wasn't the Bastille, neither was it open-door policy. Directly inside was a small pastel-hued reception area that screamed Designer at Work: Chagall-hued abstracts spotlit by track lighting; a puffy blue-leather couch; a frame- and-fabric chair more like a kite than a sitting device. One wall held framed awards for best this and that in design. The place had a subtle astringent smell, like disinfectant, or strong cleanser.
'Could chill beer in here,' Harry said, cinching his tie. We walked a short hall. I heard a muffled sob from a room to the left and gently opened the door. A slender woman sat at a small conference table with patrol officer Sally Hargreaves. Sal had been first on the scene. She was talking softly with her hand over the woman's wrist. Sal saw me and came to the door.
'Cheryl Knotts, victim's fiancee,' she whispered. 'Flight attendant out for three days. She got here fifty minutes ago to find one Peter Edgar Deschamps dead in his studio.'
'Impression?' I asked, knowing Sal's got the magic.
'She had nothing to do with it, I'd bet the farm on that. She's devastated.'
By magic I mean Sal has that rare sense letting her read people fast and dead on. All cops grow the ability to detect bullshit better than your average citizen, but some are prodigies, poly graphic Mozarts. On Sal's take alone I pretty much X'd out the fiancee as a suspect.
'Get her to answer some questions in a few?' I asked.
Sally nodded, touched my arm. 'Walk light if you can.'
Sally's got a hint of wet in her eyes; the magic has its price. I kissed her lightly on the forehead. 'Did I tell you I dreamed about you last week?' I said. 'I was a nurse and you were a Viking…'
Sal smiled for the first time and pushed me down the hall. 'Go take care of Harry before he does something weird,' she said.
The victim was on his back next to a drawing board. Beside the board was a desk with a Mac, and a monitor with a screen larger than the one on my TV. The man's garb was white-collar casual: blue Oxford-cloth shirt, pressed khakis, webbed belt, brown loafers. The deceased was solidly built not a hardcore gym rat with ham biceps and steroid-worm veins, but a guy with a hard and regular regimen. His shirt was unbuttoned and the slacks unzipped, the pants bunched low around his buttocks. Outside of the scarlet collar there was no sign of blood or other violence on his clothing. Hembree'd caught the case.
'What's the word, Bree?' I asked.
'Looks like you and Harry are going to pull some overtime.'
'Cause of death?'
'Just like Nelson. Can't find anything on the body. But a head wound…'
'Could be floating past the Dixey Bar lighthouse about now.'
Hembree nodded. 'If the perp's using a gun, I'd bet a twenty-two. Most of the time the slug goes into the skull and ricochets around inside like a Ping-Pong ball. No exit wound, no splatter. Just brain pudding.'
I thought about what the mind might make of a pellet bouncing within its confines like a metal wasp. Could a brain comprehend its own destruction? Hear itself scream?
'What about the blood when the head comes off?' I asked, rubbing my hands together, suddenly cold.
'Heart's stopped, blood's not moving. Less exsanguination than you'd think. Was me I'd slide a towel under the neck to sop blood, then remove the head. Wrap the head in the towel, drop it into a bowling-ball bag, and wave good-bye.'
'Just don't get the bags mixed up on league night. Any writing?'
'Been waiting for you to ask.'
Hembree slid the deceased's briefs past his pubic hair. The same minuscule writing, but in two lines. The top one said, Warped a quart of whores. Quart of whores. Whores warped. Quart of whores. Warped whores. Quart of whores. Warped whores. This was followed by Rats Rats Rats Ho Ho Ho Ho Rats Rats Rats Rats Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho An icy finger tickled the base of my neck.
'The whores angle again,' Hembree said. 'You guys went that road?'
I nodded. We'd contacted vice and homicide departments across the Gulf Coast, expanding to national crime-stat sources. No unsolved killings in our area, at least not within our parameters. Whatever this was, we had an exclusive.
Hembree pointed to the second line. 'Ho as 'whore'?'
'Or ho like in laughing at us, Bree.'
Hembree closed his eyes. 'Oh, man, anything but that.'
Taunts from psychopathic ally disordered killers were a chilling sign.
The killers felt certain they could get away with anything. Some did, especially if they had iron-hard self- control, like the control to precisely sever a head and write in tiny, perfectly defined letters.
Such people could live anywhere, be anything: janitor, schoolteacher, bank president.
Hembree said the ME's tech had approximated TOD at two or so hours before, give or take. Harry said, 'I'll go look around the rest of the place. See if you can get anything from the woman. Girlfriend?'
'Fiancee,' I corrected. 'Sally thinks she's clean.'
'Good enough for me,' Harry said, familiar with the magic. He buttoned his jacket. 'Damn, it's colder'n a tomb in here.'
I returned to the room with the fiancee, not looking forward to what I might become to her. In a grocery store I once unknowingly stood in line behind a woman I'd interviewed about her daughter's violent death.
When our eyes connected she turned white, made kitten-mew sounds, and ran out the door, her groceries still riding the belt. Now, entering the worst moment in this woman's life, I prayed her mind blanked me out after tonight, and when nightmares screamed open her eyes, it wasn't my face printed on the ceiling.
'Excuse me, Ms. Knotts, I'm Detective Carson Ryder, and I'd like to speak to you for a few minutes if I may.'
She took a deep breath and nodded. 'While it's still… fresh, I know.' I had to strain to hear her.
'Peter didn't tell you about any kind of meeting today? Anyone he was going to be talking to?'
'No. But he's wearing meeting clothes, long pants, dress shirt. He'd work in cutoffs and a T-shirt, unless… someone must have scheduled at the last minute.'
I heard voices and footsteps at the front door. Sally closed the door for privacy.
'Did clients come here often?'
'No. He goes to them. Peter's big on service.'
'Walk-ins?'
'Sometimes people'd see the sign and ask if he did business cards and stuff like that.'
'If he was going to meet someone and wrote it down, where would he keep the information?'
She closed her eyes. 'I gave him a PDA last Christmas. It's probably in the front desk. Top drawer.'
Sal slipped away, returning a minute later with a device hardly larger than a credit card. She'd put on latex gloves. I joined Sal in the hall. She tapped the keypad and studied the display a long moment before turning it to me.
Today's date. Under that was entered: 8:00 PM mtg.w/Mr. Cutter.
'Well, isn't that just bold as hell,' Sally said.
I stepped out to tell Harry about Mr. Cutter and ran into a straight-arm block with a wall of meat behind it. 'Whoa, there, Ryder,' Burlew said. 'Where you going, sport?' His breath smelled like manure and onions; maybe he should have chewed Listerine ads.
'I have to talk to Harry.'
'Phone him, hot dog. From outside.'
I yelled. 'Harry, you back there?'
He pointed to the front. 'Door's the other way, bucko.'
'Where's the captain, Burlew?'
'Sergeant Burlew to you. Now haul ass before it gets hauled.'
Squill stuck his face through the doorway of Deschamps's studio a dozen feet down the hall. It was like the world had shifted on its axis and everyone got thrown into different positions. 'I've got the scene now, Ryder,' he said. 'Go take statements from the neighbors.'
'Where's Harry, Captain? It's important.'
'Didn't you get enough air at birth, Ryder?' Squill said. 'I gave you a direct order. Get outside and start
