One detail I could have done without — the autopsy showed thatJohn Doe had lived through most of the . . . process. “Victimprobably died between the loss of his second lung and removal of his heart.” Itfit our old Al Kratz profile, all right. He gave new meaning to the diagnosisof psychotic scum.
Still, I stared down at my desk and shook my head. Nada.Bupkis. Null program. Cash still couldn’t tell me what the courier had beencarrying, what his real name might have been, even what country would pensionhis widow and orphans. If he left any.
The whole stack of paper told me nothing I didn’t alreadyknow, nothing that pointed anywhere except to a man who had been dead for morethan a decade.
I stared down at the photos again, spread out in a line on mydesk, disgusting in their cold clinical detail. Bits of person lay in precisearray like an illustration in Gray’sAnatomy, you expected to see captions and notes and little lines and arrowsleading from the left kidney to its proper place under the sunken undamagedskin of the man’s empty abdomen. I remembered that exact scene from a killing fifteen years ago.
And the precision bothered me. Kratz had considered himself anartist in his sick little heart of hearts. An artist never repeats. He’d done similar scenes, like a Rembrandt orCezanne would maybe do several still-life compositions of a bowl and fruit anda vase of flowers, but each would be arranged differently, lit differently, usea different palette. Only hacks who painted Elvis on black velvet did the samepicture twice . . .
Kratz wouldn’t do that. That had bothered me from the start.But I’d tasted his signature.
On the other hand, we’d gone seven or eight rounds that lasttime, enough to wear both of us down and do some damage, before the firescorched my butt and chased me down the stairs. One reason he never got out, I’djust landed a solid left hook and a good straight right or two in the boxingmetaphor, set him back on his heels and then dropped him to his knees.
I’d scored a knockdown, would have had a knockout and theheavyweight belt with another minute in the ring. Enough metaphor-stretching. I’dhurt the bastard, maybe scrambled his brain. That kind of fight can causepermanent damage. I’d been lucky, no long-term effects. Or maybe not — I’m abad choice to judge.
The image of a brain-damaged Al Kratz didn’t comfort me much.It was too easy to see him turning into a berserk copy machine, endlesslyprinting out identical crime scenes like that water-toting broom in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
Okay, I’ll stop now.
I stopped the endless useless loop then, too, because I feltsomeone coming down the hall outside my office. Felt him in spite of theshields, although I couldn’t read more than the simple fact that he was thereand he was a skilled and powerful wizard. It wasn’t Kratz, no such luck, Icould tell that much through thecopper screen.
The stranger paused at my door and I heard a metallic clickingthat had my hand diving for my left armpit and the SIG before I even realizedwhat I’d heard. I’d already started to drop behind my cop-surplus desk andthose comforting ballistic panels when the door swung open enough for me to seea pair of metal crutches held in one hand so he could open the door with theother, source of the clicking that had sounded so much like a pistol slide andsomeone chambering a round.
I relaxed enough to look almost normal by the time his faceshowed. His grim bureaucrat-mode face.
“Your office isn’t handicap-accessible. Federal law, you run abusiness, it has to be accessible.”
That was a hell of a way to start a conversation. Old habitsmoved my shoe to the foot-switch, triggering my recorders — more cop-surplusequipment I keep handy because of the sad fact that sometimes folks deny thingsthey’ve said and done. “My businessis accessible. Call me, I’ll meet you any time and place you name. Nothing inthis office is essential to my business.”
“Bycheck. FBI.” He pulled out a black leather badge-case andflipped it at me, open and closed, and then tucked it back into his suit coat.
I sat there and studied him, keeping my mouth shut until Icould get out a civil word or two. He lookedFBI, with the gray suit and the crew-cut light brown hair and those coldarrogant eyes the surgeons must install at Quantico. Every FBI agent I’ve evermet looks like he has a steel rod up his ass. In case you haven’t heard, a lotof city and state cops don’t get along that well with the Feds. Power games.They don’t give, they only take.
This one carried some fat here and there, probably classed asobese in Bureau terms, but I’d still guess I outweighed him by a hundredpounds.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like a look at your ID. Anyone can buy a badge-case and wave it around.”
He did mind, judgingby his face, but he pulled his ID out and hung it in front of my face. Thatarrogance thing again. The photo matched him, and all that jazz.
“I’ve seen forgeries that looked better.” I flipped throughthe old Rolodex, bringing up my listing for the local Bureau office, andstarted to punch numbers into the phone. The guy looked like he was chewing onbroken glass, but he shrugged and pulled his ID out of the case and actuallyhanded it to me.
I set my phone back down and held the card under my desk lamp,turning, examining edges, checking reflections, the whole nine yards. The cardlooked legit, lamination seals and watermarks and fancy plastic and all, noevidence of tampering. It also feltright. Special Agent Janos Terrance Bycheck knew what I was doing, and noddedwhen I handed the card back. The man probably had some personal identityissues, with a hodge-podge of names like that.
I settled back in my chair and waved at one of the otherseats. “What can I do for you?”
“You can start by opening a window and then throwing thatdamned stinkpot through it.”
My
