Prodigal Son

to consider an answer. Answers come to him instantly, and he rapidly inks letters in the squares, never making an error.

His name is Randal Six because five males have been named Randal and have gone into the world before him. If ever he, too, went into the world, he would be given a last name.

In the tank, before consciousness, he'd been educated by direct-to-brain data downloading. Once brought to life, he had continued to learn during sessions of drug-induced sleep.

He knows nature and civilization in their intricacies, knows the look and smell and sound of places he has never been. Yet his world is largely limited to a single room.

The agents of Mercy call this space his billet, which is a term to describe lodging for a soldier.

In the war against humanity-a secret war now but not destined to remain secret forever-he is an eighteen- year-old who came to life four months ago.

To all outward appearances, he is eighteen, but his knowledge is greater than that of most elderly scholars.

Physically, he is sound. Intellectually, he is advanced.

Emotionally, something is wrong with him.

He does not think of his room as his billet. He thinks of it as his cell.

He himself, however, is his own prison. He lives mostly within himself. He speaks little. He yearns for the world beyond his cell, beyond himself, and yet it frightens him.

Most of the day he spends with crossword puzzles, immersed in the vertical and horizontal patterns of words. The world beyond his quarters is alluring but it is also? disorderly, chaotic. He can feel it pressing against the walls, pressing, pressing, and only by focusing on crosswords, only by bringing order to the empty boxes by filling them with the absolutely right letters can he keep the outer disorder from invading his space.

Recently, he has begun to think that the world frightens him because Father has programmed him to be afraid of it. From Father, he has received his education, after all, and his life.

This possibility confuses him. He cannot understand why Father would create him to be? dysfunctional. Father seeks perfection in all things.

One thing gives him hope. Out in the world, and not far away, right here in New Orleans, is another like him. Not one of Father's creations, but likewise afflicted.

Randal Six is not alone. If only he could meet his equal, he would better understand himself? and be free.

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