House of Skin (6 page)

Fenn bet he would. This had all started as somewhat of a bothersome, uncomfortable meeting in a coffee shop with some female headshrinker … and what was happening now? Was he actually enjoying her company?

He was. And the fact that she was pretty in his eyes didn’t hurt either.

“I need your help with a man called Eddy Zero,” she said. “He was under my care at Coalinga.”

“The state mental hospital?”

“Yes.”

“That’s where they keep some of the very worst. Serial killers, thrill killers, sexual predators.” He shook his head. “Good God, why would a woman want to work in a zoo like that?”

“Why would a man want to work homicide?”

They shared a laugh.

“I never thought it would come to this,” she admitted. “I never thought I would actually take it upon myself to track him down.”

“And why are you?”

“Guilt, I guess. It wasn’t my decision to release him. I was just a junior member of staff there. I had very little say. But I got to know him and what I knew I didn’t like. He’s a time bomb waiting to go off. I only hope it’s not too late.” She sipped her coffee. “You see, Eddy fooled the other doctors. Literally. He was a clever liar. They thought he was safe, so they let him go.”

“But you never agreed?”

“Not at all. I spent three years at Coalinga and the entire time, my opinions were overlooked. Maybe because I was fresh out of school, maybe because I was a woman. Maybe both. I don’t know. But the thing with Eddy was the worst. I never could stop thinking about him. Finally, I quit and took a job as a prison psychiatrist.”

“Which joint?”

“Chowchilla. Central California Women’s Facility.”

Fenn wrinkled his nose. “Hell of a job, if you ask me.”

“But I was needed there. My advice was respected.”

He shrugged as if he found that hard to believe. “Are you still working there?”

“No, I quit over a year ago now. Other things to do.”

A waitress sauntered over and refilled their cups. Fenn ordered a donut.

“So you think Eddy’s here in my town?”

“He was. I hired a private investigator to find him. It wasn’t that difficult. He was living here off and on for the past two years.”

“And you know where?”

“No, not now. I stopped the investigation six months ago. It was costly.”

“What did this guy do to be put into a mental hospital in the first place?”

“I’ll get to that. Look at these first.”

She handed him an envelope. One of several on the table before her. Her hand shook. “These are the most recent photographs I have of him. They were taken two years ago. His mother gave them to me. She’s since passed on.”

Fenn looked them over. They appeared to be Christmas photos. Eddy Zero was a gaunt man with a skeletal face and haunted, dark eyes. It wasn’t the sort of face you’d forget after having seen it. Not particularly handsome, but attractive as all men who harbor tortured souls. The face of someone who had realized that his body was not a host but a prison, a machine that kept him in bondage.

Fenn almost felt as if he’d seen it before somewhere.

“Where was he living?”

She handed him a slip of paper. He looked over the addresses. They were all bad locations in a city full of them.

“You want me to check these out?”

“No, I already have. He hasn’t been to any of them in some time,” she explained. “As I said, I stopped the investigation six months ago, but I think he’s still around.”

“Why?”

“I’ll get to that.”

Fenn’s donut came, but he didn’t eat it. “I don’t want to sound rude, Doc. But just what is it you want from me?”

“I want you to look at these,” she told him, handing over a larger envelope. “Just look at them. I’m afraid they’re rather unpleasant.”

Fenn did as she asked. They were murder scene photographs. Not very pretty indeed. Taken by the police, no doubt. The lack of artistry and poor focus usually gave such things away.

“Look at them. Look at all of them.”

“Murders.”

“Yes,” she said grimly. “But not just any.”

And it was true. These were no ordinary crimes of slashing mania, the butchery here was precise, methodical. The work of a very demented, yet precise mind. The clothing and personal effects were arranged just so next to the bodies. The photos were all the same, the corpses different, but the methodology exact down to the smallest detail. The bodies had been eviscerated, the internals removed and cleansed of blood and then set alongside the cadavers in proper anatomical order and relation. The lips had been slit off, the eyes plucked free, the tongues severed. And again, whatever was removed was arranged in its proper sequence next to the body. The skin of each victim had been peeled free in a single sheet and secured to the wall with heavy pins. All the photos were duplicates of one another. It was incredible, if not somewhat ghoulish. The victims appeared to have been not so much murdered as dissected.

“Interesting,” was all Fenn would say. He was starting to get one of his headaches. “Where did you get these?”

“My P.I. got them for me. He said he had contacts in your own department.”

“My department? Are you saying these murders happened in San Francisco?”

“Yes. Some twenty years ago.”

He slid them back into the envelope. “Did our boy have anything to do with this?”

“His father.”

Fenn looked confused.

She looked in his eyes. “Did you ever hear of William Zero?”

“It’s vaguely familiar.” And it was. His temples were throbbing now.

“Are you all right?” Lisa asked.

He looked pale. “Yeah, go on.”

“He disappeared twenty years ago, but not before he butchered those people.”

Fenn looked pained. “Dr. Blood-and-Bones.”

“Then you remember him?”

Fenn did. “The veterans in homicide are still talking about him. He’s like their own personal bogeyman. I should’ve recognized that name. Zero. Christ.”

Dr. Blood-and-Bones. The name had made national headlines years back. He’d slaughtered a dozen and vanished. Books were still written about him. He carried the same sort of grisly mystique and dark legendry about him as Jack the Ripper. William Zero. Dr. Blood-and-Bones. Ah yes, he remembered him all right. But unlike the Ripper, people knew
who
the good doctor was, they just didn’t know where he was. In San Francisco, he was infamous. He’d never be forgotten. The old vets of homicide still grew pale when they spoke of him. They’d never gotten him and they’d never gotten over the fact. Fenn wasn’t acquainted with the particulars of the case, but he seemed to recall that Zero hadn’t worked alone.

“They never caught him,” she said, as if saddened. “The police moved in on him mere hours after he’d disappeared.”

“Tipped off?”

“We’ll never know. He had two accomplices, it was discovered. One was named Grimes. He killed himself. The other—Stadtler—alluded capture. He was never caught. Yet, it’s Zero everyone remembers, not these other two. And it’s Zero I’m concerned with.”

Fenn dug aspirins out of his coat and chewed them with a ferocity. The pain in his head was almost unendurable today. It got that way some days.

“I interviewed Zero’s wife several times before her death,” Lisa went on. “She knew nothing of what he was doing. His own father left them well provided for and William Zero never had to work as such. She knew he was an artist, even though he had graduate degrees in philosophy and medicine, a doctorate in medical anatomy. He had a studio at their old house in Pacific Heights, she said, and he’d lock himself in there with his books and paints all day long. At night, he’d go out and walk … or so he said.” There was something like fear in her eyes. “She figured his nightly jaunts were just part of the artistic temperament. Even when they became nightly, rather than weekly, she never suspected. She knew nothing of Grimes and Stadtler. He was no husband to her, she told me. And had very little to do with Eddy. He was a loner, but she never suspected she was sharing the same house with a monster. I knew her, Mr. Fenn. Just for a short time and she looked … haunted.”

“I can believe that. But what does this have to do with Eddy?”

“Apparently, Eddy was fascinated with him. She hated it. She kept a collection of newspapers articles in a scrapbook. Articles about his father and his crimes. She would show them to Eddy, hoping he’d develop a hatred and fear of his father. But the opposite occurred. He worshipped the man.”

Fenn nodded. It made sense. “And you think Eddy may attempt to recreate his father’s horrors?”

“I’m sure of it. He’s had a history of mental disturbance since his teenage years. Random acts of violence and cruelty. Assault, rape, attempted murder. He spent five years at Coalinga for blinding a man with a knife and stabbing his wife repeatedly. Luckily, both survived.”

“He’s dangerous,” Fenn said.

“Exactly. Yet, my superiors released him. He pretended to be cured of his excesses. He’s a talented liar as all psychopaths are. But he told me things he never told them, wouldn’t tell them. He admires his father, Mr. Fenn. He wants to be like him, out-do him if he can.”

Fenn butted his cigarette and shook his head. “This is mind boggling. And you believe it?”

“Yes. Absolutely. His mother believed it, too. Her greatest fear was that he’d return home and kill her.”

“Jesus.”

Lisa sighed. “I know how strange this must be, me coming to you with this. But I didn’t know what else to do. If he plans to recreate his father’s crimes, then I think it will be here, in the very city where his father did them.”

“Well, you’ve convinced me. I look into it. I’ll see if we can find him, nail him on something.”

“I know it must seem like I’m trying to be some holy crusader, taking it upon myself to stop him. But my reasons aren’t quite saintly, Mr. Fenn. Yes, I want him stopped, but I’d also love to do a book on him. He’s a pure psychopath and from a medical point of view, that’s fascinating to me.”

Fenn smiled. “If all you wanted was a book out of this, Doc, you’d have gone at it alone with your P.I.”

“Maybe.”

He sighed, his teeth locked together from the pain in his head. “I’m going to do some checking. We have a few unsolved murders on the books. I’ll do some cross-referencing and let you know what I find out.”

“Thanks for listening.”

He nodded. “I’d better be on my way.”

He made a hasty exit and bolted out to his car. The throbbing in his head was lessening, but not by much. He had to get home and under the covers. Only complete darkness and silence seemed to help.

* * *

Of course, Fenn was no fool.

He didn’t entirely believe all that Dr. Lisa Lochmere told him.

After his headache had fled and he was able to think again, he decided to do some checking. The best person to talk with was her private investigator. His name was Soames and he was no easy man to find. His offices were closed and his apartment locked. Fenn asked questions, but he got no good answers. People were paranoid of cops and Soames’ whereabouts, they decided, were none of his damn business. The most he got was an admission from a neighbor that he “was ill”. It wasn’t much to go on, but after carefully checking the city hospitals, he found Soames, all right.

He was confined in the psychiatric wing of San Francisco General.

“I’m afraid he won’t be much use to you, Lieutenant,” Dr. Luce, the attending physician told Fenn. “Mr. Soames has pretty much been a regular here for the past four or five months.”

“Why? If I might ask.”

“He’s suicidal. He entertains what might be called “black periods” from time to time. He’s interested only in destroying himself when they come about.”

“Will he be released anytime soon?”

“No, he needs intensive therapy,” Luce said. “He’s tried to kill himself some five times in the past months and he’ll have to be committed for his own protection. At least for the time being. It’s tragic. He has no history of disturbance that we know of. Tragic.”

It was, Fenn thought, the idea that insanity can take one so suddenly, without warning.

“Can I see him? I won’t upset him. Just a few simple questions.”

“Well …”

“I just have to verify that he was working for a certain somebody.”

Luce shrugged. “I’m afraid he’s under sedation. He’s conscious, but as to the validity of his answers …”

“Please. Just five minutes.”

“All right. No more, though.”

Luce led him through the wing and into a ward that was kept locked. The nurse on duty looked to be no more than thirty, but her eyes were those of someone twice that age. Soames was lying on a bed, restrained, his wrists bandaged from his latest suicide attempt. Luce left them alone.

“How are you?” Fenn asked. It was hard to screw up compassion for the man in this dreary and bleak place, but he was trying.

“Did you bring my cigarettes?” Soames asked as if Fenn were an old and trusted provider.

“No. I forgot them.”

“Damn.”

There were maybe twenty beds in the ward. Half of them were occupied. Most of the patients were sleeping off medications and reality. A few were awake. An elderly man without teeth was whistling nursery rhymes and winding invisible string around his index finger. When he was finished, he’d pull it free and start winding anew. Another was looking around the ward with blank eyes and spelling everything he saw. “Wall,” he said. “W-a-l-l. Floor. F-l-o-o-r. Window. W-i-n-d-o-w.” It went on and on seemingly without end.

“I wanted to ask you a couple of questions,” Fenn said. “If you feel up to it.”

“Questions?” he repeated. He looked confused and wizened, well beyond his true age of 55.

“Yes. If that’s okay.”

Soames shrugged, not caring one way or the other. “I’m a dead man,” he said. “Why won’t they let me die?”

“You’ll be okay,” Fenn reassured him. “You just need a good rest.”

“Rest?”

“Sure, that’s all. You’ll be right as rain in no time.”

“The doctor will kill me if she doesn’t do it first.”

“Oh … which doctor?”

“The
doctor. He knows I’ve been poking around.”

This seemed pointless, but Fenn kept on. “The doctors only have your health in mind. They want you to be well.”