by Ben Mezrich
The two monks disappeared into the stilted house, but Scully stopped next to Mulder in the doorway. She surveyed the pattern of blood, how it spread upward along the inside of the wooden door. She then turned her gaze downward, to the crimson, riverlike trail leading into the house.
“Carotid artery,” she said, half to herself. The blood on the door was well above eye level, which meant the victim had been standing. From the angle and arc of the spatter, Scully knew it could not have been a bullet wound. It had been something sharp, like a knife or a razor blade.
“The kill was made here,” she continued, slowly strolling forward. She followed the trail of blood, walking as lightly as possible. The blood had soaked into the fading oriental carpet, darkening the crimson material like spilled red wine. She tried to forget that just hours ago, she and Mulder had eaten lunch a few yards away. She needed to be objective, to remain clinically detached—
Mulder grabbed her shoulder, stopping her in the narrow hallway that led to the living area. His eyes were wide, and he was pointing toward the edge of the open main room. Scully saw Dr. Fielding hunched near the end of the trail of blood. Fielding was on her knees on the carpet, her face hidden in her hands. The two bodies were on the floor in front of her.
“My God,” Scully whispered. She could hear her heart pounding as she plodded forward. Mulder kept his hand on her shoulder. They had both seen horrors before. Dozens of brutal crime scenes, corpses in states too miserable to describe. Still, the sight of the two bodies was difficult to take. Despite all of her training, despite everything she had seen—Scully wanted to turn away.
“Skinned,” Fielding said, lifting her head out of her hands. “Every inch removed, along with a fair amount of muscle and interior tissue. I sent for you as soon as I got here. The police are on their way from Rayong; there aren’t any full-time officers here in Alkut. I figured you were the next best thing.”
“Christ,” Mulder said, standing over the corpses. The entire living room seemed covered in blood. The oriental carpet beneath the bodies was saturated with it. There were bits of muscle and organs sticking to the legs of the low pine table where Mulder and Scully had eaten lunch. “It’s them, right? Allan and Rina Trowbridge?”
Scully dropped to one knee, next to the larger corpse. It was like looking at an animal on a butcher’s block—but the animal was human, and the butchering had been crude and brutal. She tried to re-create the event, using the cues of her profession. She imagined that the first incision had been made directly under the jaw. The face had been peeled back, the ears sliced off, the entire scalp removed in one piece. Then the attention had shifted to the trunk. An incision had most likely been made down the center line, the skin pared open to reveal the rib cage and the organs beneath. Multiple slashes had been necessary to skin the pelvic region, the legs, down to the feet.
Scully shifted her eyes to the second body. Rina Trowbridge had not taken nearly as long. Scully could see strands of Rina’s silky dark hair stuck to the bloodied mass that had once been her face. Then she saw one of Rina’s eyeballs hanging from a strand of optic nerve, and her jaw clenched. She needed to concentrate. This was a crime scene. This was a crime.
She turned her attention back to the larger corpse’s pelvic area, and below. “Dr. Fielding, do you have an extra pair of gloves?”
Fielding nodded, fishing through the pockets of her coat. Scully took the gloves from her and slid them over her fingers. She reached forward, gently running her index finger over a piece of exposed tibia. There was a sharp groove right above the knee. She found similar grooves higher up, near the pelvic bone. Then she found a series of slightly less pronounced scratches around the hip joint. She paused, thinking.
“The place looks pretty trashed,” Mulder commented, from somewhere behind her. He was carefully picking his way through the small house, searching for clues. Soon, the Thai police would arrive—probably along with government investigators from Bangkok. Scully knew that the FBI would not be welcomed in the investigation, certainly not of a crime of this nature—and not in a town with Alkut’s history. Though the town was off the beaten trail, the nation of Thailand was a tourist’s paradise. Heinous double murders—even in the sticks—did not make for good tourism.
So Mulder was using the time they had to conduct a quick survey of the crime scene. Likewise, Scully could not count on getting the results of an autopsy. She had to find answers right here, right now. “Dr. Fielding, do you see these grooves and these scratches?”
Fielding leaned closer. She had been momentarily overwhelmed by the sight of the bodies; she had known the Trowbridges, had spoken very highly of Allan. But in her heart she was a doctor. “The grooves look as if they were made by some sort of blade. A few inches long. But I’ve never seen scratches like those before.”
Scully nodded. The grooves were easy. Any forensic pathologist could have identified the blade. “The grooves were made by a straight razor. Very controlled, practiced strokes.”
“And the scratches?”
Scully paused a moment longer. “I can’t be sure. But I think the killer used a dermatome to skin these bodies.”
“A dermatome?” Mulder asked. He had paused in front of the Buddhist shrine in the far corner. The shrine seemed the only thing in the room that hadn’t been overturned. His surprised expression swam across the curved surface of the gold Buddha. “Isn’t that the tool that skin harvesters use? Like a supersharp cheese slicer?”
Scully nodded. The dermatome had been set to an incredibly brutal depth—all the way through the subcutaneous layer of fat, almost to the bone. “Whoever did this was extremely skilled. He’s had some level of medical training. And he’s done this many times before.”
“He?” Mulder asked.
“Possibly a she. But it certainly wasn’t an it, despite what the crowd outside might think. These incisions follow a controlled, determined pattern. It isn’t easy to skin a body. It takes practice and a fair amount of strength. More than that, it takes preparation. Someplace to put the skin, some way to carry it away from the scene.”
“But why?” Fielding asked, her voice weak. “Why the Trowbridges—and why like this?”
Scully didn’t answer the first part of Fielding’s question. She had a sickening feeling that the Trowbridges were killed because of her and Mulder’s investigation. Either because of something the Trowbridges had said—or because of something they had withheld. The second part of Fielding’s question seemed even more obvious.
“To feed the legend,” Mulder answered for her. He was leaning forward over the Buddhist shrine, both palms gently touching the gold statue’s belly. It looked as though something about the idol was bothering him. “It’s an easy cover for a double murder—and it turns Alkut against our investigative efforts. Two foreigners stirring up trouble—waking the beast once again, sending it on a deadly rampage. We’re going to be on our own from here on out.”
Fielding rose, taking a deep breath. “I’ll go and speak to some of the neighbors. Perhaps someone saw something. In any case, there’s nothing more I can do here. It’s so bloody tragic. I keep remembering their wedding—how they looked into each other’s eyes. Both of them were foreign to this place—she a transplant from the north, he from America. But they had found each other. That was all that mattered.”
Fielding sighed heavily, rubbing at her eyes with the backs of her hands. Then she shrugged and quietly exited the house, leaving Scully and Mulder alone with the bodies.
Scully pushed Fielding’s sentimental thoughts out of her head. It didn’t help to see these bodies as people. With practiced clinical detachment, she ran her gloved fingers through the pool of blood covering most of the floor, trying to estimate the exact time of death from the consistency of the fluid. Without skin or forensic tools, she had nothing else to go by.
“We left them about three hours ago,” she said out loud. “Whoever did this must have been waiting just outside. Probably watched us leave.”
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“Maybe he’s out there now,” Mulder commented. “Still watching us to see what we do next. Or maybe he thinks he’s done what he came here to do—cut off our line of information.”
Scully rose, slowly. She crossed to Mulder’s side, watching curiously as he continued to rub the golden Buddha. The statue was three feet high, and looked as if it weighed more than fifty pounds. The gold was well polished, though there were dark hints where the smoke from years of burning incense had stained the soft metal. The Buddha’s wide expression was peaceful and strangely content—despite the flecks of fresh blood sprinkled across its globular cheeks. “Mulder, I’m just glad you’re not out there with them. I was expecting you to argue with my conclusions.”
“Monsters don’t search people’s houses after they kill them,” Mulder said, suddenly straining against the statue. “And they aren’t superstitious enough to leave a Buddhist shrine untouched.”
There was a loud metallic click, and the front of the statue came loose from its pedestal. Scully was shocked to see that the Buddha was attached to the back of its base by two oversized metal hinges. She stared at Mulder as he pushed the statue back, revealing a deep, rectangular hiding place.
“Mulder—how did you know?”
“Actually,” Mulder responded, as he reached into the opening, “the lunch menu gave it away, even before Fielding’s comments a few minutes ago. Som-dtam and khao niew are northern delicacies. That led me to believe that Rina Trowbridge was a transplant from the northern regions of the country—which Fielding just verified. But this Buddha has his arms crossed at the waist, palms up. That’s usually a southern representation of the master. It didn’t make sense to me—until I saw the shrine untouched by our killer.”
He pulled a thick envelope from the pedestal, then stepped back from the shrine. “A southern Thai wouldn’t think to desecrate a shrine like this. That made it the perfect hiding place.”
Scully was impressed. Mulder’s eye for detail was truly amazing. She watched eagerly while he opened the envelope and peered inside.
“Photographs,” he said, evenly. “About a dozen, divided into two sets. And a few printed pages.”
He reached inside and removed the photographs. The two sets were bundled separately with rubber bands. Mulder crossed to the low lunch table and spread the two sets out against the wood.
The first set that caught Scully’s eye were almost as horrible as the two bodies on the floor. They were pictures of burned patients, lying naked on military-style hospital stretchers. Each picture had a date in the corner—and according to the notations, all were taken between the years of 1970 and 1973. “Full-thickness napalm burns,” she commented. “At least seventy percent of their bodies. These patients were all terminal—if not postmortem.”
She shifted her eyes to the second set of photos. These were of naked men as well, lying on similar hospital stretchers. But none of these men were burned. All seemed in perfect health. The second set of photos had dates as well—but all the dates were the same: June 7,1975.
Scully tried to make sense of what she was looking at. “The stretchers look as though they could be MASH unit standard issue, circa Vietnam.”
She paused, noticing that Mulder was frozen in place, staring at two of the photos. One was of a burn victim, the other of one of the unmarred men. He had placed the two photos next to one another on the table.
“Mulder?”
“Scully, look.”
Scully leaned close, and realized that the burn victim’s face was partially recognizable. When she shifted her gaze to the unmarred man—she realized they were photos of the same man. She reread the dates in the corners, then shook her head. “These dates must be incorrect. Burns like that don’t heal. Even if he did somehow recover—he would have been covered in transplant scars.”
Mulder didn’t seem to be listening. He was carefully arranging the two sets of photos, burn victims next to their unmarred counterparts. An eye here, an ear there—he was using whatever clues he could find to pair them up. Some of the pairs seemed incontrovertible, others more like guesswork. But in every case, the effect was the same. A horribly burned body dated between 1970 and 1973, and a healthy body dated 1975.
When Mulder was finished, he looked at Scully. She shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking. But it’s impossible. Synthetic skin for limited transplantation, maybe. But nothing like this. Medicine isn’t magic. This isn’t medicine—this is raising the dead. These dates are wrong, Mulder.”
Mulder tapped his fingers against the table. He didn’t believe her—but he didn’t have any proof to the contrary. Instead of responding, he turned back to the folder and removed the rest of its contents: two printed pages of paper.
The first page contained some sort of list. A row of names, numbers, and medical conditions, all divided into columns. Scully quickly recognized that the list was a hospital admission register. The figures were army serial numbers. And the conditions were all strikingly similar. Burns of various degrees, either from napalm or other chemical-based weapons. None of the patients had burns over less than fifty percent of his body. Most were charred beyond the seventy percent range—again, all were terminal.
“A hundred and thirty,” Mulder said after a few moments, “all horribly burned, like the men in those pictures—”
Mulder stopped, his brow furrowed. He pointed at one of the names. Scully read it aloud. “Andrew Paladin. Napalm burns, full torso, sixty-eight percent of his face and legs.”
“Another mistake?” Mulder asked. “Like the dates on those pictures?”
“It must be,” Scully commented, nonplussed. “Or someone’s created a long trail of lies. Andrew Paladin could not have survived his brother with burns like that. And if, somehow, he had survived—he’d be confined to a burn clinic, in permanent ICU. Not living as a recluse up in the mountains.”
“Unless those pictures are real,” Mulder said, as he turned to the second sheet of paper from the folder. “Unless Paladin’s search for his perfect synthetic skin was successful.”
“Mulder—”
“Take a look at this,” Mulder interrupted, not letting Scully stop him mid-fantasy. “It’s a map. It looks similar to the map of the MASH unit we got from Van Epps. But this one’s got a basement level.”
Scully took the sheet of paper from him. Indeed, it was a map of the Alkut MASH unit. A second level was superimposed beneath the roughly drawn complex, showing a series of tunnels and underground chambers. The chambers were marked by numbers and letters—but there was no key, no explanation of what they meant. Still, it was significant. The official map of the MASH unit did not indicate the existence of an underground floor.
“It might still be there,” Mulder said, his eyes bright. “The tunnels might still be down there, beneath the clinic. Maybe there’s more evidence of Paladin’s research.”
Scully watched as Mulder gathered up the photos and list of wounded soldiers and shoved them back into the envelope. He folded the map in half and slid it into his pocket. It was obvious what he intended to do. He was going to head back to the clinic and see for himself.
“It’s been twenty years,” Scully said. “Even if the tunnels still exist, there won’t be anything down there.”
“It’s worth a look.” Mulder paused, gesturing toward the two mutilated bodies on the floor. “They died for a reason, Scully. They were hiding something—and I think we found it.”
Scully envied his conviction, despite how baseless it seemed. “What did we find, Mulder?”
“Evidence of Paladin’s success. And, perhaps, of his continued success. If the men on that list came into Alkut with seventy and eighty percent napalm burns—and came out like the healthy men in those pictures, then Paladin really did achieve a miracle. But that miracle might have had a price. Perry Stanton might have paid that price—along with everyone who got in his way. Indirectly, Allan and Rina Trowbridge might have also paid that price.”
There we
re so many holes in Mulder’s theory, it was barely a theory at all. At least he hadn’t mentioned anything about a mythical, skin-eating beast. “Why would anyone keep something like this a secret? Why kill innocent people to cover up a miracle?”
“I don’t know. But we won’t find out standing around here.”
Scully paused, thinking. Mulder had a point. They had leads to follow—even if the leads seemed insane. She made up her mind and took the envelope with the photos and hospital admission list out of his hands. “All right. As long as we’re here, we’ll follow this wherever it leads. You search for those tunnels. I’m going to find out what I can about the names on this list. If these men were casualties of the Vietnam War, I should be able to find files on them. If they died in Alkut, then there’s a good chance Andrew Paladin died alongside them—and we just wasted a whole lot of federal money tracking down two dead brothers.”
Mulder was already heading toward the door. Scully waited a few seconds before following him, her eyes drifting to the two mutilated bodies. Wordlessly, she crossed herself, then squeezed her hand tight around the tiny gold cross she wore around her neck.
The truth was, they were chasing a monster. The violent actions of Perry Stanton—the case that had brought them to Thailand in the first place—seemed to pale in comparison to the tragedy on the floor in front of her.
Like Mulder, Scully wanted to catch the monster. But she did not share Mulder’s bravado. Staring at the two skinned bodies, she was gripped by a single, sobering thought.
If they got too close to the truth—the monster would be chasing them.
