Skin Deep

by Jerome Preisler

  Brass gave him a jaundiced look. “Really? You know the stats on missing persons in Las Vegas?”

  Nick frowned. Dropping out of sight wasn’t a crime, and it so happened that this was America’s voluntary-disappearance capital. A destination where visitors from every state, city, and town in the country came to run free with the mistress or the married boyfriend after jumping their white picket fences… or maybe spend the kid’s hockey-lesson money on some exotic hired help. Two hundred people a month were reported, eighty percent of whom turned up okay except for a massive hangover and twisted undies.

  “You’re telling me it wouldn’t have made a difference,” he said.

  Brass shrugged. “It’s posted on the LVPD website—we all have the right to be left alone,” he said. “Unless you’re talking about a minor or someone with a record of convictions, there isn’t much the missing-persons detail can do. They would’ve made some inquiries, seen if there was any evidence of foul play, entered Dorset’s name into the SCOPE system.”

  “And nothing turned up?”

  Brass was nodding his head. “When he skips out on his noodles and fortune cookies for a second week straight, his friends figure they should stop by his house. No answer, the SUV gone, they decide to knock on a couple of neighbors’ doors. Nobody’s seen him for a while, so they check at the golf course. When everybody there says they’ve been wondering where he might be, they start to worry something isn’t kosher.”

  “Besides the roast pork,” Nick said.

  Brass expelled a deep breath. “Yeah.”

  Nick glanced down at the folders on his desk and tapped them with his fingertips. “Does anything in these files connect Dorset to the rest of the victims?”

  “The body art was almost certainly done by the same person,” Brass said. “But that isn’t news to anyone.”

  Nick said nothing. He’d gotten a look at Dorset and seen crime-lab and media photos of the others.

  “Quentin Dorset was a good man,” Brass said. “You ever testify in his courtroom?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not sure how long I knew him. Close to a decade, I guess,” Brass said. “He presided over a few cases I’d investigated and always got on my nerves.”

  Nick was quiet again. Brass’s eyes remained on him, but their focus had moved off into the distance as he spoke.

  “Defense teams loved him,” he said. “Prosecutors knew he’d be a handful. A stickler for evidentiary rules. But I respected Dorset even though he annoyed me every time. He was fair, you know? Fair with his decisions, better telling dirty jokes in chambers.”

  Nick nodded slowly, a wan smile touching his lips. His mother a public defender, his father a Texas Supreme Court judge, he’d understood the push-me, pull-you of the court system early on. “For me,” he said, “home was kind of like being in chambers.”

  Brass drew his gaze back in on him. “I forgot,” he said. “It would have been, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Silence.

  “I had lunch with Dorset once or twice. It was after I started to spend more time at headquarters than in the field,” Brass said finally. “When I heard another Tattoo Man vic had rolled into the morgue tonight, I never expected it would be the judge.”

  “The job has a way of doing that to us.”

  “Tag, you’re it.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Brass sighed heavily. “Quentin Dorset spent his whole life serving justice,” he said. “I hope we can get some for him.”

  Nick looked at the detective, thinking he wanted to pay a visit of his own to the autopsy room.

  “Me, too,” he said.

  He stood naked on a step stool in the Mirror Chamber, the shark hooks in his back, one behind each of his shoulders, another below his neck. The bends of the carbon-steel hooks went deep beneath his skin, their shanks protruding on one side, the points sticking out opposite the shanks. Fourteen inches long with five-inch gapes, they were the largest gauge hooks he’d been able to obtain. He took a slow, deep breath and moved barefoot toward the edge of the stool, the high chamber walls reflecting his image in multiplicity. Sweat glazed his forehead as the parachute cords running from the hooks to the suspension rig grew taut, pulling at his skin.

  The rig had stood in readiness since he’d set it up weeks ago. But it had taken the judge’s death to convince him he was ready.

  Inhale, exhale. Slow, slow. Before inserting the hooks, he’d marked off the areas where they would go with a surgical ruler and pen, wiped the skin with chlorhexidine disinfectant, then carefully guided a piercing needle through and under the colored guidelines. There wasn’t much bleeding from the puncture wounds, just thin red dribbles like snail paths in the furrow between his shoulder blades.

  Cold at first, the hooks now burned where they’d slipped into his body. Although he could feel his flesh stretching across the width of their gapes, it did not fold or bunch. The combined sensations were unpleasant but tolerable, and he knew the skin would be less likely to tear once it loosened up and gained some elasticity.

  The tug of the lines pulling back the skin suggested a greater test of endurance lay ahead.

  He had decided upon a basic three-point system. Anchored to an eyebolt in the floor, the 7/16 military surplus rappelling rope went straight up the wall to its juncture with the ceiling, ran through a swivel mount, and was then strung midway along the ceiling’s width to a pulley he’d affixed to a structural crossbeam. He had bought a metal spreader bar, the parachute cord, and locking carabiners from an Internet vendor that specialized in mountain-climbing gear, also procuring the deep-water hooks online from a commercial fishing supplier in Seattle. Everything was shipped to an anonymous mail drop in Kingstown, on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, the same phantom address where he had his body-work supplies and equipment delivered and forwarded to the United States.

  He’d had to remove the barbs from the fishhooks, of course, and had done it easily with a power drill and a grinding bit. Then he’d painstakingly sharpened them with a hand file for smoother penetration. Each stainless-steel hook supported more than eighty pounds, a third more than he’d need to hold him aloft—he’d last weighed in at one hundred and fifty on his doctor’s scale, having dropped twenty pounds in the past several months as his illness progressed. Finally, he’d put the hooks into his portable sterilizer to ensure they were rid of infectious bacteria and viruses and then tied them to the spreader bar with the parachute cord, aligning them so his weight would be evenly distributed.

  He felt confident that the rig would be strong enough and had no hesitation or concerns about his decision. But his realization that the time was upon him had come in a sudden, unexpected rush of circumstances. He’d never meant to lose the King. The death had troubled him, made him feel internally eroded and depressed. At the same time, he had known the King was undeserving of life, and his remorse had gradually shrunk away. In the end, he had understood that the death had occurred for a reason. It had freed him to move toward a new state of being—and a power that was beyond pain and guilt.

  It helped that he’d stayed as fit as possible. His body was failing him, but it had been a slow betrayal. He still did light daily exercises and maintained enough muscle tone and stamina to help him withstand the stresses of his Passage. In the last twenty-four hours, he’d taken further physical precautions, abstaining from solid food to cleanse his system and prevent nausea but staying hydrated with sports drinks that would replenish his electrolytes and carbohydrates and boost his level of endurance.

  He shuffled forward again, bending his knees, his toes inching over the edge of the stool. The hooks plucked up his skin a little more, and he felt a sharp twinge. Breathe in in in now exhaaaaale. He stepped off and produced an involuntary groan—raw, inchoate, from his center, from the core of his pain and loneliness: “AuugggghuhuuUUUH.”

  His mouth agape, the volcanic release from within climbing up his throat, pouring out of him, an undul
ant wave sweeping over, through, and around his body. Looking down at his ankles above the concrete floor, he hung like a larval moth on lines of coarse spun thread, sweat sheeting from him now, oiling him, and the pain, the pain…

  His head slung back, the veins in his neck blue and thick and bulging, his eyes rolled up under their lids, so only their whites reflected from the mirror in front of him. And suddenly—

  He smelled sagebrush. Sweet, pungent, overpowering in the heat of a desert gully. The fragrant shrubs carpeting the hard, dusty rock as far as the eye could see…

  “Oh,” he heard himself say. “My boy. Yessss…”

  The pain was gone, or almost gone, its remnants leaving him in shreds and tapers, flying off into a timeless, floating ecstasy.

  He closed his eyes, lowered his chin, and crossed his arms over his chest, palms flat against his breast in an attitude of meditative rapture.

  And hung in his chamber of mirrors, a dark chrysalis waiting to hatch from his shell.

  3

  THE CSIS COULD hear Dr. Albert Robbins’s cane clacking dully against the tiled floor of the autopsy room. The sound, like his limp, was sometimes barely noticeable, but not so this early dawn. No one knew for certain what made the difference.

  Nick had conjectured that it might have something to do with the long hours Robbins spent on his artificial legs. It was hard to tell. The chief coroner had groused about his knee joints sticking a time or two but otherwise never complained. He exercised on a treadmill in the lab and was fond of repeating a joke about being able to run all night without his legs growing tired.

  Clack, clack, clack. Robbins moved around the dissection table, propped the cane against its edge, and leaned over to slice into the cadaver’s upper brow with his scalpel.

  “The implants are typically silicone or polytetrafluoroethylene,” he said.

  “Teflon?” Sara said.

  “It’s a cheap and highly biocompatible substance,” Robbins said with a nod. “Almost frictionless, hypoallergenic, doesn’t break down inside the body. The drawback’s that an acid used in its production is a suspected carcinogen.” He reached for his tweezers, worked them into the incision. “It appears whoever did this stayed neatly within a single channel of flesh. He could be a modern-day feldscher.”

  “Glad you’re going to tell us what that means,” Nick said.

  Robbins’s bearded cheeks lifted in the faintest grin. “The term goes back to medieval Europe,” he said. “A feldscher was considered a poor man’s surgeon, but that doesn’t give the trade its due. The members of the Worshipful Company of Barber Surgeons were guildsmen who learned their profession outside the medical universities, usually on the cadavers of executed prisoners. Barbers made the best candidates for apprenticeship since they already handled cutting tools.”

  “You think the person responsible for this studied anatomy?”

  “No doubt,” Robbins said. “His skills are highly refined. My only question would be whether his education was formal or informal.” He glanced up at Nick. “I’d challenge anyone to show me the line between certain accepted types of plastic surgery and body modification. Because in my opinion, it’s gotten very blurred.”

  Nick watched Robbins’s face but couldn’t tell if he was being flippant. “I know I didn’t hear you compare these body-mod artists to licensed doctors.”

  “There are plenty of unscrupulous quacks with medical degrees. You can see their handiwork walking around Beverly Hills.”

  “Doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I wasn’t sure you asked one.” Robbins shrugged. “I’m able to afford a good plastic surgeon. Or for that matter, a dermatologist to remove an unsightly polyp from above my eyelid. You might want to save your inquiry for somebody who’s stuck without comprehensive health insurance.”

  Nick said nothing as Robbins plucked a triangular object from under the skin with his tweezers.

  “Okay, what’ve we got here?” the coroner said under his breath. He lowered his binocular forehead loupe over his eyes, switched on its optical lights, and studied the blood-slimed implant as a jeweler would a rare diamond. “Tattoo Man’s material of choice is silicone after all. He must have carved it by hand—I can discern the minute scoring from his blade.”

  Sara shook her head. “As opposed to…”

  “He could have opted for a molding-putty kit,” Robbins said. “That would involve using CAD-CAM software to program his precision specs into a computerized lathe, then mixing and casting the silicone in a vacuum sterilization chamber.”

  “Sounds time-consuming.”

  “And expensive,” Robbins said. “A vacuum sterilizer costs over a thousand dollars. A good desktop lathe several thousand more. The technique would be used for highly stylized, contoured implants. But the crown’s design elements are perfectly geometrical, five triangular points spaced across the front of the head. It’s easier to work from a stencil and cut them out of the solid, presterilized block.”

  Nick was studying the body. “Did you see the needle mark on the back of his hand?”

  “Yes,” Robbins said. “Phillips made note of it.”

  “And you agree it’s from an IV drip?”

  “I can go one better and predict that his blood samples show trace amounts of Diprivan.”

  “The anesthetic given to Tattoo Man’s earlier victims,” Nick said, and looked at him. “You saw the case files.”

  “People are normally in the same condition as this fine gentleman when they reach my care,” Robbins said. “It was refreshing to read about those who are still among the living.”

  Nick smiled with dismal amusement.

  “About Diprivan,” Robbins said. “Assuming for a minute we find it in Dorset’s bloodstream… it breaks down very rapidly after it’s administered. That means its concentration levels won’t necessarily give us definitive results regarding overdose.”

  “In other words, he might have a low amount in his blood but still have OD’d,” Sara said.

  Robbins nodded. “There are other indicators, though. Concentrations in the urine can be more determinative, so I’ll try to extract some from his bladder. And extended use can leave detectable traces in the hair follicles.” He paused. “Another point. A rapid injection of Diprivan could lead to cardiorespiratory failure. That’s why many anesthesiologists who use it for short outpatient procedures—gastroscopies and colonoscopies, say—prefer titrated infusion with Lactated Ringer’s solution or a slow, guided intravenous drip in calibrated doses, rather than with an IV push.”

  “When a stronger dose is injected into an intravenous bag with a syringe,” Nick said.

  Robbins gave another nod. “You’d be more liable to see that under operating-room conditions, when a nurse with resuscitative training would be present.”

  Nick mulled that as another thought came to him. “About the ink,” he said. “Shouldn’t we compare the type used in Dorset’s tattoos with the others?”

  “A match would certainly help establish that all of the crimes were committed by a single individual. I just don’t know if that would lead us in his direction.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Although tattoo inks are subject to the same FDA rules and approvals as cosmetics, the regulatory policies are limp,” Robbins said. “The ingredients consist of a pigment and a carrier solution, but there’s a wide range, and none of the outfits that produce, import, and export premixed inks has to label them.” A shrug. “I’d be surprised if our man doesn’t mix his own.”

  “So we’d probably have a helluva time tracing the ingredients to any one source.”

  “Or even multiple sources. I can’t estimate how long it would take to list the over-the-counter dyes and chemicals used in different formulations.”

  Nick exhaled slowly through pursed lips. “It still seems worth a shot.”

  “I wouldn’t argue,” Robbins said. “I’ll take excisions of the tattooed skin. You would need to get epithelial samples f
rom the survivors to test for similarities.”

  Nick nodded. “Anything else jump out at you?”

  “A couple of things,” Robbins said. He snapped his magnifying lenses back over his head. “The victim shaved within a few hours of his death. Or was given a shave.”

  The criminalists exchanged glances.

  “We caught that, too,” Nick said. “Can you tell whether it was before or after?”

  “Undeniably premortem.” Robbins placed his fingers under the chin and tilted it up. “He scabbed where the razor nicked him. If he’d already been dead, the blood would have settled from his face.”

  Nick digested that. “Okay… what’s the second thing?”

  Robbins deposited the implant on a folded towel, placed the tweezers in an autoclave sterilization tray. Then he rejoined Nick at the dissection table. “Care to help me turn him on his side?” he said.

  Nick didn’t hesitate. He grasped the body’s shoulders and pushed his weight against it as Robbins supported the hips, peeling back the morgue sheet from below the waist.

  Sara’s eyes widened. She glanced at Nick, then back at the thick ruby-red lip tattoos smattering the bare, pale buttocks. “Lipstick kisses,” she said, incredulous.

  His hands still on the shoulder blades, Nick leaned slightly backward, angling his head to peer around Robbins at the tattoos. “Pucker up,” he said.

  Sara had turned to face him again. “I think that just might be the message,” she said.

  The last time Catherine Willows had visited the Basin Road Public Library had been years ago, when she’d driven her daughter there for a high school reading project. It was among the smaller branches in the Clark County–Las Vegas system, and the librarian had been a dowdy, gray-haired woman in her sixties wearing a simple plum-colored jacket-and-skirt suit. As she’d checked out Lindsey’s books at the circulation desk, she offered each of them a chocolate fudge brownie from the batch a part-time volunteer had baked at home.

  The librarian in the focus frames of Catherine’s camera was likewise on the short side. But she was about twenty pounds thinner, thirty years younger, a redhead, and wearing a long-sleeved psychedelic tunic blouse that hugged her narrow waist and flared out over her tights to accentuate her shapely figure. Sprawled faceup on the floor of the reserve room with her skull shattered by a bullet and the blouse’s sleeve cut off above the elbow, she’d had her skin flayed almost to the bone from her right forearm to her wrist. Blood had hemorrhaged from her wounds in darkening, partially intermingled puddles, soaked through her clothes, and cast a gruesome mosaic of spatters and splashes into the surrounding bookshelves.