Scalpers

'Thank you, Dr. Grant, and can I count on you at my trial to stand by me?'

'Listen, Sid, please—answer one question straight.'

Sid cooled, finding an ice cream vendor and buying them each a cone. “What question?” he finally asked.

'Tom Warner, Sid, where was Tom Warner last night? Does he have access to your keys? Could he have taken your Mercedes last night?'

Sid stopped walking and looked into Dean's eyes with agitation distorting his strong features. “You know, you could be right. I did get him to admit to spying on me. He begged to keep his job ... said some rubbish about his own being threatened if he didn't cooperate with Hodges. Old Jake Hodges has been after my ass for a long time.'

Dean considered for a moment Hodges’ part in all this. He didn't seem to fit in neatly as a killer trying to frame Sid, yet there was no way to know in the end. A mass murderer could be lurking in the most innocent-looking man, or woman; Dean knew this from experience.

'Don't go falling apart on me, Sid, damn it,” Dean said. “I need you. We've got to stop these crazy bastards before they strike again, before anyone else is mutilated. They butchered that woman, and they damn sure would've done the same to the girl if she hadn't escaped.'

'God ... I can't see mild-mannered, mousy Tom Warner as ... as capable of that kind of ghastly behavior.'

'How well do you know Tom?'

Sid considered this. “Not too well. Went to medical school in your neck of the woods, University of Illinois.'

'Childhood?'

'Never talks much about it, but I recall something about Saginaw—'

'Michigan?'

'Illinois.'

'Ever see his records?'

'Not recently, but they're down in Personnel.'

'Did you fire him?'

'Damned straight I did.'

'They know that in Personnel?'

'Not yet.'

'Come on, let's have a check.'

They had arrived back at the municipal building on foot, the walk a calming one on the mild Florida winter day, refreshing, clearing Dean's mind. As they climbed the steps, Sid said, “Oh, by the way, Sybil Shanley called. Said it was urgent. Wouldn't say what about. She was kinda cool to me, actually.'

'I'll call her later. Let's look Warner over.'

'I'll just let the switchboard know where we are,” said Sid, going to the lobby's information desk and speaking briefly with the young woman there. He seemed to take more time than necessary, leaving Dean waiting. When Sid rejoined Dean, he had calmed considerably, and he said, “You know, Tom's too damned young-looking to have been the boy in Montana in ‘58 who may have axed his parents at the age of, what—fifteen?'

'True, but what happened in Montana may not have a damned thing to do with what's going on here, anyway. According to Neubauer, the fifteen-year-old had nothing to do with the deaths of his parents, right?'

Still, what Sid said made Dean wonder. He calculated the age of the young man who'd lost his parents in the brutal double murder back in Montana. The man would today be forty-five, Dean's and Sid's age. Every shred of information dishearteningly led back to Sid Gorman like a boomerang. Was all of it coincidence?

Dean tried to imagine a secret Sid Corman, a man who, after so many years of dealing with the dead, cutting into corpses to find solutions, had gone off the deep end to begin to use his scalpel on the living. He tried to imagine Sid with an accomplice who was a dwarf. He tried to imagine Sid cutting on a living person, leading a double life as a scalper. Impossible, even in his wildest thoughts. It was just too farfetched, too at odds with the Sidney Corman Dean had known since Korea.

Sid seemed to sense Dean's thoughts, staring across at him on the elevator ride down to Personnel.

Thomas Lloyd Warner, aged twenty-eight, born in Saginaw, Illinois, attended Saginaw High School and graduated from Northern Illinois University, and went on to the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago to become a doctor. Failing this, he became a laboratory technician and assistant with a police crime lab in Nebraska, and from Nebraska he went to Florida. There was nothing in his well-documented history to link him with Montana or any lies other than those he'd recently perpetrated against Sid Corman.

'I suppose you'd like to look over my file now,” said Sid, handing it to Dean.

'No, no way, Sid. I believe you're innocent. Warner may have believed differently, who knows, and then tried to help things along for Hodges, at the Chiefs urging. Being a weak man, Warner was only too willing to go behind your back.'

'But to plant evidence against me?'

'Tom Warner was nowhere near the murder site that morning in the park. Do you recall who was?'

'Dyer found the bloody scissors, but you don't think...?'

'I had thought it was Park, but not anymore. And that first day I entered your lab and was faced by the welcoming committee—'

'Dr. Grant, there is a call for you, long distance,” said the well-dressed personnel manager who had allowed the doctors access to the records they sought without argument.

'Sybil,” said Sid.

But it was Ken Kelso, with an edge to his voice. “Dean, I got you, finally. For awhile I thought you were on a slab somewhere down there. Christ, I got news for you.'

'What is it?'

'All circumstantial, but a bit too coincidental for my liking. One of the names on the list you sent up for checks—'

'Yes?'

'I think we struck pay dirt.'

'Hold on, I want Sid Corman in on this ... Sid, pick up on line 3.'

Sid did so as Kelso held off his information. “Seems, Dino, that there was a guy by the name of Ian Benjamin, a shrink. Anyway, this Dr. Benjamin was practicing psychiatry in Saugatuk, Michigan during the years when a number of scalping deaths occurred up that way, in and around Park's town of Seneca.'

Dean swallowed hard, “Benjamin? You're sure?'

'You think it could be our Montana boy?” Sid asked Dean.

'What's that?” asked Ken.

'Go on, Ken,” said Dean. “What about this guy Benjamin?'

'Well, Seneca's a little town, so they called in Benjamin, and he worked on the cases on an ad hoc basis. And I was looking at this list you sent Carl Prather through Sybil, and it hits me that the name Benjamin Hamel and Benjamin, well, they're not so far apart, you know. And then I see he's not just another doctor, but a shrink, and I figure if Park is chasing somebody as far across the country as he has, then maybe he's onto someone in particular, someone like this guy Benjamin.'

'If that were the case, why didn't he tell someone? What was he waiting for?'

'Who knows, blackmail, maybe. Didn't have the goods quite together yet? Building a solid case?'

'Or maybe he wanted both the killers, since we proved there were two men working in tandem.'

'Christ,” moaned Sid, “you don't suppose Park was trying his level best to finger me as the second killer, do you?” asked Sid.

'Could be ... a lot of red herrings leading to your doorstep, Sid, some planted in the minds of quite a few people hereabouts by Hamel.'

'Hamel ... Jesus ... I can't believe it ... he acts so, so queasy about the stiffs, and coming in here.'

'Guilty conscience, maybe.'

'Any way to identify this guy Benjamin so we know we're accurate—that it is Hamel, Ken?'