Robert Walker - Scalpers

"I know dispatch is beeping him. He's got to know by now."

"I'm not waiting all night for him.” Dean returned to the body and began taking scrapings, scrapings of coagulated blood from the chest and from the hands. “I'll want the clothing once he's transported, including the shoes,” he told Dyer. Dean allowed a momentary glance into Park's open eyes and face. It was always a mistake to do so, and now he wished he hadn't. They'd been talking earlier that day in Dean's lab, the man's mind active and alive, his muscle, nerves, and senses working, and now he was as lifeless and still as a mound of sand. Something in the dead man's eyes or expression told Dean he had been taken by surprise by Peggy Carson, shocked, perhaps, by her forcing her way in at gunpoint. But how, then, did he die as a result of his own knife?

Dean went to Peggy to ask her if she could now tell him exactly what had happened between her and Park. But Peggy seemed totally confused, telling him that she had not confronted Park, that he hadn't been in the room until she was grabbed from behind and choked unconscious.

"Choked?"

"Yes, and I must've fainted."

"Where were you when you were grabbed from behind?"

Dean sat at the very spot she indicated and glanced over his shoulder to where the bath was. “Had you secured the bathroom, Peggy, before going over the news clippings, you might not have been surprised by Park."

"No, I thought he was out ... thought I was alone. Then somebody grabbed me and I ... I lost consciousness.'

This sounded odd to Dean. He slipped out a slide from his valise and asked Peggy to exhale on it."

"What for?"

"Call it a breathalizer test."

"I wasn't drinking!"

"I just want a sample, Peggy, please. Humor me, all right?"

She looked deeply into Dean's eyes. Seeing the concern there, she did as he asked. He immediately treated the slide with a fixative, covered it, and clamped the two together. Later he'd analyze it in the lab.

"What in God's name!” It was Chief Hodges in evening attire. His bulk filled the doorway. “I was just across at Nero's when I heard."

"Come on, give me a hand,” Dean said to him.

"With what?"

"Spray."

"Spray?"

"Seconal."

"Oh, yeah ... that shit."

"I want the whole carpet covered with it,” said Dean.

"The whole damned carpet, huh?” Hodges wasn't use to taking orders, but the situation called for cooperation, and soon he was going about the room with the can of seconal spray as if it were Lysol.

"The bed, too, Chief."

Hodges frowned, but did as he was told.

"It'll highlight any blood spots, give us a trail, if there is one, tell us exactly where Park was when he died and if he did any twisting,” said Dean. “More to the point, we'll know if he died here, or was carried here."

"That's rather obvious, isn't it?” asked Dyer from his knees at the bed. He was searching between the springs and the mattress for any additional incriminating scalps. "Ugh," he said, his hand touching hair. “I think I've got another one, Dr. Grant"

Dean rushed to the spot, telling Dyer to keep his mitts off. With the foreceps, Dean again had the prized evidence put into a sealed bag. Dean had already gathered up the newspaper clippings, pointing them out to Hodges who, by this time, was embarrassed and delighted at once. Embarrased because he believed all that David Park had led him to believe, and had been led to believe so by someone in faraway Michigan as well. Delighted because now he could return to the Mayor and tell him that the Scalper was a thing of the past. The two scalps in Park's room alone were enough to convict him, in Hodges’ book.

Even so, the more evidence Dean and Dyer unearthed in the tiny apartment, the more Dean wondered. Something smelled here, and it was more than just the scalps. It would take a little more time for the seconal spray to work, and in the meantime, Dean went again to Peggy Carson and asked her questions. “Did you hear Park come up on you? Did he say anything to you?"

"No, nothing."

"When did you grab hold of the knife?"

"I didn't. I swear, I didn't see the knife until you and Frank came through the door. I didn't kill him! "

"Don't worry, Officer Carson,” said Hodges, “you did this city a service, and it's going to be written up that way. Don't be surprised if you get a commendation, young lady."

"I don't want a commendation for killing someone I had no part in—” But Hodges wasn't listening to Peggy. He merely continued on.

"But how did you know Park was the man who had attacked you before?"

"I was acting on information I ... learned from Dr. Grant, sir—but believe me, I swear it's the truth when I tell you—"

"Then Dr. Grant is to share the limelight as well. Right, Dr. Grant?"

"Hold your commendations, limelight and all your congratulations, Chief,” said Dean, who now turned out the light switch and asked Dyer to do the same with the light in the bath. The seconal spray turned splat marks and sprays of blood both large and small all about the room into eerie irregular shapes over walls and floor, but nothing on the bed. It were as if the blood was telling a tale. Most of the story was in the shaggy, near black-green carpet. The seconal told Dean Grant that Park's blood had created a clear and eerie trail between here and the bath. To Dean's trained eye it meant only one thing.

Pointing to the floor on the far side of Park's body where the seconal spray indicated more than one trail of blood from the bath to where the body now lay at the foot of the bed, Dean said, “Lt. Park's not the Scalper and he never was."

"That's nonsense,” said Hodges, not wanting to believe Dean. “No one can make that kind of judgment based on a can of spray—"

"Chief, Dean's right,” said Sid Corman, who entered in darkness from outside, where now a police barricade had formed to keep people back. “Park would have had to stagger back and forth two, maybe three times, to lose that much blood in that section of carpet from just a single knife wound."

"Bullshit,” replied Hodges. “I've known cases, even seen men with knife wounds to walk blocks to get to a hospital and survive!"

"Not with a knife shoved all the way into the heart, I'm afraid,” said Dean. “Besides, if all that blood on Park's chest is his, it's been pumping out of him for at least an hour. It's so coagulated that—"

"Shit, I saw a man once in a bar fight who took a knife to the brain, right down the middle, and he was rushed to a hospital. Didn't survive the removal of the blade, but he lived for hours after the initial—"

"The brain and the heart are two entirely different organs, Chief,” said Sid.

"God damn it, you two aren't going to tell me that we don't have solid proof against this crazed cop! We've got two scalps! We've got a knife and a scalpel! We've got all those news stories and the man's record with the Michigan cops. He was there and now he's here. We've got him! "

The lights were returned and the men squared off at one another with darting eyes. Hodges, understandably, wanted what all of the others wanted: an end to the madness in his city. “I want the same as you, Chief, but we can't whitewash this thing simply because it will please everyone to do so. Suppose for a moment that—"

"Screw you, Grant. This is no longer your concern. Corman's the coroner of Orlando, and if you'll just hand over what you've taken here, you can get on a plane for Chicago and we'll all be much better off burying our own trash."

"Burying, Chief? Or sweeping it under the rug?"

"You are no longer needed here, Grant. Now do you go, or do I have my officers take you out bodily?"

Dean looked to Sid for support. “Chief, please—let us do our job. Grant's concern is only for the truth,” said Sid. “Give us time to prove Park guilty, and we will ... we will."