“Don’t do that,” Stone said, irritably. He didn’t like the man’s hands on him.
Van Fleet took his time at whatever he was doing. “Sorry to disturb you,” he said. “Just to rest your mind, I have no sexual interest in you. I don’t like men that way.”
Stone was relieved to hear that, but not much.
“How much did you take in before I used the stun gun?” Van Fleet asked.
“So that’s what it was.”
“That’s right. Something like fifty thousand volts, but only for a few milliseconds.”
“That was enough.”
“It was, wasn’t it?”
“To answer your question,” Stone said, “I took in a number of corpses sitting at a dining table.”
“Let’s not refer to them that way, please,” Van Fleet said. “They are my friends, and, if they could hear you, they’d be very upset.”
“As you wish. How did you get, uh, meet these people?”
“Oh, here and there. You might say I picked them up around town. They’re all very interesting people who do interesting work. I find that interesting work makes an interesting person, don’t you?”
Stone realized that he had now solved the disappearance of Dino’s yuppies, not that it mattered much. “Sure, I think that’s true. But, somehow, I don’t think they make very interesting conversationalists at the moment.”
“You’re quite wrong,” Van Fleet said. “I know you think of them as dead, but they’re not, you know. In fact, I’ve given them a whole new kind of life. It’s a technique I’ve developed myself, over the years, one I refined both in my work at the funeral parlor and in my previous job, at the Museum of Natural History. They remain as supple as when they were alive, in the usual sense of the word.”
Stone could think of nothing to do but keep the conversation going. Besides, there was more he wanted to know. “Tell me about Sasha, Herb.”
“Ah, Sasha.” Van Fleet sighed. “She is the centerpiece of my little dinner party, of course. Everybody likes a celebrity at the table. Adds spice to the evening.”
“Was she alive when you brought her here?”
“I told you, they’re all alive,” Van Fleet said emphatically. “Please don’t make it necessary for me to mention that again, or I will terminate this conversation immediately.”
“I’m sorry,” Stone said. “I meant alive in the usual sense of the word. What I meant to ask was, after her fall and the ambulance wreck, what sort of condition was she in?”
“Well, when I took her out of the wreck,” Van Fleet said, “she was in very poor condition, indeed. The fall had broken some bones, but, oddly, not the skin. The traffic accident had done somewhat more damage. It took me quite a long time to bring her back to her present condition.”
“Was she… breathing when you took her?”
“Amazingly enough, yes,” Van Fleet said. “In fact, I believe that, if not for the traffic accident, she might have continued to breathe. As it was, she lasted only a few days, in spite of the very excellent medical care she received from me.”
Stone winced at the thought of Sasha alive for days with this creep. His terminal velocity theory, though, had panned out, sort of. “Who wrote me the letter?” Stone asked.
“Oh, Sasha did – with my help, of course. She wrote me two letters, you know, when I first began writing to her, so we had something to help us with her handwriting.”
“Why did she have olive oil on her hands?”
“Oh, you noticed that, did you? Well, I wanted an agent that would make a good fingerprint, and, since I was in the kitchen at the time, the oil was handy.”
“Herb, we have to talk seriously now. We have to get you some help.”
“Help?” Van Fleet sounded surprised. “I don’t need any help. I’ve done all this work on these people alone, without any help at all. And it was pretty good work, don’t you think? Let me explain it to you. I’ll skip the technical parts, but have a look.” Van Fleet took hold of the table and dragged it until Stone was facing down the room, then he put a hand under Stone’s head and raised it, so he could see.
At the other end of the room was the object Stone had not been able to make out before. The body of a young woman hung by its heels, the fingertips just brushing the floor. She had been opened with one long incision from her pubic hair to her sternum, and the abdominal cavity had been emptied. “Oh, God.” Stone breathed. He turned his head away.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,” Van Fleet said, turning Stone back to his original position. “I was going to take you through the process, but if you’d rather not…”
“I’d rather talk,” Stone said. “When I said you needed help, I didn’t mean with your work.”
“Oh, you mean a psychiatrist. That was suggested to me once, a long time ago.”
“By Dr. Garfield?”
Van Fleet walked around Stone so that he could look at him. “What do you know about Garfield?”
“Oh, Dr. Garfield and I had a long chat about you the other day, Herb. He told me about your internship, about why you didn’t complete it.”
Van Fleet bristled. “This is not an amusing conversation,” he said. “I hope when you’re at the table you can find something more interesting to talk about.” He turned and walked out of Stone’s line of vision, then seemed to leave the room.
At the table? Stone began to sweat, then, almost immediately, to shiver.
Van Fleet returned. “Sorry, I had to get my instruments. Since you’re going to be such a boring conversationalist, I may as well start work on you now.”
“Wait a minute, Herb,” Stone said quickly. “We have more to talk about.”
“Do you think you can refrain from referring to past unpleasantness?”
“Oh, yes. I’m terribly sorry about that; it was rude of me.”
Van Fleet dragged a stool over and sat down facing Stone. “All right, what would you like to talk about?”
“Tell me about the night Sasha fell from her balcony.”
“Oh, that. I’ve told you about taking her from the wreck of the ambulance. Before that, well, I left Elaine’s a bit after you did, I guess, and, on the way home, I thought I’d drop by Sasha’s building. I often did that on the way home, just to catch a glimpse of where she lived. When I turned into the block, I could see the doorman through the glass front of the building. He was asleep in a chair, and I saw somebody walk right past him into the building, and he never woke up.
“I found that very interesting, so I parked the van and went into the building. I just walked right past him, and he never turned a hair. I took the elevator up to the twelfth floor – I knew Sasha’s apartment number from my research – and, to my surprise, her door was open. I had just planned to leave a little present and go, but there was that open door. I couldn’t resist.
“I crept into the apartment, and I could hear these angry voices from out on the terrace. I peeped out there, and she and this other person were having a knock-down, drag-out fight, and, all of a sudden, Sasha was just dumped over the railing.
“I jumped back behind the door, and I could hear this other person rummaging around the room, looking for something, I guess. That went on for a minute, then I heard the elevator start up, and I guess the… well, the murderer heard it too, and ran. I heard the fire stairs door open, then the elevator door open, and I heard somebody running down the stairs.
“I peeped out the door, and the doorman was standing at the top of the stairs, looking down, so I just popped into the open elevator and rode down. I got out on the second floor and tiptoed down the stairs. When I saw you get back into the elevator, I left the building, got into the van, and drove around the block to where Sasha was. The ambulance arrived about that time, and I followed it. I wanted to see which hospital Sasha was being taken to, so I could send flowers.
“Then, wham! That fire truck came out of nowhere, and the ambulance got hit. You know the rest.”
“Herb, who threw Sasha off the balcony?”
Van Fleet shrugged. “Nobody I knew,” he said.
“Can you describe him?” Stone asked.
Van Fleet started to speak, then stopped. “No, I don’t think I will,” he said petulantly. “You were unkind enough to bring up the past, so I don’t think you deserve to know, at least not yet. Later, if you’re nice, you can bring it up
