Whispers of the Dead

by Simon Beckett

  With an odd sense of certainty, I went over to where the microscope stood on the workbench. I felt no surprise when I saw the small white object on the stage beneath the lens. If anything I should have realized before. I'd wondered what Tom had been doing in here when he'd had his heart attack. Now I knew. The image was blurred when I looked through the eyepiece. I adjusted the focus until the vertebra swam into view. It was as delicately fluted and spurred as coral, its porous surface appearing pitted under the magnification. The hairline cracks looked as deep as a chasm. Straightening, I took the piece of bone from under the microscope. The fractures were almost invisible to normal eyesight. There were two of them, one on each of the laminae, the slender bone bridges that link the main body of the vetebra to its more delicate neural arch. Feeling strangely clear-headed, I set it down and went back down the corridor to the autopsy suite where Tom had been working. Going straight to Terry Loomis's skeleton, I picked up the sixth cervical vertebra from the examination table and held it up to the light. The fractures were even less obvious than on the laminae I'd just seen. But they were there all the same. So that was it. I felt no satisfaction, only a sudden welling of sadness.This was Tom's discovery, not mine. I took out my phone and called Paul. 'I know how they were killed.'

  'So it's definitely strangulation.' Paul looked dispassionately down at the vertebra he was holding. We were in Tom's autopsy suite. I'd already shown him the fractures in Noah Harper's sixth cervical vertebra before bringing him in here to examine the matching cracks in Terry Loomis's. 'I can't see any other way you'd get such precise breaks,' I said. While a blow to the back of the neck could have broken the vertebra, the damage would have been much more extensive. And the chances of blunt trauma causing near identical injuries to two different victims was too remote to consider. No, these fractures were the result of something altogether more focused. More controlled. That was a word that seemed to figure a lot with York. 'At least now we know for sure how Loomis and Harper came by the pink teeth,' Paul agreed. 'And it explains what Tom was doing in the other autopsy suite. He found the fractures in Loomis's vertebra and went to see if Harper's had them as well. That how you see it?' 'More or less.' And then York had phoned him while he was examining it under the microscope. I supposed there was an irony there, but wasn't sure what it was. Paul gently set down the bone. 'Lord, it makes you want to weep.' He sounded as exhausted as he looked. Tom's death had hit him hard, and the false alarm with Sam the previous night hadn't helped. He'd cut a faculty meeting short when I'd called him, and the strain of the last few days was evident as soon as he walked in. The lines I

  around his eyes looked etched, and patches of blue-black bristles were already shading the pallor of his chin where he'd shaved in a rush. He tried to stifle a yawn. 'Sorry.' 'Do you want to get some coffee?' I asked him. 'Later.' He made an effort to pull himself together.'What about the cervical vertebrae from the remains in the woods? Have you checked them as well?' 'While I was waiting for you to get here. Two of them are missing, but the rest are all intact. Including the sixth.' That was no surprise. Willis Dexter had died in a car crash, not been murdered like Noah Harper or Terry Loomis. 'So we're looking at a steady pressure exerted on both victims' necks, powerful enough to fracture the laminae but without breaking the hyoid.' Paul held up his hands and considered them. 'Can you remember how big York's hands were?' 'Not big enough to do this.' The only thing I could recall about York's hands was their nicotine-stained fingers. But both Loomis and Harper had been grown men; it would have taken a huge span to wrap far enough round their necks to fracture the vertebrae. And that would more than likely have broken the hyoid as well. 'Most likely some kind of ligature or garrotte rather than manual strangulation,' Paul said. 'Whatever he used, it must've fastened around their necks at exactly the same point, causing identical damage to the same vertebra each time. Hard to say exactly what it was, though.' 'Tom had worked it out.' _.He looked at me in surprise. 'He did?' 'Remember what he said to Mary when he was taken into hospital? Spanish. At the time we didn't know what he could have meant.' It was a further sign of Paul's tiredness that it took him a moment to make the connection. 'Spanish windlass. Christ, I should have realized.' So should I. Wrap a bandage or piece of cloth round a bleeding limb, then place a stick underneath and twist it. That was a Spanish windlass. At its most basic it was little more than an improvised tourniquet that could be wound tighter or loosened at will, a simple device that had saved countless lives. But not the way York had used it. I thought about the photographs the TBI had found in York's garage. The agonized expressions of his victims, their dark and swollen faces. Suffused with blood as York had incrementally tightened the windlass, steadily choking the life out of them. And photographing it as it happened. I pushed the images from my mind. 'York might not even have realized he was leaving any visible evidence at all. There'd be no way for him to know the laminae had been fractured. And even if he noticed the pink teeth, they're a pretty obscure phenomenon. He might not have realized their significance.' 'That still brings us back to the blood in the cabin,' Paul said. 'Loomis was strangled, so there's no way it's all his. So who the hell's is it?' 'Another of York's games, perhaps?' I said. The DNA analysis would tell us eventually, but I'd an idea that we might not have to wait as long as that. Paul gave a weary shrug. 'I spoke to Gardner earlier. He didn't come right out and admit it, but they're obviously taking your theory about Tom seriously. The bottom line is they can't rule out that York might try for someone else on the investigation now he's screwed up his chances with him.' I suppose that should have occurred to me, but somehow it hadn't. I'd been too wrapped up with what had happened to Tom to follow the idea to its logical conclusion. 'So what's Gardner going to do?' 'Not much he can do except warn people to be careful,' Paul said. 'He can't wrap everyone in cotton wool, and there isn't the manpower to do it even if he wanted to.' 'I'll consider myself warned.' He smiled, but there wasn't much humour in it. 'Just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it? Turned out to be one helluva research trip for you.' It had, but I was still glad I'd come. I wouldn't have missed the chance to work with Tom, regardless of how it had turned out. 'Are you worried?' I asked. Paul's stubble rasped as he passed a hand across his face. 'Not really. York had surprise on his side before, but he's lost that now. I'm not saying I won't be careful, but I'm not going to spend my life looking over my shoulder in case some psycho decides to come after me.' 'You get used to it after a while,' I said. He gave me a startled look, then broke out in a laugh. 'Yeah, I suppose you do at that.' He grew serious. 'Look, David, if you want to bow out, no one's going to blame you. This isn't your problem.' I knew he meant well, but the reminder still felt like a slap. 'Perhaps not. But it sort of feels like it is.' Paul nodded, then looked at his watch and grimaced. 'Sorry, but I've got to go. Another damn faculty meeting. Things should settle down in a day or two, but right now I need to be in two places at once.' The silence of the autopsy suite seemed to press in around me after the door had closed behind him. I looked down at the partially assembled skeleton waiting on the examination table, and thought of Tom. Clearing my mind, I went back to work.

  I worked even later than I'd intended. Partly because I wanted to make up for lost time, but also because the thought of spending the evening alone back at my hotel held little appeal. As long as I was busy, I could hold off confronting the fact of Tom's death for a little longer. But that wasn't the only thing that was bothering me. The feeling of oppression I'd felt after Paul's visit stubbornly refused to diminish. My senses seemed oddly heightened. The mortuary's chemical stink was underlaid with an indefinable biological odour, a faint hint of the butcher's slab. The white tiles and metal surfaces gleamed coldly in the harsh light. But it was the silence that I was most aware of. There was the distant hum of a generator, more felt than heard, the constant plip of a dripping tap. But, other than that, nothing. Normally I didn't even notice the quiet. Now I felt it all around me. Of course, I knew all too well what was the matter. Unt
il Paul had mentioned it I'd never considered the possibility that York might target someone else from the investigation. My concern had been all for Tom, and even after what had happened to Irving, I'd blindly assumed that he was the only one under threat. But it was naive to think that York would stop with his death. He'd just shift his priorities and carry on. Paul hadn't really been involved with the investigation until now, but there were plenty of others who might satisfy York's apparent desire for high-profile victims. I wasn't arrogant enough to think that I was one of them. Even so, for the first time in days I found myself fingering my stomach, feeling the scar tissue under the cotton scrubs. It was after ten before I finished. Noah Harper's bones revealed nothing else of significance, but then I hadn't expected them to. The fractured cervical vertebra had said enough. I changed and set off down the mortuary's main corridor. I seemed to have the place to myself. There was no sign of Kyle, but he would have finished his shift long ago. One of the fluorescent strips wasn't working, making the corridor dim. Up ahead I could see a thin beam of light seeping out from beneath the door of one of the offices. I was walking past when a voice came from inside. 'Who's there?' I recognized the bad-tempered bark immediately. I knew the intelligent thing would be to walk straight past. Nothing I could say would change anything; it wouldn't bring Tom. back, heave it. It isn't worth it. I opened the door and went in. Hicks sat behind the desk, paused in the act of closing a drawer. It was the first time I'd seen him since the scene at the cemetery. Neither of us spoke for a moment. The lamp cast a low circle of light on to the desk, throwing the rest of the small office into shadow. The pathologist stared at me sullenly from the edge of it. 'Thought you were a diener,' he muttered. I saw the half-full tumbler of dark liquid in front of him and guessed I'd interrupted him putting away a bottle. I'd gone in there intending to let Hicks know what I thought of him. But as I looked at him slumped behind the desk, my appetite for confrontation vanished. I turned to go. 'Wait.' The pathologist's mouth worked, as though he were trying out unfamiliar words before he spoke them. 'I'm sorry. About Lieberman.' He studied the blotter on the desk, one fat index finger tracing an abstract pattern on it. I noticed that his cream suit looked rumpled and soiled, and realized he'd been wearing it every time I'd seen him. 'He was a good man. We didn't always get on, but he was a good man.' I said nothing. If he was trying to appease a guilty conscience I wasn't going to help him. But he didn't seem to expect me to. He picked up the tumbler and stared morosely into it. 'I've been doing this job for over thirty years, and you know what the worst of it is? Every time it happens to someone you know, it still surprises the hell out of you.' He pursed his lips, as though puzzling over the fact.Then he raised the tumbler to his lips and emptied it. Reaching down with a small grunt he opened the drawer and produced a nearly full bottle of bourbon. For an awful moment I thought he was going to offer me a drink, propose some maudlin toast to Tom. But he only topped up his glass before putting the bottle back in the drawer. I stood there, waiting to see what else he might say, but he stared into space as though he'd either forgotten I was there or wished I wasn't. Whatever urge had prompted him to talk seemed to have been exhausted. I left him to it. The encounter was unsettling. The comfortably black and white terms in which I'd seen Hicks had been undermined. I wondered how many other nights he'd sat alone in the small office, a lonely man whose life was empty except for his work. It was an uncomfortable thought. Tom's loss was a solid ache under my breastbone as I left the morgue and headed for my car. The night was cooler than usual, the damp chill a reminder that winter was still only recent history. My footsteps echoed off the darkened buildings. Hospitals were never truly abandoned, but when visiting hours had passed they could seem lonely places. And the morgue was always set well away from casual eyes. It wasn't far to the car park, and I'd left my car in an open, well-lit area in its centre. But Gardner's warning whispered in my mind as I walked towards it. What had seemed safe in daylight now took on a wholly different aspect. Doorways were shadowy holes, the grassy spaces that I'd admired in the sunshine now fields of solid black. I kept my steps regular and even, refusing to give in to the primal urge to hurry, but I was glad when I reached my car. I took out my keys and unlocked it while I was still a few paces away. I'd started to open the door before I realized there was something on the windscreen. A leather glove had been slipped under one of the wipers, its fingers spread out on the glass. Someone must have found it on the ground and put it there for its owner to see, I thought as I went to remove it. A subliminal voice tried to warn me that it was the wrong time of year for gloves, but by then I'd already touched it. It was cold and greasy, and far, far too thin for any leather. I snatched rny hand away and spun round. The darkened car park mocked me, silent and empty. Heart thumping, I turned back to the object on the windscreen. I didn't touch it again. It wasn't a glove, I knew that now. And it wasn't leather. It was human skin. 18

  Gardner watched as a crime scene agent lifted the windscreen wiper and carefully removed the scrap of skin with a pair of tweezers. He and Jacobsen had arrived twenty minutes ago, accompanied by the large van that was the TBI's mobile crime scene lab. Lights had been set up round the car, and the entire area taped off. 'You shouldn't have touched it,' Gardner said, not for the first time. 'If I'd realized what it was I wouldn't have.' Some of my irritation must have leaked into my voice. Standing next to Gardner, Jacobsen took her eyes from the crime scene team dusting the car for fingerprints. She gave me a faintly worried look, the slight tuck visible between her eyebrows again, but said nothing. Gardner, too, fell silent. He had a large manila envelope that he'd brought with him, although so far he'd made no mention of what it might contain. He watched, expressionlessly, as a forensic agent carefully placed the skin in an evidence bag. This was a different team from the one I'd seen before. I found myself wondering if they were on another job or just standing down for the night. Not that it mattered, but it was easier thinking about that than what this new_ development might mean. Holding the bag carefully in a gloved hand, the agent brought it over. He raised it up so Gardner could get a better look. 'It's human, all right.' I didn't need him to tell me that. The skin was dark brown in colour, with an almost translucent texture. It was obvious now that it was too irregular to be a glove, but the mistake was understandable. I'd seen this sort of thing often enough before. Just not on the windscreen of my car. 'So does this mean that York's been skinning his victims?'Jacobsen asked. She was doing her best to appear unruffled, but even her composure had been shaken. 'I don't think so,' I said. 'May I?' I held out my hand for the evidence bag. The forensic agent waited until Gardner gave a short nod before passing it across. I held it up to the light. The skin was split and torn in several places, mainly across its back, but still retained a vague hand-like shape. It was soft and supple, and an oily residue from it smeared the inside of the plastic bag. 'It wasn't flayed off,' I told them. 'If it had been then it'd be in a flat sheet. This is split in places, but it's still more or less whole. I think it sloughed off the hand in one piece.' There was no surprise on either Gardner's or the forensic agent's face, but I could see Jacobsen still didn't understand. 'Sloughed?' 'Skin slides off a dead body of its own accord after a few days. Especially extremities like the scalp and feet. And the hands.' I held up the evidence bag. 'I'm pretty certain that's what this is.' She stared at the bag, her usual diffidence forgotten. 'You mean it slid off a corpse?' 'More or less.' I turned to the forensic agent, who'd been watching with a sour expression. 'Would you agree?' He nodded. 'Good news is it's nice and soft. Saves us having to soak it before we lift the fingerprints.' I felt Gardner looking at me, and knew he'd already made the connection. But Jacobsen seemed appalled. 'You can get fingerprints from that?' 'Sure,' the agent told her. 'Usually it's all dried and brittle, so you have to soften it up in water. Then you slip it on like a glove and take the prints like normal.' He held up his own hand and waggled it to illustrate. 'Don't let us keep you, Deke,' Gardner said. The agent lowered his hand,
a little shamefaced, and went back to the car. Gardner tapped the manila envelope against his leg. The look he gave me was almost angry. 'Well? Are you going to say it or shall I?' 'Say what?'Jacobsen asked. Gardner's mouth compressed into a thin line. 'Tell her.' 'We've been wondering how York managed to leave his victims' fingerprints at the crime scenes months after they were dead,' I said as she turned to me. I gestured at the car. 'Now we know.' Jacobsen's frown cleared. 'You mean he's been using the skin from their hands? Wearing it like gloves?' 'I've never heard of it being done to plant fingerprints before, but that's how it looks. That's probably why Noah Harper's body was so badly decomposed. York wanted the skin from its hands before he switched it with Willis Dexter's.' And then he'd waited a few more days before going back to the woods and collecting the sloughed skin from Dexter's hands as well. Scavengers wouldn't have bothered with scraps of drying tissue when they'd got the entire body to feed on. And if they had ... He'd just have used someone else's. I felt a weary anger at myself for not realizing sooner. My subconscious had done its best to tell me, prompting the deja vu at the sight of my wrinkled hands when I'd peeled off the latex gloves, but I'd ignored it.Tom had been right. He'd told me I should listen more to my instincts. I should have listened to him as well. Jacobsen took the evidence bag from me. Her expression was a mixture of disgust and fascination as she studied its contents. 'Deke said this wasn't dried out. Does that mean it must have come from a body recently?' I guessed she was thinking about Irving. Although no one had actually said as much, we all knew that the profiler must be dead by now. But even if he'd been killed straight away, it would have taken longer than this for the skin to slough off. Whoever this had come from, it wasn't him. 'I doubt it,' I said. 'It looks like it's been deliberately oiled to preserve it and keep the skin supple . . .' I stopped as something occurred to me. I looked over at the car windscreen, at the greasy smears left on the glass by the skin. 'Baby oil.' Gardner and Jacobsen stared at me. 'The fingerprint on the film container in the cabin was left in baby oil,' I said. 'Irving thought it was proof that the killings were sexually motivated, but it wasn't. That's what York's been using to keep the sloughed skin supple. Its natural oils would have dried out, and he'd have wanted the fingerprints to be nice and clear. So he oiled it like old leather.' I remembered Irving's mocking jibe. Unless the killer has a penchant for moisturizing . . . He'd been closer to the truth than he knew. 'IfYork's been harvesting his victim's fingerprints, how come he didn't take the skin from Terry Loomis's hands as well?' Jacobsen wanted to know. 'That was still in the cabin with the body' 'If it hadn't been we'd have noticed and guessed what was going on,' Gardner said, self-reproach making his voice harsh. 'York wanted to pick his own time to let us know what he was doing.' I watched the forensic agents carefully dust another part of the car with fingerprint powder. They were making a thorough job of it. For all the good it would do. 'So "why now?' I asked. Gardner looked across at Jacobsen. She shrugged. 'He's bragging again, telling us he isn't afraid of being caught. Obviously, he doesn't think our knowing this'll do us any good. Sooner or later we would've realized what he was doing anyway. This way he gets to stay in control.' The other question remained unspoken. Why me? But I was afraid I already knew the answer to that. Gardner looked down at the manila envelope he was holding. He seemed to reach a decision. 'Diane'll drive you to your hotel. Stay there till I call. Don't let anyone into your room; if someone says room service, make sure it is before you open the door.' 'What about my car?' 'We'll let you know when we're done with it.' He turned to Jacobsen. 'Diane, a word.' The two of them walked out of earshot. Gardner did all the talking. I saw Jacobsen nodding as he handed her the envelope. I wondered what might be in it, but I couldn't raise much interest. I looked back at the white-suited figures working on my car. The fine powder they were using to dust for fingerprints had dulled its paint, making it seem like something dead itself. There was a bitter taste in my mouth as I watched them. I ran my thumb across the scar on my palm. Admit it. You're scared. I'd been stalked by a killer once before. I'd come here hoping to put it behind me. Now it was happening again.