Blood Memory

Screw it. The end of that hallucination is on the other side of this door.

I chamber a round in the Walther, then knock hard on the orange door. It moves inward a few inches with the force of my blow.

“Dr. Malik?”

No reply.

Now I wish I’d called Sean. This is where pride gets you. Bringing my gun to chest level, I kick open the door and rush into the room, checking the corners for threats.

The room looks just as I imagined it: ratty green carpet, two double beds, a TV on a stand, a lavatory beneath a mirror on the far wall.

No Malik.

I cross the room and kick open the bathroom door, the Walther extended in front of me.

Malik is lying in the bathtub. He’s fully clothed-all in black, of course-and the white tiles above his bald head are spattered with blood and brain matter.

My initial shock balloons into terror when I realize the blood is still running down the tile. Whoever killed Malik could still be close by. As I whirl back toward the room, the gun in Malik’s right hand registers in my mind.

Suicide?

I can’t believe that.

But then I see the skull in his lap. It’s a human skull, entirely stripped of flesh, boiled clean like the skulls used to teach orthopedics. Malik is cradling it in his hands as he might an infant. Springs and screws hold the mandible to the maxilla, and the arteries and veins have been painted in red and blue across the white plates of bone. The skull wears the slightly ironic grin of all its kind, but this particular skull, I sense, is trying to tell me something. There’s a reason it’s here, and it wants me to know it.

I look at Malik’s face for some clue, but he can’t even help himself now. The psychiatrist’s once piercing eyes are as dead as those in a stuffed deer head. As I stare, searching in vain for some explanation, Malik’s chest heaves violently, and his head flies forward as if pulled on a string.

The Walther jerks in my hand.

The bathroom booms like a bomb-testing chamber.

Everything goes white.

Chapter 42

I’m snow-blind.

Lost in a sea of white, my head pounds incessantly from the cold. Far in the distance, someone calls my name.

“Dr. Ferry…? Catherine!”

The voice is familiar, but I can’t see anyone.

The wind stings my face.

A flash of darkness spears through the white, and then dirty-yellow light frames a blurry face. “Dr. Ferry? Can you hear me?”

Yes…over here.

“Cat? It’s John Kaiser. Special Agent John Kaiser.”

It is. It’s John Kaiser. His hazel eyes hover only inches over mine.

“What happened?” I ask.

“I don’t know. We’re hoping you can tell us.”

Blinking rapidly against the yellow light, I try to see who “we” is, and where I am. I seem to be propped against a bathtub, my hips beneath a commode, my legs splayed out in an open doorway. There’s a paramedic behind Kaiser, and behind him I see the dark face of Carmen Piazza, commander of the NOPD Homicide Division. Piazza looks angry.

“Are you wounded?” Kaiser asks. “They can’t find any injuries, but you were unconscious.”

“My head hurts. How did you get here?”

“Don’t worry about that. How did you get here?”

I turn to make sure Malik’s corpse is still lying in the tub behind me. It is. “Dr. Malik wanted me to meet him here. I came.”

“Jesus,” mutters Captain Piazza. “Did you hear that? Did you fucking hear that?”

Kaiser shakes his head. “Did Malik try to kill you, Cat?”

No, I almost say aloud. But fortunately my common sense has survived whatever happened to me. “I want a lawyer.”

Kaiser looks disappointed. “Do you need a lawyer?”

“I don’t know. Can you promise not to arrest me?”

He glances back at Piazza, then looks at me again. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Then I want a lawyer.”

He stands and tells the paramedic to check me out. While that happens, I hear someone clearing people from the murder scene. Then I hear Captain Piazza’s voice, low and furious, while Kaiser tries to mollify her with a sonorous baritone.

“Can you walk?” asks Kaiser. He’s standing in the door again.

“I think so.”

“Then walk with me.”

I get to my feet and, after a last look at Malik and the skull in his lap, follow Agent Kaiser into the parking lot. That skull is bothering me, but I don’t have time to ponder it now. The parking lot that was empty before is nearly full, with NOPD squad cars, an ambulance, a coroner’s wagon, and unmarked detectives’ cars. Kaiser walks me about twenty yards along the row of rooms, far enough so that no one will hear us.

“Listen to me, Cat. I came to this scene directly from another one. Our UNSUB hit his sixth victim.”

“Who was it?”

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“We haven’t caught our killer yet. Why should he stop?”

“You didn’t think Malik was the killer?”

“I wouldn’t have come here if I did.”

Kaiser studies me for some time. I glance back at the room and see Piazza talking to two detectives. She gestures at me, and the detectives both stare in my direction. They look like a pair of pit bulls awaiting a command from their master.

“Same crime signature on victim six?” I ask.

“Yes. Two gunshots, bite marks, the same message on the wall. ‘My work is never done.’ But while we were working the scene, task force headquarters got a call telling us Malik was hiding out here.”

“Anonymous again?”

“Yes.”

“Your caller is your killer, John.”

Kaiser looks at me like a stern father. “Tell me about Group X.”

“You didn’t learn anything from the two patients you have?”

“We don’t have them anymore. Both women disappeared this morning. Maybe last night, I don’t know. What I don’t get is how they knew to run. I checked their phone records; no one suspicious called them.”

“Talk to everyone who called them,” I say, realizing that Ann may now be the only person who can tell us who the members of Group X are-other than the women themselves. Unless Malik’s documentary can be found. Could he have had it in the motel room with him?

“We’re checking everybody,” Kaiser says. “But you know more than you’ve told me.”

“You keep me out of jail, we’ll talk.”

“That might not be possible.”