Robert Walker - Scalpers

"Are you men going to remain throughout the autopsy?” asked Dean, incredulous.

"We'll be above you,” replied Hamel, a finger indicating the viewing section above.

"And we'll monitor your every word,” added Hodges.

"I see,” replied Dean, “how cozy. But suppose I choose not to become a part of such a performance?"

"Then we will call in someone of our choosing,” said Hodges with a whispered aside—someone's name—to Dr. Hamel.

"I see..."

"Dean, as a favor,” asked Sid quietly.

"Without knowing what this is all about?"

"That's the way we would like it, yes,” answered Hodges.

"A complete autopsy will take all day and night, and some tests will take longer still."

"We are all quite well aware of that, doctor."

Dean's eyes met Sid's, and now he remembered Sid as he really was, always the pain-in-the-ass. He'd get himself into trouble and dig it deeper until someone bailed him out. He hadn't changed, only Dean's memory of him had changed. In Korea, he had been a passable doctor, but in his case, going into forensics had been a much safer occupation, for the dead could not sue for a wrongful cut or clumsiness from a night's binge.

"Please, Dean."

"When you want me to begin?” he asked Hodges.

"Now."

"So this is her,” said Dean when he peeled back the white sheet from the red-haired woman he had only known through routine lab tests and a photo.

Park cleared his throat and Dyer gasped at the still-gruesome sight of the mutilated scalp. Park, trying to be professional, shakily said, “We ID'd her as—"

"Never mind,” pleaded Dean, his eyes riveted on the gash in the woman's forehead and skull. Blue-black beneath the cold hardness of death, the wound seemed somehow alive, a creature unto itself. “I'd just as soon not know her name right now, detective."

"Of course..."

Dean knew that Sid understood, even if no one else might. He just did not wish to know anything more about her—not yet, anyway. The least a forensics man knows of the victim, the better, at such an early stage. If he thought of her as a young woman with children, a husband, a nice home, as a woman with a fair name like Laura or Debbie, it would only serve to get in his way, erode his concentration, taking with it all that rooted him to stand firm before this perverse picture of serenity.

The red-carpet treatment Sid had promised was red all right; red with murder and gore, and now suspicion. Who was on trial here, Sid, the two detectives? It didn't seem that Hodges was after Hamel—rather that these two men had worked out the game plan.

Dean had thought the reports he'd read on the plane most satisfactory; perhaps a bit brusque, given the situation of scalping, an oddity beyond words, yet Sid hadn't left anything out, had he? Or was it Park and Dyer who were getting a shellacking? Odd, how they did things in Orlando. But Dean's sudden involvement was all Sid's doing, and the damned fool hadn't been straight with him. Maybe he was hiding some secret or vital piece of information ... but why?

"We had all agreed, doctor,” began Hamel, a smile creasing his handsome, well-tanned face, “to allow you to do your own work in this case. Then we would tell you if Dr. Corman here had or had not overlooked evidence of a vital nature."

Dean wondered if it were the paint the killer used. Then he wondered if it were a thousand other things Sid could have honestly overlooked. The situation was fraught with bad consequences.

"We will leave you to your work now, Dr. Grant,” said Hodges.

"Dr. Corman will assist you,” said Hamel, almost as an afterthought. “Perhaps he might learn something?"

The dig was not lost on Dean. He wondered for how long Sid and Hamel had been at each other's throats. Dean gave Sid a shake of the head as the others filed out. But true to their word, they didn't go far. In shifts, for the next twenty-four hours, one and sometimes two of them were staring from overhead like vultures as Dean worked. Vultures in search of what type of carion—incompetence, neglect, stupidity, or a simple cover-up?

TWO

NIGHTFALL

The direction she'd taken was not good, as it drove her deeper into the dark between the low-lying apartment buildings on Orlando's west side. Crime was high here, and Officer Peggy Carson knew the dangers that lurked in every shadow. But she had requested undercover work here because it was not unlike the frightful neighborhood she had grown up in as a child. If anything, she joined the police force to do what she might to counter the terrible loss of life and children in such squalor as this. Tonight, she had a tip on a drug dealer, whose apartment she'd had in her sights when from out of nowhere came a strange, shadowy figure that moved ghostlike through the back alleys of the sordid neighborhood. What struck her the most was the fact that the man looked, in the changing light of the street lamp, like he was white. In a black neighborhood of Orlando at this hour, that usually meant one thing.

Could he be the big bust she really wanted?

Peggy shored up her courage and tried to follow the elusive shape that flitted in and out of her vision, until she stood not knowing which way he had disappeared. Beside her the trash cans stood silent and smelly. Behind her was a wooden garage, nearly falling in with dry rot and age. To her left was the long tunnel of the alleyway, silent and gaping, like an enormous mouth. If she walked its length, she could be jumped from any direction. She could be raped—or murdered.

She really didn't want to do it. But she had no choice.

Bolstering her nerve, convinced that this was the only direction in which the suspect could have continued, she snatched out her service revolver and proceeded. This was the major problem with undercover work: she'd long since left the area she and her partner were supposed to be working, and they were not wired. She was effectively shut off, alone.

Rumor had it the last of the Scalper's victims, the redhead, had also been a policewoman, and she now guessed that the rumor was very likely true. If it could happen to a fellow officer, then why not her? Hell of a way to go, she thought, chilled by the recollection of the news accounts and insider descriptions detailed by insidious people like Mitch Tobin. Tobin was a macho cop with a redneck philosophy that said if you puked, you weren't good cop material. She hated the guy.

Now Raft, there was a good cop. Her partner, Mickey Raftlin, was called the Raft for his calm, easygoing ways. A no-nonsense guy, with no time for it from others, Raft just kind of floated to his own drummer. He was cool in his priest's outfit, with dark features, his mustache dangling to his chin on either side, and he made people believe in the Word if he had to take them down. He had the priest routine down great, and Peggy had learned a lot from her partner, but she knew she had plenty more to learn.

A rattle up ahead, slight but distinct, told her someone was there in the deep shadow, watching. It had to be her man, but she'd blown it. He was waiting to jump her, knowing he'd been followed. No way was he going to make a drop. She could only hope he was stupid or brash enough to have the stuff still on him.

"Okay, I got you locked on target, man!” she said firmly, a tinge of anger making the words bite. “Get your ass one step over here, now!"

From out of the shadow stepped a strange creature. A small boy? Gnome? Dwarf? Fat, grimy little hands balled into fists and raised overhead, pleading with an animal squeal of fear.

"What the hell,” she said more to herself than to anyone else. It was as if the tall man had transformed into something misshapen and ugly. Then she saw something in the little man's eye, a look that replaced the fear, and the eyes smiled wide with the gnome's grin. He was wearing a fanciful outfit, something out of Dickens’ England. “We've got you now,” squeaked the mousy little man just before she felt the powerful arms surround and engulf her.