?” Rukmani shook her head. “I suppose a boy needs a hobby.”

      Poe was talking as much to himself as to Rukmani. “He likes killing. He likes … dressing his victim in a certain fashion. But like a hunter with his prey. Hunters don’t get their kicks out of torturing animals. They like clean, kill shots. One big bam and the animal keels over. The thrill is the hunt.”

      “And the head on the wall afterward,” Rukmani stated. “Something they can brag about. Maybe that’s what she was. A trophy kill.”

      “She wasn’t dressed or displayed like a trophy kill.” Poe paused. “Of course, I got to her after she’d been in a windstorm. Who knows what she looked like before?”

      Rukmani said, “I should be getting back.”

      Poe said, “Do you have a fix as to what kind of instrument made the gouges?”

      “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that.”

      “Go

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