Scalpers

'Hodges is strictly first watch, and off by noon or one o'clock to the golf course.'

'Likes his nightlife, too, I'm told,” added Sid.

'So, if he can point the finger elsewhere...” began Dean, but let the thought drop.

'How does Hamel figure into the picture?” asked Sid. “I mean, he's somehow become a big cheese on this case. Last month he was a nobody, sitting in his office and playing with rubber bands.'

'Hodges brought him in in desperation, for answers,” said Dyer. “He's certainly not getting any from Park and me.'

'So Hodges gets Hamel to profile the killer, to soothe the mayor into thinking something's being done,” added Sid. “Meanwhile, if things are being poorly managed and botched, it's not Hodges’ department, but mine.'

'Watch your backsides, gentlemen,” said Dyer as he got up to go. “Got to catch up with my pard.'

'Thanks,” said Dean, rising.

'What for?'

Dean considered this. “For making up for Park, I guess.'

'I understand why Park's reluctant to talk. He's really too damned new to the department to be handed such a case to begin with, and he doesn't always share his thoughts, or his actions with me, either.... So, don't feel unduly offended by the man, if you can help it.'

Dyer rushed off.

'Park's new around here, hunh?” asked Dean.

'Yeah, well, there aren't too many people in Orlando, or Florida for that matter, who can claim to be first generation.'

Dean emptied half the bitter machine-made coffee back into the machine, wondering if the thing would recycle it. He crushed the cup and tossed it in a container. Sid got up alongside him, and together they found Sid's car in the lot.

'Thinking about what Dyer said?'

'Yeah, that and the baggies.'

'Yeah, weird, huh?'

'Not unlike our bagging specimens at a crime scene, Sid, if you ask yourself what happened to those chunks of flesh the killers made off with.'

'So the Scalper is now the Scalpers, and they are collectors of specimens.'

'One uses what might well be a scalpel, Sid.'

'Points to a professional man, you think? A doctor?'

'Or maybe someone who likes to play doctor.'

'Some warped-out, whacko Jack-the-Ripper with a fetish for hair?'

'Or maybe the guy next door, who turns into something else when the sun goes down.'

'A hundred thousand maybe's.'

They got into Sid's big car and pulled away. Fending off Sid's arguments to the contrary, Dean managed to get to the Hyatt Regency Hotel where he had made reservations. Arguing even as he drove away, Sid left him there for the evening to sleep and contemplate all that had occurred before and since his arrival in the city.

The voice on the phone was unshakably real, yet it could not be her, it could not be Angel Rae, the woman Dean had put an end to in Chicago this past summer. Yet her body had never been recovered from Lake Michigan, its assumed resting place, and there was always the nagging doubt that perhaps she'd somehow miraculously escaped her own drowning death. And that she had come back not in a quiet, haunting way, as in his oft-repeated dreams of her, but in a most real and vicious way. A way that meant Jackie was in trouble at this moment, with this madwoman stalking her, and with Dean over a thousand miles away from his wife, unable to do a damned thing but listen to the eerie, surreal voice coming through the connecting wires in a monotone, frustrating in its calm, deliberate choice of words. It drove him mad, this voice from his past that simply would not let go, lodged as it was in his brain, saying, “You've been too long at school ... Nurse Grant is mine now ... all mine, and she will be delivered, made free to float to the sky.'

'No!” Dean shouted the instant the phone rang. Trembling in the air-conditioned dark, he lifted the receiver after the third jolting ring, trying to regain himself. It had been a nightmare, no doubt brought on by his call to Jackie at home. She wasn't home, and he tried to convince himself she was at the hospital, taking someone else's shift, but when he started to dial, he was gripped with a fear at not finding her there. He rationalized his not having called because of the lateness of the hour. So he hadn't spoken with her, and now she was calling him.

'Yes, hello,” he said into the phone, “Jackie?'

A ripple of fear fluttered through him. Could he possibly stand it if even a recorded word from Angel Rae were to come through the wire?

'Dean, old boy, sorry to wake you,” said Sid Corman.

'What the hell's it now, Sid? What time is it?'

'Four-twenty, and I'm sorry to do this to you, but—'

'Four-twenty?' Jackie hadn't bothered to call him, either.

'—but the son-of-a-bitch scalping crew has hit again, and this time it's a kid.'

'Oh, Christ,” Dean moaned. “How old?'

'Sixteen, maybe seventeen, in a park not far from our offices downtown. The girl appears to be a runaway. She was most likely hustling and she just hustled the wrong guy—'

'Or guys.'

'Want me to pick you up?'

Dean had told Sid to do just that, should another victim be found. Knowing how important the initial crime scene evidence gathering was to any case, Dean wanted to be on hand for this. If he was to be able to help Sid turn the murderous tide of this scalping crew, as Sid had put it, then he must be in that park before anything was disturbed.

'Did you tell the police what we want?'

'Sure, the moment you asked for it. Should be standard by now, but Orlando's sudden growth has put on a lot of green recruits.'

'Don't waste time picking me up, Sid. Get to the scene and control the cops. Do your job.'

'I'm at the scene, and I'm doing my goddamned job, Dean.” Sid's sudden anger was understandable.

'I'll get a cab. Just give me the location.'

'Conway Park, north entrance, at the water's edge, can't miss it.'

'Give me fifteen minutes.'

'Hold on, Dean. We got a unit freed up to pick you up and bring you here. Be waiting out front.'

'Will do.'

Dean raced into his clothes. Soon he was standing in the early morning darkness watching a revolving light and siren approaching. Lodged deep in his mind was the voice of Angel Rae telling him that no matter what had become of her, she had effectively taken Jackie away from him.

'You Dr. Gant?” asked a baby-faced police officer with a modified punk haircut and a jewel in his earlobe.

'Grant, Dr. Grant,” Dean corrected him roughly. He got into the large white squad car and it raced for the downtown exit off I-4. Sitting in the dark rear seat Dean felt like a criminal and a failure—both as a husband and as a forensics specialist. Yes, he had put the Floater killer away in Chicago, and yes, Angel Rae and Brother Timothy were indeed dead. But no one knew how they lived on despite death, despite the vanquishing of evil by so-called knights of criminal justice like him. Because the evil lived on to destroy sleep and peace—and love and marriages.

FIVE

Dean wondered if there were any similarities between the killer in Chicago, who enjoyed drowning people to watch them float to God, and this vicious bastard who cut people's heads apart while they were still alive. It was suddenly and cruelly apparent that in the case of both the young Jane Doe in the park and Officer Peggy Carson, this son-of-a-bitch didn't care whether the victim felt pain.