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“You say tool marks, not blade marks. Most people assume it takes a blade to skin someone.”

“Anything that holds an edge can do it,” I said, “though it’s slower and usually messier. This is strangely clean.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “Yes, that’s a good phrase for it. As horrible as it is, it’s still very neatly done, except for the extra tissue that was removed. That was not neatly done, but brutally done.”

“Almost like we have two different . . .” I kept wanting to say killers, but these people were still alive. “Perpetrators,” I said finally.

“What do you mean?”

“Cutting up a body with a dull tool that isn’t strong enough to tear through bone, then pulling a person apart with bare hands is something more in the line of a disorganized serial killer. The careful skinning is something an organized serial killer might do. Why go to the trouble of carefully skinning the face and groin, then pulling off the pieces? It’s either two different mutilators, or it’s two different personalities.”

“A multiple personality?” He made it a question.

“Not exactly, but not all serial killers are so easy to put in one category or another. Some organized criminals have moments of savagery that resemble the disorganized killer, and some organized minds become more disorganized as they escalate their killing. The same isn’t true of a disorganized killer. There aren’t enough brownies in the pan for them to ape organized methods.”

“So either an organized killer with savage moments of disorganization, or. . . or what?” The good doctor was talking very reasonably to me, not angry anymore. I’d either impressed him or at least hadn’t disappointed him. Not yet, anyway.

“It could be a pair of killers, an organized killer being the brains of the operation and the disorganized being the follower. It’s not that unusual to find killers working in tandem.”

“Like the Hillside Strangler or rather Stranglers,” he said.

I smiled behind the mask. “There have been a lot more cases than just that one where we had two killers. Sometimes it’s two men. Sometimes it’s a man and a woman. In that case the man is the dominant personality. Or at least in every case I’ve ever heard of, except one. Either way one is dominant and the other is to a lesser or greater degree in the control of the other. It can be a near complete domination so that the other person is unable to say no, or it can be more of a partnership. But even in more equal relationships one person is primarily dominant while the other is the follower.”

“And you’re sure it’s a serial mutilator?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“The serial mutilator idea is the most normal solution I can come up with, but I’m a preternatural expert, Doctor Evans. I’m rarely called in when the answer wears a human face, no matter how monstrous. Someone thinks this wasn’t done by human hands, or I wouldn’t be here.”

“The FBI agent seemed very sure,” Doctor Evans said.

I looked at him. “Have I just wasted both our times here? Did the Feds come in and say pretty much what I just said?”

“Pretty much,” he said.

“Then you don’t need me.”

“The FBI is convinced that it’s a serial mutilator, a person.”

“Sometimes the Feds can be very sure of themselves, and once they’ve committed themselves, they don’t like to be wrong. Policemen in general can be like that. It is usually the easy answer when it comes to crime. If a husband dies, the wife probably did do it. Cops aren’t encouraged to complicate a case. They’re encouraged to simplify it.”

“Why aren’t you taking the simple solution?” he asked.

“Several reasons. One, if it was a serial anything, a human, I’d think the police, Feds, whatever would have some clues by now. The level of fear and uncertainty among the men is too high. If they had a clue to what was happening, they’d be less panicked. Two, I don’t have a superior to report to. No one’s going to slap my hand or demote me in rank if I guess and I’m wrong. My job and income don’t depend on pleasing anyone but myself.”

“You do have a boss