passing it across.
I held it up to the light. The skin was split and torn in several places, mainly across its back, but still retained a vague hand-like shape. It was soft and supple, and an oily residue from it smeared the inside of the plastic bag.
‘It wasn’t flayed off,’ I told them. ‘If it had been then it’d be in a flat sheet. This is split in places, but it’s still more or less whole. I think it sloughed off the hand in one piece.’
There was no surprise on either Gardner’s or the forensic agent’s face, but I could see Jacobsen still didn’t understand.
‘Sloughed?’
‘Skin slides off a dead body of its own accord after a few days. Especially extremities like the scalp and feet. And the hands.’ I held up the evidence bag. ‘I’m pretty certain that’s what this is.’
She stared at the bag, her usual diffidence forgotten. ‘You mean it slid off a corpse?’
‘More or less.’ I turned to the forensic agent, who’d been watching with a sour expression. ‘Would you agree?’
He nodded. ‘Good news is it’s nice and soft. Saves us having to soak it before we lift the fingerprints.’
I felt Gardner looking at me, and knew he’d already made the connection. But Jacobsen seemed appalled.
‘You can get fingerprints from that?’
‘Sure,’ the agent told her. ‘Usually it’s all dried and brittle, so you have to soften it up in water. Then you slip it on like a glove and take the prints like normal.’ He held up his own hand and waggled it to illustrate.
‘Don’t let us keep you, Deke,’ Gardner said. The agent lowered his hand, a little shamefaced, and went back to the car. Gardner tapped the manila envelope against his leg. The look he gave me was almost angry. ‘Well? Are you going to say it or shall I?’
‘Say what?’ Jacobsen asked.
Gardner’s mouth compressed into a thin line. ‘Tell her.’
‘We’ve been wondering how York managed to leave his victims’ fingerprints at the crime scenes months after they were dead,’ I said as she turned to me. I gestured at the car. ‘Now we know.’
Jacobsen’s frown cleared. ‘You mean he’s been using the skin from their hands? Wearing it like gloves?’
‘I’ve never heard of it being done to plant fingerprints before, but that’s how it looks. That’s probably why Noah Harper’s body was so badly decomposed. York wanted the skin from its hands before he switched it with Willis Dexter’s.’
And then he’d waited a few more days before going back to the woods and collecting the sloughed skin from Dexter’s hands as well. Scavengers wouldn’t have bothered with scraps of drying tissue when they’d got the entire body to feed on. And if they had…
He’d just have used someone else’s.
I felt a weary anger at myself for not realizing sooner. My subconscious had done its best to tell me, prompting the deja vu at the sight of my wrinkled hands when I’d peeled off the latex gloves, but I’d ignored it. Tom had been right. He’d told me I should listen more to my instincts.
I should have listened to him as well.
Jacobsen took the evidence bag from me. Her expression was a mixture of disgust and fascination as she studied its contents.
‘Deke said this wasn’t dried out. Does that mean it must have come from a body recently?’
I guessed she was thinking about Irving. Although no one had actually said as much, we all knew that the profiler must be dead by now. But even if he’d been killed straight away, it would have taken longer than this for the skin to slough off. Whoever this had come from, it wasn’t him.
‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘It looks like it’s been deliberately oiled to preserve it and keep the skin supple…’
I stopped as something occurred to me. I looked over at the car windscreen, at the greasy smears left on the glass by the skin.
‘Baby oil.’
Gardner and Jacobsen stared at me.
‘The fingerprint on the film container in the cabin was left in baby oil,’ I said. ‘Irving thought it was proof that the killings were sexually motivated, but it wasn’t. That’s what York’s been using to keep the sloughed skin supple. Its natural oils would have dried out, and he’d have wanted the fingerprints to be nice and clear. So he oiled it like old leather.’
I remembered Irving’s mocking jibe. Unless the killer has a penchant for moisturizing… He’d been closer to the truth than he knew.
‘If York’s been harvesting his victim’s fingerprints, how come he didn’t take the skin from Terry Loomis’s hands as well?’ Jacobsen wanted to know. ‘That was still in the cabin with the body.’
‘If it hadn’t been we’d have noticed and guessed what was going on,’ Gardner said, self-reproach making his voice harsh. ‘York wanted to pick his own time to let us know what he was doing.’
I watched the forensic agents carefully dust another part of the car with fingerprint powder. They were making a thorough job of it. For all the good it would do.
‘So why now?’ I asked.
Gardner looked across at Jacobsen. She shrugged. ‘He’s bragging again, telling us he isn’t afraid of being caught. Obviously, he doesn’t think our knowing this’ll do us any good. Sooner or later we would’ve realized what he was doing anyway. This way he gets to stay in control.’
The other question remained unspoken. Why me? But I was afraid I already knew the answer to that.
Gardner looked down at the manila envelope he was holding. He seemed to reach a decision. ‘Diane’ll drive you to your hotel. Stay there till I call. Don’t let anyone into your room; if someone says room service, make sure it is before you open the door.’
‘What about my car?’
‘We’ll let you know when we’re done with it.’ He turned to Jacobsen. ‘Diane, a word.’
The two of them walked out of earshot. Gardner did all the talking. I saw Jacobsen nodding as he handed her the envelope. I wondered what might be in it, but I couldn’t raise much interest.
I looked back at the white-suited figures working on my car. The fine powder they were using to dust for fingerprints had dulled its paint, making it seem like something dead itself.
There was a bitter taste in my mouth as I watched them. I ran my thumb across the scar on my palm. Admit it. You’re scared.
I’d been stalked by a killer once before. I’d come here hoping to put it behind me.
Now it was happening again.
It started to rain as Jacobsen drove me back to my hotel. Fat drops slid down the car windows in uneven bursts, swept away by the wipers only to reappear a moment later. Away from the hospital, the roads and bars were still busy. The bright lights and bustling streets were a relief, but I couldn’t connect with their normality. I felt separated from them by more than the car window, aware that the reassurance they offered was illusory.
For once I was almost unaware of Jacobsen’s closeness. It was only when she finally spoke that I dragged my thoughts back to the here and now.
‘Dan says Loomis and Harper were strangled with some kind of ligature,’ she said.
I stirred, surprised by the conversational gambit. ‘Probably something called a Spanish windlass. A sort of tourniquet.’ I explained how it worked.
‘That’d fit in with what we know about York. He’d like the power something like that would give him. Literally life or death, and much more satisfying than killing someone straight away. It’d allow him to control the process, decide exactly when to exert enough pressure to kill his victim.’ She gave me a quick glance. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t very tactful.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s all right. I’ve seen what York does. I’m not going to faint because he’s playing mind games.’
‘Is that what you think tonight was?’
‘If he was serious about coming after me, why warn me in advance?’ But even as I said it I realized I’d encountered another killer once who’d done exactly that.
