Frankenstein: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Dean Koontz

police tape.

      “Doesn’t look like the same crowd you see at the opera,” Michael said as he and Carson shouldered through the gawkers on the sidewalk and the jogging path. “Or at monster-truck rallies, for that matter.”

      In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this area had been a popular place for hot-blooded Creoles to engage in duels. They met after sunset, by moonlight, and clashed with thin swords until blood was drawn.

      These days, the park remained open at night, but the combatants were not equally armed and matched, as in the old days. Predators stalked prey and felt confident of escaping punishment in this age when civilization seemed to be unraveling.

      Now uniformed cops held back the ghouls, any one of whom might have been the killer returned to revel in the aftermath of murder. Behind them, yellow crime-scene tape had been strung like Mardi Gras streamers from oak tree to oak tree, blocking off a section of the running path beside the lagoon.

      Michael and Carson were known to many of the attending officers and CSI techs: liked by some, envied by others, loathed by a few.

      She had been the youngest ever to make detective, Michael the second youngest. You paid a price for taking a fast track.

      You paid a price for your style, too, if it wasn’t traditional. And with some of the cynical marking-time-till-pension types, you paid a price if you worked as if you believed that the job was important and that justice mattered.

      Just past the yellow tape, Carson stopped and surveyed the scene.

      A female corpse floated facedown in the scummy water. Her blond hair fanned out like a nimbus, radiant where tree-filtered Louisiana sunlight dappled it.

      Because the sleeves of her dress trapped air, the dead woman’s arms floated in full sight, too. They ended in stumps.

      “New Orleans,” Michael said, quoting a current tourist bureau come-on, “the romance of the bayou.”

      Waiting for instruction, the CSI techs had not yet entered the scene. They had followed Carson and stood now just the other side of the marked perimeter.

      As the investigating detectives, Carson and Michael had to formulate a systematic plan: determine the proper geometry of the search, the subjects and angles of photographs, possible sources of clues.…

      In this matter, Michael usually deferred to Carson because she had an intuition that, just to annoy her, he called witchy vision.

      To the nearest uniform on the crime line, Carson said, “Who was the responding officer?”

      “Ned Lohman.”

      “Where is he?”

      “Over there behind those trees.”

      “Why the hell’s he tramping the scene?” she demanded.

      As if in answer, Lohman appeared from behind the oaks with two homicide detectives, older models, Jonathan Harker and Dwight Frye.

      “Dork and Dink,” Michael groaned.

      Although too far away to have heard, Harker glowered at them. Frye waved.

      “This blows,” Carson said.

      “Big time,” Michael agreed.

      She didn’t bluster into the scene but waited for the detectives to come to her.

      How nice it would have been to shoot the bastards in the knees to spare the site from their blundering. So much more satisfying than a shout or a warning shot.

      By the time Harker and Frye reached her, both were smiling and smug.

      Ned Lohman, the uniformed officer, had the good sense to avoid her eyes.

      Carson held her temper. “This is our baby, let us burp it.”

      “We were in the area,” Frye said, “caught the call.”

      “Chased the call,” Carson suggested.

      Frye was a beefy man with an oily look, as if his surname came not from family lineage but from his preferred method of preparing every food he ate.

      “O’Connor,” he said, “you’re the first Irish person I’ve ever known who wasn’t fun to be around.”

      In a situation like this, which had grown from one bizarre homicide to six killings in a matter of weeks, Carson and her partner would not be the only ones in the department assigned to research particular aspects of the case.

      They had caught the first murder, however, and therefore had proprietary interest in associated homicides if and until the killer piled up enough victims to force the establishment of an emergency task force. And at that point, she and Michael would most likely be designated to head that undertaking.

      Harker tended to burn easily – from sunshine, from envy, from imagined slights to his competence, from just about anything. The Southern sun had bleached his blond hair nearly white; it lent his face a perpetually parboiled look.

      His eyes, as blue as a gas flame, as hard as gemstones, revealed the truth of him that he attempted to disguise with a soft smile. “We needed to move fast, before evidence was lost. In this climate, bodies decompose quickly.”

      “Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself,” Michael said. “With a gym membership and a little determination, you’ll be looking good again.”

      Carson drew Ned Lohman aside. Michael joined them as she took out her notebook and said, “Gimme the TPO from your involvement.”

      “Listen, Detectives, I know you’re the whips on this. I told Frye and Harker as much, but they have rank.”

      “Not your fault,” she assured him. “I should know by now that vultures always get to dead meat first. Let’s start with the time.”

      He checked his watch. “Call came in at seven forty-two, which makes it thirty-eight minutes ago. Jogger saw the body, called it in. When I showed up, the guy was standing here running in place to keep his heart rate up.”

      In recent years, runners with cell phones had found more bodies than any other class of citizens.

      “As for place,” Officer Lohman continued, “the body’s just where the jogger found it. He made no rescue attempt.”

      “The severed hands,” Michael suggested, “were probably a clue that CPR wouldn’t be effective.”

      “The vic is blond, maybe not natural, probably Caucasian. You have any other observations about her?” Carson asked Lohman.

      “No. I didn’t go near her either, didn’t contaminate anything, if that’s what you’re trying to find out. Haven’t seen the face yet, so I can’t guess the age.”

      “Time, place – what about occurrence?” she asked Lohman. “Your first impression was …?”

      “Murder. She didn’t cut her hands off herself.”

      “Maybe one,” Michael agreed, “but not both.”

       CHAPTER 5

      THE STREETS OF NEW ORLEANS teemed with possibilities: women of every description. A few were beautiful, but even the most alluring were lacking in one way or another.

      During his years of searching, Roy Pribeaux had yet to encounter one woman who met his standards in every regard.

      He was proud of being a perfectionist. If he had been God, the world would have been a more ordered, less messy place.

      Under Roy Almighty, there would have been no ugly or plain people. No mold. No cockroaches or even mosquitoes. Nothing that smelled bad.

      Under a blue sky that he could not have improved upon, but in cloying humidity he would not have allowed,