Page 28 of Girl, Unmasked
‘Just a little light reading,’ he said.Clutching the manuscript to his chest, he suddenly felt like a prize fool, like a little kid who wouldn’t share his favorite toy.Such infantile behavior would only lead to suspicion, he reasoned, so he calmly placed the paper back down.It was flipped open on page fifty-six.
Gladys leaned over her tray and said, ‘Well, Mr.Fancypants, you’ve gone and got yourself a mistake right there.’
Cain wasn’t sure he heard right.There was no way she just said that.‘What?’
‘Right there,’ she nodded.‘Read that first line.’
He looked at the first line of the scene, then back at the waitress.A cocktail of vulnerability and offense swirled in his stomach as he regarded her doe-eyed expression jump from line to line of his bible.
‘There are no mistakes,’ he said.
'Could have fooled me.Says right there,the moon shed its glow across the sidewalk.Doesn't need a fancy-ass apostrophe onits.You’re talking about a possession, not a contraction.’
For a second, Cain wondered if he hadn’t fallen asleep at this table ten minutes ago and this was all some hallucination.Who was this bitch?Who did she think she was?Tearing apart this book like it was one of her grubby receipts?There was no way this rube with a stupid nametag and yesterday’s mascara had found a flaw.
And then she did the unforgivable.Gladys placed her tray down and reached out one nicotine-yellowed talon and tapped the manuscript, right on the offending apostrophe, like she was a schoolmarm rapping the desk of a dim student.
Something snapped in Cain's head.The world tunneled to a crimson pinprick, and before he knew what he was doing, he was on his feet.He scooped up the manuscript into his arms and, in his wild movements, nudged the tray on the table.A coffee mug clattered to the ground and smashed with an attention-grabbing clang.Gladys yelped something inaudible as she jumped back.
Cain suddenly struggled for breath.He looked around and saw ten pairs of eyes on him.Forks paused halfway to mouths, conversations guttered out.He had to get away.Away from the stares of the creep in the diner, away from Gladys and her sour-lemon judgment.
Without pause, Cain barreled out of the diner and didn’t look back.His feet slapped the pavement as he made his graceless escape down Lodge Street, onto Hawthorne Close and round into a back alley away from prying eyes.He slumped against the wall, gasping, cursing.Dammit to hell.This bitch had seen the book.Had she seen the book title?If so, what’d happen when she saw news of a dead body posed as an angel?Even someone as dumb as her could put two and two together and remember the freak in the diner reading some weird-ass book withhaloin the title.
He looked to the sky and rapidly filled his lungs with air.He needed to be more careful.No more carrying this book with him.Hell, he had the whole thing memorized anyway.It was okay.Mistakes happened.
With the manuscript under his jacket, his feet carried him out of the alley and into the flow of pedestrian traffic.
In just a few hours, he was about to bring the next chapter to life, and if the first angel didn’t get people talking, then the second definitely would.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Outside the coroner’s door, Ella figured that if she hit the gym as much as she hit the morgue she have the abs she had when she was nineteen.She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen an autopsy table without Ripley by her side, but hopefully the old dog was making some headway withHalo of Blood.
Ella rapped her knuckles on the door to Suite 3C and it swung open to reveal a woman that Ella could only describe as a gothic poster child.She was a hundred-twenty pounds of pure gothitude packed into a lab coat two sizes too small.Jet-black hair slicked back in a razor-sharp bob sharp enough to flay flesh from bone.
‘Agent Dark?’the woman said.‘I’m Maggie Jacobs.You’re here about Miss Draper, I assume.’
‘You assume correct,’ Ella said.
‘Come right in.I hope you’ve brought your best stomach.’Maggie stepped back and let her pass.The autopsy room was an icebox, and it had the signature aroma of tangy medical fluid, like something between a swimming pool and a public toilet.In the center of the room squatted an autopsy table with its occupant shrouded in a crisp white sheet.
Ella's stomach did a slow roll as she eyed the lumpy silhouette.No matter how many bodies she saw, that first moment always got her; the suckerpunch reminder that under all the mystery, they were dealing with the dead.The people who couldn't speak for themselves anymore, who needed people like her to give a damn when it mattered.
‘Thanks for seeing me.I appreciate you doing this so fast.’
Maggie moved over to the room’s centerpiece and gently removed the white sheet.Ella knew it was coming, but the sight still took the wind out of her.Sophie Draper – or what had once been Sophie Draper – was sprawled on the slab.Her skin was the color of dirty chalk, mottled with the blooming violet of postmortem bruising.Pinpricks to the forehead from where the barbed wire had been jammed, and of course, the twin pits where her eyes should have been.Stray scraps of optical nerve dangled from the ragged holes.Ella gave the poor woman a momentary silent tribute.She’d seen death in all its myriad forms but this was new territory.
‘Awful,’ Maggie said.‘This woman’s body has been put through the wringer.I’m sorry we all have to see this.’
‘Talk me through it, doctor.I don’t even know where to start.’
‘Eyes,’ said Maggie as she probed the ocular caverns with her pointer.‘Enucleated, only the second time I’ve seen it in twenty years.Perp used a scalpel or straight razor to nick the optic nerves behind the eye.’
‘How clean?’Ella asked.
‘Clean enough, but it’s not exactly heart surgery to remove an eyeball.Get the knife in, scoop it out.It’s grim work, but if you’ve got a strong enough stomach, it’s doable.’
Ella pretended like she didn’t already know the ins and outs of eyeball removal.‘What about the things he replaced the eyes with?’
