Skin Medicine

Long took out a knife and began. See here, Reb? See how she’s been opened from belly to crotch? That’s a sure sign of the Sin City Strangler. Trust me…I saw the other one in Osceola. Slit right open, see? Ain’t that something? Long followed the incision with the blade of his knife, using it like a pointer. Like he was an anatomy instructor. See, this crazy bastard, he stuck the knife right in her business there, dragged it up to her throat. Then he cut her widthwise just below her tits here and then again right at her bellybutton. Opened this bitch like a Christmas present. See? She’s all hollow inside on account this bastard scooped out all her goodies, spread ‘em around like birthday streamers…you see that? One thing missing, though, is her heart. Yep. He always takes that part with him. Now, out in San Fran they had themselves some hotshot surgeon what looked at the body and said the woman there died about the same time she was strangled. I wouldn’t know about that. But see those purple marks at her throat…yeah, them ones…them are from fingers. You can see ‘em fine, thumbs and fingers. Now, she died from strangulation and was opened afterward, Reb. I know that on account of what I’m seeing. No, don’t turn away. This is the important part. Her eyes are full of blood and her color is blue…oxygen starvation causes that they tell me. She was strangled, all right. Now, Reb, what you’re looking for here is a dirt-mean, deranged cocksucker who fancies whores and likes to fuck ‘em and choke ‘em and gut ‘em. Got another secret for you, too, Reb…he fucks ‘em after they’s dead, too. So you find this character, he’ll have a long, sharp knife and maybe a heart and a few other things boiling in a pot…where you going, boy?

But Cabe had had enough. Only a ghoul could linger in such a place. There was something definitely wrong with Cyrus Long. He was too clinical, too detached. It almost seemed he’d been enjoying it. Sick redleg sumbitch.

“ You ready now?” Dirker said.

Cabe crushed out his cigarette. “You?”

“ Nope. Not in the least.”

They went back in, Cabe leading. They went in and stood at the foot of the bed. The air was redolent with the stink of voided bowels, fresh blood, and salty meat. It was a heady, nauseating odor that crawled down inside both men and made something shiver in their bellies. Cabe looked at everything but what he was supposed to be looking at. He took in the velvet tapestries, the oak chiffonier, the red tapers melted down now. Everything was red and warm and selected to induce passion, he supposed. But what was on the bed induced anything but.

Like the whore in Pinoche…Mizzy Modine had been eviscerated.

But it was worse this time. All her internals had been cut out, arranged next to the body in some unguessable sequence. Her bowels had been draped over the headboard and coiled around her head in a halo. Her eyes had been plucked out and replaced with coins. Her breasts hacked off and set on the nightstand along with her eyeballs and privates.

“ Yeah…it’s him,” Cabe breathed. “I got a firsthand tour in Pinoche. It looked like this. Only this time it’s even worse.”

Dirker just nodded. “All right, then.”

Together they went outside, stood together, let the wind blast them clean. A light mist hung in the air…but even if it had been pouring, it couldn’t have hoped to wash the stink off of them. A stink that was mostly in their head by that point.

“ You can go, Cabe,” Dirker said. “Get some rest. There’s no more you can do here.”

Cabe looked at him, started to say something…then just shook his head and started down Piney Hill through the muddy, damp streets.

17

At the St. James Hostelry, Janice Dirker said, “My, my, Mister Tyler Cabe, but you smell like the Devil’s own brewery. For a man who didn’t come to Whisper Lake to ‘hell around’, you certainly managed to dip in the waters of our taverns quite thoroughly.”

Cabe just stood there. “Yeah…it was a hard night.”

“ You look like hell, Mr. Cabe. If you don’t mind me saying so.”

“ I don’t, ma’am.”

He wanted very badly to get into bed, to sleep away the day, but she insisted he join her for breakfast. He didn’t figure it would be polite to resist. So he followed her into the dining room, thinking it was going to give old Crazy Jack a heart attack if he came in and none other than Tyler Cabe was breaking bread with his woman. Maybe yesterday that would have given Cabe pleasure…but after what he’d been through this day or night or whatever in hell it was, he just didn’t have the strength to feel any animosity for Dirker.

It just wasn’t there.

The cook brought out eggs and hotcakes, maple syrup and coffee.

Cabe stared at the food, his belly growling, but he kept seeing Mizzy Modine laying in that slaughterhouse. He picked up his fork and set it down again.