John Connolly - Every Dead Thing

“So,” she said, “who wants to start?”

I told them about Remarr, and instantly, the tiredness went from Rachel’s face. She made me detail the position of the body twice and then spent a couple of minutes shuffling papers on her desk.

“There!” she said, handing me a sheet of paper with a flourish. “Is that it?”

It was a black-and-white illustration, marked at the top of the page, in old lettering: TAB. PRIMERA DEL LIB. SEGVNDO. At the bottom of the page, in Rachel’s handwriting, was written “Valverde 1556.”

The illustration depicted a flayed man, his left foot on a stone, his left hand holding a long knife with a hooked hilt, his right holding his own flayed skin. The outline of his face was visible on the skin and his eyes remained in his sockets, but with those exceptions, the illustration was profoundly similar to the position in which Remarr had been found. The various parts of the body were each marked with Greek letters.

“That’s it,” I said quietly as Angel and Louis peered silently over my shoulder. “That’s what we found.”

“The Historia de la composición del cuerpo humano,” said Rachel. “It was written by the Spaniard Juan de Valverde de Hamusco in 1556 as a medical textbook. This drawing”-she took the page and held it up so we could all see it-“is an illustration of the Marsyas myth. Marsyas was a satyr, a follower of the goddess Cybele. He was cursed when he picked up a bone flute discarded by Athene. The flute played itself, because it was still inspired by Athene, and its music was so beautiful that the peasants said it was greater even than that of Apollo himself.

“Apollo challenged Marsyas to a competition to be judged by the Muses, and Marsyas lost because he couldn’t play the flute upside down and sing at the same time.

“And so Apollo took his revenge on Marsyas. He flayed him alive and nailed his skin to a pine. According to the poet Ovid, at his moment of death Marsyas cried out, “Quid me mihi detrahis?”-which can be roughly translated as: “Who is it that tears me from myself?” The artist Titian painted a version of the myth. So did Raphael. My guess is that Remarr’s body will reveal traces of ketamine. To fulfill the myth, the flaying would have to be carried out while the victim was still alive-it’s hard to create a work of art if the subject keeps moving.”

Louis interrupted. “But in this picture he looks like he flayed himself. He’s holding the knife and the skin. Why did the killer choose this depiction?”

“This is just a guess, but maybe it’s because, in a sense, Remarr did flay himself,” I said. “He was at the Aguillard house when he shouldn’t have been. I think the Traveling Man was concerned at what he might have seen. Remarr was somewhere he shouldn’t have been, so he was responsible for what happened to him.”

Rachel nodded. “It’s an interesting point, but there may be something more to it, given what happened to Tee Jean Aguillard.” She handed me a pair of papers. The first was a photocopy of the crime scene photo of Tee Jean. The second was another illustration, this time marked DE DISSECT.

PARTIVM. At the bottom of the page, the date “ 1545” had been handwritten by Rachel.

The illustration depicted a man crucified against a tree, with a stone wall behind it. His head was cradled by the branches of the tree, his arms spread by further branches. The skin below his chest had been flayed, revealing his lungs, kidneys, and heart. Some unidentified organ, probably his stomach, lay on a raised platform beside him. His face was intact, but once again, the illustration matched the posture of Tee Jean Aguillard’s body.

“Marsyas again,” said Rachel. “Or at least an adaptation of the myth. That’s from Estienne’s De dissectione partium corporis humani, another early textbook.”

“Are you saying that this guy is killing according to a Greek myth?” asked Angel.

Rachel sighed. “It’s not that simple. I think the myth has resonances for him, for the basic reason that he’s used it twice. But the Marsyas theory breaks down with Tante Marie, and Bird’s wife and child. I found the Marsyas illustrations almost by accident, but I haven’t found a match yet for the other deaths. I’m still looking. The likelihood is that they are also based on early medical textbooks. If that’s the case, then I’ll find them.”

“It raises the possibility that we’re looking for someone with a medical background,” I said.

“Or a knowledge of obscure texts,” said Rachel. “We already know that he has read the Book of Enoch, or some derivative of it. It wouldn’t take a great deal of medical knowledge to carry out the kind of mutilation we’ve found on the bodies so far, but an assumption of some surgical skills, or even some mild familiarity with medical procedures, might not be totally amiss.”

“What about the blinding and the removal of the faces?” I asked. I pushed a flashing image of Susan and Jennifer to the back of my mind. “Any idea where they fit in?”

Rachel shook her head. “I’m still working on it. The face appears to be some form of token for him. Jennifer’s was returned because she died before he could start working on her, I’d guess, but also because he wanted to shock you personally. The removal could also indicate the killer’s disregard for them as individuals, a sign of his disregard for their own status as people. After all, when you remove a person’s face, you take away the most immediate representation of their individuality, their main physical distinguisher.

“As for the eyes, there is a myth that the image of the killer stays on the retina of the victim. There were lots of myths like that attached to the body. Even at the start of the last century, some scientists were still examining the theory that a murder victim’s body bled when it was in the same room as its killer. I need to do more work on it, then we’ll see.”

She stood up and stretched. “I don’t mean to sound callous, but now I want to take a shower. Then I want to go out and get something decent to eat. After that, I want to sleep for twelve hours.”

Angel, Louis, and I started to leave but she held up her hand to stop us. “There’s just one more thing. I don’t want to give the impression that this is just some freak copying violent images. I don’t know enough about this to make that kind of judgment and I want to consult some people who are more experienced in this area than I am. But I can’t help feeling that there’s some underlying philosophy behind what he’s doing, some pattern that he’s following. Until we find out what that is, I don’t think we’re going to catch him.”

I had my hand on the door handle when there was a knock at the door. I opened it slowly and blocked the view of the room with my body while Rachel cleared away her papers. Woolrich stood before me. In the light from the room, I noticed a thin growth of beard was forming on his face. “Clerk told me you might be here if you weren’t in your own room. Can I come in?”

I paused for a moment, then stepped aside. I noticed that Rachel was standing in front of the material on the wall, obscuring it from view, but Woolrich wasn’t interested in her. His eyes had fixed on Louis.

“I know you,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” said Louis. His eyes were cold.

Woolrich turned to me. “You bringing your hired killers to my town, Bird?”

I didn’t reply.

“Like I said, man, I think you’re making a mistake,” said Louis. “I’m a businessman.”

“Really? And what kind of business would you be in?”

“ Pest control,” said Louis.

The air seemed to crackle with tension, until Woolrich turned around and walked from the room. He stopped in the hall and gestured to me. “I need to talk to you. I’ll wait for you in the Café du Monde.”