no sign of noticing how inappropriate his comment was.
Gray saw her.
Crime scene spotlights glared on the first of the two suspended cages. Inside, her back to Gray, her wrists taped to the uppermost bars, hung a woman partially covered by strips of torn clothing.
Cameras clacked, technicians moving rapidly but precisely to get every angle of a scene worthy of a horror movie.
He recognized Bernie Bois, the club manager, his rangy body sprawled in a chair, his hands covering his face.
“Who is she?” Nat asked Beauchamp.
The older man ran a hand over his sweating head and hair. “I’ll settle for who she isn’t,” he said. “Some guy from Scully’s is being tracked down to take a look.”
“Danny Summit,” Nat said.
Beauchamp grunted. “The last missing female’s father is being brought over, poor bastard. I’m talking about the one that went missing—supposedly—in the warehouse on—”
Gray cut him off. “It’s not Pearl Brite,” he said.
Beauchamp slowly looked in his direction. “Fisher? What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I thought I’d pop in for a pick-me-up.”
“Funny. You heard the question.” Beauchamp’s face plumped up and got shinier. “Why are you here?”
“He came with me,” Nat said. “He’s been giving us a hand. Knows some of the singers.”
“Yeah?” Beauchamp’s deep-set eyes were very close to the bridge of his nose. They turned crafty. “How come?”
“I was writing about them,” Gray said wearily.
“Oh, yeah. You quit the force to be a reporter.”
Why bother to explain himself? “Right.”
“Take a look then,” Beauchamp said.
Nat and Bucky fell in with Gray when he approached the cage and the cameras were quiet.
“She’s stacked,” Beauchamp said in a loud voice.
Gray resisted an urge to turn back and punch the guy out. He didn’t miss some snickers, but there were more muffled exclamations of disgust.
“There was no hurry to cut her down,” a tech said to Nat. “The photos could be invaluable, sir.”
The woman was obviously as dead as she would get. “Yeah,” Nat said.
“There was a bag over her head,” the same tech said. “We cut it off, so we could see…”
“Her face,” Nat said.
“What’s left of it,” Gray said.
He stood close enough to the cage to touch it if he wanted to. The woman might as well be naked. She had been reduced to a crude parody of sadistic sexuality, her dress torn from her shoulders to reveal naked breasts cross-hatched with welts. Blood had dried—a long time ago—on her belly and thighs. The patterns resembled those on Shirley Cooper’s body.
Slowly, Gray looked past a sizable puncture wound in her neck, and back at her face. Where her eyes should have been, two holes gaped. Her cheekbones and nose were crushed and black hair stuck to wounds in the skin.
Only the mouth, slack but untouched, was as Gray remembered it, that and a small black birthmark just above the right side of the upper lip.
Nat touched his arm. “It’s—”
“Liza Soaper,” Gray said. “She was special. She could belt out a foot-stomping number or sing lyrics that made you want to cry, and she was decent. I’m going to find the bastard who did that to her and—”
Bucky whistled loudly, drowning out the rest of Gray’s sentence.
Nat waited until he could be heard and said, “I’ll help you.”
“A word?” Dr. Blades sidled near and kept on moving toward the front of the building.
Nat and Gray glanced at one another and followed quickly and quietly.
Blades left the club and walked to the opposite side of the street.
“You aren’t leaving now, are you?” Nat said. “Won’t you stick around until she’s taken down?”
“Yes,” Blades said shortly. “I don’t want to talk in that zoo. I’ll go back after we’ve spoken. She’s been kept frozen.”
Gray stared at the man.
“She’s still fairly solid so it’ll make establishing time of death more difficult,” Blades continued. “That much I’ll share with that fool, Beauchamp.”
“What won’t you share with him?” Nat bounced onto his toes.
“Did you notice the stench?” Blades asked.
“Yes,” Nat and Gray said in unison.
“Shirley Cooper’s body has the same odor—although it’s faded a lot.”
“We noticed.” Gray shoved his hands into his pockets and kept his peace.
“We jumped to conclusions about this thing being some sort of alligatorlike monster,” Blades said.
“But from another planet,” Nat said, perfectly serious.
“From somewhere we’ve never been,” Blades said. “I’ve got to get back now, but did you notice there are scratches and bites—it’s the bites that drew blood. I did the sniff test, and that’s also where the smell of very old rotting flesh is hanging around. Not the scratches. It’s the teeth that do the real damage.”
Gray swallowed.
“Okay,” Nat said slowly.
“I think our particular monster may be a pretty impressive copy of something we know all about these days. Except for the obvious differences. Varanus komodoensis.”
Gray shrugged and shook his head. “Doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Or me,” Nat said.
Blades nodded. “I don’t have time for a lecture now. Take a look at what the experts say about the Komodo dragon.”
Chapter 44
Gray watched Nat follow Blades back across the street. Agitation pounded at his nerves. He glanced around, expecting to find onlookers staring at him.
“Hey, Gray,” Nat called to him. “Aren’t you coming?”
“Nah. I think I’ll go catch up on a few things.”
Nat raised his brows questioningly, then shrugged and carried on toward the club.
Gray hovered, thinking his way through his next steps and trying to order the sensations battering at his brain. He tried to quiet down. Marley had communicated with him before. True, they had been in the same place, but he didn’t know if she might be able to reach him from just about anywhere by now. He had felt their connection getting stronger.
Royal Street was the only place he could go. He was panicking for no reason. She was the kind of woman who got immersed in her work and probably turned her phone off.
She was there.
“Remember me, Gray?” Sykes Millet seemed to appear from nowhere, just to loom up in front of Gray. “We met here once before and—”
“I remember you. Have you seen Marley recently?”
The man’s face went still, except for his intensely blue eyes. They changed shades and expressions, and Gray didn’t like any of what he saw there. Sykes was unsettled.
“Just answer a few questions for me,” Sykes said. “No, no, don’t try to interrupt. We don’t have time.”
Gray scrubbed at his forehead. “Ask.”
