“Ever scalped someone before?”
“Excuse me?”
“There are now two sections of the head. The front flap and the rear flap. We need them both pulled back to expose the skull. Which end do you want?”
Curran wanted a cigarette. Badly. “Front, I guess.”
“Don’t be afraid to use a little strength. That can be tough sometimes.” He motioned for Curran to position his hands. “Okay, give it a good yank.”
Curran felt his fingertips slide under the lip of skin on either side. He pulled and it suddenly came loose in his hands. The skin came down just over the forehead. It looked like the corpse had a mask halfway off his face.
Kwon repeated the procedure for the rear flap. Curran saw the skull exposed and tried to keep from remembering what the image looked like.
“Hand me that Stryker saw, would you?”
Curran picked it up and handed it to Kwon. Another high-pitch whine filled the air. Kwon bent low and began cutting around the equator of the skull. Curran stood back.
Please, he prayed, please don’t let it be.
Kwon finished cutting and looked up. “You okay, Steve?”
Curran opened his eyes. “Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“Are we almost done?”
“I’m ready to remove the calvarium — what we call the top of the skull. Don’t get freaked out by the sound.”
“Is it bad?”
Kwon grinned and grasped the top of the skull. Curran heard a wet sucking sound and then the top came off in Kwon’s hands.
No!
“Jesus H. Christ.”
Curran exhaled. It couldn’t be. Not here. Not now!
Kwon leaned back against the counter, skullcap still in his hand. He pointed at the exposed brain. “Is that your theory, Mr. Homicide Detective?”
Curran nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
“You’ve seen this crap before?”
“Yeah.”
“That brain is green, Steve.”
Curran sighed. “Yeah. It is.”
“That’s not normal. Not one goddamn bit.”
Curran shut his eyes, but the images already filled his mind. After all this time. After the peace. The quiet.
Shattered.
God help me, thought Curran. God help us all.
Chapter Two
Curran drove the long way back to his three-bedroom Colonial in West Roxbury after the autopsy. They’d finished around two-thirty. Curran was due at work by nine, which meant he’d have about six hours worth of sleep.
He figured he needed about a million times that amount to help make him forget the realization that the horror he thought he’d left behind all those years ago — the horror that had infected his life — seemed to have once again returned to his world.
Cold drizzle still coated Boston’s streets and gave them a black tarry look. Curran could almost imagine his tires getting stuck in the wet ooze, like some kind of evil force was reaching up for his car.
And him.
His right hand withdrew the crumpled pack of Marlboros and flipped it until one of the butts inside tumbled onto the seat next to him. He jabbed the cigarette lighter in his car and waited for it to pop moments later.
I ought to quit these damned things, he thought. Gotta be a cheaper method of suicide out there. The lighter popped and he almost grinned.
Later.
He touched the hot metal coil to the end of the tobacco stick and inhaled, nursing the cinder. It caught and he took a lungful of smoky death into his body.
He savored the nicotine.
His pulse steadied.
Could it be something else that had killed the guy tonight? Some other cause for the death that he hadn’t looked for yet?
Kwon had sent some blood down for a toxicology work-up, but he seemed convinced that the green brain was somehow a major factor in the death.
Unfortunately, so was Curran.
He already knew what to expect from the toxicology screen. There’d be substantial amounts of glucose present, the result of an incredible surge of adrenaline just prior to death. Curran had seen the toxicology reports from six other cases back when he’d been with the FBI.
Toxicology hadn’t helped one bit.
Nothing had.
He wheeled his way down the Jamaicaway, rounding dangerous curves that sent most drivers whimpering for second gear. Curran handled them at forty miles per hour, enjoying the slight fishtail action of the car before he righted it again.
It had to be him. The same killer Curran had unsuccessfully tracked. A killer so adept at dealing death that his victims showed no signs of it, other than the green brain.
The sole souvenir of their demise.
Curran drove past Holy Name on Centre Street. The spire rose high above the other rooftops nearby. Almost like it was calling out to get his attention. But he hadn’t been to church in years. His faith had suffered. Curran wasn’t sure it could ever be salvaged.
Not after…
He blocked the images and drove on, anxious to get home.
His mind’s eye played back the image of the corpse on the floor of the nightclub. According to the wallet the first uniforms found on him, Gary William Fields was thirty-two years old. His short brown hair and thin mustache made him look older while the sleek black satin shirt, gold chain, and tight black pants made him look sleazy.
Witnesses? Hardly. Curran frowned and skirted another pothole. The people closest to Fields when he suddenly dropped said that they hadn’t noticed a thing. And the club had been far too crowded for it to seem unusual if another person wandered close by.
The club’s video surveillance system covered everyone coming into and leaving the club, but Curran doubted he’d get lucky there. Thousands of people passed through the doors of a club each night. Still, it was a lead one of the junior grunts in Homicide would no doubt get stuck with. Especially if they eventually got lucky.
Luck.
Curran sniffed. As if such a thing even existed.
He slid the window down and tossed the cigarette butt into the slipstream. What made Fields so special that he had to die tonight? And would this mark the start of another wave of bodies just as it had all those years ago?
The key, he decided as he turned on to his street, was Fields. In the morning, he’d pore through the computer databases and put a picture together of what Fields might have done that warranted someone killing him.
Curran felt pretty certain he knew who had killed him.
But after so many years, he wondered why.
In the darkness he felt the pressure of its gaze. The heavy stare cloaked his mind from an unseen source, boring into his skull with relentless zeal. He could feel it lapping at the fringes of his subconscious, tasting and drooling with desire at the thought of causing mayhem in the city.
It will be.
The velvet voice oozed over his mind, seeping into his head. It repeated itself over and over again like a mantra of evil.
It will be.
Curran wanted to shout but his throat felt thick. He wanted to claw at the voice but a million arms grabbed him and held him fast. He struggled but nothing would work. His legs felt rubbery and his arms were pinned behind him.
In the darkness in front of him, a face emerged. But it was unlike any he’d ever seen before. It didn’t look human. It didn’t look like anything he knew.
Two cold yellow eyes swept over him. He felt himself go cold as the stare bore down on him.
From a gaping maw a spindly tongue rolled out, flicking at the air by Curran’s face. Flecks of spittle dropped onto Curran’s skin and he almost retched. The tongue touched his cheek. Curran grimaced as the wet sandpaper rubbed against him.
The voice spoke inside his head again. You will never be able to stop me.
“Why are you back?”
I never left.