She"s shutting down their senses, Spence realized. Spence realized. Why? Why? "That"s all?" "That"s all?"

"Pretty much. Extreme genital violence, of course, but you can see that for yourself."

Yes, Spence could. Weird, rawish ovals. "What about the genitalia?"

"She kept them, sir. Not a p.e.c.k.e.r in the pile."

Spence, a strong man, felt his knees wobble for a second.

"The differences are much more significant," Kohls went on. "Calabrice"s hands and feet were intact. These three she severed all of them, burned them, and put them in the pile. I"m not even sure if I"ve got the right hands and feet with the right bodies. Spectrometer reads reduced carbon and commercial Naphtha. Know what I think? I think she burned the hands and feet up in a barbecue. Point is she did a good job-don"t expect an easy ID on any of these guys."

"What about their teeth?"

"That"s another significant difference. These guys all had their teeth pulled out first, unlike Calabrice, before she sewed their mouths up. The dental extractions are all pretty clean, so she must"ve done it while they were still unconscious from the sodiumam. She didn"t want these three ID"d, but she obviously didn"t care if we ID"d Calabrice. It"s almost like..."

It"s almost like she wanted us to know about Calabrice, Spence considered. Spence considered.

"You sure you don"t want to see the heads?"

"No thanks," Spence said. "I gotta drive."

"Histo data"s all in the prelims. There"s your big difference between these guys and Calabrice."

"What do you mean?"

"Calabrice was a wellnourished white male. Moderate drinker, sure, low B6 and mag, but he was healthy. He had good guts."

Good guts, Spence echoed. Spence echoed.

"These guys?" Kohls flicked his hand. "Low economic histo spectrums. Lot of arterial plaque, firststage liver sclerosis, lot of lipofusial rancidity, low bodyfat. These guys were malnourished."

"b.u.ms?"

"No, not b.u.ms. Just nutritionally deficient, players."

"Players" meant hustlers, street hawks, city people whose incomes were erratic and who didn"t eat right. "In other words," Spence asked, "Not the kind of guys who hang out in highcla.s.s bars."

"Exactly," Kohls said. "Compared to Calabrice, these three guys were phantoms."

Phantoms, Spence thought. Spence thought.

He considered this on his drive back to Headquarters on Indiana. He had an appointment. The autopsy reports were dicey this early but Kohls had given him enough up front to get him thinking.

Spence had been doing a lot of thinking.

Now he sat in the office of one Dr. Ian Simmons, who quietly read over the forensic preliminaries. Simmons, sixtyish, goateed, and with a paunch, was the department"s forensic psychiatrist. He"d recently had an article published in a British medical journal called Lancet Lancet ("Criminal Behavioral Differences of Ipsilateral Males"), and had been nominated for some award. ("Criminal Behavioral Differences of Ipsilateral Males"), and had been nominated for some award.

"So you"re looking for someone with medical knowledge. A doctor, perhaps." Simmons" eyes widened in amus.e.m.e.nt. "Me, perhaps."

"You"re not a woman with red hair," Spence observed.

"Ah, but couldn"t the hairfall be from a wig?"

"Not with intact hairroot sheaths. Not with shaft cuticles full of unoxidized dihydrotestosterone. All the pubic hairs microscopically match the head hairs. Fusiformal lineament and scalecount are female positive."

"Good, good," Simmons said, still scanning the prelims. He was just testing Spence, as always. "Who"s doing the radioimmune a.s.say?"

"McCrone a.s.sociates. They"re expensive but they get the work back a lot faster than the Bureau."

"You should"ve saved the taxpayer"s money," Simmons said. "The r.i.a. results will indicate a longterm drug or alcohol abuser, malnourishment, megalopsis."

"How do you know?"

"If I"m wrong, I"ll buy you dinner."

"I hope you"re wrong," Spence said. "I haven"t been to a good restaurant in ages."

Simmons chuckled. "No doubt you"ve instructed Background Programming to crossreference redhaired females with recent psych ward releases?"

"Yes," Spence said. "And hospital employment."

"Too bad there"s a Privacy Act, hmm?"

"I"m telling them to go back four months."

"Tell them to go back a year," Simmons corrected. "This is something more evolved than your typical unsystematized reality break. Take my word for it, Jeffrey. That"s what they pay me for."

Simmons" mien always captivated Spence. The doctor regularly spoke with great animation and facial inflection yet rarely looked up from his reading, as though the preliminaries were Spence"s face. Simmons was perhaps Spence"s only real friend.

"Sagittal fusion, fusion of the mastoid process...all four of your victims are late"20s to early"30s, yet the first three clearly come from lower economic backgrounds."

"That"s right," Spence said.

More reading. Then Simmons" brow furrowed. "Your friend is quite tribal-" Simmons always amusedly referred to killers as Spence"s "friends." "-and probably very smart as well as very well read."

Spence backed up. "What do you mean tribal?"

"She collects physical symbols of adversarial power. Use the Bantis of lower Africa as an example, or any number of precolonization Filipino tribes. They collected the heads of their enemies because they believed it would give them power. You"ve got voudou cults in the deep south doing the same thing today. Similar tribes collected p.e.n.i.ses for the same reason." Simmons fell into a bemused pause. "And your friend here is definitely collecting p.e.n.i.ses."

Collecting p.e.n.i.ses, Spence thought. It was perhaps the strangest thought of his life. Spence thought. It was perhaps the strangest thought of his life.

"Calabrice, Stephen, W. Your friend mailed Mr. Calabrice"s p.e.n.i.s to a magazine writer?"

"That"s right. A selfhelp columnist."

"Idolatry," Simmons said, still smiling vaguely at the reports. "Objects of abuse serve as objects of power to be envied-hence, the missing p.e.n.i.ses. In Calabrice"s case, your friend decided to share that object of power with another woman. More tribalism."

This was too strange. This entire conversation was too strange. What would the average person think, overhearing this? What would the average person think, overhearing this?

"She probably lives in a house, in a secluded community," Simmons continued. "She was s.e.xually abused, probably quite heinously, and probably by her father or other prominent male family figure, from a very young age. She"s obviously bipolar enough to function in public."

But Spence had considered all of this already. Preliminary deductions that any investigator would make. Simmons added: "And she has no close acquaintances. No friends."

A flash of memory. Spence"s mother. How come you don"t go out with friends, Jeffrey? How come you never go out with- How come you don"t go out with friends, Jeffrey? How come you never go out with- Spence frowned the memory away. "I"m thinking maybe she"s a prost.i.tute. Calabrice"s vehicle was ditched just off the redlight corridor."

"Maybe, maybe not," Simmons said. Finally he set down the CES prelims and looked at Spence. "We have some oddities here, most paramount of which is that she"s probably also very attractive."

"Because Calabrice was attractive?"

"Of course. And wealthy, and successful. You can"t catch quality fish without quality bait."

"Why is it an oddity?"

Simmons stroked his silverish goatee. "Most acute stage psychopaths are uniformly unattractive. The s.e.xual traumas of their childhood enforce a repugnant selfimage. But of course most psychopaths, contrary to popular belief, don"t kill people either."

"I thought we were looking for a stage sociopath," Spence said.

"No no no no," Simmons replied. He said "no" a dozen more times. "I thought your degree was in psychology, not onanism. Your friend here is uniquely psychopathic, and it was only very recently that she suffered the first major reality break of her life."

"On what do you base that?"

"The four victims. Aren"t you curious as to why she went to extremes to obstruct the potential identification of the first three victims, yet not Calabrice?"

"That"s the chief reason I came to see you," Spence said.

"Oh, and all this time I thought it was my invigorating persona. It"s rather typical in serialkiller scenarios that are psychopathically rooted, as opposed to sociopathically rooted. The first few victims are frequently discovered after later victims. No difference here. One, Two, and Three had no fingerprints, no teeth. Calabrice did. Why?"

"You"re the clinical psychiatrist."

Simmons laughed in his throat. "All psychopathies eventually a.s.sume an objective purpose in the psychopath"s mind. The initial crimes are always unformed. It is only until well after the reality break that the crimes pursue a solid focal point."

"Well then what"s the focal point?" Spence asked.

"I should think it would be obvious. It"s this magazine writer. This-" Simmons reglanced at the Calabrice summary. "-this Kathleen Shade."

They walked down to the automat, for Macke coffee. "But why?" Spence inquired. It bothered him. "Why Kathleen Shade?"

"I have no idea," Simmons answered. "I don"t know her, nor have I read her. But I suspect that"s the key-it has to be. A psychopath"s active delusions almost always cling to a physical symbol. For some reason, your friend relates to Kathleen Shade. I"d love to know exactly why."

You"re not the only one, Spence thought. "In her first correspondence, she referred to Shade as a "Great Woman."" Spence thought. "In her first correspondence, she referred to Shade as a "Great Woman.""

"Not surprising. Shade"s an idol, and you can probably count on the keystone of the idolatry as being quite subjective, or even invented. On one hand it may be something as simple as a physical resemblance; or it could be something so complex via the delusion that no sane person could grasp it... How are you handling Shade?"

"I think I summed her up pretty quick," Spence said. "She kind of strikes me as a fractured personality type. Smart, independent, but diced up from insecurities."

"And she"s trying not to show those insecurities," Simmons guessed rather than asked.

"Yeah, that"s what it looks like. So I"m playing Bad Guy with her, and it"s working. You know, the stoneface, rigid body language, deliberately rigid speech patterns, and all that. Objective rudeness; she thinks I"m a male chauvinist pig. It really p.i.s.ses her off."

"Good, good. She sounds like the type you"ll have to keep p.i.s.sed off in order for her to remain perceptive herself. She has to feel the necessity to compete with you, otherwise she won"t be of much help. And there"s probably something in Shade"s writings that have set off the idolconcept. I suggest you read everything she"s published."

Spence nodded. "I already got Research pulling it all up."

"And find out if Shade was s.e.xually abused."

"I did," Spence said. The coffee was terrible. "I ran a prelim background on her; she was abused by a family member a long time ago. The guy got busted, and she testified against him. I"ll be getting more info on that soon." Spence halfsmiled. "She thinks I guessed. I kept her antsy by using all those great kinetic and kinesthetic gestures you taught me in school. She practically thinks I read her mind."

"Good, and make her keep keep thinking that. Is she lesbian?" thinking that. Is she lesbian?"

"No. Her advice column is heteros.e.xual. And last night she spent the night with a man she just met."

"You"re a bad boy, Jeffrey. Discreetly psychoa.n.a.lyzing citizens, following them, invading their privacy."

Spence shrugged. "Hey, I"m a cop. That"s what cops do, isn"t it?"

Simmons" nose crinkled over his coffee. "You should"ve been a psychiatrist. Then you could invade people"s privacy even more."

"The killer seems to want Shade to write a book about her," Spence said, "or a story of some kind. "Would you like to do my story?" she asked Shade."

"Of course. Shade"s the key; the killer relates to her. More proof that the purpose of the delusion has solidified. That"s why she left the first three bodies in Calabrice"s car. She wanted wanted you to find them. She you to find them. She wants wants you to know what she"s doing now. Without that, the purpose has no actualization, and no meaning. And if Shade publicizes her crimes, the purpose will a.s.sume even more meaning for whatever the killer"s delusion is based upon. She thinks Shade will sympathize, will view her as a colleague. More delusion. Actually, it"s wonderful that your friend is a stage psychopath." you to know what she"s doing now. Without that, the purpose has no actualization, and no meaning. And if Shade publicizes her crimes, the purpose will a.s.sume even more meaning for whatever the killer"s delusion is based upon. She thinks Shade will sympathize, will view her as a colleague. More delusion. Actually, it"s wonderful that your friend is a stage psychopath."

"Wonderful?" Spence questioned. He couldn"t think of a word more inappropriate.

"Because unlike sociopaths, psychopaths always make mistakes," Simmons a.s.serted. "You"ll probably catch her soon, probably through some very unelaborate means."

"Unelaborate?" Spence could"ve laughed. "She manually extracted the teeth of the first three victims to prevent a dentalrecord ID. She burned up their hands and feet. And she hasn"t left a single latent, not in the car, not on any of the bodies. My guy at CES says she"s wearing double pairs of surgical gloves, for G.o.d"s sake. In other words, she"s so wellinformed about modern criminalistic procedures that she knows about the resin applications that can ID latents left through a single pair. Christ, she"s knocking these guys out with sodium amobarbital."

"Fine, fine. She"s intricate. But what you"re underrating is that she"s a chronic stage bipolar. As more time pa.s.ses, the delusional stage becomes more apparent. Psychopaths are notoriously forgetful. They have outstanding longterm memories but almost no shortterm memories. They can have human body parts going karyolytic in their bedrooms and not even be aware of it. When enough time pa.s.ses after the psychotic event, they become convinced of their delusions. They become monomanic, oblivious. They begin to think in fragments and visual splices. They hallucinate. They"ll drive to the store naked and think there"s nothing wrong with that. I had a man last year who actually buried a bag of garbage and left a body out by the curb. It doesn"t matter that they often have higher IQs than you and I. When their delusions overtake them, they become p.r.o.ne to outrageous, and even comedic, acts of stupidity." Simmons sipped his coffee and grimaced. "Don"t worry, your redhaired friend will start making mistakes. But that doesn"t mean you don"t have quite a lot to worry about in the meantime."

"What should I expect expect in the meantime?" in the meantime?"

"More bodies," Simmons said. His mouth hooked up, then he dumped his coffee in the wastebasket. "You remember your basic psychiatric terms from school. Do you remember what a nascent is?"

Spence dumped his coffee out too. "An object or ideation that causes a delusion to become real to the afflicted. Or something like that."

Simmons held up a finger. "Exactly. And Kathleen Shade is the link to the nascent." Simmons" bizarre smile seemed to radiate. "Find the nascent, Jeffrey, and you will find your psychopath."

Chapter 8.

(I).

She"s at the kitchen table.