Robert Walker - Scalpers

"Did you tell the police what we want?"

"Sure, the moment you asked for it. Should be standard by now, but Orlando's sudden growth has put on a lot of green recruits."

"Don't waste time picking me up, Sid. Get to the scene and control the cops. Do your job."

"I'm at the scene, and I'm doing my goddamned job, Dean.” Sid's sudden anger was understandable.

"I'll get a cab. Just give me the location."

"Conway Park, north entrance, at the water's edge, can't miss it."

"Give me fifteen minutes."

"Hold on, Dean. We got a unit freed up to pick you up and bring you here. Be waiting out front."

"Will do."

Dean raced into his clothes. Soon he was standing in the early morning darkness watching a revolving light and siren approaching. Lodged deep in his mind was the voice of Angel Rae telling him that no matter what had become of her, she had effectively taken Jackie away from him.

"You Dr. Gant?” asked a baby-faced police officer with a modified punk haircut and a jewel in his earlobe.

"Grant, Dr. Grant,” Dean corrected him roughly. He got into the large white squad car and it raced for the downtown exit off I-4. Sitting in the dark rear seat Dean felt like a criminal and a failure—both as a husband and as a forensics specialist. Yes, he had put the Floater killer away in Chicago, and yes, Angel Rae and Brother Timothy were indeed dead. But no one knew how they lived on despite death, despite the vanquishing of evil by so-called knights of criminal justice like him. Because the evil lived on to destroy sleep and peace—and love and marriages.

FIVE

Dean wondered if there were any similarities between the killer in Chicago, who enjoyed drowning people to watch them float to God, and this vicious bastard who cut people's heads apart while they were still alive. It was suddenly and cruelly apparent that in the case of both the young Jane Doe in the park and Officer Peggy Carson, this son-of-a-bitch didn't care whether the victim felt pain.

"You're saying she was completely conscious when the scalp was taken?” asked Frank Dyer as he leaned into the discussion Dean and Sid were conducting over the nude and mutilated body of the black teenager.

"That's a distinct possibility, yes,” Dean said firmly. “And we both know that it was the case with Carson when the knife wound to her head was done. In the earlier cases, I could not say for certain, what with the multiple contusions and abrasions, any number of which could have been a killing blow. But this ... look at her. Other than the scalp removal, there's nothing beyond a patch of skin and hair in the pubic area."

"Was she sexually molested?” It was Park asking.

"No,” Dean replied.

"You can tell just like that?"

"I can."

"It's our man, or men, all right,” said Sid.

"Yeah, neuter cases,” agreed Park. “Pricks without pricks."

"Impotent, or sexless, or both, like Dr. Hamel said,” added Dyer.

"Maybe the Scalpers are working out some sort of religious fantasy, you know, appeasing some—” Dean stopped himself from exploring ideas aloud. He knew it could lead to an investigator down the wrong path. As it was, it sounded as though Dyer and Park were already confused enough by Dr. Hamel's assessment of the killers.

"Can you definitely say, doctors, that this young woman was killed by two men and not one?” asked Dyer.

"The wounds indicate two instruments were used. The head wound is neat, the tool a precision instrument, quite likely a scalpel. The other cut is careless, hurried, the result of a serrated knife, most likely a switchblade, and one that could cut much more deeply."

"I've seen scalpels that are made to close and switch open, Dean,” said Sid.

Dean agreed with a nod. “Whoever's behind this seems to have taken parts of skin and hair from each victim for a reason; and however sick that reason, perhaps if we could understand it, we might have a clue as to who it is we are searching for, gentlemen."

Sid nodded over the bloody corpse, recalling Dean's final assessment in the Floater case.

"You know,” began Dyer, sounding confused, “the wounds to this girl, they just don't seem enough to ... to kill a person, Dr. Grant. I mean, they are not that deep, and she hasn't lost near as much blood as I've seen in accident victims on the highway...."

"Trauma killed her in the end, Dyer. The trauma of having your scalp ripped from you is enough to devastate the mind and cause enough pain and fear to kill the average person."

"Only a few people in all of history have survived and lived to tell about a scalping,” said Park, surprising Dean.

"You've done some reading on the subject."

Park nodded, “Part of the job. Get to know the enemy, right?"

"Good strategy, yes."

Park ambled off, deciding there was no more he could learn from Grant and Corman. Dyer hung closer by again, taking in as much as he was capable of.

"Guess we'd best finish up here, Dean,” said Sid as Dean stared after Park. Park's quiet, rough exterior had reminded Dean of a young Marlon Brando, but the act was wearing thin. But Sid was right, and so Dean turned his attention toward the dead girl, whose bag had been rifled by the police who had discovered her. She'd had a change of clothes stuffed into the handbag, and a clutch purse with the usual makeup and loose change, but there was also a crumpled fifty, a ten, and a five-dollar bill which the murderers hadn't taken. They were not after money. They were not after sex. They were after scalps, and this night in particular, it seemed they were bent on gaining the scalp of a black female. Failing with Peggy Carson, they had found this poor soul.

Dean and Sid began the laborious work of clipping and brushing the body for fingernails and the residue of foreign fibers and hair. As they worked, dark turned into day, and Dean's knees began to throb. While they worked over the body, Dyer searched about the park for footprints they might take molds of, but there were none. Yet he found something else, a pair of surgical scissors which he promptly placed into an evidence bag, to be dusted for prints at the lab. Sid took custody of them.

When they were nearly finished, Sid suggested they lift the girl's arms overhead for a look at her armpits. “Once burned, you know,” he said.

Dean, Sid, Frank Dyer stared at the bare armpits which were not shaven, Dean guessed, but shorn, shorn with the surgical scissors discovered by Dyer a few yards away. But there was no blood. There were no cuts, no skin peeled away, just the clipped nubs of hair.

"Bastards like hair,” said Dean.

"We've gotta take clippings from this area, too,” said Sid.

"Right,” agreed Dean.

Dyer shook his head, wondering why, but saying nothing.

Sid began a casual search through his own surgical kit for the proper tool to take hair samples from the deep groove of the armpit. It took time and Dean saw a strange look come over Sid's face, and he then saw the empty space in Sid's black case where his scissors should be. Alongside the empty space were a pair of smaller nail scissors, and Sid, closing the valise to prying eyes, made do with these.

Dean watched Sid's work closely and clinically now, assessing his friend's method as he had not done before. Dean wondered if there could possibly be more to Sid's major oversight on the redhead. He wondered if Sid, for some as-yet-unaccountable reason, was hiding a great deal more than a lack of professional bearing in the case. He even allowed himself the ugly thought that Sid, in some other mental state, could possibly be the scalpel-wielding killer, who with his medical knowledge had faked the appearance of a second set of wounds that might look, even to a trained eye, like the work of a second murderer. But this thought was simply foolish, Dean told himself. Sid was no more guilty of this horrid business than his wife, Jackie, had been of the drowning of that old woman at her hospital. Dean's imagination was running away with him, and Sid could easily explain the loss of his surgical scissors and would do so if Dean put the question to him.