Scalpers

cupped the receiver in his hand, and said, “Peggy Carson's come around, and she's talking.'

'Damn, let's get over there.'

Dean stopped in his mad rush long enough to tell Sid's lab assistant how vitally important the materials and slides they were working on were, and to leave them untouched. Then they were off for the hospital to speak to the only eyewitness they had in the case.

SIX

'Hold up, doctors,” shouted Dave Park, catching them outside Peggy Carson's hospital room, where they'd just spent several minutes getting past the uniformed guard. “Sorry, but we got orders to keep everybody out until Hodges says otherwise.'

'She's alert and talking, isn't she?” Sid pointed out.

'Yes, but for now—'

'Park, back off,” said Dean, removing the other man's hand from his chest. “We're part of this investigation whether you like it or not. Now, please don't try to bully me again.'

Park and Dean glared at one another. Park's firm look broke, his lip curling into a smirk. His eyes were like steel, his skin tawny—Spanish, or perhaps American Indian, Dean thought, though his light hair said otherwise. “All right, Doc ... all right. It's just that there are too damned many people buzzing around Peggy right now ... and she's been through hell.'

'Does she know about the latest victim?” asked Dean.

Park breathed deeply and nodded, his hand going through his hair. He seemed to rock on his feet, and Dean wondered what he was holding inside that was ready to explode. Anger, hatred, bitterness, frustration—or all of them at once? More than Dyer, more even than Hodges, Lt. David Park was a bomb about to go off. Perhaps he should be having sessions with Dr. Hamel to explore these emotions before they conspired to overwhelm him.

Park must be in his late thirties, and he had a way of pinning a man to the wall with his eyes. The man had an unnerving quality about him. Was his anger directed at everyone else on the planet? Or was it such a frustrated anger at the Scalpers that it simply spilled over to whoever got near him?

'What's your problem, Park?” Dean asked him outright, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.

'Let's just say that I don't get it. I mean Dr. Corman here, in particular. He botches the lab report, and now he's on the scene to question the only eyewitness we have? You wrenched it out of me.'

Sid bit his lower lip and said, “I'm interested in the truth just as much as you, Park—maybe more.'

'Don't get me wrong, Dr. Corman. I don't suspect you of any willful wrongdoing. I just follow orders. If anything happens to Peggy Carson, especially if she knows something, my butt's in a sling.'

'Has she said anything to corroborate our theory of two men—'

'Yeah, we're fairly sure it's two men.'

This news was exciting for the doctors. “Excuse us,” Dean said, going into Peggy Carson's room only to find that the young black woman was heatedly arguing with Hamel and Hodges. Dyer stood back.

'I don't need an injection! I don't need time! Chief—” she told Hodges. “I know what I saw!'

'Dr. Hamel only asks that you—'

'Bull!' Peggy's forehead was one massive bandage, the white a glaring contrast to her chocolatey complexion and dark, haunting eyes. Despite her injury, she was strikingly attractive.

'You must allow her to rest!” insisted her doctor.

Dean tried to intervene, to talk to her, when Hamel suddenly agreed with the physician. “Officer Carson has undergone a great deal of stress, Chief, and I must agree—bedrest and quiet are absolutely required now.'

'I know what I saw!” she repeated, her eyes fixing on Hamel as if he were evil incarnate. “Don't try to make me out a fool or a nut case!'

'Please, please.” The doctor ushered Dyer and the others outside, where Park, at the very end of the hall, again watched from afar.

'Obviously it's a delusion, suffered under stress. It happens,” Hamel was saying. Dressed in a light gray, three-piece pinstripe, Benjamin Hamel looked the picture of competence, but Dean wondered.

'Are you going to tell us what the woman said?” Sid asked after a minute.

'She's sticking to her story about the second man being a dwarf,” said Dyer.

'And you men find that a bit hard to believe?” asked Dean of Hodges and Hamel.

Hodges shook his head. “The woman's young, and it was her first encounter with a life-threatening situation on the street. A little guy, maybe. But a dwarf?'

Hamel quickly agreed. “When fear and pain control the perceptions, a psychosis of the first order can, and often does, come into play. A person might see dwarfs and pink elephants as easily as a man in the grip of delirium tremens.'

'Delirium tremens?” asked Hodges.

'Alcoholics, when they need a drink,” Dean explained.

'Oh, yeah ... but Carson's record is clean of anything, so maybe Hamel's right—she just got too hyper under pressure and her thoughts ran away with her and started sending the wrong signals.'

'Maybe,” said Dyer, “and maybe not. Don't forget that print I took.'

'What do you suggest we do, Frank?” asked Hodges. “Comb Disneyland for every dwarf they've got?'

'It'd be a start.'

'You do that, Frank,” Hodges turned his attention to Sid. “Anything new from the lab?'

'We have now established proof positive that it is the work of two men.'

'Dr. Grant's doing you a lot of good, Sid. I heard about the scissors. Any match on them, Dr. Grant?'

'They were Sid's.'

'Honest mistake,” said Sid.

Hodges bit off the end of a cigar, spat the nub into a trash container, and slowly lit up before responding. “Sid, I think you've got a right to know this. The D.A.'s over at your lab right now, confiscating everything that has the remotest bearing on this case, and soon—very soon, my friend—you will be indicted on charges of negligence, if not outright fraud.'

'That's nonsense!” shouted Dean. “What proof do you have that Sid Corman is capable of—'

'Where were you between the hours of three and four this morning, Dr. Corman?” asked Hodges.

'Christ, I was home, in bed with my wife.'

'That's not what your wife tells us.'

'You bastard.'

'Maybe,” replied Hodges, “but a bastard that will see you hang,'

Dyer left without a glance at Sid or Dean. Sid looked into Dean's eyes. “I swear, Dean, this is a set-up. It's got to be.'

'I know that ... I know.'

'You believe me, don't, you?'

'Yes, I do.” But Dean thought of his call to Sybil and the favor he'd asked of Carl Prather—to check on Sid's last place of employment in Dayton, Ohio, to determine if any similar deaths had occurred in the area at any time since the Korean War.

The idea that Sid could possibly have had anything to do with murder of such a hideous nature didn't sit well with Dean, yet there had been repeated incidents of failure on his part to uncover the killer. There had been the scissors, and the fact that the killer was using a scalpel, the tool of a professional man. Still, it was all quite circumstantial, and until Dean could match the hair he had lifted from Sid's desk against the hair back at the lab, he couldn't know for certain. And now, with the D.A. moving in to confiscate the entire lot, he might never get the chance.

'We've got to get a court injunction against the D.A.'s office coming in and disrupting our work, Sid,” Dean told him.

'You think that's possible?'

'You know any judges well?'

Sid breathed deeply and nodded. “Yeah, as matter of fact, the same judge that's my alibi for last night, Judge Karen Stuart.'