'You're saying she was completely conscious when the scalp was taken?” asked Frank Dyer as he leaned into the discussion Dean and Sid were conducting over the nude and mutilated body of the black teenager.
'That's a distinct possibility, yes,” Dean said firmly. “And we both know that it was the case with Carson when the knife wound to her head was done. In the earlier cases, I could not say for certain, what with the multiple contusions and abrasions, any number of which could have been a killing blow. But this ... look at her. Other than the scalp removal, there's nothing beyond a patch of skin and hair in the pubic area.'
'Was she sexually molested?” It was Park asking.
'No,” Dean replied.
'You can tell just like that?'
'I can.'
'It's our man, or men, all right,” said Sid.
'Yeah, neuter cases,” agreed Park. “Pricks without pricks.'
'Impotent, or sexless, or both, like Dr. Hamel said,” added Dyer.
'Maybe the Scalpers are working out some sort of religious fantasy, you know, appeasing some—” Dean stopped himself from exploring ideas aloud. He knew it could lead to an investigator down the wrong path. As it was, it sounded as though Dyer and Park were already confused enough by Dr. Hamel's assessment of the killers.
'Can you definitely say, doctors, that this young woman was killed by two men and not one?” asked Dyer.
'The wounds indicate two instruments were used. The head wound is neat, the tool a precision instrument, quite likely a scalpel. The other cut is careless, hurried, the result of a serrated knife, most likely a switchblade, and one that could cut much more deeply.'
'I've seen scalpels that are made to close and switch open, Dean,” said Sid.
Dean agreed with a nod. “Whoever's behind this seems to have taken parts of skin and hair from each victim for a reason; and however sick that reason, perhaps if we could understand it, we might have a clue as to who it is we are searching for, gentlemen.'
Sid nodded over the bloody corpse, recalling Dean's final assessment in the Floater case.
'You know,” began Dyer, sounding confused, “the wounds to this girl, they just don't seem enough to ... to kill a person, Dr. Grant. I mean, they are not that deep, and she hasn't lost near as much blood as I've seen in accident victims on the highway....'
'Trauma killed her in the end, Dyer. The trauma of having your scalp ripped from you is enough to devastate the mind and cause enough pain and fear to kill the average person.'
'Only a few people in all of history have survived and lived to tell about a scalping,” said Park, surprising Dean.
'You've done some reading on the subject.'
Park nodded, “Part of the job. Get to know the enemy, right?'
'Good strategy, yes.'
Park ambled off, deciding there was no more he could learn from Grant and Corman. Dyer hung closer by again, taking in as much as he was capable of.
'Guess we'd best finish up here, Dean,” said Sid as Dean stared after Park. Park's quiet, rough exterior had reminded Dean of a young Marlon Brando, but the act was wearing thin. But Sid was right, and so Dean turned his attention toward the dead girl, whose bag had been rifled by the police who had discovered her. She'd had a change of clothes stuffed into the handbag, and a clutch purse with the usual makeup and loose change, but there was also a crumpled fifty, a ten, and a five-dollar bill which the murderers hadn't taken. They were not after money. They were not after sex. They were after scalps, and this night in particular, it seemed they were bent on gaining the scalp of a black female. Failing with Peggy Carson, they had found this poor soul.
Dean and Sid began the laborious work of clipping and brushing the body for fingernails and the residue of foreign fibers and hair. As they worked, dark turned into day, and Dean's knees began to throb. While they worked over the body, Dyer searched about the park for footprints they might take molds of, but there were none. Yet he found something else, a pair of surgical scissors which he promptly placed into an evidence bag, to be dusted for prints at the lab. Sid took custody of them.
When they were nearly finished, Sid suggested they lift the girl's arms overhead for a look at her armpits. “Once burned, you know,” he said.
Dean, Sid, Frank Dyer stared at the bare armpits which were not shaven, Dean guessed, but shorn, shorn with the surgical scissors discovered by Dyer a few yards away. But there was no blood. There were no cuts, no skin peeled away, just the clipped nubs of hair.
'Bastards like hair,” said Dean.
'We've gotta take clippings from this area, too,” said Sid.
'Right,” agreed Dean.
Dyer shook his head, wondering why, but saying nothing.
Sid began a casual search through his own surgical kit for the proper tool to take hair samples from the deep groove of the armpit. It took time and Dean saw a strange look come over Sid's face, and he then saw the empty space in Sid's black case where his scissors should be. Alongside the empty space were a pair of smaller nail scissors, and Sid, closing the valise to prying eyes, made do with these.
Dean watched Sid's work closely and clinically now, assessing his friend's method as he had not done before. Dean wondered if there could possibly be more to Sid's major oversight on the redhead. He wondered if Sid, for some as-yet-unaccountable reason, was hiding a great deal more than a lack of professional bearing in the case. He even allowed himself the ugly thought that Sid, in some other mental state, could possibly be the scalpel-wielding killer, who with his medical knowledge had faked the appearance of a second set of wounds that might look, even to a trained eye, like the work of a second murderer. But this thought was simply foolish, Dean told himself. Sid was no more guilty of this horrid business than his wife, Jackie, had been of the drowning of that old woman at her hospital. Dean's imagination was running away with him, and Sid could easily explain the loss of his surgical scissors and would do so if Dean put the question to him.
Then Dyer, watching as Sid cut miniscule nubs of hair at their base from the dead girl's armpit and carefully placed them into a bag no larger than those used by stamp collectors, said in disgust, “Christ, Dr. Corman, do you have to do everything the fuckin’ murderer did to her all over again?” Not answering, and with great care, Sid clipped and numbered the bag as Dean, equally calm, helped in recording the clippings.
'Like vultures,” Dean heard a uniformed cop tell another some distance off.
Dean took in a deep breath of the dew-wet air. He then stood, his legs aching, his back throbbing, his nerves on edge. “Dyer, we're here to speak for this girl through scientific investigation. We're not vultures, nor are we delighting in our work, not here, not now.'
But even as he said it, Dean wondered if he were speaking for Sid as well as himself. Sid's surgical scissors were missing from his valise. Dyer had found just such a pair of scissors only a few yards off. Sid had lied to Dean before, and now this.
'What're you going to do with armpit hair?” Dyer wanted to know.
'Determine if it was cropped or torn out, determine if it was cut by one blade or two, as with scissors, like those you found, or a knife; match the hair against any found on the scissors from which, hopefully, we'll find prints.'
'Forget the scissors, Dean,” said Sid suddenly.
Dean and Sid stared at one another for a moment as Dyer asked, “Whataya mean, forget the scissors?'
'They're mine,” said Sid. “I must've dropped them earlier. When I first arrived on the scene, my case popped coming down the incline, and ... well, they must have just come out. I didn't know until I reached for them.'
Dean knew Sid was missing them earlier, when he had taken samples from the crown of the head and from the pubic area, but he had not said anything then. Now, faced with his own surgical scissors impounded as evidence in a slaying, he had to come out with it. His prints were on those scissors.
'You're sure, Sid?” asked Dean.
'Yes, it's the only explanation.'
'Did anyone else see the case come open?'
'You think I'm lying?'
