Twelve O'Clock Tales by Felice Picano

Author:Felice Picano [Picano, Felice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781602826991
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
Published: 2012-02-20T05:00:00+00:00

*

They were safe for six months and one week and five days, it turned out, before they found Dr. Sharik Deming. But this time, they’d at least mollified the Powers That Be at One Police Plaza by predicting when the next vic would be found, if not who he would be or by whose hand he would be done in. It was a little, but it was something.

Like the others, Dr. Deming had been genitally mutilated and something very particular done with the spare body parts. This was the serial’s signature.

Unlike the seven other cases, I happened to be out playing pinochle with Det. McGraghiu when he was called to the scene, and he dragged me along. I protested mightily.

He relied, “You’re on the goddamn payroll with all the other kooks and wackos! You’re coming along. Who knows what kind of shit you’ll uncover.”

“I use computers. Slide rules. I’m not a psychic.”

He pushed me into the passenger seat of his Crown Vic, slammed the door, which self-locked, and off we went. The apartment building was one of the big old beauties just after Vine becomes Rossmore Avenue, and where working-class, nuts-and-bolts Hollywood segues dramatically into Hancock Park. Twenties or thirties vintage. Big rooms with high ceilings and triple crown moldings. Amazing views. A lobby the size and décor of your average older cinema: classic-era movie star ateliers. Dr. Deming’s office was a secondary one, clearly, for at home, maybe even emergency, consultations. Lots of diplomas on the wall. Specializations in Surgery and Ob-Gyn were prominent among them.

Very few medical instruments were around, although whatever was present had been utilized and/or purposely left by Our Favorite Serial. Who had apparently brought his own hypodermic setup—showing his usual careful selection of the vic, then preparation and preplanning. The needle, as usual, was left for the LAPD to find and was seen to contain a milky fluid, which several people sniffed and guessed at from previous scenes and which Toxicology would later confirm to be just enough of a very strong animal tranquilizer to not knock him out but instead strongly stun him, make him fuzzy as hell, and probably also paralyze him.

“And?” I added, “Also dull the pain?”

“He probably wouldn’t have felt that much pain,” the on-the-spot M.E. said, “once it kicked in, which looks early on in the evening,” reporting this to us as we arrived. The examiner proceeded to give the time and other elements of the death to Det. McGraghiu.

“What?” Mac asked, looking at me.

“You said the serial has rage. Why does he stun them so they don’t feel pain?” I asked. “If it was rage, he’d make sure they’d feel every iota of pain! No?”

Det. Alvarez: “I kinda wondered about that myself.”

“Take a look at what he does, and you tell me it isn’t rage?” Mac said, and dragged me inside.

Now to be honest, up till then, I’d seen maybe three dead bodies in my life, and never on purpose. Two of them old people when I was a kid.

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