Don't you tell me what to do, you bastard! You're not my boss. I'm my own boss!
You're drunk, is what you are.
You drive me to drink.
Right, your weaknesses are my responsibility.
Don't laugh at me, I'm warning you-
You drink, Christina, because you're weak. Because you can't face life. You're a coward.
Bastard goddamned bastard! What's that you're guzzling, Coca-Cola?
I can handle my liquor.
I can handle my liquor.
Don't imitate me, Christina.
Fine. Now get the hell out of here. Drink yourself cirrhotic and leave me alone.
Drink yourself cirrhotic. You and your fucking jargon, think you're a hotshot. Everyone thinks you're a pompous asshole-when I worked Four West, everyone said so.
Didn't slop you from licking my balls, did it?
It made me want to throw up. I did it for your money.
Fine. You've got my money. Now get the hell out of here.
I'll stay wherever the hell I want to.
You're out of control, Christina. Rambling. Make an appointment with Emil Diefenbach tomorrow and have him check you out for organic brain disease.
And you're a limpdick asshole.
Pathetic
Stop smirking, limpdick!
Pathetic.
Maybe I am pathetic, maybe I am! At least I'm human, unlike you the fucking machine who can handle everything. You're perfect-Mister Per Doctor Perfect! Handles anything except getting a hard-on! Doctor Limpdick Perfect!
Pathetic lush.
What is that, Coca-fucking-Cola!
Get away, Christina, I'm-
Sure doesn't taste like Coca-fucking-
Get away-
-Cola!
-Oh, shit, you spilled it all over me.
Poor baby, poor limpdick! Serves you right! Slob! Whore-fucker!
Get out of the way, you goddamned bitch! Get out of the way, damn you! I need to clean this off!
Just throw it out Doctor Limpdick. Fucking Italian suit makes you look like a greaseball, anyway.
Move, Christina!
Whore-fucker.
MOVE!
Fuck you!
I'm warning you!
I'm warning you-Ow! You-oh, you pushed me you hurt me, you lousy stinking bastard! Oh! Ow, my foot-Look at you. Dribbling. Pathetic.
You pushed me, you goddamned cocksucker!
Drunken cow!
Piece of shit!
Fucking lush!
STINKING FUCKING KIKE BASTARD!
Ah! There it is!
You're goddamned fucking right there it is, you filthy hooknosed kike limpdickl
Go ahead, let it all out. Show your true colors, bitch!
JEW BASTARD!
White trash cunt!
KIKEKIKEKIKE! CRUCIFYING BASTARD!
The second victim was identified quickly.
After he'd picked up the sheet and looked at her, Daniel's first thought was: Fatma's older sister. The resemblance was that strong down to the missing earrings.
They'd started working on the missing-kid files again, getting nowhere. But the interdepartmental gag was off, the story had hit the papers immediately, and passing her picture around brought results on Sunday forty-eight hours after the body had been found. A detective from the Russian Compound, a recent transfer from Haifa, remembered her as someone he'd busted a few months ago, for soliciting down by the harbor. A phone call to Northern District brought her file down by police courier, but she'd been let go with a warning and there wasn't much to learn from it.
Juliet Haddad ("They call me Petite Julie"), born in Tripoli, a professional whore. Twenty-seven years old, dark and pretty, with a baby face that made her appear ten years younger.
The illusion of youth ended below the slashed neck-what remained of her body was flabby, mottled, the thighs lumpy and scarred with old cigarette burns. The uterus was gone, severed and lifted out like some bloody treasure, according to Dr. Levi's report, but tissue analyses of the other organs revealed evidence of gonorrhea and primary syphilis, successfully treated. Like Fatma, she'd been sedated with heroin, but for her it was no maiden voyage: scores of sooty, fibrosed needle marks surrounded the pair of fresh ones. Additional marks in the bend of her knees.
"She was washed as clean as the other," Dr. Levi told Daniel. "But physiologically speaking, she was far from spotless-a damaged young woman, probably abused for years.
There were hairline fractures all over the skull-like spider-webbing. Some evidence of minor damage to the dura of the occipital and frontal lobes of the brain."
"Would that have affected her intelligence?"
"Hard to say. The cerebral cortex is too complex to assess retroactively. Loss of function in one area can be compensated for by another."
"How about an educated guess?"
"Not if you'll hold me to it."
"Off the record."
"Off the record, she may have had visual problems-distortions, blurring-and a dulling of emotional responses, like the patients the Russians do psychosurgery on. On the other hand, she may have functioned perfectly-there's no way to tell. I've examined brains that have necrosed to nothing-you'd bet the owner was a vegetable. Then you talk to the family and find out the guy played chess and solved complex math problems up until the day he died. And others that look picture-perfect and the owners were morons. You want to know how smart she was, find someone who knew her when she was alive."
"Any theories about the uterus?"
"What did the psychiatrists say?"
"I haven't spoken to any of them yet."
"Well," said Levi, "I suppose I can guess as well as they can. Hatred of women, destruction of femininity-removal of the root of femininity."
"Why take this one and not Fatma's?"
"Maniacs change, Dani, just like anyone else. Besides, Fatma's uterus was virtually obliterated, so in some sense he was destroying her womanhood, too. Maybe he removed this one in order to take his time with it, do God-knows-what. Maybe he's decided to start a collection-didn't Jack the Ripper start off by carving, then progress to removing organs? One of the kidneys, if I remember correctly, wasn't it? Sent a chunk to the police, claimed to have eaten the rest of it."
"Yes," said Daniel, thinking: butchery, cannibalism. Until Gray Man, such horrors had been pure theory, cases in the homicide textbook. The kind of thing he never thought he'd need to know about.
Levi must have read his mind.
"No sense escaping it, Dani," said the pathologist. "That's what you've got here-another Jack. Better bone up on maniacs. He who forgets history is condemned and all that."