Vaguely she sensed that things were being choreographed against her, as if she were moving in a dark and elaborate scheme.
The room was dark but a relief from the too bright corridor. She felt the wall and found a switch. She flicked it on. The light was not so blinding as outside, but she still had to squint because her eyes were very sensitive for some reason.
The interior looked like some kind of recovery room with medical equipment and IV stands, electronic monitors and other equipment sitting silently in racks against the walls. Against another wall were beds made up in stiff white.
But what caught her eye was a gurney in the middle of the room. Because her vision was blurry and her brain slow, it took her a few moments to realize that it was not empty—that something was lumped under a white sheet.
As steadily as her feet would allow, she shuffled toward the gurney. Her brain fluttered in and out of awareness in rapid cycles as if what her eyes took in was illuminated by strobes.
From the impressions, the sheet appeared to be draped across a human body, for she could make out the little tents at the feet and the vague impression of legs and torso and a head contoured under the tip of a nose. Almost without thought her fingers picked up the edge and pulled back the sheet.
Dana let out a cry of horror. It was Aaron Monks.
90
“Aaron Monks. The cosmetic surgeon. I don’t know what I’ve got, but I want to talk to him.”
“Where are you?” Dacey asked.
“On my way to my wife’s.”
“I’ll call for backup.”
“Let me check first. What you can do is find his receptionist. I think she’s a Filipina woman with a long last name beginning with m. Also, I need to know who manages the building his clinic is in.”
“No problem, but I think you might want to call Chief Reardon.”
It was Saturday afternoon, and Reardon was probably playing golf somewhere.
Hi, Chief. Sorry to interrupt your game, but seems we got a serial killer who goes after redheads who all had plastic surgery and who look like my wife, who just got some work done by Dr. Aaron Monks, surgeon of the stars. Just want to break into his office and look around.
Steve made it to their house in less than fifteen minutes.
What bothered him was that the outside lights, including the driveway floods, were on. And it was two in the afternoon, which meant that either Dana had forgotten to turn them off when she went to bed last night, or she hadn’t come home yet. The other possibility was that she didn’t want to return to a dark house.
But what set off an alarm was that her car sat in the garage. Someone had again picked her up. Maybe the guy in the limo.
He let himself in through the back door. The kitchen lights were on, so was a lamp in the living room and family room. The only sound he could hear was the refrigerator. He called out her name. Nothing. A single wineglass sat on the counter by the sink. It had been rinsed out. A tiny puddle of water remained at the bottom. He picked it up and felt a shudder that took him back to that night in Terry Farina’s apartment.
He made a fast check of the downstairs rooms. No Dana, and all was in place. He bounded upstairs, calling her name again. Their bedroom was to the right at the top of the stairs. The door was open and the interior was dark. He said a little prayer that Dana was under the blankets.
The bed was flat and empty. He flicked on the lights, his fingers slimed with perspiration. He checked the guest bedroom, then their offices.
No Dana.
He dialed her cell phone. Once again he got her voice mail and left an urgent message to call him no matter what time.
“Shit,” he said aloud.
Her desk calendar lay open with no entries for the last several days, but last Wednesday she had scribbled “checkup.” He didn’t know if that was for a regular medical exam, her dentist, or Monks.
He went back into the master bedroom then to the bathroom. He flicked the switch, ducked his head in, then flicked it off, thinking about calling colleagues at Carleton High. He started out of the bedroom toward the stairway, when he stopped in his tracks. Like the afterimage of an old television set something lingered in his mind. He shot back inside and moved to her vanity.
On it sat a color photograph.
For a moment all he could feel was numbness as his brain processed what he was looking at. Then a bolt of horror shot through him. It was a computer portrait of Dana.
His first thought was of James Bowers. The forensic anthropologist.
But that didn’t make sense. He opened his briefcase and found the projection image Bowers had given him. It had the same digitalized flatness, the same Photoshop fabrication, except in the printout Dana had red hair.
Then it hit him.
91
“The guy gave her a computer projection of what she’d look like with a nose job. He also colored her hair red.”
Steve explained to Captain Reardon what he had found. “They all had had cosmetic surgery and looked alike at their deaths. Only one of them had reddish hair, but at autopsy they all had the same shade of red. The thing is that nobody knew who did their work, like they were operated on under some code of omertà.”
While Reardon listened, Steve explained how Dana had had cosmetic procedures, including rhinoplasty, performed by Aaron Monks.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. I can’t locate her.”
“Sounds to me like you’ve got a missing wife problem, not a serial killer.”
“Captain, I think she may have even been seeing him socially.” He hated uttering the words.
After a moment’s silence, Reardon said, “This sounds more personal than investigatory.”
“I know how it sounds, but I’m telling you I think Monks is our man.”
“And I think you’ve got nothing to go on. And before you jump in, I got a call from Captain Ralph Modesky of the Cobbsville P.D. saying you called him today in the middle of a political fundraiser asking questions about cosmetic surgery.”
“Yeah, on legitimate police matters. Does the investigation have to stop for lunch?”
“Lieutenant Markarian, I don’t like the tone of your voice.”
“And I don’t like resistance on running down a prime suspect.”
“He’s not a prime suspect. You’ve got nothing—no priors, no physical evidence, not even circumstantial evidence. Nothing but that he did your wife’s cosmetic work and she vaguely resembles the victims. Besides the guy is the Bigfoot of plastic surgery, probably up for the Nobel Prize. You check his whereabouts on any of these?”
He hadn’t, but the Boston Globe “Party Line” said that on the night Terry Farina was killed Monks had been photographed at a banquet at the Westin Hotel in town. It ran from five to closing, but he could have slipped out a little after eight to make it to her apartment—maybe even do a fast outfit change in the car—kill her then return to the hotel to seal an alibi. “I want to search his place.”
“You can try, but I doubt you’ll get a warrant. And if you go over there looking for your wife, you’re doing it as private citizen Markarian. You hear me?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know how to say this without saying it, but if you try to break into Dr. Monks’s place or anywhere else without papers, I’m going to cut you another asshole. Is that clear, Lieutenant Detective Markarian?”