Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 1–3: The Hundredth Man, The Death Collectors, The Broken Souls. J. Kerley A.

      The scene was a large Italianate-style home near the southern outskirts of downtown, a neighborhood of stately historic homes intermingled with apartments. Insects burred from the hovering pines and wide-spread oaks. Several patrol cars fronted the scene, as did the crime-scene van and an ambulance. A news van did a U and pulled to the curb. Neighbors with somber faces milled on the sidewalk. Traffic thickened, drivers drawn like moths to the flashing lights and activity. A patrolman in the street waved his arms and bawled, “Move on, folks, move on.” I saw Harry and pulled up on the curb behind him.

      “Weasels ’R’ Us around?” I asked.

      Harry shook his head. “Squill’s been at his brother’s condo in Pensacola. On his way.”

      Pensacola was at least ninety minutes away. Given time elapsed, we had maybe a half hour without him.

      “Let’s hit it while we can, bro,” I said. We walked onto a large front porch. Leaning against a white column was Detective Sergeant Warren Blasingame from District Three, who—since we were in D-3—had initial jurisdiction. Blasingame was sucking a cigarette and staring at the treetops.

      “What’s happening inside, Warren?” Harry asked.

      Blasingame drew a finger across his Adam’s apple. “That’s all I know.”

      “You haven’t been inside?”

      “Just ME folk, scene techs, and Hargreaves. She took the call,” Blasingame drawled, spitting onto the lawn. “My guys ain’t supposed to go in till Squill gets here. Neither are you, probably, no matter what Piss-it rules say about you being in charge.”

      “Didn’t hear nothing about that,” Harry said as our footsteps thumped across the porch.

      Words scripted around a logo on the door: Deschamps Design Services. A small sign below the doorbell advised, PLEASE RING TO ENTER. A decal on the glass said PROTECTED BY JENKINS SECURITY SYSTEMS. While the place wasn’t the Bastille, neither was it open-door policy. Directly inside was a small pastel-hued reception area that screamed Designer at Work: Chagall-hued abstracts spotlit by track lighting; a puffy blue-leather couch; a frame-and-fabric chair more like a kite than a sitting device. One wall held framed awards for best this and that in design. The place had a subtle astringent smell, like disinfectant, or strong cleanser.

      “Could chill beer in here,” Harry said, cinching his tie. We walked a short hall. I heard a muffled sob from a room to the left and gently opened the door. A slender woman sat at a small conference table with patrol officer Sally Hargreaves. Sal had been first on the scene. She was talking softly with her hand over the woman’s wrist. Sal saw me and came to the door.

      “Cheryl Knotts, victim’s fiancée,” she whispered. “Flight attendant out for three days. She got here fifty minutes ago to find one Peter Edgar Deschamps dead in his studio.”

      “Impression?” I asked, knowing Sal’s got the magic.

      “She had nothing to do with it, I’d bet the farm on that. She’s devastated.”

      By magic I mean Sal has that rare sense letting her read people fast and dead on. All cops grow the ability to detect bullshit better than your average citizen, but some are prodigies, polygraphic Mozarts. On Sal’s take alone I pretty much X’d out the fiancée as a suspect.

      “Get her to answer some questions in a few?” I asked.

      Sally nodded, touched my arm. “Walk light if you can.”

      Sally’s got a hint of wet in her eyes; the magic has its price. I kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Did I tell you I dreamed about you last week?” I said. “I was a nurse and you were a Viking…”

      Sal smiled for the first time and pushed me down the hall. “Go take care of Harry before he does something weird,” she said.

      The victim was on his back next to a drawing board. Beside the board was a desk with a Mac, and a monitor with a screen larger than the one on my TV. The man’s garb was white-collar casual: blue Oxford-cloth shirt, pressed khakis, webbed belt, brown loafers. The deceased was solidly built—not a hardcore gym rat with ham biceps and steroid-worm veins, but a guy with a hard and regular regimen. His shirt was unbuttoned and the slacks unzipped, the pants bunched low around his buttocks. Outside of the scarlet collar there was no sign of blood or other violence on his clothing. Hembree’d caught the case.

      “What’s the word, Bree?” I asked.

      “Looks like you and Harry are going to pull some overtime.”

      “Cause of death?”

      “Just like Nelson. Can’t find anything on the body. But a head wound….”

      “Could be floating past the Dixey Bar lighthouse about now.”

      Hembree nodded. “If the perp’s using a gun, I’d bet a twenty-two. Most of the time the slug goes into the skull and ricochets around inside like a Ping-Pong ball. No exit wound, no splatter. Just brain pudding.”

      I thought about what the mind might make of a pellet bouncing within its confines like a metal wasp. Could a brain comprehend its own destruction? Hear itself scream?

      “What about the blood when the head comes off?” I asked, rubbing my hands together, suddenly cold.

      “Heart’s stopped, blood’s not moving. Less exsanguination than you’d think. Was me I’d slide a towel under the neck to sop blood, then remove the head. Wrap the head in the towel, drop it into a bowling-ball bag, and wave good-bye.”

      “Just don’t get the bags mixed up on league night. Any writing?”

      “Been waiting for you to ask.”

      Hembree slid the deceased’s briefs past his pubic hair. The same minuscule writing, but in two lines. The top one said, Warped a quart of whores. Quart of whores. Whores warped. Quart of whores. Warped whores. Quart of whores. Warped whores. This was followed by Rats Rats Rats Ho Ho Ho Ho Rats Rats Rats Rats Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho

      An icy finger tickled the base of my neck.

      “The whores angle again,” Hembree said. “You guys went that road?”

      I nodded. We’d contacted vice and homicide departments across the Gulf Coast, expanding to national crime-stat sources. No unsolved killings in our area, at least not within our parameters. Whatever this was, we had an exclusive.

      Hembree pointed to the second line. “Ho as ‘whore’?”

      “Or ho like in laughing at us, Bree.”

      Hembree closed his eyes. “Oh, man, anything but that.”

      Taunts from psychopathically disordered killers were a chilling sign. The killers felt certain they could get away with anything. Some did, especially if they had iron-hard self-control, like the control to precisely sever a head and write in tiny, perfectly defined letters. Such people could live anywhere, be anything: janitor, schoolteacher, bank president.

      Hembree said the ME’s tech had approximated TOD at two or so hours before, give or take. Harry said, “I’ll go look around the rest of the place. See if you can get anything from the woman. Girlfriend?”

      “Fiancée,” I corrected. “Sally thinks she’s clean.”