Fear Nothing (11 page)

I stared my sister in the eye. “It wasn’t your fault, Shana. What our father did, what happened in that house, it wasn’t your fault.”

“You’re a baby! A weak, useless baby. Mom used to tell him that just so he would leave you alone. But I showed you my love. I cut your wrist just so you wouldn’t feel alone, and Mom beat the shit out of me for it.”

“She hit you? Or Dad hit you?”

“
She
hit me. Mom is not love. And you’re still weak and useless!”

I switched gears, leaning back. “Shana, who stitched you up? If blood is love, and he cut you each night, who repaired you in the morning?”

My sister looked away.

“Someone fixed you. Every morning, someone had to make you better again. And they couldn’t take you to a hospital. That would’ve garnered too much attention. So every morning, someone had to clean your cuts, bandage the wounds, do their best to make you feel better. Who, Shana, did that for you?”

Shana, shoulders twitching, jaw working, kept her gaze fixed on the far wall.

“Mom did it, didn’t she? She stitched you up. Every night he destroyed and every morning she rebuilt. And you’ve never forgiven her for it. That’s why Mom cannot equal love. Daddy hurt you. But she failed you. And that was worse, wasn’t it? What she did, that hurt worse.”

Shana, suddenly staring at me, her brown eyes gleaming uncannily: “You are her. I’m Dad, but you’re Mom.”

“Do you think I am trying to rebuild you? My visits feel like the morning; then I go away and abandon you once more to the night?”

“Dad is love. Mom is
not
love. Mom is worse.”

“You’re Shana. I’m Adeline. Our parents are dead. It’s not our fault what they did. But it is up to us to let them go.”

Shana smiled at me. “Daddy is dead,” she agreed, but her tone was sly again, almost gleeful. “I know, Adeline. I was there. What about you?”

“I don’t remember. You know that.”

“But you were there.”

“A baby strapped in a car seat. That doesn’t count.”

“The sound of police sirens . . . ,” she goaded.

“Harry Day panicked, realized the cops were on to him,” I filled in evenly. “Rather than be taken alive, he slit his wrists.”

“No!”

“I read the reports, Shana. I know what happened to our father.”

“Blood is love, Adeline. I know you understand, because you were there.”

I felt myself pausing, frowning. But for the life of me, I didn’t know what Shana meant. Because I had been just an infant, and my knowledge did come solely from police reports.

“Shana—”

“She gave him the aspirin. Thins the blood.” My sister’s voice had turned singsong, almost like a child’s. “Then she filled the tub. Warm water. Helps expand the veins. He took off his clothes. She told him to climb in. Then he held up his wrists.

“‘You must,’ he told her.

“‘I can’t,’ she whispered.

“‘If you ever loved me,’ he said. He handed her his favorite razor, the old-fashioned kind with an ivory handle. A gift from his own daddy, he’d once told me.

“Bang, bang, bang on the front door. Open up, open up, it’s the police. Bang, bang, bang.

“And Mom slit his wrists. Two strokes each, running down, not across, because across can be stitched up by doctors. Down is a killing stroke.

“Daddy smiled at her. ‘I knew you’d do it right.’

“She dropped the razor into the water. He sank into the sea of red.

“‘I will always love you,’ Mommy whispered, then fell to the floor as the police burst into our home.

“Blood is love,” Shana intoned. “And our parents are not gone. I’m Daddy, and you’re Mom, and Mom is not love, Adeline. Mom is worse.”

“You should rest now,” I told my sister.

But she merely smiled at me.

“Blood will win out, Adeline. Blood always wins in the end, little sister mine.”

Then she grabbed my hand. For a second, I thought maybe she’d smuggled in another blade and was going to do something violent. But she just clutched my wrist. Then the drugs finished taking hold. She eased back. Sighed. Her eyes closed, and my murderous older sister fell asleep, still holding my hand.

After a long moment, I eased my fingers free. Then I lifted my hand and studied the faint white scar I’d had for as long as I could remember across the pale blue veins of my wrists. Apparently put there by my sister forty years ago.

I could nearly hear my adoptive father’s voice now in my head:
Pain is . . . ?

Pain is remembering, I thought.

Pain is family.

Which explains why even an expert on pain, such as myself, turned away and walked out the door.

Chapter 8

U
PON RETURNING HOME
, the first thing D.D. did was call the medical examiner, Ben Whitley. Alex had had to continue on to work, so she was alone in the house, sprawled on the sofa, still wearing yoga clothes from the morning’s analysis of her own injuries.

“I have a question,” she said the moment Ben picked up.

“D.D.!” Ben’s voice boomed in her ear. The ME wasn’t necessarily the world’s most outgoing personality, but during the years he’d dated D.D.’s squad mate Neil, they’d gotten to know each other personally and, even after the breakup, had remained friends. “Heard about the avulsion fracture. Leave it to you to injure yourself in the most creative way possible.”

“I try.”

“Left arm?”

“Yes.”

“Icing? Exercising? Resting?”

“Yes. Yes. Mostly.”

“You must be losing your mind.”

“Yes!”

“Which is why you’re calling me. Let me guess, you want to know about our latest skinning victim.”

“No.”

For the first time, Ben paused. D.D. could practically hear him thinking over the phone line.

“Not the second victim,” she supplied graciously. “I figured you were just now getting to that exam.”

“Slated for later this afternoon.”

“Sounds about right. So I have a question about the first victim, Christine Ryan, as I’m assuming you’ve had more time with those remains. And given you’re a savvy medical examiner, one of the best we’ve ever had—”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.”

“And you’ve already examined the excised skin . . .”

“True.”

“You may have some working theories on the blade used by the killer?”

“True again. Very thin, no nicks or damages to the edge. Question of the day, however, was it a knife edge, or perhaps a razor?”

“Oh.” She hadn’t thought of that. But now, considering . . . “Wouldn’t a razor be difficult to manage through such an . . . involved process? I mean, as a cutting instrument, given the thin strips, okay. But factor in the
number
of thin strips, and to be blunt, wouldn’t a razor become too slippery to handle?”

“Could be attached to a handle. Think of the classic straight blade used for shaving, or for that matter, a box cutter. My other thought for the day, perhaps it was a scalpel. But I’m veering away from knives. For one thing, I’ve tested dozens over the past few weeks and none provide the same results. At least in my tests, a larger, thicker blade has a tendency to pull on the skin, leading to puckering along the edges. Whereas, our subject . . . He is removing very fine, smooth-edged ribbons of tissue. Which, may I add, clearly indicates practice. Even with my own training, it took a number of tries to execute well. Of course, I was hindered in the beginning by poor weapons choices. Now that I have expanded my search to include surgical instruments, I seem to be coming closer to replicating his precise excise patterns.”

“Okay.” D.D. had to pause for a moment. She hadn’t considered that the killer might have used a scalpel and could be someone with at least basic surgical training. But given her recent brainstorm, a scalpel didn’t necessarily eliminate, and in fact . . . “I’m going to suppose,” she continued now, “that an ME of your fortitude—”

“Already buttered up. Move along, D.D. It is a busy day.”

“You tried to reassemble the skin strips. Re-create the whole.”

“
Tried
being the operative word.”

“You couldn’t succeed.” Her voice picked up, her heart quickening. Here it was, her middle-of-the-night stroke of brilliance: “Because it turned out, you don’t have all the pieces. Some of the ribbons of skin are missing. The killer took them with him.”

“Ding, ding, ding. Give the beautiful blond detective a prize. Tell me the truth, is it your golden ringlets that give you your edge?”

“Absolutely. How much skin is missing? Are we talking a little or a lot?”

“Say, approximately half a dozen ribbons of excised flesh. Enough a living victim would certainly notice the loss.”

Which was what she had guessed. That the skinning aspect of the murders was more than just a fetish, but also a means of providing what the killer desired most; an extremely personal memento of his crime.

She returned her attention to the phone: “Last question,” she stated to Ben. “The victim’s skin. Was it treated with anything beforehand? Meaning it possibly tested positive for some interesting chemicals? Say alcohol, or even formaldehyde?”

“You’re wondering if the killer attempted to preserve his trophy by first wiping down his victim with some sort of solution?”

“The thought crossed my mind.”

“To answer your question: yes and no. The remaining skin on Christine Ryan’s torso tested positive for basic antibacterial soap. However, her arms and lower legs did not. Now, assuming the victim bathed as part of her bedtime ritual, the skin on her entire body should retain traces of the same antibacterial residue. Given that’s not the case, I think it’s safe to assume the killer himself wiped down the victim’s torso with a basic cleaning solution, most likely prior to the skinning process.”

D.D. frowned. “Like a surgeon would do? Preparing the skin for incision?”

“True surgical prep would involve ‘painting’ the incision site with an official prep solution, most of which are alcohol based. The skin on our victim was washed but definitely not treated with a prep stick.”

“So the killer made an effort to clean the target area but not sanitize it.”

“I believe so. Also, to finish answering your previous question, I didn’t find any traces of formaldehyde, so negative on a preserving agent.”

“Okay.”

“Though that doesn’t preclude the killer from attempting to preserve his trophy after the fact,” the ME continued, his voice warming to the subject. “A savvy killer could place the strips of skin in a glass jar containing a formaldehyde solution, or even dry the strips using a salting process. Really, the choices are endless.”

“Good to know.”

“You’re the one who asked.”

“Occupational hazard. So, to recap your findings: Our killer incapacitated the victim with chloroform, then asphyxiated her via compression. Then he removed the victim’s clothing and wiped down her skin with basic antibacterial soap, before he proceeded with the main event, which involved delicately removing long strips of skin from her torso and upper thighs. A process you believe may involve a scalpel. Then the killer exited the scene, after helping himself to some of the victim’s excised skin as a particularly morbid trophy. That sound about right?”

“Couldn’t have summarized it better myself.”

D.D., still thinking out loud: “Meaning our killer has some experience with surgery and/or prep, but also is comfortable with dead bodies. In fact, given the main elements of the crime occur postmortem, may even be
most
comfortable with dead bodies.”

“Jeffrey Dahmer?” the ME supplied. “Wasn’t he a necrophiliac who felt compelled to keep body parts from his victims? He claimed to be seeking the perfect lover—one who could never leave him.”

“Except last I heard, our two victims didn’t show signs of sexual assault?”

“No evidence that I could determine.”

D.D. nodded to herself, then remembered to speak into the phone. “Okay, this has been most helpful.”

“You’ve identified the killer?”

“Not yet, but I have an idea of possible occupation.”

“You’re going to investigate hospitals and/or medical schools?”

“I’m going to have Neil pursue hospitals and/or medical schools. Personally, I’m going to check out funeral homes.”

The sensible thing to do would be to wait for Alex to return home after work. He could assist with proper wardrobe, then help load her into the car. But D.D. wasn’t feeling sensible. She was feeling stubborn, not to mention as resentful as hell toward her arm, shoulder, Melvin. She was a strong woman. An independent woman. And a detective on a case.

She would dress her own damn self and Melvin could stick that in his pipe and smoke it.

Melvin, of course, had other ideas.

It started when she tried to remove her scooped-neck yoga top. She went to pull the spandex top up over her healthy right shoulder and somehow twinged her left. Then there was the matter of trying to slide the shirt down her left arm, once she finally got it over her head, let alone the matter of sliding off tight-fitting black exercise pants. Definitely no reason to be using her shoulder muscles to shimmy down yoga pants, and yet her left arm burned in response and she could feel sweat starting to bead her upper lip.

It was as if the more she tried not to jostle her left side, the more every movement jarred her neck, shoulder, upper arm. She gritted her teeth, grabbed dark-gray slacks from her closet and determinedly stepped into them. Then began the painful process of yanking them up, inch by inch, with only one good hand. She finally got them slid over her hips, only to be stymied by the fastening button. She tried it four times without luck.

Oversize top, she thought wildly. Or a jacket. She’d wear a long top to cover the open waistband of her slacks; no one would be the wiser.

It made so much sense, she sat on the edge of her bed and cried.

She hated this. Hated the feeling of uselessness and impotence and sheer frustration. She blamed her body for not healing. She resented her shoulder for aching and her stupid tendon for ripping away a chunk of her own bone. What if she never healed properly? It was a rare injury; no one had been able to provide an exact prognosis. Six months from now, would she finally be able to dress herself? Hold a gun? Pick up her child?