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.
She held fast to her revolver, held on for her life, squeezing the trigger. One shot was followed by another until her gun was empty and she lay half-unconscious, her face against the pavement, her forehead bleeding profusely. She felt her life waning, slowly running out to mix with the early afternoon rain. She felt detached, apart from her body, and she knew she was either going to vomit now or black out, and she wondered what Tobin would make of her death. He'd probably have something thoughtful to say to the squad room on that score, something about women shouldn't be in undercover work except in bed....
She thought, but could not be certain, that she heard people running. Running toward her or away, she didn't know. She distinctly heard people's voices, one man slapping his wife and telling her they weren't getting involved. Doors slammed. Lights went off. Then she blacked out, believing herself at the mercy of a knife-wielding midget and his powerful partner.
Two rejects from Barnum's, she wondered just before everything went black.
In her unconscious state, her mind replayed the night over eternally, and some portion of her brain became a chamber of horror, a hell in which the attack took place over and over in a continual, unending tragedy of events. She following him, stepping into his trap, calling out to a large, tall, dark-clad figure that had knowingly lured her here. In her nightmare, he took her flesh and scalp with ruthless and pleasing glee time and time again. In her nightmare, no one could help her. No one knew where she was and no one heard the shots, and those who did chose to ignore them ... all but the dwarf, who perched himself at the base of her neck and held her down for the knife-wielder to do his deadly work.
He hadn't seen the gun in her hand, so the gunshots came as a deafening and fearful surprise. Still, he had held onto her ferociously as she fought. Her gun empty, the other joined him and helped subdue her long enough for him to slash her across the forehead, but it was no good. The shots had people and sirens coming from all directions. They must disappear immediately, to leave their quarry until another time, perhaps.
He didn't even see the bloody gun until he'd grabbed hold of her. Then it was like having an angry mongoose by the tail. She spit and bit and squealed. Vile language spewed from her. And the little shit wasn't much better. He freaked, the gunblasts sending him clear down the alley. They were out of control and nothing had been accomplished.
He had held onto the woman for as long as possible. His blows to the back of the head had subdued her considerably, but the noise had been too much.
"Hold onto her, hold on,” he kept squealing, piglike. “I want that black scalp."
"You shittin’ take it then,” he burst out, angry and upset.
"I ... I never done any cutting before,” said the dwarf.
"You've sat and watched enough times."
"I c-can't ... I don't think."
"Forget it. There isn't time. Look!” He pointed out the police car that had just careened past the alleyway. “No time! We've got to save our own scalps. Hurry!"
The little man was reluctant to leave the helpless woman. He snatched away the killer's knife and dug it deep into the wound that had already been begun, but the killer snatched his arm and tugged him away.
"But we can't go back empty-handed,” wailed the dwarf.
"Who said we would? Come away, now!"
The trophy of the black woman's scalp was lost to them. The little one felt more than let down—he felt betrayed. Promises had been made, after all.
Words like imperative, duty, mission, and cause slid in and out of the killer's consciousness. Meanwhile, the little man bitched and complained and threatened to harm himself, he was so upset. But there was nothing to be done. You couldn't do this thing with precision if rushed, and the hair must be parted correctly and with the love and devotion owed it. It just didn't make for good ritual method to do as the little man said, “Sever the head and take it with us...."
She'd discharged her weapon with ferocious intent. He had had all he could do to hold on to the petite black woman. She'd lost control when the dwarf darted from his cover on cue, just as he always did. It was amazing indeed that the little bastard wasn't blown to smithereens. Thank God for that saving moment, for his death could bring people snooping, asking a lot of questions, questions they'd have difficulty answering.
Still, the little one was right. They had gotten off with nothing save their own heads ... just ahead of the police units that raced to the scene like screeching banshees, shadows dancing everywhere. In those shadows, he and the dwarf man disappeared, melted away. He had failed. The dwarf would tell it all his way. He had failed to bring home the natty-curled scalp to add to the collection. They didn't have a black's scalp. And it had looked so promising, for a time. He had taken the woman for a streetwalker when she began to follow him. He had wanted to turn, go back to her, entice her into the shadows with him with the promise of money, but no, he couldn't do it his way. As it was, she had caught them off guard. Sloppy.
One day he'd just do it his way, and that would be a great day.
THREE
Dean was dead on his feet. One more glaring ray of light hitting his eyes would knock him over. The autopsy, as it stood, had gone routinely, save for the nature of the death, that the victim had not only suffered a loss of blood at the head, but was drained in several other key locations, primarily in the breast, where a nipple had been sliced away, and in the uterus, where an ugly, almost star-shaped gash had been taken, along with a patch of pubic hair and skin, a sick sort of second scalping. Whoever the bastard was, he was definitely out of his head to mutilate the body so brutally.
When making any observation, Dean spoke into the microphone positioned just above him. Both he and Sid were now in the blue surgical gowns of the lab, but Dean had long before abandoned his constricting mask. The room was kept at a constant fifty degrees as they worked, and since the corpse had been refrigerated and an autopsy had already been performed, there was little to do in the way of incision.
Dean knew that examinations of this nature often overlooked the obvious, that doctors looking death in the face hurried through, especially in mutilation cases. It could be forgiven of young and inexperienced men, but now he realized with a start what surely must have the police upset with Sid: separate knives had been used on the woman, and two other scars, nearly hidden from view, had been washed clean and had gone unreported on the charts. Beneath each arm, deep in the pit, more chunks of flesh had been cut away, using, again, a kind of childish slash to roughly conform to shapes, a circle and a triangle. The deceased had lost a great deal of blood from these wounds as well, yet Sid had ignored these on his reports. Furthermore, he had indicated the depth of the slash wounds and the possible size of one knife, instead of all the knives. One of the cuts in particular, the head cut, which pulled away the scalp, might well have been done with a scalpel, while the others had been caused by a jagged, longer edge.