Scalpers

gracefully and unseen.

'I don't think he's in,” said the neighbor. “He's a cop, works a lot of hours ... guess you know that....'

'Yeah, well ... thank you, sir ... I do know that. Tell me, does he live alone?'

'Never seen a woman with him, if that's what you mean.'

'Ever see a man with him?'

'Yeah, on occasion, but I never gave it much thought. Why you asking?'

'Ever see a dwarf or a midget with him?'

'Hey, I don't think he's that kinky.” The neighbor laughed and closed his door.

Peggy inserted the key, taking in a deep breath of air. The door cracked, and she saw only a gaping black hole before her, and inside that hole anything might lurk. She reached along the wall for the light switch, her hand shaky. She felt like a little girl again, sleeping just off the floor, afraid to let her hand over the edge of the bed for fear of a rat she'd once seen larking there. She expected a meat cleaver to take her hand off at the wrist if she didn't immediately withdraw it. Then her fingers found the switch and a light went on.

The room was thrown into a dreary, shadowy pall, the single lamp on the switch far in a corner and covered with a god-awful green shade. The wall paper was an ugly dark montage of blades of grass or leaves with an occasional pink flower. The carpet was an institutional green shag that looked infested. All in all, whatever Park was paying for the place, it wasn't worth it.

Peggy found another light switch and this brightened the room a bit more, and she saw that it was a single bedroom with a small fridge and stove perched on a linoleum section of floor. She imagined that Park ate out a lot. But she hadn't time for wondering, she knew. She must search the place as quickly and cleanly as possible and get the hell out.

She began with a suitcase that had been set aside, and she was a bit fearful of its contents. She'd seen the movie Magic, and more than anything the thought of dummies and dolls coming to life to kill people sent shivers up her spine. If the dwarf were just that, hell, he could very well be inside the damned suitcase. She knew her thoughts were childish, but she'd seen the hairy dwarf, and he, or it, had not looked quite human. She pulled back the lid slowly, cautiously, her sense of touch registering the fact long before her eyes that the case was completely empty. Park must then have placed his things into the drawers to her right.

Peggy began a search there, stopping when she came to a paper notebook with pockets crammed with newspaper clippings, stories of scalping murders which had taken place in Montana, Idaho, Iowa, and Michigan. Most of the stories were photocopies, except for the Michigan ones. Peggy unknowingly staggered to the bed and sat down, her eyes and mind entirely focused on the evidence against Park.

Her mind became like a vacuum, taking in all the photos and headlines at once. She did not hear the noise in the rooms on either side of her any longer. She didn't worry herself with the possibility that Park might enter at any moment. She didn't hear the soft step of a man in expensive loafers as he peered from the blackness of the bath not four feet away, holding his breath, nor the dwarf who stood on the body that lay prone in the tub.

The man in the tub had the dwarf's large hunting knife plunged in his heart. They'd done their work and had been getting ready to leave when Peggy Carson arrived. It was only through sheer luck, the dark carpeting and the shadows of the place that she had not seen the splat of blood where the pair of brothers had dispatched Lt. David Park. This killing was not for hair, or scalp, or skin. This one had been for safety's sake, because Park, above all others, had tenaciously chased them across the country, never giving up, like a hound on a scent. This plan had been hatched by Ian and approved by Van.

The unexpected entry of Peggy Carson posed a new wrinkle.

Ian saw that she was absorbed in what she was reading, material they must turn to their own use and benefit now.

He stepped out silently, in slow-motion time, realizing she was armed and dangerous, as she had proven before, realizing also that it would be a struggle to keep Van from slicing her forehead and scalp where Ian had begun before, that he would want to finish the job started. But Ian had a far more fetching and possibly rewarding plan for Peggy Carson and the police, a plan that would screen Ian and Van long enough to get the baby scalp that Ian wanted before they must rush from this area where too much of their activity had come to light.

Ian had a handkerchief he'd doused with chloroform. Within inches of the concentrating reader now, close enough to feel the heat rising off her body, Ian struck, forcing the sleeping potion into her eyes, nose, and mouth all at once. He felt the kick and fight go out of her almost instantly, and in a moment Peggy Carson lay in his arms and the dwarf was straddled across her midsection, undoing her uniform, forcing a hand against her breast, cooing and getting excited at the touch of her skin. He examined the forehead and realized for the first time it was the same woman as that night in the alley.

Ian knew he was going to have to disagree and fight with Van this time.

'Let's do her right this time,” said Van. drooling onto his hairy chin.

'We can't, no ... no!” Ian whispered, pointing to the walls which were paper thin.

'This is too tempting,” Van whispered back, his long, uncut nails digging into the flesh of Peggy Carson's scalp. He then began to undo her belt and zipper, sniffing over her like a dog in heat.

Ian pulled him away from her, tearing out long strands of his hair to do so, he must tug so hard. “I said no!” It was hard to be emphatic and whisper at the same time, but Van was beginning to realize that the girl meant something special to Ian.

'Peggy's scalp stays. We don't harm her.'

'Peggy?” he snarled at the suggestion, the big orbs glaring at Ian.

'I've got a much better plan for her.'

'I want her ... I want to eat parts of her....'

'No! Not if you want the babies, remember the babies! The black scalp didn't work. Now we've got to try baby hair, like I said! If we kill this one, it'll only tell them we're still at large.'

'No, no ... if we kill her, they'll still think he did it,” He indicated the bathroom where Park's body had been left.

'Be reasonable! You're always unreasonable when you ... when you're like this.'

'I am being reasonable.'

'No, no you're not. If Park scalped her, then how in God's name did she kill him with his own knife? Trust me, this time I know what's best for us both.'

The grim, large lips of the dwarf parted in a lopsided smile and he nodded his head successively while getting ahold of his emotions. He did very much want to do the girl ... very much ... but something in Ian's voice told him that his brother was taking on responsibility and growing. “Yes, all right ... let's hear your plan.'

'No time to tell it to you. Just help me bring Park's body back out here and place it right where you stabbed him.'

'Oh, clever ... I begin to see....'

Dyer was incredulous. He didn't believe what Dean was trying to tell him as they sped toward Park's place. He didn't want to even consider the possibility that Park had anything whatever to do with the slayings—any more than he had wanted to believe Sid Corman had—and he didn't want to believe that Peggy Carson could be so stupid as to go after the man on such flimsy evidence, acting like Annie Oakley.

'Christ, Dr. Grant, it's crazy ... all of it! Why're we all focusing in on the department this way, like this perverted killing is something of an inside job? To my way of thinking, we should be focusing outward. To my way of thinking, these murderers are out there in the community, not in the department. Sure, Dave can be uncooperative and secretive, and he's been a real ass not to confide in me, his partner, about his true identity, but that hardly makes him a mass murderer. I mean, come on, Doctor.'

'I'm sorry my investigation of his past got out, Frank.'

'Yeah, well, sorry won't help if one of those two cops shoots the other when Peggy goes storming in, Christ.'

'That's why I called you.'

Dyer had killed the siren now that they were near their destination, not wishing to add to the chaos he expected to find on Park's doorstep. “I don't understand your job, Dr. Grant. I mean, you're a coroner, right? And coroners work with microscopes and slides, not guns and bullets, yet here you are, investigating people over the wires. That kind of stinks, you know that?'