Slaughter

“You still in the sack?”

“Sack. Yes.”

“Had breakfast yet?

“No.”

“Don’t. I got something for you.”

Qui

“You don’t want to get your fingers dirty?” he asked Renz.

Renz laughed. “You’re my go-to guy when a case looks like shit that might rub off. I admit it. Our business, you gotta expect some shit.”

“I like to limit it.”

“And I like to roll in it,” Renz said. “I don’t mind admitting I’m ambitious. We both know the score. We got things to trade. You take the risk and the media flack, and the money. I come away clean, move up a notch or two, and there’s more money for me down the line.”

Qui

“Someone is dead,” Renz said. “A young woman whose purse contents identify her as Lois Graham. Got an address in SoHo.”

“Is that where the body is?” Qui

“Nope. Central Park. Near the Eighty-first Street entrance, not far off Central Park West.”

“Sexual assault?”

“Maybe.”

“That why she was killed?” Women were murdered occasionally in Central Park. So why was Renz calling Qui

“The why isn’t what bothers me. It’s the how.”

“So what’s the how?”

“You’d have to see it.”

Qui

“I’ll be there soon as I can,” Qui

“Bring Pearl.”

Qui

“Try to stop her,” he said.

4

After parking the Lincoln illegally near a loading dock on a side street, Qui

It wasn’t difficult to find the crime scene. White canvas panels were propped on two sides of where Qui

Qui

Doctor Julius Nift, the little necrophiliac (it was rumored) ME, was kneeling by the nude dead woman and looked up and smiled at them. Especially at Pearl, who hated him with a passion.

Renz also smiled, his flesh-padded cheeks almost hiding his eyes, the fat pink of his bull neck spilling over his white shirt collar.

“Meet Lois Graham,” Nift said. “Beautiful in death.” He rose to his full height, which wasn’t much, and expanded his chest. He saw himself as Napoleonic. Qui

Lois Graham’s clothes were stacked neatly folded off to the side. It took a second look to realize they appeared to have been cut away from her body rather than removed in ordinary fashion. Her pale, still form lay on its back so she seemed to be staring up at the sky with frozen wonder.

“She has some rack on her,” Nift commented, doubtless trying to get a rise out of Pearl, who ignored him.

But that wasn’t what sickened and angered Qui

And suddenly understood. The corpse’s limbs had been neatly sawed through at the joints. Her wrists were a quarter of an inch short of her hands. Her arms had been severed at the elbows and shoulders. Same kind of sawing with her legs, at the ankles, knees, and hips. Qui

“The injuries are postmortem,” Nift said. “If her heart hadn’t stopped first there’d be blood all over the place. But as you can see, there isn’t.”

“Thank God for that,” Pearl said.

“Did the killer have medical knowledge?” Qui

Nift shook his head. “Some. He isn’t a surgeon, but he has a basic knowledge of the human body.”

“Med-school dropout?” Pearl asked.

“Doubtful. A med-school student would have done this a bit differently, and with different instruments.”

“Still . . .” Qui

Nift shook his head. “Not part of the curriculum. Though my guess is that he’s done this kind of thing before.”

They all glanced at Lois Graham. Her corpse reminded Qui

“What do you think made the cuts?” he asked.

Nift shot a look at Renz, who had already asked him some of these questions. Renz said nothing. Nift sighed and knew he’d better answer again. He winked at Pearl, who stood stone-faced.

“Not a surgical tool that I could identify,” Nift said. “Some kind of sharp, agile saw with a narrow blade. It cut cleanly through bone and gristle, along with flesh.”

“Electrical?”

“You mean battery powered?” Nift smoothed his tie. “I doubt it. Not because a portable saw wouldn’t do this. It looks to me that the instrument was sharp enough that an electrical or fuel-powered saw wouldn’t have been needed. And I’m sure the cutting was done right here. She wasn’t sectioned off like this and then moved here and so neatly reassembled.”

“But it’s possible?” Pearl said.

“Possible,” Nift conceded. “More like the work of a jigsaw in the hands of a reasonably strong man.”

“Or woman?” Pearl asked.

Nift shrugged. “I doubt it, but I wouldn’t rule it out.”

“This was . . . sex to him,” Pearl said.

“Understandable,” Nift said.

Pearl looked at him as if he were the most loathsome thing on the planet.

“Control’s what it’s all about,” he explained. “That’s why victims die such slow deaths.”