Body Parts by Vicki Stiefel

Author:Vicki Stiefel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Afterworld Publishing

* * *

I sulked, got over it as I soaked in the tub. How to sort out my feeling for Jake?

That I didn’t know. But by the time I pulled the plug, I realized I’d better talk to my former professor, Dr. Barbara Beliskowitz, a forensic psychiatrist. I might be decent at analyzing people with aberrant behaviors, but Barbara was the best of the best.

“Come in. Come in,” Barbara said in her deep, honeyed voice. She offered me one of her big, toothy smiles that rose all the way to her intelligent gray eyes.

As I sank into one of the huge couches in her art-filled living room, I breathed in the room’s calm. It felt swell.

“It’s been too long,” I said. After we filled each other in on our lives, she drew out my feelings about Blessing and his suicide.

“Anger,” I said. “Remorse that he’s dead. Fear, of course. I haven’t probed these feelings very deeply.”

“That’s fine. So put them in your pocket for another day.”

“Will do.” I sketched her the tale of Della and Chesa, Arlo and Mrs. Cheadle, and Elizabeth and Angela and Moira. “The police believe this is all about an organ harvesting ring. That these organs are being sold for profit.”

Barbara poured us more coffee. “And you?”

“I agree that organs are missing, especially eyes. The police, the FBI, they’re not stupid. But they hear ‘wiseguy,’ and sometimes they lose perspective. They think Harry Pisarro is tied to these crimes.”

“And you don’t?”

“I did for a while. But now? No. Although most of the kills were organized, the killer’s anger, his passion was intense. I don’t get why they’re missing that.”

She clasped her hands. “You’re linking all of the women’s deaths?”

“I think they must be tied together. Both Elizabeth and Moira were hacked up in some way. It appears the mummy lady was chain sawed. The disturbing thing is the ardor, the passion. People selling eyes for profit aren’t motivated by their emotions.”

“I couldn't agree more. Perhaps a serial killer, you’re saying to yourself.”

“Yes. Might these organs have been taken as trophies?”

“Possibly, which would indicate some personal, psychotic motivation. This killer would have lost complete touch with the usual meanings people have in their lives. Think of the proportions. His degree of rage and paranoia. The idea of causality.”

“Yes,” I said. “Those feelings of fury and paranoia would have reached psychotic proportions. At the same time, he’s disconnected from their cause.”

“Of course,” Barbara said. “Remember that eyes watch you.”

“They do,” I said. “They see into your soul.”

“If he’s harvesting their eyes and keeping them, he’s keeping a specific part of them, in order to have them, to hold them to him.”

“Harvesting. Yes.” I sat back on the sofa. I could see Blessing so clearly. The sweat, beading his forehead, dripping down his face, him tossing the coin. I felt his hand shaking as he pressed the gun to my face. I tasted bile.

“Tally?”

“Sorry. I... Blessing said a lot of stuff to me that night. But one thing keeps humming around my brain.

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