Robert Walker - Scalpers

Ian had a handkerchief he'd doused with chloroform. Within inches of the concentrating reader now, close enough to feel the heat rising off her body, Ian struck, forcing the sleeping potion into her eyes, nose, and mouth all at once. He felt the kick and fight go out of her almost instantly, and in a moment Peggy Carson lay in his arms and the dwarf was straddled across her midsection, undoing her uniform, forcing a hand against her breast, cooing and getting excited at the touch of her skin. He examined the forehead and realized for the first time it was the same woman as that night in the alley.

Ian knew he was going to have to disagree and fight with Van this time.

"Let's do her right this time,” said Van. drooling onto his hairy chin.

"We can't, no ... no!” Ian whispered, pointing to the walls which were paper thin.

"This is too tempting,” Van whispered back, his long, uncut nails digging into the flesh of Peggy Carson's scalp. He then began to undo her belt and zipper, sniffing over her like a dog in heat.

Ian pulled him away from her, tearing out long strands of his hair to do so, he must tug so hard. “I said no!” It was hard to be emphatic and whisper at the same time, but Van was beginning to realize that the girl meant something special to Ian.

"Peggy's scalp stays. We don't harm her."

"Peggy?” he snarled at the suggestion, the big orbs glaring at Ian.

"I've got a much better plan for her."

"I want her ... I want to eat parts of her...."

"No! Not if you want the babies, remember the babies! The black scalp didn't work. Now we've got to try baby hair, like I said! If we kill this one, it'll only tell them we're still at large."

"No, no ... if we kill her, they'll still think he did it,” He indicated the bathroom where Park's body had been left.

"Be reasonable! You're always unreasonable when you ... when you're like this."

"I am being reasonable."

"No, no you're not. If Park scalped her, then how in God's name did she kill him with his own knife? Trust me, this time I know what's best for us both."

The grim, large lips of the dwarf parted in a lopsided smile and he nodded his head successively while getting ahold of his emotions. He did very much want to do the girl ... very much ... but something in Ian's voice told him that his brother was taking on responsibility and growing. “Yes, all right ... let's hear your plan."

"No time to tell it to you. Just help me bring Park's body back out here and place it right where you stabbed him."

"Oh, clever ... I begin to see...."

Dyer was incredulous. He didn't believe what Dean was trying to tell him as they sped toward Park's place. He didn't want to even consider the possibility that Park had anything whatever to do with the slayings—any more than he had wanted to believe Sid Corman had—and he didn't want to believe that Peggy Carson could be so stupid as to go after the man on such flimsy evidence, acting like Annie Oakley.

"Christ, Dr. Grant, it's crazy ... all of it! Why're we all focusing in on the department this way, like this perverted killing is something of an inside job? To my way of thinking, we should be focusing outward. To my way of thinking, these murderers are out there in the community, not in the department. Sure, Dave can be uncooperative and secretive, and he's been a real ass not to confide in me, his partner, about his true identity, but that hardly makes him a mass murderer. I mean, come on, Doctor."

"I'm sorry my investigation of his past got out, Frank."

"Yeah, well, sorry won't help if one of those two cops shoots the other when Peggy goes storming in, Christ."

"That's why I called you."

Dyer had killed the siren now that they were near their destination, not wishing to add to the chaos he expected to find on Park's doorstep. “I don't understand your job, Dr. Grant. I mean, you're a coroner, right? And coroners work with microscopes and slides, not guns and bullets, yet here you are, investigating people over the wires. That kind of stinks, you know that?"

Dean wondered if he should confess now to Dyer that Dean's contacts he, too, had been on Dean's list of people being surveyed by in Chicago. It wasn't the best of moments to do so. Instead Dean replied, “Everyone's suspect in a case like this, Frank, and you know exactly why we're all looking over one another's shoulder. Someone did take Sid's scissors to plant at the murder scene. Now, whether that someone is one of our scalpers or not, he's guilty of a crime. Besides, you know of the calls to Dr. Hamel, the contents of those calls."

"Park wouldn't have had anything to do with such a play."

"Who then? You?"

"Me? What the hell'd I do a thing like that for?"

"Sid fools around some, a lot, from what I've seen. You have a wife—"

"And kids, but you're clutching at straws here, doc. I'm not no goddamned killer, or liar, or the kind of man who would handle a problem like that by devious means. If you do a check on my record, like you did Park's, you might learn how I'd handle Sid Corman, if he ever went near my wife."

"Then you won't mind if I do just that—run a check on your past?"

He glared at Dean. “You're something of a real bastard, doc."

Dean considered his point briefly. “You get as old as me, Frank ... see as much as me ... if you remain a cop for as long as I have remained a coroner, and you'll have people calling you a bastard, too, believe me."

"Bastard,” Frank Dyer muttered in repetition.. “Park ... he's a bastard, too, come to think of it. This working like James Bond, on his own, it ain't no good for nobody, and it doesn't inspire confidence in a partner, believe me. Suppose he is close to the killer. Suppose he's hot on his trail, and suppose the killer turns around and pops him. Where does that leave the rest of us? Some bag of shit we got ourselves here, Doc, a caseload of four dead by scalping and more elsewhere from what you say, a so-called investigative team that so distrust one another, nobody can tell what's what. Just the kinda business that let the Boston Strangler do his handiwork for so long without ever being detected. Nice going, one and all."

Dyer was right again, but so far as Dean could tell, the screw-up had begun well before his arrival, at the top level, with Chief Hodges. “I agree one hundred percent, Frank, and I'd like to make a pact with you now. No more secrets between us."

Dyer looked across at Dean to take his measure. “Okay, fair enough."

"You remind me a lot of a cop friend of mine in Chicago, Frank."

"Oh, yeah?” Tough guy, or what?"

"Smart guy who cuts through crap like a razor's edge. How do you size up Park?"

"I say you've got the man all wrong. I say what he told you was pure truth, but hey, I've been known to be wrong."

"Thanks for the qualified observation."

After returning Park's body to the living area and unceremoniously dumping him at the spot where it would be determined Peggy Carson had killed him when he'd attacked her, Ian cooly gave Van orders to help him wipe clean all traces of the dead man's blood in the bathroom. “The tiles, the bath, sink, floor, everything."

"Do it yourself,” said Van, nastily, “I'm going to look at the girl."

"Damn it, Van, we're doing this to keep you safe from harm, from men like Grant!"

"I'm not afraid of Grant or any of those bastards you seem so in awe of, big brother."

"Van!"

"And you're getting just a little too smart for your own good!"

"We don't have time for this, please. Oh, damn it, I'll do it myself."

He worked until nothing was left on any of the surfaces. Then he guided Peggy's lithe body over toward the corpse and saw to it that blood was smeared on her hands and clothing. He had worked with rubber gloves on the whole time.