Save the girls, Johnny ...
Johnny is a bad boy. Peeping Johnny likes to peep like a peeping Tommy ... a very bad boy, Johnny, to look at the good girls, to want the girl ... we need to scrub Johnny ...
His breathing becomes shallow. His vision narrows. His heart races so fast he’s going dizzy. He lurches up, knocking over the kitchen chair as he hurries to the bathroom to find the exfoliation mitt. Slipping it onto his hand, he unzips his pants and takes himself into his mitted fist. He watches his eyes in the bathroom mirror. Photos of naked Gracie are taped down the sides of the glass. He begins to work the coarse mitt up and down, up and down, in time to Her words, harder, harder, faster, the pain growing into an unbearable pleasure ...scrub, scrub, scrub ... clean Johnny ...his eyes are watering with pain, with pleasure. Braided together.Scrub, scrub, scrub it raw ...his vision blurs into scarlet ...
CHAPTER 14
“Bad timing?” said the cherub-cheeked woman with the snack trolley.
Maddocks cleared his throat and caught Doc O’Hagan’s eyes. The unspoken subtext—the echoes of the so-called “Cemetery Girl” case—simmered heavily in the dead air between them all. The doc looked up at the clock, clicked off her mike.
“This one’s going to take a while,” she said. “Shall we break before we open her up, gentlemen? Resume in, say, forty-five?”
“That’s probably a good idea,” Maddocks said quietly, checking his own watch, adrenaline fizzing hot through his veins. “I need to loop Buziak in. Leo, see if you can get anyone to pull some extra hours working the databases for a possible match to the Medusa ink on our DB. There’s a chance something like that could be in the system.”
And Jack-O was still in his vehicle. He desperately needed to find the animal a sitter while he worked this case. The one he’d arranged for when he was due to start work had fallen through.
“What you got there for sandwiches, Hannah?” O’Hagan said to the food trolley woman as she snapped off and trashed her gloves, then turned on the tap in the sink to wash her hands. Water drummed against steel.
“A chicken mayo, a couple of turkey salami and cheese, all on white. And a vegetarian, gluten-free hummus wrap. Sorry, that’s all that’s left.”
“Always the morgue for last, eh? Dregs,” the doc said, drying her hands. “Bottom of the barrel in the basement.”
“Hey, it’s hospital food. You say you hate it, anyway.”
“I do. Just don’t find the time to ever get out of here.”
“Want me to put it on the counter?” Hannah said, holding up a wrapped sandwich.
“Thanks, and a coffee—cream, two sugars. And a Snickers bar—got Snickers?”
Leo, who was using his cell to quickly snap some photos of the Medusa tattoo to send back to the station, crooked up his brow. “Plenty of calories in them Snickers, Doc.”
“Long night ahead. This job is physical, especially when you start wielding the saw.”
“How about you guys?” the food woman said. “Want anything, detectives?”
Maddocks hesitated at the trolley. “Ah, yeah. I’ll take that turkey salami.”
She handed him a wrapped sandwich. “On the house,” she said. “Would go to waste anyway. How ’bout you, Detective Leo?”
“No,” Leo said quickly, his complexion looking a little green as he pocketed his phone and passed the trolley on his way to the exit. “I’ll snag something hot from the cafeteria upstairs.” The automatic doors hissed open, and Maddocks and Leo departed the morgue.
“How the fuck can she eat in there?” Leo said.
“Let me know if you get a hit on the ink,” Maddocks said as he turned to head down the length of the sterile basement corridor toward a fire escape. Fluorescent lights flickered. Air conditioners and other machinery hummed in the bowels of the hospital.
“Where are you going?” Leo called after him.
“Stairs. Got to give my dog a bathroom break. I’ll call Buziak from the parking lot.”
“You got a dog? In your car?”
Maddocks ignored him and pushed through the fire escape doors. He climbed the stairs two at a time instead of using the elevator, needing to work his muscles and get the cloying scent of death pumping out of his lungs. He shoved out of the hospital doors into brittle air. The sleet had stopped, and Maddocks drank the fresh oxygen down into his lungs as he strode for his Chevy Impala.
He beeped the lock, opened the door, and peered in. Jack-O lifted his grizzled little head.
“Hey there, old man,” Maddocks said, reaching in and ruffling Jack-O’s coat. “Com’ere. Let’s get you outside.” He hooked the dog’s lead onto the collar, and he lifted the animal down into the crystalline slush covering the ground.
