Here, the dead sleep.

Here are treasures, seen and unseen.

Here is temptation.

And here is evil.

CHAPTER NINE

The windows in the room were covered with sheets of metal riveted to the walls, preventing any natural light from entering. There were pieces of bone on a workbench: ribs, a radius and ulnae, sections of skull. A smell of urine added a sharp, unpleasant character to the stale air in the room. Beneath the bench were four or five wooden packing crates containing straw and paper. Against the far wall, to the right of the blacked-out windows, was a console table. At each end rested more skulls, all missing their lower jaw, with what appeared to be a bone from the upper arm clasped beneath the upper mandible. A hole had been made in the tops of the skulls, into which candles had been inserted. They flickered, illuminating the figure that hovered behind them.

It was black, about two feet in height, and appeared to be made from a combination of human and animal remains. The wing of a large bird had been carefully stripped of its skin and feathers, and the bones skillfully fixed in place so that the wing stood outstretched, as though the creature to which it belonged were about to take flight. The wing was fixed to a section of spine from which a small rib cage also curled. It might have belonged to a child or a monkey, but I couldn’t tell which. To the left of the spine there was, instead of a second wing, a skeletal arm, with all of the bones in place, down to the tiny fingers. The arm was raised, the fingers grasping. They ended in small sharp nails. The right leg looked like the back leg of a cat or dog, judging by the angle of the joint. The left was clearly closer to that of a human, but was unfinished, the wire frame visible from the ankle down.

The fusion of animal and man was clearest, though, in the head, which was slightly out of proportion to the rest of the figure. Whoever had crafted it possessed an artistry to match his disturbed vision. A multiplicity of different creatures had been used to create it, and I had to look closely to find the lines where one ended and another began: half of a primate’s jaw was carefully attached to that of a child, while the upper part of the facial area between jaws and forehead had been formed using sections of white bone and bird heads. Finally, horns emerged from the top of a human skull, one barely visible and resembling the node on the head of an immature deer, the other ramlike and curling around the back of the skull, almost touching the statue’s small clavicle.

“If this guy is subletting, he’s in a shitload of trouble,” said Angel.

Louis was examining one of the skulls upon the workbench, his face barely inches from its empty sockets.

“They look old,” I said, answering a question that had not been asked.

He nodded, then left the room. I heard him moving boxes around, searching for some clue as to the whereabouts of Alice.

I followed the smell of urine to the bathroom. The tub contained more bones, all soaking in yellow liquid. The stink of ammonia made my eyes water. I made a cursory search of the cabinets, a handkerchief pressed to my nose and mouth, then closed the door behind me. Angel was still examining the bone statue, apparently fascinated by it. I wasn’t surprised. The creation looked like it belonged in an art gallery or a museum. It was repugnant, but breathtaking in its artistry and in the fluidity with which one creature’s remains flowed into the next.

“I just can’t figure out what the hell this is supposed to be,” he asked. “It looks like a man changing into a bird, or a bird changing into a man.”

“You see a lot of birds with horns?” I said.

Angel reached out a finger to touch the protuberances on the skull, then thought better of it.

“I guess it’s not a bird, then.”

“I guess not.”

I took a piece of newspaper from the floor and used it to lift one of the skull candlesticks from the table, then shined my mini Maglite inside. There were serial numbers of some kind etched into the bone. I examined the others and all had similar markings, except for one that was adorned with the symbol of a two-pronged fork and rested on a pelvic bone. I took one of the numbered skulls and placed it in a tea chest, then carefully added the forked skull and the statue. I took the box into the next room, where Louis was kneeling on the floor. Before him stood an open suitcase. It contained tools, among them scalpels, files, and small bone saws, all carefully packed away in canvas pockets, and a pair of videocassettes. Each was labeled along the side with a long line of initials, and dates.

“He was getting ready to leave,” said Louis.

“Looks like it.”

He gestured at the chest in my hands.

“You found something?”

“Maybe. There are marks on these skulls. I’d like someone to take a look at them, perhaps at the statue too.”

Louis removed one of the cassettes from the case, placed it in the VCR, then turned on the TV. There was nothing to be seen for a time except static, then the picture cleared. It showed an area of yellow sand and stone, across which the camera panned jerkily before coming to rest upon the partially clothed body of a young woman. She lay facedown upon the ground, and there was blood upon her back, her legs, and the once-white shorts that she wore. Her dark hair was spread across the sand like tendrils of ink in dirty water.

The young woman stirred. A male voice spoke in what sounded like Spanish.

“I think he said that she’s still alive,” said Louis.

A figure appeared in front of the camera. The cameraman moved slightly to get a better shot. A pair of expensive black boots came into view.

“No,” said another voice, in English.

The camera was pushed away, preventing it from getting a clear view of the man or the girl. It picked up a sound like a coconut cracking. Someone laughed. The cameraman recovered himself and focused once again on the girl. There was blood flowing across the sand around her head.

“Puta.” It was the first voice again.

Whore.

The tape went blank for a moment, then resumed. This time, the girl had yellow highlights in her dark hair, but the surroundings were similar: sand and rocks. A bug stalked across a smear of blood close by her mouth, the only part of her face that was visible beneath her hair. A hand reached out, sweeping the hair back so that the cameraman could get a better view of her, then that section ended, and a new one began, with another dead girl, this one naked on a rock.

Louis fast-forwarded the tape. I lost track of the number of women. When he was done, he inserted the second cassette and did the same. Once or twice, a girl with darker skin appeared, and he stopped the image, examining it closely before moving on. All of the women were Hispanic.

“I’m going to call the cops,” I told him.

“Not yet. This guy ain’t gonna leave this shit here for just anyone to find. He’ll come back for it, and soon. If you’re right about being watched in the alley, then whoever lives here could be outside right now. I say we wait.”

I thought about what I was going to say to him before I opened my mouth. Rachel, had she been present to witness it, might have considered this progress on my part.

“Louis, we don’t have time to wait around. The cops can do surveillance better than we can. This guy is a link, but maybe we can pick up the chain farther on. The longer we stay still, the more the chances diminish of finding Alice before something bad happens to her.”

I’ve seen people, even experienced cops, fall into the trap of using the past tense when talking about a missing person. That’s why, sometimes, it pays to work out in your head what you’re planning to say before the words start spilling out of your mouth.