Under His Skin

by Rita Herron

  He booted up the computer, then accessed the police databases and searched for stories about the missing corpses to see if there were other similar cases in the South or across the States. Several cropped up, so he methodically accessed each one.

  The stories of necromancy made his skin crawl—two had occurred in Savannah four years earlier, three in Atlanta, and numerous others in New Orleans and across the States. Most had been solved, although one case in the hills of North Carolina had never been closed.

  A satanic cult in the Tennessee mountains had also stolen bodies to burn as a sacrifice. A case in eastern Kentucky noted a serial killer who dismembered corpses after he killed the victims—the killer had been tried and convicted, and was now on death row.

  Some bodies had been stolen from morgues around Halloween for pranks. Other cases involved stealing comatose patients for organs to sell on the black market.

  A schizophrenic man in North Carolina had stolen corpses because he swore he heard voices telling him to turn them into vampires.

  He paused, rubbed his hand over his face. Even though he’d been a cop for years, the depravity of humans still stunned him.

  Having read about the questionable projects a few doctors had been involved with at CIRP, he ran a search for medical purposes for which a corpse could be used. Research experiments and medical educational facilities topped the list. But those bodies were donated to science, not stolen. There was no report indicating they had a shortage of donors for either.

  Knowing any one of the above could be the motive for the current body snatcher, or that they might be dealing with yet a different scenario, he made a note of the various motives.

  One of the nurses poked her head in. “Mr. Kilpatrick?”

  “Yes?”

  “Dr. Whitehead suggested I give you a sleeping pill to help you relax before your surgery tomorrow.”

  “I don’t need a pill.”

  She shrugged. “All right, but I’ll be in to get you bright and early.”

  Her cheerful smile irritated him. “Fine. I’ll be here,” he mumbled. As if he’d be anywhere else.

  He checked the morgues housing the bodies for reports of impropriety but found nothing. In spite of his resolve to work, exhaustion wore on him. Another downside of his injuries; he’d yet to regain his stamina. And he would need his energy to force himself to endure the agonizing therapy following tomorrow’s ordeal.

  Within seconds after his head hit the pillow he faded into sleep, but images of Grace’s blue eyes flashed into his mind. He didn’t need her at his side, but he couldn’t help but wish she’d show up anyway. Just hearing her voice before he went under the knife would give him comfort.

  DARK STORM CLOUDS HOVERED in the sky, obliterating the moon and stars as Grace drove to Tybee Island and the cottage her parents had owned. Thunder rumbled and lightning crisscrossed the darkness above the palm trees, signs of an impending storm.

  Grace hated storms. There had been a terrible one the night her parents died.

  Worse, all the Halloween decorations in town and on the island reminded her of the ghost stories and legends of pirates and lost souls in the area, adding to her paranoia.

  She tried to focus on the reason she’d moved back to the cottage—because it was so peaceful. She craved the lulling sound of the ocean in the background, the warm fall air, the smell of the marsh and the sway of the palm trees in the late-night breeze. During the summer months when most of the cottages were inhabited, either by homeowners or renters, the island came alive with bikers, joggers, walkers and children. But fall sent vacationers home, and the island felt isolated, even deserted and eerie at times.

  Especially at the end of the street tucked back into the cove where she lived.

  Tonight, in light of the ghouls and goblins hanging on door fronts and trees, the recent wave of vandalism and stories of missing corpses, she felt on edge, as if someone was watching her. Someone who was waiting in the shadows, ready to leap out and grab her.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have returned to her parents’ home. It had stirred all kinds of memories. But pleasant ones mingled with the sad. The rare times when her father had taken vacation days, rented a fishing boat and taken her and Bruno fishing in the inlet. The crabbing expeditions in the marsh. The long walks on the beach searching for sea turtles and shells. Building sand sculptures and flying kites in the spring.

  Although her parents hadn’t died in this house, she thought about them more and more since she’d returned.

  She parked in the clamshell drive, lifted her hair off her neck to let the breeze brush her skin as she let herself in the cottage. The wind chimes on the front porch tinkled, and inside, lavender and cinnamon scented the air. Remembering the figure running into the woods the night before at the graveyard, she paused in the doorway, listening for an intruder. What if the man in the woods thought she had seen him?

  What if he came looking for her?

  Chapter Three

  Shivering, Grace flipped on the TV and checked the news while she ate a salad. Maybe they’d found the culprit and he was in jail now.

  The report was already midway: “Tonight, we’ve had another case of what the police believe to be vandalism.” The camera panned to a cemetery outside of town. “Someone flooded the graveyard by Shiloh Church, saturating the ground so badly that several feet of dirt washed away and caskets have risen to the surface. A Halloween prank or is someone robbing graves now?”

  Grace frowned and waited to see if they mentioned the corpse from the night before, but the reporter spent most of the segment on interviews at the church scene. Sighing, she chided herself for worrying, took her salad plate to the sink, rinsed it and stuck it in the dishwasher, then stepped outside on the back patio. The smell of the marsh assaulted her, and the sound of the ocean crashing against the shore filled her ears. But thunder rattled her nerves, and the wind brought the whisper of her brother’s voice.

  “Help me…”

  She froze. She must have imagined the words, had been thinking about Bruno too much lately because of these missing corpses.

  That and the fact that his killer had never been caught.

  Suddenly exhausted, she went back inside, stripped her clothes and slipped into a cool, cotton nightshirt. For a brief moment she allowed herself to think about Parker Kilpatrick, and imagined him beside her, watching her undress. Imagined him smiling as he ran his hands over her bare breasts. Imagined him erasing thoughts of dead bodies and replacing them with an erotic night of lovemaking.

  But the image of his frown when he’d told her to leave returned, drowning out the fantasy, and she crawled into bed, reminding herself that nothing could happen between them.

  He was a cop. She’d lost her mother and the two most important men in her life, everyone she had ever loved, to the job, and she refused to take the chance on that again. Besides, he wasn’t interested in her.

  Feeling claustrophobic, she left the window open so she could feel the breeze and hear the waves during the night and soon fell into a deep sleep.

  But rest didn’t come. Instead nightmares of her childhood did.

  THE STORM RAGED outside, shaking the walls and beating the thin windowpanes. She was seven years old, huddled in bed with her teddy bear, trying to drown out the noise by covering her ears with her hands. Her little brother had gone to a friend’s for the night, and she wanted to climb in bed with her parents, but her daddy told her earlier she had to be a big girl.

  Her chin wobbled as she fought tears. Suddenly a loud boom split the air. The storm?

  It sounded like thunder. No…someone had screamed.

  Her heart pounding, she slipped from bed and padded toward the door to the den. Mommy would hold her and make everything all right. Would keep her safe from the storm, and tell her the screams were all in her head.

  But when she peered through the crack in the door to the den, she saw her parents hovering together on the sofa. Her mommy was crying.

&
nbsp; Then she saw the other man. A big guy in black clothes with a ski mask over his face. He was waving a gun at her parents.

  Another streak of lightning fell across the room and he shoved her father back onto the sofa and pointed the gun at his head.

  Her mother screamed, then a gunshot blasted the air. Blood splattered the floor and walls. Grace closed her eyes and sank to the floor in horror, then covered her ears as a second shot blasted.

  Without looking she knew her parents were dead.

  TIME TO GO under the knife.

  Parker grimaced as the first strains of daylight stole into the hospital room. In spite of his resolve not to get involved with Grace Gardener, he searched the faces of the nurses for her sea-blue eyes. Another nurse prepped him for surgery and when she started to give him a shot to relax him before they transported him to the operating room, he finally accepted that Grace wasn’t coming.

  She had given up on being his friend. He’d driven her away.

  Good. He didn’t need or want her hovering over him. Doing him any favors. Smiling at him like he meant something special to her when she probably treated all her patients the same way.

  Besides, he knew she wanted answers about her brother’s death. Answers he didn’t have. As soon as he’d joined the precinct, the serial arsonist had struck and he and his partner had been swamped with the case.

  But when he got back on track, he’d investigate and see what he could find out about Bruno’s death. All he’d heard when he’d replaced the investigating cop was that Bruno had committed suicide, although some of the locals suspected he hadn’t killed himself. He’d been found with a bullet in his head and had fallen over a cliff. They wouldn’t have a body if a storm hadn’t washed it back in. Which made him suspicious.

  That was probably the only reason Grace had been so friendly. She wanted his help.

  Still, he felt a tug of disappointment in his chest that she hadn’t dropped by to see him this morning. Hadn’t he learned? People only used you when they needed something. Promises were only words that were broken.

  The medicine kicked in and his head became fuzzy, the room a kaleidoscope of beige on white that swirled in a drunken haze.

  Suddenly two blue circles appeared in the haze. Grace’s smiling eyes. Then her angelic voice penetrated the fog, calling his name.

  “You’re going to do great, Parker,” she whispered. “And when this is over, you’ll heal just like you want. One day you’ll walk out of here and we’ll never see you again.”

  He smiled, or at least he thought he did. His face felt funny, as if it was melting clay, and his lips seemed gluey, his tongue thick as if it was swollen inside his mouth.

  “I’ll see you when you wake up.” She squeezed his hand and he tried to squeeze back to let her know he heard, that he appreciated her visit, but he didn’t know if he’d actually moved his fingers.

  Then they were rolling him into a room with bright lights. The operating room. A mask slid over his face. Faces blurred, voices became a rumbling echo, distant and indiscernible.

  Slowly the world faded into nothingness, where he dreamed about death. He was being buried but someone had stolen his body from the casket…

  GRACE TRIED NOT TO WORRY about Parker during the surgery—after all, this was routine compared to the condition he’d been in when he’d first been admitted. But something about the tissue recalls disturbed her.

  What exactly was the problem with the initial tissues? Although the hospital was affiliated with CIRP and took advantage of all the cutting-edge techniques, it had an impeccable reputation. The area had become a hubbub of high-tech medical research, and patients came from all over the States to utilize the latest treatments available. Sometimes in desperation, they agreed to new treatments offered through the research projects as a last resort.

  But these tissue transplants were fairly common. Perhaps the problem wasn’t with the hospitals but with the tissue banks.

  She spent the morning tending to other patients, and when the orderlies wheeled Parker to ICU after he was released from recovery, she rushed to check on his condition. He was breathing fine, his vitals were normal, and he had come through the surgery with flying colors. He didn’t need her, just a nurse to take care of routine tasks.

  So why did she stay close to his side all morning? Why did she run every time she heard his breathing turn erratic or hear him moan in pain?

  Furious with herself, she allowed another nurse to help him walk the first time. And when they transported him to a regular room, she was relieved. No more making a fool of herself over the man. He was on his own.

  Still, the questions concerning the tissue transplants needled her. When she stepped into the hospital lounge for a midmorning cup of coffee, two surgical nurses hovered together in low conversation. “So far, we’ve had at least twenty patients affected,” one of the nurses said.

  “The hospital will get flack for this,” the other nurse muttered.

  “I just hope the police don’t ask questions,” the first nurse said.

  “Why would they?”

  “With this many patients involved, and with one of them a cop, the press will have a heyday. There’ll probably be lawsuits.”

  Suddenly they spotted her and clammed up. But the rest of the morning, their conversation haunted Grace.

  When she slipped into the hospital cafeteria for lunch, she spotted Dr. Whitehead and his colleague Dr. Nigel Knightly in deep conversation. She grabbed a chicken salad sandwich and a glass of sweet tea, half hoping to avoid Wilson Whitehead, but he cornered her and insisted she join them for lunch.

  Dr. Knightly had performed Parker’s surgery so she decided to broach the subject of the tissue transplant with him. “The surgery with Parker Kilpatrick went okay?”

  “Yes, it was a success,” Dr. Knightly said.

  “This tissue was checked prior to surgery so we don’t expect any more problems,” Dr. Whitehead added.

  She sipped her tea. “Did you get any more details on the recalled tissue?”

  Dr. Knightly shrugged. “It wasn’t processed properly after extraction. That causes infection, rejection in some cases, and in one case now the patient has reacted, become septic and a limb had to be amputated.”

  “Where do you think the problem originated?” she asked, digging for more information.

  Dr. Whitehead arched his blond brows. “Why are you so interested, Grace?”

  “Patients ask questions,” she replied quickly. “Sometimes they’re afraid or hesitant to go to the doctors. I just want to be prepared.”

  He studied her for a long moment as if assessing the truth of her statement, then offered a small smile. “The problem didn’t occur in our hospital, that’s for sure. Probably an inexperienced or sloppy lab technician who didn’t know what he was doing.”

  And since more than one hospital received tissue from designated tissue banks, other facilities and patients might be affected. “Then the problems might be far more widespread than our hospital here. Have the necessary parties been notified?” Grace asked.

  The doctors exchanged an odd look, then Dr. Whitehead covered her hand with his. “Yes. Now, don’t worry yourself over this, Grace. We have the situation under control.”

  She tensed at his patronizing tone. And the strange look in Dr. Knightly’s eyes sent a tingle of nerves up her spine. They obviously didn’t want her asking questions about the transplants.

  THE NEXT WEEK passed in a blur of pain, physical therapy and frustration for Parker. Not wanting to grow addicted to the medication, by midweek he refused the pain pills.

  By Friday, his leg felt remarkably better than after the first surgery.

  He walked the halls with the help of one crutch instead of two, and hoped to be transferred to the rehab facility soon.

  The only downside to the transfer was that he wouldn’t get to see Grace every day. Pathetic though it was, he looked forward to the five-minute, drop-in visits that she’d carved out
of her busy day for him.

  Unfortunately while he’d been laid up, several more bodies had been stolen from different morgues, two of which were involved in pranks. Three others had gone missing, only to be discovered later at a different morgue or funeral home. The coroner’s office had argued improper tagging and blamed a shoddy body-moving service.

  Tests were being run to see if any trace evidence had been left on the bodies.

  He’d also heard whispers about other patients being brought in for tissue replacement surgeries. One man had died from an infection.

  He shuddered, knowing he should be grateful. And he wanted to repay Grace by finding out the truth about her brother’s death.

  Dark storm clouds cast a gray fog over the sky, the rolling thunderstorms mirroring his mood. He hadn’t been out in days and missed the sunshine on his face and the fresh air.

  The barometric pressure seemed to affect his knee and made it ache. Thunder burst into a roar, and the power flickered off then back on, making him think about the hospital and potential problems if a power shortage occurred. Backup generators would kick in, but what if they lost a patient during the time that took?

  Funny how he never considered those issues before he’d been imprisoned in the facility. He had too damn much time to think. Which he’d been doing a lot of. The problems with the tissue banks disturbed him. He’d heard rumors that one of the doctors might have known about the problems but used the tissue anyway.

  He was taking a final spin around the hospital wing when he spotted Grace approaching him. She looked tired and agitated but so beautiful his gut tightened, and arousal speared him. At least that part of him hadn’t been injured. The only pleasurable sensation he’d experienced lately.