“Keep going, Mr Fossie.”

“I heard Hampton call for Patti and I hid in the gym, figuring they’d go upstairs and knock out a quick fuck and I could leave. I heard talk, then angry talk, then it turned real bad: Patti yelling and breaking things. Hampton was yelling, too, like with Richard gone he was telling her how it really was. Then I heard the…” he blew out a long breath.

“Boom,” I finished.

“Hampton started screaming like nothing I’ve ever heard. It was like he was being eaten alive. I was too terrified to move.”

Fossie made a noise like a deflating cushion. I looked at Harry, then at the closed door at the top of the stairs.

Harry said, “You want to wait for a team?”

“Miz Scaler and I have a history,” I said. “Watch my back.”

I climbed the stairs, stood to the side of the door. Knocked gently. “Mrs Scaler? Patricia? It’s Detective Ryder.”

“It’s not a good time, sir.” Her voice sounded distracted, as if she was nearing deadline on a project and I was interrupting.

“I need to come in, ma’am. Are you decent?”

“I’m a beautiful and desirous woman.”

“Yes, ma’am. You’re a lovely woman. May I come in?”

“Oh, I suppose.”

I said, “You don’t have a gun or anything, do you?”

“I put it back in the locker. I was finished with it.”

I took a deep breath and pushed open the door to see Patricia Scaler’s slender back across the wide room. She was looking out the window, framed in light, her black spaghetti-strap dress cut low and hemmed high. It was an amazing body for a woman nearing fifty. She wore sling-back high heels. Scarlet smudges had followed her across the carpet.

I moved closer. Her hands were touching at her face.

“Ma’am? Are you all right?”

She made a mewing sound and I advanced another few steps, eyes adjusting to the light. Her hand was at her face, elbow jerking back and forth, like a fiddler.

Or a butcher cutting meat.

She turned and stopped my heart. The right side of her face was missing. She threw something my way. It landed on the carpet at my feet. A rag of severed flesh.

“I won’t be needing that any more,” she said, her open teeth and gums glistening with blood, one eye revealed almost fully. “I’m getting a new one.”

She started to laugh, a wet sound.

Tom Mason rolled up at the scene. He’d been working the political side, keeping the brass clued in, getting timelines down. Mrs Scaler had been transported to the hospital forty minutes ago. There were no flashing lights on the vehicles out front, kept to a minimum while things were being sorted out.

Tom held his hat low in respect as the senator’s body was rolled out the door on a gurney. He turned back to us.

“The senator’s aides say he received a call two hours back, looked frightened, jumped in his car.”

“How’s Mrs Scaler?” I asked. “Have you heard?”

Tom shot a glance at his watch. “Sedated. She was screaming when she arrived at the hospital, trying to tear the rest of her face off. A shrink at the hospital thinks she’s gone fully round the bend.”

“She’s always been at the turn in the bend, Tom,” I said, unable to shake the image of Patti Scaler turning to me with half a face. “Today she had the current behind her.”

Tom shot a look at the techs, busy photo-graphing and cataloging the bizarre scene. He took my elbow and pulled me to a corner.

“What’s behind all this, Carson? Scaler. Tutweiler. Meltzer. A US senator, for crying out loud. What’s going on?”

I could only offer my shaking head as an answer.

“I have no idea, Tom. We’re sure it started in the way-back. Unfortunately, we may have run out of people who can tell us anything.”

Tom sighed, nodded, walked over to Clair. She was directing her tech staff, displaying her typical calm in the middle of chaos. Watching Clair’s serene command I felt a convergence of emotions, then a sense of relaxation; strange feelings to have arise in that troubled house.

“Hello?” said a voice from behind me.

I turned to the open front door and saw a small man in his sixties, suited, his sharp face like an anxious hawk. A neighbor, I thought, drawn by the commotion.

“Yes, sir?” I said.

“I wanted to speak to Richard Scaler. I work for him.”

The man looked guileless, as if he really expected the Reverend. I said, “You haven’t been watching the news, I take it?”

“I’ve been out of the country. Often in isolated places. I’m not big on news anyway.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“My name is Dr Kurt Matthias. I’ve been doing research for Reverend Scaler.”

I saw a name scrawled on a property transfer. Kurt…Not Matthews, Masters, Mathers… Matthias. Was this also the man who’d swabbed the Q-tip through Shanelle’s mouth?

My heart started beating hard against my ribs. I gestured for him to step over the threshold, enter.

I said, “What’s your connection to a house below Coden, Doctor? A place near the Gulf in an abandoned shrimping village. There is a connection, right?”

A sharp frown. “Excuse me, but how do you know about –”

“Please answer my question, sir.”

“I used the Reverend’s money to purchase the property. I needed an isolated place to house a young couple and their child until finding better accommodations in the city.”

Dr Matthias’s eyes strayed to the threshold of the study, saw the dark swashes of red.

“Something terrible has happened, hasn’t it?” he said.

Chapter 47

Harry and I took Matthias to a sunroom at the back of the house, far from the din of the investigation. It was bright and cheerful and at odds with everything the house had come to represent. We told Matthias we suspected his young couple – Anak and Rebecca – were dead, but were clinging to hope that the child had survived.

The news hit him like a falling wall. Matthias needed several moments to gather himself, seeming to drag his emotions into a box, storing them for later. He switched into a scientific mode, calm and clinical. He sat in a chair beside a potted fern, tented his fingers beneath his lips, and frowned.

I said, “The residents of that house, Doctor…what was so special about them?”

“Anak and Rebecca? They were simply two young people who, by nothing more than chance, carried a wide variety of genetic material from around the world.”

“What were you using them for?” Harry said.

“Study. Trying to advance a theory.”

“Some people think you were playing God,” I said. “Breeding people. Creating Frankensteins. What’s your answer to that?”

Matthias looked at me like I had started clucking like a chicken.

“Breeding? Playing God? Making Frankensteins? My God, man, what are you talking about?”

“Cloning a new race,” I said, stealing from Spider’s addled jargon. “Creating super-humans.”

Matthias closed his eyes and his face fell into his hands. He muttered about ignorance. He stood wearily, his shoulders slumped, and turned to Harry.

“You know people with sickle-cell anemia, Detective. Is that not so?”

“I do.”

“All are of African-American descent, right?”

Harry nodded.

“People of Jewish descent are prone to Tay-Sachs disease. Many Asians have difficulty digesting milk. Some populations have long life spans. Others are prone to schizophrenia. Some resist cardiomyopathy better than others. Every disparate population has a multiplicity of positive and negative genetic dispositions. I’m talking statistics, here. The actual differences are miniscule.”

Harry said, “What’s this have to do with…”

“Hear me out. What would happen if you ate little more than fatty meat, with vegetables almost unheard-of in your diet?”

“My arteries would clog and I’d tip over dead.”