Skin Trade(44)

The man nestled in the plastic had short brunet hair. His complexion was gray with the edges dark, like someone who had a tan but had been bled pale. Just from seeing his face and neck, I knew he’d bled to death, or bled out, before he died. The official cause of death might read something else, but he’d been alive long enough to lose all or most of his blood.

“Is the official cause of death exsanguination?” I asked.

Dr. Memphis looked at me; it was a little less hostile. “This one was; why do you ask?”

“I’m a vampire hunter; I see a lot of bloodless corpses.”

“You said this one was. Are there other causes of death on the other men?” Olaf said.

He looked up at the bigger man, and again it wasn’t as friendly. Maybe he just didn’t like men who were over a foot taller than himself. Short person’s disease: attitude.

“See for yourself,” Memphis said, and he peeled back the plastic farther to expose the man to his waist.

I knew how he’d bled out-cuts. So many cuts. I knew blade work when I saw it. But so many wounds, like angry mouths everywhere, lipless but gaping wide to show the pale meat underneath.

“It was a blade of some kind.”

Olaf nodded and reached out toward the wounds with his gloved hands. I stopped him, just short of touching the body, with my own gloved hand on his arm. Olaf glared at me, his deep-set eyes going back to that first blush of hostility he’d had before he started “liking” me.

“Ask first,” I said, “we’re in the doctor’s house, not ours.”

He continued to scowl at me, and then his face changed-not softened, just changed. He put his other hand over mine, so that he pressed my hand to his arm. It was my turn not to freak. But it sped my pulse, and not from the usual reason a man’s touch will speed your heart rate. Fear put my pulse in my throat as if I were choking on candy. I fought not to show my fear in any other way. Not for Olaf’s benefit, but so the doc didn’t figure out something was weird.

My voice was even as I asked the doctor, “Is it okay if we touch the body?”

“I’ve gathered all the evidence I can from this… body, so yes.”

He’d hesitated on the word body, not something that most pathologists have problems saying. Then I realized I’d been slow. He knew the men, or at least some of them. The odds were that he’d had to work on people he knew over the last few hours. Hard.

I tried to lift my hand from Olaf’s arm, but he kept his pressed over mine, holding me in place. For a second I thought it would be a fight, but then he moved his hand away.

I fought not to step away from him. I fought with almost everything I had not to run screaming. Seeing the corpse cut up like this was romantic to Olaf. Motherfucking shit.

He whispered, “You look pale, Anita.”

I licked my dry lips and said the only thing I could think of. “Don’t touch me again.”

“You touched me first.”

“You’re right, my mistake. It won’t happen again.”

He whispered again, leaning over me, “I hope it does.”

That was it; I stepped away. He made me flinch first; not many people can say that, but I just couldn’t stand there beside the cut-up corpse of this man, this police officer, and know that Olaf thought my touching him over the dead body was foreplay. Oh my God, I could not work with this man. I just couldn’t, could I?

“Is there a problem?” Dr. Memphis asked, looking curiously from one to the other of us. He wasn’t angry anymore, he was interested. I wasn’t sure that was an improvement.

“No problem,” I said.

“No problem,” Olaf said.

We went back to looking at the corpse, and the fact that I was less bothered staring at the butchered man than at Olaf’s living eyes said volumes about both Olaf and me. I wasn’t sure what it said, but something. Something frightening.





15




I’D EXPECTED OLAF to be heavy-handed with the corpse, now that he had a green light, but he wasn’t. He explored the wounds with his fingertips, delicately, as if he were afraid of waking the man or hurting him. At first I thought he had some respect for the dead. Maybe it was the whole military/police thing. You respect your dead. Then I realized that wasn’t it at all.

It was when he was on his third wound, and did the exact same pattern again, that I got a clue. He started by tracing the very edge of the wound with his fingertips; then the next time around the wound, he plunged his fingers a little deeper but was still strangely gentle. The next time around he shoved two fingers into the meat of the wound. It wasn’t as smooth a motion, as if he were finding bits that stopped the smoothness of his progress, but he circled the wound again.