And suddenly, I thought of what El Médico had said to Richie.
You shouldn’t have seen my face. It wasn’t ready.
I reflected on the process I had developed with faces. Breaking them into planes and quadrants. Of what had been familiar to me when I’d seen the picture at Natalie Kastner’s house. The dimpled chin and nose.
Natalie Kastner had dug into her past. Identified something, but she didn’t know what.
More lightning. I moved toward the glowing blue item.
One one-thousand.
The story Natalie had told of Freddie’s childhood best friend.
Two one-thousand.
The same man he’d run into at the ATM. The person who’d shot him.
Three one-thousand.
Was this friend related to someone well known? The heir to a hotel chain?
Four one-thousand.
Perhaps Freddie’s friend was right. Perhaps hewasthe progeny of some backroom affair: a rich local and a restaurant waitress.
Thunder nearly shook the house, the rain lashing sideways against the windows.
I moved closer to the blue jar.
The victims had all been petite in frame, but with husky faces, and now I knew why. He wanted women he could overpower, but with more masculine facial features. I also knew why the bodies had not been blitz attacked. He didn’t want them bruised.
I pictured xylazine being injected. How the muscles would become soft. The body loose. Perhaps then El Médico lifted the womenonto his lap. Pulled them onto his own body, a mirror positioned in front of the pair, the incapacitated victim laid atop him.
Cut you, he’d threatened Amber Isiah.
I imagined the victims, unable to move. And El Médico with his dirty veterinary tools. The women draped atop him. How he’d control his breathing. Take the knife and begin cutting into their faces, pulling their skin taut. Watching and learning as the human body reacted. Adding fillers to plump the skin outward. And unknowingly scraping at the bone below, as he had done with a number ten scalpel on Araceli Alvarez.
All to practice.
All to be ready for therealsurgeries.
Lightning flashed through the house, and I imagined what El Médico had done next. After these practice sessions.
He’d taken a surgical knife and cut into his own face.
Remodeling himself step-by-step into someone different.
And that’s when I understood everything about the case.
The thunder was deafening, a mile out from the beach at most. I moved closer to the marble pedestal.
Lightning came once again, and the place lit up like daylight.
On the table was a large jar, filled with some blue solution.
Inside it?
The face of Edward Burrows—cut clean off his skull by the man I now surmised was his half brother, known to us as Donnie Dom or El Médico.
