Jessica stared down at the prone figure below the sheet. She then tore the shroud away for a complete view, the fabric spiraling away like a fleeing specter.
Below her gaze lay the body of a thin, shapeless woman, not a blemish of any kind save the stitching done by Shockley and his team. Even the woman's nipples, the areola, appeared white and an extension of her breast skin. Her breasts formed two perfect and symmetrical buttons, so small as to make her appear genderless. A gaze into the woman's face, and Jessica felt she must be the most pure-skinned white woman she had ever encountered, dead or alive. Even given the purplish hue from the postmortem pooling of blood as tissues had broken down, even with the bruises caused most likely by the rough handling of the body by so-called professionals, this corpse appeared nearly flawless. “Not so much as a single freckle,” she whispered.
“How were the bodies discovered?” Jessica asked Sturtevante, who, along with James Parry and Kim Desinor, had joined them in the autopsy room. Everyone wore blue surgical masks.
“In every case, the body has been discovered by a friend who'd come looking for the deceased.”
“No, I'm asking in what posture were the bodies found? Facedown, faceup?”
“Facedown, on their stomachs, resting comfortably. Placed in bed or on pillows. Whoever the killer is, he wants the poems seen immediately, so in walks the hapless friend to discover first the poem, then their dead friend-or at least the two simultaneously.”
“She looks like a beautiful young boy,” Kim said matter-of-factly.
“I hadn't noticed,” jested the old coroner at Jessica's side. “Of course! Fact struck me immediately, a thunderbolt in the ass. I mean, how often do you see the human body without a single blemish?” Shockley darted a glance at Sturtevante. 'Tried to tell our lieutenant in charge of the case, but she didn't think it important.”
“I doubt there's a person within an eight-mile radius whose body is without some sort of blemish,” replied Jessica, thinking of her own physical imperfections.
“No such thing as true alabaster skin, they say, and yet here it is,” added James Parry. “Wouldn't you say, Jess- uh, Dr. Coran?”
Other than the brief acknowledgment at their meeting and businesslike exchange in the elevator, these were James's only words to Jessica. Kim Desinor looked like she was about to answer, but she hesitated, allowing Jessica a moment to gather her thoughts.
“As pure as pure gets, it would appear. Not so much as a mole or a birthmark anywhere,” Jessica replied. 'Tell me, Jim, is this true of the other two victims as well?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.” Sturtevante stepped closer to the body. “We haven't been getting a whole lot of sun here lately. Fact is, I can't recall what the sun feels like. Either way, we have plenty of pale-skinned people running about.” She stopped talking to watch Kim Desinor. Kim placed her hands over the body and seemed to scan it with her fingertips, ever so lightly, her eyes closed. Jessica placed a finger to her lips to indicate that the others must remain quiet while Kim worked.
Kim's body began a near-imperceptible shiver, and she began to take on a slightly blue tinge like that of the long-frozen corpse. “Blue frost,” she muttered. “Blue frost… cold to the bone.”
Kim came out of the trance she had put herself into, the blue tinge disappearing from her features. “Please, can we turn her over? I'd like to have a go at the back.”
“Can we roll her, Dr. Shockley?” asked Jessica.
“Let me call in a couple of my attendants. Strong young fellows who won't break her neck in the process.”
This done, they all stared at the strange, eerie lettering on the back of the victim. It was one thing to view such an unusual desecration of a body in photos, quite another to look on the real thing. Here it stared back at you as if the words were alive, the color of the ink vivid, the color of the bruising around the cuts gruesome. Hues no photograph could reproduce. Here lay the poem about chance and innocence that ended with flickering life.
“Strange or not, each of the victims had assumed a stage name or at least a changed name,” Sturtevante told them.
Kim wasted no time in fingering the pen markings, trying desperately to learn something from her reading of the body.
Nothing happened until they all realized that the blue cast that had left Kim's skin had returned, the color far deeper this time. “What the hell is-” began Shockley.
“Shhhh,” Jessica cautioned him.
Jessica watched Kim with great intensity; she saw the tears begin to form in her eyes, tears that instantly turned into frozen little pearls. “She's freezing cold. Get her out of here, away from the body. Now!” Jessica ordered.
James and Jessica guided a weakened Kim Desinor from the autopsy room to Shockley's office, Lieutenant Sturtevante opened doors along the way. There Shockley pointed to a leather couch, saying, “Lay her down here.”
The others gathered around Kim to watch the blue tint disappear and the tears turn again to liquid. “She loved him,” Kim said aloud. “Loved him?” asked Sturtevante. “Who loved whom?” asked Parry. Talking over the other two, Jessica asked, “For whom did she die, Kim?”
Kim's reply came like the whisper of a child. “She loved him, he loved her… her killer. The number nineteen… keeps coming at me, insistent, along with some letters which… which I haven't been able to understand just yet. I think I'll have to arrange them. They're some sort of call letters or insignia.”
“Nineteen? Nineteen what?” asked Parry.
“She loved him?” Sturtevante repeated. “Then that ought to make our search easy. We go after the boyfriend with more fervor.”
“Boyfriends, you mean,” corrected Parry. “She had a lot of male friends, as well as female friends, all of whom tell us the same story, that she was a lovely, open, caring person who got dumped on a lot because she was a good listener. And all of her so-called boyfriends claim to have had a platonic relationship with her-no sexual involvement- but if you believe that one, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.”
“But she did not sleep around,” Sturtevante added to correct any false impression Jim may have left. “All the friends say the same: they know no one who would have wanted to harm her.”
“You don't understand,” complained Kim, still lying prone. “Their love was transcendent… transcendental. Not your normal boy-girl relationship, not based on sex.”
'Transcendental? I always took that to mean finding a way to get out of your dental bills, or that it was an insurance company-Occidental Transcendental, something like that,” quipped Parry.
The others, glad for something to laugh at, laughed at Parry's lame joke, except for Kim, who remained stonily silent, and Jessica, clearly remaining aloof from any joke Parry had to make about anything.
What then?” asked Parry. “Did they cut into one another with this poison pen in a pact of some sort? Did they read poetry together, only he chickened out and bailed? That doesn't explain the other two deaths.”
“No, it's not a suicide pact, since the killer obviously isn't willing to include himself in it,” countered Sturtevante, vigorously shaking her head.
“But it might explain how he gets them to this point,” suggested Jessica. “Conning them into a pact, then bailing.”
“Perhaps the victims went first, and were under the impression he would follow, but once the poison is introduced, our man steps off,” added Shockley. “Not a bad theory.” Kim shook her head. “He loved her, too.”
“Loved her, yeah, enough to kill her,” Sturtevante commented. “I've seen it before. Love kills.”
“Got that right,” Parry agreed.
“No, no. He loved her too much, too much to allow her a moment's suffering,” insisted Kim. “At least in his head.”
“What suffering?” asked Parry. “She was in perfect health, according to Shockley. Right, Doctor?”