“ Don’t pretend you don’t hear me, Doctor, or that you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Coudriet said, placing a meaty hand over her microscope lens.
“ Precisely how did you hear about our disagreement?” She had told no one of her and Eriq’s argument.
“ As you said, walls in a police precinct have ears.” He noticed only now, by their labels, that the series of slides she was working on had come from the severed hand of Allison Norris. The attention she showed the slides created in him even more interest in what she was about. “What more do you hope to accomplish with that material?”
Jessica needed an ally, needed someone she could talk the scientific facts out with. Andrew Coudriet would have to be it; he would soon have access to the information anyway. “I’m not sure, but I noticed some odd anomalies with respect to the chemical makeup.”
“ Really? Now you’re a forensic chemist as well?”
“ I had our chemists at Quantico check it out.”
“ I see.”
“ Something didn’t quite jive, but now I’m sure.”
“ Sure of what?”
“ I noticed an odor when I first had this specimen in Islamorada, but I chalked it up to the embalming fluids used on the shark carcasses there. Early on, I sent tissue samples up to Quantico, to chemists there. Quantico confirmed a hunch I had, so now that I’ve got corroboration, I thought you might care to have a look.” She got up from her stool to allow him access to the microscope. “Go ahead. Tell me what you see.”
He looked from her to the scope and back again before settling his eyes over the dual eyepiece. “What am I looking for?”
“ Just keep looking.”
Coudriet settled in, removed his glasses and stared hard down into the microscope. After a moment, he thoughtfully said, “This came from the severed hand?”
“ Yes.”
“ What is it, precisely?”
“ I just got off the phone with an expert chemist with my outfit in D.C. He FedExed these slides overnight.”
Coudriet’s eyes squinted, the red brows looking like bird feathers. “And… and?”
“ And from the chemicals they were able to isolate, J.T. says it’s clearly a preservative or fixative of some sort… not unlike the kind we use to keep our own specimens in limbo.” Jessica rubbed the sleepiness from her eyes.
“ Good God, are you saying this madman is or was a… a medical man?”
“ Not necessarily. The chemicals could be had at most any drugstore. He might also have a link with a mortician’s office, or for that matter any number of places in the business of preserving flesh,” Jessica speculated.
“ From Jell-O to WonderPIus Glow 19? But why is he using preservatives on the hand alone? We saw nothing of the kind in the autopsy, and a thing like that, you don’t miss.”
“ No, there was no evidence of it in the body proper, no.”
“ Islamorada then. They somehow stuck the hand full of it. It’s the only logical explanation,” Coudriet said.
“ Yeah, maybe… I thought the same.”
“ Thought? As in the past tense?”
“ Well, Doctor, one of my jobs is to think the unthinkable.”
“ And precisely what unthinkable are you thinking?”
She considered her answer carefully. She knew she ought actually to be talking to Eriq about this, and she planned to, but he had so infuriated her the night before that she meant to steer clear of him today. “If I were relentlessly killing people, Dr. Coudriet, in cold and brutal fashion, I’d need some sort of construct or scaffolding built around me, as a safety measure for my own sanity. You follow me so far?”
“ I… I think I do.”
“ So, I kill and kill and kill again, enjoying the delight I take in robbing others of the most potent and powerful force on the planet-life itself. I feed myself on that loss of life and suffering others must pay me. However, I need a reason, a rationalization for my cruelty and perversion which will in effect wash my hands of guilt.”
“ What has this to do with preserving the girl’s hand?”
“ As a trophy, as a prize, to keep forever or to give in offering to my master and god.”
“ To God?”
“ Not just any god, but the god who talks to me, the god I’ve created who buttresses and shores up the scaffold of my perverse rationale. It becomes an offering, the hand, but it must be as perfect as I can make it.”
“ But it’s perishable, impossible to preserve.”
“ Up to a point, yes… So over the side it goes. It was not released at the same time as the body.”
“ So the shark that swallowed it-”
“ Did not attack Allison’s body to come away with it. It had already been severed.”
“ But the bracelet? He would have removed it, wouldn’t he?”
“ He’s playing at god himself; he’s neither sane nor afraid of us, Doctor. There’s resin-epoxy-residue from Super Glue where he attached the bracelet.”
“ Heartless sonofabitch… But the arm was hacked off by what appeared to be a shark’s bite; you said so yourself.”
“ I wanted to believe the parts matched, and they did. Self-fulfilling prophecy. We go back for another look, a more critical look, we’ll find differently. We do it all the time in our business. Doctor.”
Coudriet remained recalcitrant, unconvinced, shaking his head. “We can’t possibly hold the body any longer. They want the body released yesterday…”
Jessica said nothing.
“ But why? Why would this madman sever the hand and embalm it? What possible purpose could it serve?”
“ We’ve got to stop looking for purpose; this bastard’s purpose is totally a construct of his own making, having no validity outside his brain.”
“ No validity save that which his fevered mind has concocted…”
“ Precisely, no reason in our world, only his; but if you want my opinion, the hand is just the beginning of an escalation.”
“ An escalation of what?”
“ His attempt to preserve flesh, to preserve a victim whole… It’s in keeping with how long he has held them in the water.”
Coudreit didn’t want to believe it, but it shook him nonetheless. “Such madness allowed to move about freely out there.”
“ We’re going to catch this monster.”
“ Sometimes… sometimes it makes me wonder where God is in all this. And what about this madness in here, too… The way this investigation is being run, it’s all insane.”
“ What do you suggest we do about it?” She was touched by his sudden show of concern, the depth of his feeling. “Look, I have a fax machine in my office and direct E-mail on my computer, should you care to avail yourself.” He dropped a stark photocopy likeness of the killer onto the lab table beside her. “But of course if policy prevents you, I’ll understand.”
“ You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“ The hell I don’t. Frankly speaking, Dr. Coran, I never much cared for the politicizing of this office or any murder investigation, and I’m sure, if you are your father’s daughter, you don’t either.” It was a challenge to her, the gauntlet thrown at her feet. She looked from the eyes of the killer in the artist’s composite to the soft, even and determined eyes of Dr. Coudriet. There seemed to be a fresh, new glow about the man today, and he smelled different, like a man who’d discovered some new delight in life. “What do you know of my father?” she asked.
‘ ‘ Are you serious? I learned a great deal from him; read every word he ever wrote on forensic medicine,
