But there was something now that didn’t quite fit. Something more to Tolan’s demeanor than the sudden surprise of a patient going ape shit. His eyes registered a shock that was far deeper than the situation warranted, as if he had just seen or witnessed an event that Blackburn wasn’t privy to.
The image of the old homeless guy came into Blackburn’s head. He, too, had had that look when he saw the bitch. Not quite as severe as Tolan’s, but he had backed away from her with what, at the time, had seemed to be an unwarranted expression of surprise and fear.
Blackburn had just assumed the old guy was off his rocker — so many of the homeless were — but it now appeared that this woman, whoever she was, had some hidden ability to render men powerless. Something in her look or her demeanor or her scent, something Blackburn was unable to see or feel or smell, made them vulnerable to an attack. She was an insect, stinging her victims into submission before she devoured them.
“We okay in here?” the guard asked Cassie.
She nodded and he headed back out the door.
Glancing down at the smear of blood on the back of his hand, Blackburn watched as Cassie used a tissue to swab Psycho Bitch’s face and nose. He didn’t think he’d broken anything, but she was certainly a mess.
And she was no longer fighting. Just stared at the ceiling as if none of this had happened, looking for all the world like a corpse waiting for the embalmer.
Blackburn wondered if she was too far gone to help him. She was about as cracked as you can get, and no amount of spit and bailing wire would put her back together again. And judging by Tolan’s demeanor, he wasn’t in any shape to help out.
Blackburn held out a hand to him. “You all right, Doc?”
Tolan ignored the offer. “Her face…” he said.
He still looked dazed.
Blackburn frowned, remembering something similar coming out of the old homeless guy’s mouth. Looking over at the bitch again, he realized he’d never seen her without blood all over her face.
“Yeah, I guess I banged her up pretty good.”
“No,” Tolan said, “that’s not what I mean. She… she looks just like…”
Then he paused, letting the words trail off as he dragged himself to his feet. His gaze had fallen on Psycho Bitch, his eyes abruptly coming into focus as the shock that had been clouding them for the last few moments seemed to vanish in an instant. Now they showed relief.
“Doc?”
Tolan shook his head. “Nothing. It’s nothing,” he said. “I… I don’t know what happened. She just took me by surprise.”
Sensing there was a lot more to it than that, Blackburn was about to respond when his cell phone bleeped. He took it from his coat pocket, checked the screen.
Mats Hansen.
He clicked it on. “I’m kinda in the middle of something here.”
“So am I,” Mats said. “And you’re gonna want to see this.”
“What’ve you got?”
“Not over a cell. You never know who’s listening.”
“Oh, for crissakes,” Blackburn said. “Give.”
“No way. This is too hot. This case just took a major left turn. So get your ass over to the lab ASAP.”
Then the line went dead.
Mats had always been something of a drama queen, but this was ridiculous.
Blackburn looked at Tolan, who seemed to have almost fully recovered now and was crossing to the bed. When he got there, he stared down at Psycho Bitch with only a trace of hesitation. Whatever had spooked him was gone.
“So what’s the prognosis, Doc? Any chance you’ll get her to open up?”
Tolan kept staring at her, as if he wasn’t quite sure he trusted his eyes. “I don’t have an answer for you,” he said. “Or a timetable, for that matter.” Then he turned to Blackburn. “But one thing I do know: You owe my colleague an apology.”
Blackburn frowned. “How so?”
Tolan nodded to Psycho Bitch’s forearms, which were fully displayed under the fluorescent light. “No needle marks.”
Blackburn stared at them for a long moment.
In all the excitement, he hadn’t noticed them until now. And Tolan was right. There were a few bruises there but nothing else.
What the fuck?
He could’ve sworn those were junkie arms he’d seen in that passageway. Would’ve bet a year’s salary on it.
Maybe he was the one who was high.
“I’ve got somewhere to be,” he said, then gestured to Cassie and crossed to the door. She moved to the keypad mounted next to it and punched in a brief code.
The door beeped and clicked open.
“If anything changes,” Blackburn told Tolan, “be sure to give me a call.”
He looked at Psycho Bitch’s arms again, wondering how the hell he could’ve been so wrong, the theme to The Twilight Zone rolling through his head as he opened the door and left.
11
The county morgue was located in the Government Center just off Victoria Avenue. Blackburn got there in about twenty minutes and found Mats waiting for him in one of the autopsy rooms, the body of Carl Janovic laid out on a stainless-steel table.
It looked like Mats had been busy. The body had been stripped down and prepped for cutting, which was a surprise. The coroner’s office rarely moved this quickly. For some reason Janovic’s autopsy had been bumped to the top of the list.
What was going on here?
“Any luck with the Jane Doe?” Mats asked.
Blackburn sighed. “She’s about half a step away from being a lost cause.”
“Where’d you take her? County?”
Blackburn shook his head. “Place is a zoo. I need results, not a Band-Aid.”
“Don’t tell me you took her to Baycliff?” There was a trace of alarm in his voice.
“Yeah,” Blackburn said. “Is that a problem?”
Mats hooked a finger, gesturing for Blackburn to take a closer look at the body. “You tell me.”
Putting gloved fingers to Janovic’s left ear, he pinched the lobe and gently pulled on it. The ear flopped back, connected to the head by only a strip of bloody tissue.
Blackburn felt the Snickers bar he’d scarfed down on the way over start to back up a bit.
“I didn’t notice this until I got the wig off,” Mats said. “Looks like our perp tried to sever the ear. My guess is he was interrupted in the process. Possibly by your Jane Doe.”
Blackburn knew what this meant, but wanted it confirmed. “What are you telling me?”
“Exactly what you think,” Mats said. “It’s Vincent. He’s back.”
The Snickers bar rolled over a couple of times, then settled with a thud.
Vincent.
Holy Jesus.
The man they called Vincent was a serial perp who had taken the department and the city on a seven-month wild ride. Blackburn had only been peripherally involved in the case, but he’d felt the burn, just like everyone else.
Over the course of those seven months, eight Bayside County residents had been found obscenely butchered, their corpses carved up and rearranged as if the killer was using their body parts as some sort of artistic statement.
Each victim’s left ear had been sliced off, nowhere to be found.
When that little detail was leaked to the press, the killer was immediately dubbed Van Gogh, and members of the task force assigned to the case soon started calling him Vincent.
The search for the killer had been extensive, had nearly exhausted the resources of the department, and had caused the early retirement of the task force leader, a borderline alcoholic who had been in over his head from the start.
And they got nothing.
No leads. No suspects. No DNA. No arrest.