Show of Evil

added. 'We may have a similar case up here. If this is a serial killer, it would help us greatly to stop the perp before he goes any further.'

'Perp?'

'Perpetrator.'

'Ah. Perp.' He laughed. 'I'll have to use that. It'll throw Hiram for a loop.'

'Yes, sir. I was wondering, do you have a fax machine?'

Fields got another hearty laugh out of that. 'Just got me an answer machine last year,' he said. 'Can't think of any reason why I'd need a fax machine.'

Meyer sounded depressed by the news. 'It sure would help me right now,' he said.

'Why don't I just get the report out and read it to you? Isn't that long.'

'That would be great!' Meyer answered. He reached over to the telerecorder attached to his phone and pressed the record button. 'Mind if I tape it?'

'Just like that?'

'Yes, sir, just like that. We're big-timers up here,' and they both laughed.

Fields left the phone for a minute and Meyer could hear a metal file drawer open and shut.

'This is exactly what I reported, Mr Meyer. Ready?'

'Yes.'

'The victim, Linda Balfour, is a white female, age 26. The body is 53.5 inches in length and weighs 134 pounds and has blue eyes and light brown hair. She was dead on my arrival at her home on Poplar Street, this city. The victim was stabbed, cut, and incised 56 times. There was evidence of cadaver spasm, trauma, and aero-embolism. There was significant exsanguination from stab wounds. The throat wound, which nearly decapitated Balfour, caused aero-embolism, which usually results in instantaneous death. Wounds in her hands and arms indicate a struggle before she was killed. There was also evidence of mutilation. Both of the victim's nipples and the clitoris were amputated and placed in the victim's mouth. It appears that the wounds were accomplished by a person or persons with some surgical knowledge. Also the inscription C13.489 was printed with the victim's blood on the rear of the skull, 4.6 centimetres above the base of the skull and under the hairline. The weapon was determined to be a common carving knife with an eight-inch blade found on the premises and belonging to the victim. A routine autopsy revealed no alcohol, controlled substances, or poisons in the bloodstream. The victim was nine weeks pregnant. Signed, Edward Fields, M.D. Date, 6/10/93.'

'That help any?' Fields asked.

'Yes, sir,' Meyer said, his pulse racing. 'Can you repeat the inscription on the back of the head so I'm sure I have it right?'

'C13.489. Any idea what that means?'

'Not the slightest,' Meyer said. 'But if we figure it out, I'll let you know.'

'Hope I've been some help, Mr Meyer.'

'Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. If you're ever in town give me a call. I'll buy lunch.'

'My kind of fella.'

Meyer cradled the phone and sat for a long time staring down at the scrap of paper in front of him.

C13.489. What the hell could that mean?

Maybe the old-timer would know.

Seven

Vail braced himself and pushed open the doors to the main salon, knowing exactly what to expect. A tidal surge of noise and heat assaulted him. He faced a thousand lawyers and their wives, all babbling at once with a calypso band somewhere on the other side of the room trying to compete with them, all enveloped in an enormous ballroom with eight food tables, each with its own towering ice sculpture, a dozen or more bars, nobody to talk to but lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians - and no place to sit. The world's biggest cocktail party. Vail, a man who despised cocktail parties, was about to take a stroll through Hades.

Vail was the most feared man in the room, for he represented a