Skin Trade (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 17)

Chapter 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.

He finally plunged those two fingers far enough into the wound that it made a little squelchy sound. When he did that, he closed his eyes as if to listen, as if that sound could tell him something. But I was pretty certain that wasn't it. He wanted to savor the sound. The way you close your eyes for a favorite piece of music. Close your eyes so that your sight doesn't steal away some of your hearing.

When he reached for a fourth wound, I started to say something, but Memphis beat me to it. "Is there a purpose to what you're doing, Marshal Jeffries?" His tone said plainly that he doubted it.

"Each wound that I have explored was made by a different blade. Two of the wounds were made with something that had a pronounced curve to it. The first wound was a more standard blade shape."

Memphis and I both looked at Olaf, as if he'd spoken in tongues. I think neither of us had expected anything useful from the corpse fondling. Damn.

"That is exactly right," Memphis said. The doctor stared up at the big man and finally shook his head. "You were able to tell all that with just your fingers along the wounds?"

"Yes," Olaf said.

"I would have said that was impossible, to tell all that from what you just did, but you are right. Maybe you can help us catch this... bastard." I wondered what he'd planned on saying before he picked bastard, or was he just one of those people who didn't cuss much and needed practice? I'd be happy to help him practice.

"I know blade work," Olaf said, in his usual empty voice, though when your voice is that deep, empty has a growl to it.

"Do you need to see the whole show?" Memphis asked.

"The whole show?" Olaf made it a question.

I said, "He means, do we need to see the rest of the body uncovered?"

Olaf just nodded, wordlessly, face impassive.

I wasn't sure we needed to see the damage below the waist, but I couldn't refuse. What if I went all wussy on them and didn't look, but there was some vital clue on the body? Some metaphysical thing that Olaf wouldn't see, or the doc, but I'd know what it was? Olaf knew blade work, more intimately than I ever would, hopefully. But I knew the metaphysics better. In a way, Edward, who did metaphysics pretty well for someone with no talent for it, and Bernardo, who was strictly a see-and-shoot-it guy, were a good team to look at the bodies, and oddly, so were Olaf and I. We each had skills the other lacked, and we could learn more together than apart; as disturbing as that was to admit in my head, it was true.

The cuts continued down the body. I don't know why damage to the sex organs is always so disturbing, but it is. There was nothing special about the damage there, just a cut that happened to cross his groin. It wasn't mutilation for the sake of mutilating; it was just another cut. It still made me want to look away. Maybe it was all those taboos on nudity that I grew up with, but it seemed wrong to just stare. You'd think I'd get over that part, but I hadn't yet. Sexual mutilation, even accidental, bothered me.

Olaf reached toward the body, and for one awful moment I thought he was reaching there, but he went to a wound in the thigh. He didn't lovingly explore it, like he had the others; he just shoved his fingers in, as if looking for something.

He actually knelt beside the gurney, peering into the wound. He had plunged his fingers as far in as he could and was fighting to go farther. He'd actually managed to find new blood.

"What are you looking for?" Memphis asked.

"This one is deeper, and torn. Did you find the tip of one of the weapons broken off in the wound?"

"Yes," and Memphis sounded completely impressed now.

I was impressed, too, but I also knew where Olaf had gotten his expertise. "You knew the weapon had broken off in that wound, particularly, just by looking at it?" I said.

He looked up at me, his fingers still deep in the wound, the tearing he'd made bringing out what little blood was left. His face was finally turned away from the doctor, so he let me see what he was thinking. His face softened and filled with heat, anticipation; romantic things. Fuck.

"Your fingers are smaller than mine; you might be able to reach farther in," he said, and stood, taking his finger out, letting it make another sound. He closed his eyes and let his face show the shudder he'd been hiding from the doctor because only I could see. It wasn't a shudder of fear or revulsion.

I looked away from his face and back at the body. "I'm sure the doctor has gotten everything out of that wound that he can find, right, doc?"

"Yes, but he's right. I found the tip of a blade. We'll analyze it and hopefully learn something."

"Are all the bodies like this?" I asked. Olaf was still turned away from the doctor. I'd moved so I couldn't see his face. I didn't want to know what he was thinking, and I sure as hell didn't want to see the thoughts cross his face.

"Are you done with this body?" he asked.

"I am; I don't know about Jeffries here."

Olaf spoke without turning around. "Answer Anita's question before I answer yours."

"The bodies that I've processed are like this, yes; some worse, one not as bad, but mostly worse."

"Then, yes," Olaf said, "we are done with this body." His voice was under control, and he turned around, with his face once again its impassive angry normal.

The doctor covered the body back up. Then we got to see number two. Olaf got to take off his gloves and get fresh ones. I hadn't touched the body, so I got to keep mine.

The next body was almost identical, except the man was a little shorter, more muscled, with paler hair and skin. His body had been nearly shredded. It wasn't just cuts; it was as if some machine had tried to eat him, or... With the body cleaned and laid out, you could see the damage, and it was still hard for my mind to take it all in.

"What the hell happened to him?" I asked it out loud before I was sure I wanted to.

"The few wounds I've been able to isolate so far seem to have some of the same edges as the earlier wounds. It's the same kind of weapon, maybe the same weapons; I'll need more tests to be sure."

"But this is different"-I gestured at the body-"this is... He's been butchered."

"No, not butchered; there was no intent to take meat for eating," Olaf said.

I looked up at him. "Meat?" I said.

"You said he was butchered, but that was not accurate; the meat is ruined this way."

"It's a figure of speech, Otto," I said, and again didn't know how to interact with him.

He was looking at the body, and this time he couldn't hide everything from the doctor. He was enjoying seeing this corpse.

I looked at Memphis and tried to think about something other than Olaf. "This looks almost mechanical," I said. "There's too much for one human being, isn't there?"

"No," Olaf answered. "A human could do all this damage if some of it were postmortem. I've seen people cut at corpses, but this is"-he leaned over the body, closer to the wounds-"different from that."

"Different how?" I asked; maybe if I just kept asking questions, he'd answer and not be as creepy.

He traced his finger across some of the wounds on the chest. Anyone else around a body would have motioned above the skin, but he touched the body. Of course he did.

"The first body, the wounds are deliberate, spaced. This is frenzy. The wounds crisscross each other. The first one looks almost like a knife fight; most of the wounds are not killing wounds, as if the killer was playing with him, making him last. These wounds are deep from the beginning, as if the killer meant to finish it quickly." He looked at Memphis. "Did anyone interrupt the scene? Any civilians found among the dead?"

"You think the killer heard something and stopped playing, to just kill?" Memphis asked.

"A thought," Olaf said.

"No, no civilians, just the police and our local vampire hunter."

"Is the last body cut up like this one?" Olaf asked.

I'd have thought of it eventually, but I was having trouble being a good investigator around Olaf. My creep factor was getting in the way of my thinking.

"One other member of SWAT is cut up like this. Only the body you've already seen and the vampire hunter are cut, as you put it, like they were played with, or offered a knife fight."

"Do they have wounds on their hands and arms, like they were armed with a knife and fought back?" I asked.

Olaf asked, "How do you know about wounds like that?"

"When you fight with knives, you still use your arms like shields; it's like defensive wounds, but it looks different. It's hard to explain, but you know it after a while."

"Because you've had the same kind of wounds?" he asked. His voice had the faintest edge of eagerness to it. I almost hated to answer the question, but... "Yes."

"Did you see wounds like that on the arms of the other men?" Olaf asked.

I thought back, pictured them. "No."

"Because they were not there."

"So no knife fight," I said.

"Or whatever they were fighting was so much faster than they were, they were not able to use their skills to help themselves."

I looked up at Olaf. "It was daylight, and there were uncovered windows in the warehouse. It couldn't have been vampires."

He gave me a look. "You of all people know that there are more than just vampires that are faster than humans."

"Oh, okay, you mean wereanimals."

"Yes," he said.

I looked at Memphis. "Were any of the more frenzied attacks made with things other than blades? I mean, did you find evidence of claws or teeth?"

"Yes," he said, "and the fact that you figured that out makes me glad you got invited here. These are our men, do you understand?"

"You wanted to solve it without help from a bunch of strangers," I said.

"Yes, we owed them."

"I understand," Olaf said. He was ex-military, so he probably did.

"But you know the monsters better than regular police. I thought that the Marshal Service having a preternatural branch was just some politically expedient way to give a bunch of killers a badge. But you guys really do know the monsters."

I glanced at Olaf, but he was still looking at the body. I answered the doc, "We know monsters, doc, it's what we do."

"I stopped processing the last body when I found what I thought was lycanthrope damage. I wanted to wait for the preternatural experts, which I guess is you."

"So they tell us," I said.

The door to the autopsy suite swung open, and three new gowned and gloved people entered the room, wheeling another gurney and a new plastic-wrapped figure. This plastic was looser, as if it had been hastily thrown back over the body. Memphis stripped off his gloves and started to put on new ones. New body, new gloves; clean up, move down. I threw my gloves after the doctor's. Olaf followed at my heels, like a game of follow the leader. Olaf loomed behind me, a little too close. I hurried to catch up with Memphis and the new arrivals. Three strangers and a corpse, and I was eager to meet them. Anyone was a step up from Olaf at this point.